Concept and creative process
Opening titles for the long-running twice weekly soap about life inside and outside of the hospital for a group of nurses now working in Heath Green Hospital. A musically synched oscilloscope drove the sequence of new wave computer graphics. The oscilloscope was traditional animation by Hibbert Ralph and filmed with back-lit lighting effects on a rostrum camera. The specially shot live action footage of the nurses was filmed on a spare ward at Walsgrave Hospital Coventry. The computer animation was by the Middlesex Polytechnic Computer Graphics Department run by computer guru Professor John Vince. The CG transitions were achieved by rotoscoping (tracing) the frames from the live action and animating from one to the next on the computer using the Picasso software developed by John Vince. This enabled the computer to draw the outline images in black on clear cels. When these were photographically reversed, the negative images obtained were filmed back-lit on a rostrum camera and married optically with the live action. These titles lasted until 1983 when the series finally came to an end.