BBC2 1991 idents - made in widescreen?

Just gotten wondering about BBC2's 1991-2001 idents. Even though the originals were made in 1991, they have obviously been shown from 1998-2001 in widescreen. Now, what I'm wondering is how they were made in widescreen in 1991? Were they shot on film?

Were they not just cropped? I don't think they recreated them.

Might have been shot on film but they were cropped, the '2' was quite larger from 1997 onwards.

That was my initial thought, but comparing them on TV Ark, I think there was a bit more to it. The '2' in Powder looks a little bigger but there's a lot more powder visible on screen.

Pretty certain they were shot on film (35mm I suspect), which would have meant they were much higher resolution than SD TV, in turn meaning that some latitude for re-sizing and re-framing during the telecine scanning process was possible.

If they were first created in 1991 - the chances are the original transfers would have been to 4:3 SD video - probably to D1 (there was no DigiBeta or D3 back in 1991 ISTR) rather than 1" (Beta SP was never really approved for anything other than camcorder acquisition outside news)

This means they'd probably have gone back to the film originals in 1997/8 to re-transfer to create an SD 16:9 copy (probably to DigiBeta this time round)

The 4:3 and 16:9 telecine transfers could both have re-sized and re-framed differently - and the original camera negative was probably neither 4:3 nor 16:9 - but instead a film ratio.

They may have also done some compositing on some idents to improve their 16:9-ness.

Thanks for clearing that up. So technically if they were still on air they could get the original film again and transfer it to HD, couldn't they?

Yes - if they were shot on 35mm, and were on suitable stock they'd probably hold up quite well in HD.

I don't know - I've always wondered that but there are some suspicious bits to them.

Have a look at this:

http://i36.tinypic.com/2cfp5iv.png


In photoshop I lined up the "2" exactly, and it seems that around the "2" it stayed the same, but the more left or right you go, the more stretched it becomes...

Must admit I'd always been under the impression that the early idents were 4:3 only, and were cropped for use in 16:9.

I was wondering some time ago what BBC could do if it for some weird reason decided on using the Balloon idents on BBC One HD.

I wondered that because I thought shots of a hot air balloon against the british countryside would look better on a HD channel than a few shots of some CGI hippo's making a circle underwater (Assuming they will use HD versions of the current idents, which is a safe bet).

I then realised that though something like that could work for BBC Two, with it's idents being 'timeless', it wouldn't work for One because it's idents were shot in 1997.
This leads to shots of the balloon above London, with no London Eye or Gherkin, they could just axe those ones, but I then wondered why I was bothering even considering the idea because the likelihood of the BBC bringing these 2s and Balloons back is pretty much nil.

I think all of the balloons were shot in 16:9 SD. Certainly the change to widescreen never seemed to be a problem with the Balloons, whereas with the original batch of '2's, as has been discussed already, the original film had to be revisited.

I can't see the Balloon coming back though sadly, even though it remains one of my favourite presentation packages ever. The Balloon itself has been retired I believe, ISTR it making it's last flight somewhere. That would make filming new idents difficult - though of course they could always commission a replica.

Incidentally, the current BBC One idents do appear on BBC America HD - whether they exist in HD in the first place I don't know. I suspect they might...

Yep I'm pretty sure they would have been, it was only a few years ago - probably easier to make them HD than SD even then!

I remember several people (including myself) commenting at the time that for the amount they cost they probably were!