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From: scs@wucs.UUCP (Steve Swope)
Newsgroups: net.tv.drwho
Subject: Re: Visual Effects in Credits
Message-ID: <1194@wucs.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 1-Oct-85 05:27:40 EDT
Article-I.D.: wucs.1194
Posted: Tue Oct  1 05:27:40 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 2-Oct-85 10:00:09 EDT
References: <5162@allegra.UUCP>
Organization: Washington U. in St. Louis, CS Dept.
Lines: 27
Summary: How they're done

In article <5162@allegra.UUCP>, don@allegra.UUCP (Don Mitchell) writes:
> Does anyone know how the visual effects in the Dr. Who opening and
> closing credits were done?  The early shows (Hartnell to middle
> Pertwee) show a wavy pattern which looks like video feedback (what you
> get if you point the camera into the monitor).  The psychedelic-tunnel
> effect at the end of more recent shows is nice.  I have no guesses as
> to how it was done.

The credits up until Pertwee's last season were, in fact, done using video
feedback. Pertwee's last season and the first six seasons of Tom Baker used,
I believe, a form of slit-scan photography (The opening of the stargate in
2001: A Space Odyyssey is a good example of this technique). It involves
covering a photograph or piece of artwork so that only a sliver of it will be
exposed, and moving a film camera toward it while holding the shutter open
on a single frame. The artwork is repositioned and the process repeated for
each frame.
The last Tom Baker season, and the Davison and Colin Baker seasons I'm not sure
about, but I believe they were hand animated (somewhere I have a photograph of
a BBC special effects man holding up what looks like an animation cell with
Peter Davison's picture on it).
My sources are varied, and it's possible I've forgotten or mis-remembered some
of the information. I would welcome more detailed information for my own sake.

				Steve Swope (aka scs@wucs.UUCP)

"Brigadier, A straight line may be the shortest path between
 two points, but it is by no means the most interesting!"