Play for Today (1970)

Concept and creative process

Opening titles for a long-running strand of one-off BBC dramas. The concept was to show a three-dimensional logo of the main title, composed of solid, specially made letterforms, arranged and lit from one side so that they cast shadows. This was photographed in a studio and printed, together with some 24 varied lighting set-ups of different arrangements of abstract patterns formed by the juxtaposition of two or more letterforms. The resulting photographs were tinted in the development processing and filmed on a rostrum camera with dissolves in-camera between the stills in synch with the title music.