Concept and creative process
Titles for ‘Next’, a daytime programme aimed at retirees struggling to find something to do next. The brief was to emphasise the possibilities of retirement as ‘not an end’ but ‘a new beginning’ and packed with opportunities! Pete Wane remembers working on this sequence: “The theme music came first with lyrics that drove my concept - let’s get wacky and send Grandad for a bungee jump, or at the very least a trip in a hot air balloon while Grandma gets into gear in her racing car. The visual styling for the titles was taken from advertising of the imagined viewers’ youth, giving endless potential for cut-out animation with flourishes and embellishments. The cut-out collage was shot as flat-bed animation on an Oxberry Camera with minor edits and tweaks. The individual letters of ‘Next’ were given character and took on the roles of Grandma and Grandad in their acts of derring-do, eventually coming together to spell out the title as the line in the theme song is sung: ‘Next – what are they gonna do next?’ The animation was created by Brian Larkin and his team at Animation People, without whom my concept would have remained but a scruffy storyboard.”