In the Red (1993)

Concept and creative process

Titles for a series of programmes in which six people attempt to find out what the Chancellor should do about Britain's £50 billion budget deficit. An illustration was created in the style of enlarged bank note with a face value of £50 billion and tracked and panned and filmed under the rostrum camera at Zephyr Films. Similarly, a portrait of Her Majesty the Queen illustrated in the same enlarged print style and the Palace of Westminster taken from a rotoscoped frame of the actual film footage, so that it could dissolve through to the live action scene and become the background for the jokey main title. In the final incarnation of the £50 billion note the Queen was replaced by a look-alike actor expressing her horror at the rising tide of national debt. The actor was filmed against green screen and keyed in over the shot of the bank note in the digital edit.