Young Musician of the Year - slitscan version (1984)

Humphrey Burton introduced this most sought-after and respected music competition. Top young instrumentalists from all over the country competed within their four genres of Wind, String, Brass and Piano, before the overall winner was announced. The final was held in the presence of HRH Duchess of Kent and was a very important date in the music calendar. The sequence depicts the 4 genres in the form of the 4 players and was shot live action on 35mm film at Ealing Film Studios. Curved tracks were placed around the players in order to move around them in a semicircular move in real time. The lighting at the start of the sequence was naturalistic-looking but as the camera moved around the track the cue was given to change to rim lighting in order to be able to push shafts of light through in post-production. It was shot so that it appeared almost as if in outline, so that the image would still be well defined, once the light scan technique was utilised. The trophy, which I designed specifically for the series, had bands representing music staves and these were to be treated in the same way as the live action. The trophy was shot on a turntable. The musical instruments were photographed at the highest resolution on a 10 x 8 plate camera. From these, large 20 x 16 colour transparencies were produced photographically. The larger transparencies were shot on the back-lit area of a computerised rostrum camera, where the slit-scan technique was used to create the extended perspectives through the camera zooming in with the aperture open.

Lettering Artist - Fen Field.

Trophy made by Alan Kemp.

Post-Production - Pat Joseph at Geoff Axtel.

Design and Creative Direction, Live Action & Model Shoot Direction - Liz Friedman.

• BBC Programme Index/Genome
• BBC programmes
• Wikipedia