Concept and creative process
‘Stages' was a series of single dramas by new and established writers on contemporary themes. The title sequence reflected the script to screen process of bringing drama productions to the television audience. In a fast flowing series of live action and animated shots the story was told in a visual shorthand through vignettes of the key stages of the creative process.
Filmed to look like one continuous tracking and panning shot, the camera moved through the script on a PC screen into a dressing room with empty clothes hangers waiting to receive the costumes. The virtual camera continued tracking through the make-up mirror onto a blueprint of the set design on which the drawn flats became the walls of the set in a 3D animation. The animation matched the movement and continued on over a studio light as the baffles opened, and on through its fresnel lens and the light element. The scene mixed to another 3D animation of a TV studio camera, tracking through its lens to a monitor suspended from the studio’s lighting gantry on which the opening caption ‘stages’ was displayed. It was an apt solution to the problem of creating a generic sequence to introduce a series of six very different one-off plays, conceived for the television studio.