{"id":318,"date":"2023-11-23T14:04:14","date_gmt":"2023-11-23T13:04:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kecskebak.hu\/?p=318"},"modified":"2023-11-25T12:53:18","modified_gmt":"2023-11-25T11:53:18","slug":"lemons-parking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kecskebak.hu\/?p=318","title":{"rendered":"Lemons Parking"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

For people of a certain age there is a news theme that evokes memories of days off of school ill so strongly it might as well be carbonated and wrapped in orange cellophane<\/strong><\/em>1<\/a><\/sup>.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The theme in question was Ken Elliot\u2019s2<\/a><\/sup> 1972 theme to ITN\u2019s First Report<\/a><\/em> (in 1976 the programme was moved half an hour later in the afternoon and renamed News At One<\/em>). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What made this theme really special was that it was completely performed on synthesisers. This made it really stand out from other news themes at the time3<\/a><\/sup>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Ken\u2019s synth theme is very characteristic of his style. All done on ARP2600<\/a> IIRC and probably at CF8 studios\u2014where I had the pleasure of doing some rough mixes of some of the Seventh Wave tracks.<\/em><\/p>\nRichard G. Elen, Transdiffusion All Talk<\/a><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

There had been attempts at creating a synthesised television news themes before, most notably with the \u201cplastic set\u201d launch of the BBC Nine o\u2019Clock News<\/em> on 14th September 1970. The futuristic set went with a futuristic signature tune composed by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Colour
Robert Dougall and vacuum formed plastic set<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

On the first day, Robert Dougall said that he was rather startled by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop\u2019s wobbulated bleeps and bloops as he had not heard them in advance. Neither the set nor the music went down very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The plastic set was very rapidly relegated to comedy programmes4<\/a><\/sup> (replaced by a very strange CSO newsroom that remained static when the camera angles changed) and Peter Hope<\/a>\u2019s \u201cNewsroom One\u201d replaced the BBC Radiophonic Workshop\u2019s signature tune.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The First Report\/News at One<\/em> theme was arguably the first synthesised news theme that really worked. It lasted from 1972 until 1987, which was a fantastic innings given the chronic neophilia of television executives, and it still sounds just as fresh today as it did then. I also loved the green and blue typing hands which accompanied the stills in the title sequence. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How this title sequence was done with 1972 technology for First Report<\/em> I haven\u2019t got a clue but, fortunately, Gareth Randall does:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A while ago I tried to work out the most logical way the titles must have been done. The actual typing hands have obviously just had what we\u2019d now call a solarisation effect applied, probably with a \u201cCox box\u201d, one of the many analogue video processing devices made by Michael Cox Electronics\u2014a Cox box was used to generate the colours for the BBC Noddy-era symbols.<\/em>

The giveaway for how the stills were made to appear is that you can see in some off-air recordings<\/a> that the photos aren\u2019t exactly lined up in their little boxes and the edges of some overlap into an adjacent box.<\/em>

That reveals that it\u2019s a separate camera shot of a montage of photos (easy to make up and refresh on a daily basis) being revealed box-by-box using an animated matte, and the camera was often not lined up precisely with the matte.<\/em>

The only question really is whether the sequence was done live every day, or pre-recorded once the day\u2019s photo montage was ready. My feeling is they probably just did it live each day; the matte run could have part of the main titles tape, or run in sync using a separate VTR, or a series of slides cut up live<\/em>.<\/p>\nGareth Randall, Transdiffusion All Talk<\/a><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Back in 2011, when my children were small, I recreated the News at One<\/em> title sequence using footage of my daughters and places around the town where we lived at the time to make them laugh (and they did).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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