Concept and creative process
Titles for a series that offered two partisan views of a controversial issue. The theme of the series was dramatically interpreted in an animated sequence by designer Kathy Reeves. Her concept was to design a film leader countdown and make it the hero of the piece. Normally a film leader counts down from 10, but hers was in every frame of the 22 second sequence and had to be specially designed and prepared as artwork, with cel overlays changing the central numbers. It was filmed on a rostrum camera as part of the animation sequence. The other animated elements were the fist, which tried to hammer the leader out of screen, and the flat hand which tried to resist, ending up with a centre screen tussle in which the leader got squashed to oblivion. The animation was dramatically drawn with animated coloured backgrounds of explosions and a tempestuous seascape behind the struggling hands. The hands were reprised as a still frame for the final programme logo, which emerged from the chaos of the battle of the film leader.