Take Nobody's Word For It (1987)

Concept and creative process

Opening titles for ‘Take Nobody’s Word for It’, a series of do-it-yourself science programmes. The artwork for this title sequence was entirely created using photographic Kodalith acetate mattes. The Kodaliths were backlit with coloured gels and filmed frame by frame on a 35mm rostrum camera to achieve the animation. The exposure was varied during filming to create the neon lighting effect. A camera zoom out from the central grid revealed two panning friezes of outline images of impossible mathematical shapes and conundrums. Several of these, including the Necker Cube and the Penrose Triangle, were superimposed in white zooming up and past the camera on a separate exposure. The sequence was filmed and edited entirely in-camera to timings taken from the music track and annotated for the cameraman on a shooting script or dope sheet.

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