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Trails and Slides
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From the days of slides and opacities through to video graphics, we take a look at a series of entertaining and original graphics from Wales and the West.
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Trail Styles
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We start with a selection of trail styles, most of which were created by Mick Winning at Splash Computer Graphics, using Harry and Paintbox. A Real Video of some of these trail styles is downloadable here (301Kb).
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Ah, summer on HTV. Our first example from 1986 isn't too exciting, but it's a fairly typical (for the time) amalgam of capgen and computer animation. The line up's pretty dismal. "Classmates" was a sort of cut-down "This is Your Life" presented by Sarah Kennedy.
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A nice one from December 1988. We're looking at the plan-view of a Christmas tree, which was built-up with round slabs of decreasing diameters. As the slabs spin and resolve, we realise that the tree-ornaments are portions of the HTV logo. Quite what the bubbles have to do with Christmas is another matter ...
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1988 - "New Horizons from HTV", the "aerial" rendered in the plasticy/metallic finish that computers always seemed to offer. Still, nice work. By now HTV was employing professional V/O artistés rather than local announcers for trails.
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| Beach promo from summer 1989. Sadly we've just missed the animated crab. Interestingly, "Codename Kyril" was an HTV production for the Network. |
A well executed sequence with lots of live-action from autumn 1990. Programme in question would spring from one of the playing cards. Accompanied by suitably cheesy music. |
Desk top motif for this one from the same year. The actual programme trail would resolve itself into album - as here. Other pictures in the album were back references to previous HTV trail styles. |
Influence of the NPU
| In 1998 ITV introduced a new image for the Network, centred around their "heart" motif. Additionally a Network Promotions Unit was set up to provide unified trails for Network shows. HTV remained defiant - well, a bit - by painstakingly obscuring the ITV logo supplied on the trails with an HTV one. It isn't clear why they adopted the two different styles ... |
 
| ... though their policy wasn't consistent, sometimes the HTV logo was only added to the final caption, while occasionally it wasn't added at all. |
Slides and Captions
| We begin with a WWN slide from 1963 announcing programme changes. Next a TWW caption from 1966 taken from the end of children's programmes and from 1968, a Harlech promotion for Wednesday. These day-specific captions were used between the Harlech start-up, with its elongated ident and the first appearance of the day's announcer. They were also used at closedown. |
| Hello, Harlech's just popped out to pay the milkman. The "For Children" caption from 1970 was a style adapted for other programmes, usually with title and mini HTV ident above the line and appropriate picture below. Next, a typically seventies' style caption complete with alarmingly loud font. |
| A couple of optically sourced images next, from 1985; the first followed episode one of Granada's "Albion Market". The "Benson" slide covered a breakdown, during an afternoon transmission. "The Late Friday Film" is from 1987 - a combined optical, electronic effort. |
| The "Lace" caption is from 1989, following a style which began in 1988, a sort of odd telly/microwave oven affair. Next, a Children's ITV caption from 1989 embracing the ITV corporate style introduced that year and a Saturday afternoon menu from 1990. |
| Finally, a glimpse of the programme-slide style used for a couple of years up until the end of 1998. Right, a rare peek-time glimpse of a programme menu in the new, ITV style. This was used to cover a short breakdown. |
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Some of the pictures on this page have been supplied by the Transdiffusion Archive Project
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Next: a look at the graphical style of HTV news.
  
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