Shed Media for NBC/BBC.
Wall to Wall USA

Following the success of the UK series we are now on our second season of titles and in-programme graphics for ‘Who do you think you are’ for NBC in the US and the BBC in the UK.

Although the UK series mainly draws from the world of television and stage, the US sibling series does cast its net into a truly bigger, glitzier pool. The celebrities from the first series included Matthew Broderick, Sarah Jessica Parker, Spike Lee, Susan Sarandon and Lisa Kudrow, who also produced the series for NBC.

Title sequence

The titles are drawn from a selection of rushes which are frozen and then enhanced via a parallax technique whereby the inherent depth in the frozen image is enhanced by extracting the subject from his or her background and foreground are also overlaid to add further depth again. While a subtle virtual camera move pans over the scene the now ubiquitous family tree lines descend revealing the typographic elements. All these celebrity cameos are interspersed with footage of US and other world locations which provide the background for our overlaid traveling family tree lines.

Maps

The maps for this show are very processor intensive as they involve creating huge canvases for the each continent so that our virtual cameras can start from a small town in any US state and then arc outwards to reveal a wide view of the continent and then finally finish this arcing movement by settling on a small town or village within what was once called the ‘old world’. All these frames have to be fully HD so you can imagine the size of the maps which have to be originated.