Doctor Who (1967)

Concept and creative process

I had not been directly involved in the electronic process of Version 1 of 'Doctor Who', but knew now that I could influence the result by the introduction of graphic shapes. I used a contrasty portrait of Patrick Troughton, who played the Doctor, to create imposing shapes, and I introduced concentric lines at the start of the sequence to create different effects. The cloudy wipe from the face into the Doctor Who Logo is not electronic but an effect I made by filming a sheet of crunched up white polystyrene. When lit from the side, the shadows of the bits of polystyrene turned from the black to peak white, as the polystyrene was rotated in front of the camera. The negative and a positive of this effect were then used as mattes in the film optical to create the wipe.