Concept and creative process
Barry Norman presented this final programme of Series 6 in his long-running series of ‘Hollywood Greats’, in which he had profiled the lives and work of the Hollywood stars. In a direct response to the producer’s brief to reflect the movie titles of the 30s and 40s, Barbra Flinder changed the titles for this series, making them purely typographic in an Art Deco type font, superimposed over a textured monochrome background. The word ‘The’ of the main title was hand drawn and combined with photoset type, which was then hot foil blocked onto clear acetate cels in sets of black, white and grey. When these cels were registered and overlaid on one another with a slight offset, they gave a three-dimensional feel to the lettering. The cels were filmed in 35mm on the rostrum camera using a multiplane set-up. Raised layers of glass were built up on the rostrum animation table and the acetate cels of lettering were positioned accurately one above another, each on a separate sheet of glass. Top and side lighting was used to create the double drop shadow effect on the textured artwork backgrounds, using a different texture for each of the three credit changes with in-camera dissolves between each one.