The Consultant (1983)

Concept and creative process

Opening titles for a serial dramatised by Alan Plater, from the novel by John McNeil, in which a computer consultant was hired to detect fraud in a major bank's computer system.
Hywel Bennett starred as Webb the ambitious and ruthless computer consultant hired to solve the case. This he did, stopping at nothing, not even murder, in an attempt to turn his exposure and elimination of the perpetrator of the bank fraud to his own financial advantage. A wireframe computer animation of Webb’s head and brain morphed to an outline of the buildings of the City of London which lay symbolically at the heart of his investigation into the fraud and embezzlement of the bank’s money. The cel artwork plotted by the computer from the close-up shot of Webb at the computer and the wide shot time-lapse shot of the City was filmed on a rostrum camera and combined with the two scenes in a film optical.

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