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Post by Matthew Kurth on Jul 12, 2014 7:46:45 GMT
I know there's a really nice piece out there on the DVDs which demonstrates the slit-scan animation technique used for Pertwee's last season and for most of Tom's reign, but is there anything out there which does a sort of practical walk-through of how the first three title sequences were built up?
I mean, clearly they are based on video howl-around/feedback techniques but there appears to be some sophisticated use of mirrors and vision mixing to build up some of the elements. I believe I read at some point that the effect of Troughton's face "melting" was done by rotating a piece of Styrofoam painted black on one side to generate a key signal, and that the parts of the original Pertwee sequence not involving his face was shot in B&W to maintain better control of the image and then colored later.
But are there any videos out there which actually walk through or try to recreate the process for each sequence?
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darcysmart
Member
"...Comes from an outside influence. Unless this old body of mine is wearing a bit thin."
Posts: 47
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Post by darcysmart on Jul 12, 2014 9:14:28 GMT
I wish. I'm always interested in stuff like that. The opening sequences were what got me into DW as 9 year old. Every weekday at 6pm, the ABC would broadcast and Episode of Doctor Who (in chronological order of course.) and every day I'd tune in for about 30 seconds and flip out over the titles. Then one day I actually decided to see if the content was any good. The rest is history... To me anyway.
Aside from the waffle, is there an online source for the Pertwee demonstration you were talking about?
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Post by richardlong on Jul 12, 2014 11:39:50 GMT
I've always understood that the original Pertwee title sequence was shot entirely in black & white (except for his face) and then coloured manually after initial tests apparently showed that the howlround technique didn't work very well with colour equipment.
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Post by Richard Marple on Jul 12, 2014 12:10:33 GMT
The decade books give a decent discription of each of the early title sequences.
IIRC some of the original sequence reused some test footage Bernard Lodge created for a different programme.
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Post by martinjwills on Jul 12, 2014 16:15:47 GMT
The Clean Opening Titles for the original Pertwee are an easter egg on one of the DVDs, the Titles tape still exists as well with the end titles. I have seen a clean early pertwee titles on the web where the circles are more vivid and the colours are more Blue/Green than the red.
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Simon Collis
Member
I have started to dream of lost things
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Post by Simon Collis on Jul 12, 2014 20:11:35 GMT
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Post by Brian Seaver on Jul 14, 2014 9:16:51 GMT
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Post by Matthew Kurth on Jul 15, 2014 3:10:39 GMT
The Spearhead DVD gives some good detail in the making of documentary (only watched it the other day co-incidentally). It was filmed in Black and White, and details how the coloured gels were added and how the various versions of the Pertwee image were built up - quality scans with side lighting to give the concentric angels of the howlaround, as well as full colour scans and black and white imagery. Thanks for pointing me to this, I hadn't gotten around to watching that bit. It goes a long way toward explaining why the color in Pertwee's face was somewhat dodgy until the RT brought modern tools to bear on it.
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Post by Matthew Kurth on Jul 15, 2014 3:27:42 GMT
The decade books give a decent discription of each of the early title sequences. Ah yes! In fact, page 89 of The Sixties has the exact description I was looking for. I still think it would be fascinating to go through the steps to re-create each sequence, as a sort of documentary project. If only I had that kind of time these days...
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Post by Richard Tipple on Jul 19, 2014 20:19:14 GMT
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Post by Matthew Kurth on Jul 20, 2014 22:43:58 GMT
The introduction of the laser pointer is an interesting idea for generating some on-the-fly effects, but I've done simple camera-to-TV feedback and it gets kind of boring after awhile. I'm much more interested in something that explores using an additional input and a switcher to inject imagery into and obtain higher degree of control over the effect.
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Post by Richard Marple on Jul 21, 2014 11:53:46 GMT
I've done a few visual feedback videos, sometimes it works quite well, but you have to get all the TV settings & the room lighting just right.
It also helps to find some music that with synch in with it.
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Post by Hugh Pearson on Jul 21, 2014 12:56:07 GMT
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Post by Ed Brown on Jul 28, 2014 1:53:55 GMT
I've always understood that the original Pertwee title sequence was shot entirely in black & white (except for his face) and then coloured manually after initial tests apparently showed that the howlround technique didn't work very well with colour equipment. It has always been my understanding that producer Derrick Sherwin discovered in 1969 that 'howl around', as a feedback effect, was something which only occured on the old 405-line b/w tv cameras, but did not occur with the newly introduced EMI 2001 625-line colour cameras. This, it appears, is the reason why the howl-around sequence for the 1970 season's titles had to be recorded in black-and-white, since it was only possible to create the effect using the traditional b/w tv cameras, which were just then being taken out of service as BBC1 went over to colour, in November '69.
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Post by Richard Marple on Jul 28, 2014 11:48:19 GMT
That's interesting I've seen a few 1970s TOTP perfromances that managed to have a 'howl around' effect.
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