Concept and creative process
Opening titles for a festive episode of the series, featuring a mixture of sketches and stand-up comedy from Eric Morecambe, Ernie Wise and guests. For the Christmas show a constantly changing starry background was created by filming pinpricks of varying sizes in alternating pieces of back-lit artwork on a rostrum camera, with a star filter on the lens. Over this background other elements were added, beginning with a variety of randomly decorated star fields painted on cels, which were filmed top-lit, fast-cutting in-camera between the cels. As the star fields faded out, Eric and Ernie’s stars zoomed up, superimposed over the starry background. Finally, ‘Christmas Show’ was also superimposed with star filter effects, before zooming away to infinity, as the large stars zoomed up and over the camera, leaving just the starry background to wipe through to the studio.