BBC Family Clock

[VMPhil]

it actually amazes me just how much of the MLN stuff was practical - the BBC smokey globe just blew my mind.

It was? That does make sense, a lot of L-N stuff was practical by necessity but that is fascinating to learn.

Don't quote me on this, but I believe it was a concious decision to do things practical as much as possible, after everyone copied Lambie-Nairn's Channel 4 ident with computer generated flying shapes in space or other concepts that could never exist in real life. So Lambie-Nairn decided to go the opposite direction.

[VMPhil]

It isn't a mock; before he died I had an email exchange with Martin Lambie-Nairn where we discussed it. It was a simple idea created by one of his staff (Sandy MacMillan) at the time and used a tank full of water with dyed ribbons to produce. The original plan was to use it as a pan BBC identity in times of serious obit use or national emergency. The clock I was told was a static frame and the ident itself was the ribbons on a 60 second loop without the logo fading on screen and without a soundtrack. It ended up being used by all different departments in different ways (on desktop wallpapers, ID cards, mousemats, the internal intranet and even flags at BBC Centres) - somehow BBC Worldwide ended up using it for Video and later DVD prints too.

This is kind of fascinating because it implies that BBC Worldwide took it upon themselves to use the ident on the start of videos/DVDs, and that it wasn't intended for that use at all! At least it meant we have a good quality copy of it readily available (here's a copy I uploaded a while back)

[video]https://up.metropol247.co.uk/102018/1539535683_1512707203.mp4[/video]

Unfortunately I don't think embedding video files is enabled on here so you'll have to click the link like the old days.

EDIT: updated to use new video embed tag.

[Steve in Pudsey]

It's interesting that there seemingly wasn't such a clock for the previous Family ident that was used when Diana died. The One O'Clock News was introduced off the ident.

https://youtu.be/Gn8jOdwy0ZM?t=14405

(Also surprising that it was referred to as the One O'Clock news given that BBC World was presumably also taking it. In fact I wonder if World pres had done its own thing in that junction and the preceding weather forecast as an announcement about EastEnders was probably not appropriate to the World audience?)

I guess the other question that this begs is whether previous incarnations of BBC presentation had a similar family ident that was never used?

EDIT: That's got me thinking now (always dangerous) - if the whole point of the Family ident was to bring all of the BBC output together, which I assume included BBC World, having a clock in that package doesn't make sense because of the time zones issue on World.

[VMPhil]

I guess the other question that this begs is whether previous incarnations of BBC presentation had a similar family ident that was never used?

Apparently, again from an old post on TVF, before the ident in the clip you've posted, there was an ident that used both the 1 and 2 logos and made it look like a channel called BBC ½.

[Inspector Sands]

[
that has really amazed me is that this was a practical effect - I would have assumed it would have been cgi - even in 1997 this wouldn't have been mega hard to produce, and today, you could do it in your bedroom in blender, fully rendered out in 4k in just a few hours - an amazing nugget of trivia.

it actually amazes me just how much of the MLN stuff was practical - the BBC smokey globe just blew my mind.

I suspect that these days a lot more is based on a physical items than you'd think. It's very easy just to assume that everything is 'CGI', but using real life elements presumably both looks better and is quicker

[Matrix]

[
that has really amazed me is that this was a practical effect - I would have assumed it would have been cgi - even in 1997 this wouldn't have been mega hard to produce, and today, you could do it in your bedroom in blender, fully rendered out in 4k in just a few hours - an amazing nugget of trivia.

it actually amazes me just how much of the MLN stuff was practical - the BBC smokey globe just blew my mind.

I suspect that these days a lot more is based on a physical items than you'd think. It's very easy just to assume that everything is 'CGI', but using real life elements presumably both looks better and is quicker

Could not agree more. There's a genuinely creative element to quite a lot of designers' work that gets overlooked by the idea that everyone has a CGI budget similar to a Hollywood film. Unless done right, most CGI can look a bit, well, less than ideal...

[Mike]

You also need to remember that for something that's unlikely to be seen more than once if ever why spend a lot of money in 1997 terms animating a lifelike set of 3 ribbons moving with waves when you can simply get a high speed camera, tank of water and some strips of ribbon far cheaper and quicker than spending a few weeks getting a 3D model produced and rendered.

Just 18 months beforehand The Simpsons had to go to a 3D animation studio for this sequence - at a substantial cost - and the rippling water effect was said to be the most expensive part of it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dvavcX9I8g

That's not to say there wasn't probably some hue/colour correction to those ribbons (and it may be the source tape that Inspector Sands has copied it from) the colours seem washed out in the clock whereas the capture I've provided being taken from the email exchange seems more vibrant (As does the BBC video variant.

[Steve in Pudsey]

The point about rippling water makes a lot of sense in the context of what Yorkshire allegedly paid for the Liquid Gold ident, albeit a decade earlier.

[Mike]

Just as an aside I've badly looped VM Phil's capture of the video ident to give a sense of what the family ident would have looked like
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMs0uRlfUTk

[chris]

I always thought the digital delay reasoning was an excuse. Wasn’t it because a silent clock was seen an outdated method of presentation?

I don’t agree with that as I happen to think a clock is such a classy way of introducing a news bulletin.

Completely an excuse. Otherwise the BBC should have got rid of the pips when DAB and radio streaming launched.

Of course, BBC Two rebranded to the yellow 2s before BBC One - was a clock ever made for that set? From memory the clock was used very rarely by the end of the 1991 2s so but you’d think they’d have wanted one just in case?

[IndigoTucker]

it actually amazes me just how much of the MLN stuff was practical - the BBC smokey globe just blew my mind.

The video we've seen of the practical effect of the smokey globe troubles me on two points, 1) the 1 and BBC logo are physically on the perspex, when we know they are keyed on and 2) theres a big window in the background, when surely it would be in a light-tight studio. It might be representative of how elements were made, but I'm sure there was more electronic work involved.

[welnat06]

It does astound me how in the 90's they decided that rather than using some of the more Morden technology at hand, they would instead utilise the effectiveness of old school physical models an produce some of the most groundbreaking idents of the time with the 90's globe and the 2's. Credit to the genius of ML-N.

[deejay]

I always thought the digital delay reasoning was an excuse. Wasn’t it because a silent clock was seen an outdated method of presentation?

I don’t agree with that as I happen to think a clock is such a classy way of introducing a news bulletin.

Completely an excuse. Otherwise the BBC should have got rid of the pips when DAB and radio streaming launched.

Of course, BBC Two rebranded to the yellow 2s before BBC One - was a clock ever made for that set? From memory the clock was used very rarely by the end of the 1991 2s so but you’d think they’d have wanted one just in case?

I don’t think a yellow 2 clock was ever made. As you say, by then the clock was only ever shown at closedown and even then not all the time. I think if the learning zone was on, there was a symbol and some pages from ceefax scheduled rather than a clock.

[James2001]

I don't think they even showed the clock at closedown after 1998, it was restricted to when Wimbledon displaced the news to BBC2. So usually once a year.

[Mort]

[mention]Mort[/mention] is that on occasions when there has been a Covid briefing, when you can expect the schedule to be disrupted, or more generally?

Just more generally, that I've noticed. Boris seems to be keeping mostly to time these days, unlike last year when he often seemed like he had to binge one more Killing Eve before hitting the flag room.