Colouring the archive stills

Programme Montage

Production: Blakeway
Director: Rob Coldstream
Channel: BBC

The reign of King George & Queen Mary illustrated using large textured canvases.

The graphics in this series were created using extra large canvases which encompassed memorabilia, photographs and newspaper cuttings, all montaged into patterns and textures from the era. We used this technique on ‘Bertie’ last year but as this series was to be broadcast in HD, then we needed to upgrade the quality & computing power involved (see gallery below).

The moves on these canvases were achieved in Adobe After Effects, by pulling the frames out from the canvas so that we could give the appearance of depth when the virtual cameras swooped over the scene. We attempted to suggest some further realism by adding a reflective quality to the images in the frames by placing an image of a room beyond the camera so that its image would then appear overlaid in a masked area suggesting the qualities of glass. We used a low ambient light and lots of small spotlights which then moved and cast light on the pertinent parts of the narrative.

As well as these large canvases we had access to detailed coloured stills were normally standard black & white archive stills were engendered with a new lease of life involving complex painting and fastidious research by Toni Marshall, into the clothing and regal attire of the time.