Concept and creative process
This title sequence was for ‘The French Revolution’, a docudrama series featuring real-life events re-enacted. The series covered the 10-year-long French Revolution. The Monarchy of France was broke and taxing their subjects to pay more and more of their miserable income. Life was incredibly hard for them and the people were starving while they continued to see the bourgeoisie living the high life. You can understand why the French people revolted! The BBC producer required a title sequence that would reflect the gritty reality and brutality of the times. The thought of the warring factions inspired me to use the red, white and blue of the French Tricolore, with the three colours representing the blood shed by each faction. I chose people with interesting faces from a casting session - young, old, black, white, women, men….and a baby! The colours, representing blood, were fired out of canisters at our cast of characters, one at a time. I was told it was a harmless, special, hand-made brew, however the shoot itself was a bit messy. I had to keep it down to one blast per person because of the length of clean up time. We were very gentle with the baby – just a couple of drops of blood was enough. Hi-speed camera settings allowed us to reduce the whole sequence to slow motion. The film footage was sent to an editor to create a cut that could be used as a template for the music. This was handled via the BBC producer. In post-production we were able to organise all of the colours to give the appearance of making the red, white and blue of our French Revolution logo.