The 1988 News at Ten titles

Just looking back at the ITV News at Ten titles in use from 1988 to 1992...they're pretty brilliant, aren't they?! Particularly when comparing it to pres at the time (some regions still using idents and clocks made out of cardboard, particularly in '88 ) it looks utterly otherworldly, streets ahead of any other UK TV graphics I can think of from the time. I can't work out how they managed to have so many buildings (virtually the entire London skyline) without any obvious popup on the horizon, something home game consoles didn't start getting right until around 15 years ago.

A nice touch too is that they showed the exact time the bulletin started - usually 10, but in this example a few minutes past, titles at 1:25:



Does anyone know how they would have been made and how the "live" clock was achieved? The late noughties update was also quite astonishing but you'd expect that for 20 years later.

I'm pretty sure I've read about the making of these titles before. It was possibly in the brilliant News at Ten: A Celebration book but I don't have a copy to hand and can't remember what it said.

I can't remember the exact method they used but the hands only appear once the zoom in to the clock is head-on, so it is just a straight zoom. Completely seamless though, especially good for the time.

The late 80s was the heyday of the super facility house in Soho, where the likes of Molinaire provided some stunning electronic effects to television that even the national broadcasters couldn't match. I'm guessing this was achieved by one of those facilities generating the landscape frame at a time. Possibly based on a real helicopter shot and redrawn within something like a Paintbox then rendered off to video at the end. Again, this is just a guess, but I'd have thought they'd have done a Ten o'clock set of titles which ends properly with the clock showing Ten, and a blurred version which ITN managed to key clock hands onto, should the on air time be different.

Any other guesses, or better, actual facts? I agree this is a really great set of titles and far ahead of its time.

Really? Looks like the hands are visible here while the south facing clock-face is still also visible:


But I suppose it could be a bit of an optical illusion, with no actual rotation of the clock face itself from this point.

Just by looking at it, I'd say that this is a video in its own right:



and is added to the picture using a vision mixer, with each frame of the wipe animation timed to match the 3d skyline animation.

Have you never considered they might have made a few versions of the sequence - you know, with each one showing a different time - 1 min past ten, two mins past ten etc, and used whichever was appropriate to the actual on-air time on the night. I don't think it was any more complicated than that.

And Kent house has far too many storeys than it actually has in the title sequence, a minor quibble I know!

It's possible but there still would have been a technique used to change the time - ie they wouldn't have rendered the entire sequence 15 times for 15 minutes

15 renders of the title sequence is probably cheaper than finding a way to key in the hands generated using another piece of equipment (and synchronise the motion) live - that would be a major engineering faff for the time.

it would be easier to render the last zoom shot - which will only be a few hundred frames for each time variation and splice them together. it's only got to be done once - surely that's going and easier than doing it live?

You could hide the rest of the scene and just render the clock face (with mask) and then key it on to the rest of the scene which you've already rendered once. That'd be seamless.

Thank you!! Somebody else who noticed the casual disregard for architecture ( )

I loved those titles, and back then someone with a passing interest in television technology I always assumed that ITN made (or got someone like The Moving Picture Company) to make the hands on the clockface at 10, then rendered the minute hand for every minute around to 11 to allow for one hour schedule changes. Then in the gallery, they chose the correct minute it would on air, and played it out.

Of course, it would have been really clever, if the minute hand moved down a minute in real time on the 'News At Ten' title caption hold...

I can't imagine ITN could tie their vision mixer, a DVE, and a caption generator to timecode from a VT replay of a blurred set of titles to render a set of clock hands. Not in 1988 anyway. I stand to be corrected of course but I'd have thought a selection of titles with clock hands at 00, 01, 02 etc would be far more likely, with the gallery choosing the one most appropriate.