Jonny Trunk’s mailout today shares the link below, which will lead you into a fabulous and massive black hole of lost time as you peruse the TV graphics in Auntie’s Archive from the 1950s onwards. I’ve already let one cup of coffee go stone cold while gazing at the opening titles for Fred Hoyle’s superb ‘A For Andromeda’ and countless other marvels of ancient broadcasting.
Cast your eyes and ears across these little gems of creativity before HM Gov flog them all off. Or something. Relect upon the outstanding value your TV Licence delivers. You don’t even need to pay for a subscription to explore this treasure trove, which is complete with creator’s notes and comments in many cases.
I started with the diggidee bum diggidee bum Doctor Who sequence, which is accompanied by an explanation of its genesis from Bernard Lodge, who was the genius behind the title sequence…. but there’s so much more in here. So much more. Dive in!
Where’s that coffee? Damn, gone cold again.
Thank you. Wish I’d seen this in Lockdown 1. The Body In Question is my favourite so far.
I met the designer of these Sportsnight titles from 1985 not long after they’d gone “live”. It was the first computer-generated sequence the BBC had commissioned, so rather prestigious, and the designers were given a year to do it, along with all the computing power the beeb had at their disposal… but this was new-new territory, and with a week to go until transmission date, they were still 5 seconds short, so in desperation the team made up some fiberglass models (the boxing glove and the track shoe), filmed them in a similar style, and bob’s yer uncle…
https://www.ravensbourne.ac.uk/bbc-motion-graphics-archive/sportsnight-1985