Concept and creative process
Opening titles for a children's entertainment series presented by Basil Brush and his new friend Mr Billy Boyle, with songs, sketches and special guests. The brief was to create an animating neon light effect and punctuate the sequence with Basil’s famous “BOOM BOOM”. The neon effect was created using photographic Kodalith acetate mattes. The Kodaliths were backlit with coloured gels and filmed frame by frame on a 35mm rostrum camera to create the animation. The exposure was varied during filming to create the neon lighting effect. A blue panel was used to key in live action of the guests. Editing was achieved in-camera using an animation dope sheet/shooting script with timings derived from a frame count of the soundtrack. The sequence was filmed in-house at the BBC TV Centre by Colin Hancock.