Straight Talk (1981)

Concept and creative process

A BBC West Midlands series featuring an in-depth interview with various interviewees from different fields. The title sequence was created with the artwork of the ‘Straight Talk’ programme logo and animating mattes, shot back-lit on a rostrum camera, with coloured gels providing the infill. The straight lines and angles of the logo were filmed in close-up one frame at a time, using opaque paper mattes to uncover the artwork and expose it to the camera. A zoom out from a close-up revealed the complete programme logo. A T-shaped matte was used to create the background around the logo to permit the exposure of the vertical stripes on a second pass of the film through the camera.