BBC Four Striped Schools Diamond (lame mock)

I've always had a fascination for the BBC Schools Diamond (a mechanical model devised by Murray Andrew for use in the intervals before BBC Schools programmes) - I am ancient enough not only to remember it, but to have watched it at primary school every week before a programme. Only for my unimpressed teachers would complain that it wasn't as easy to understand as ITV's schools clock. The diamond mechanism itself is fascinating and it was very satisfying to work out how it worked.

This four striped version of the diamond was originally only a static caption card, but I always wanted to see it being animated. Hence another lame mock that I produced, as always, in Macromedia Flash 8. I find the overall effect is rather akin to seeing one of those 4x4 or 5x5 Rubik's cubes for the first time.

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• bbc
• schools
• presentation
• diamond
• flash
• mock

[cwilliams1976]

One other mistake - the BBC put the cue dot on the left and ITV on the right which is where you had it.

[stupidrubbish]

@cwilliams1976 When I'm doing a mock I'm never that bothered about details like that, as I'm only doing them for my own amusement. If I'm doing a recreation then I'll try to get all those small things right.

[borgduck]

HOW do you people do this?!

[presheaven]

@stupidrubbish It's not very good really. There has to be some curvature to the sides apparently. I'm guessing that it was down the way the model was built, so to do it properly I need to use Swift 3D. Check the MHP Chat list for the url to an interesting French blog if you haven't already, it's got some small but good off-screens of some other regional BBC logos.

[stupidrubbish]

@presheaven AfterEffects is something I've always wanted to play with, but I've never had the opportunity. I've just been looking at your BBC West jaws again - it's fabulous.

[presheaven]

@stupidrubbish I used to use After Effects for that, with a combination of filters to key out the background colour, replacing it with the same colour and blurring things a bit, then using the wiggler to adjust the key randomly but smoothly over time. You have to be careful not to make it too pixelated, which is where the blurring comes in. Unfortunately, it produces the effect vertically as well as horizontally, which didn't happen on the old luma key as far as I can tell.

[stupidrubbish]

@presheaven I've taken a close look at a number of off airs of diamonds - they vary enormously. Sometimes the stepper motor accelerates and decelerates a bit, sometimes it starts and stops dead and moves at a constant speed. Sometimes, as you say, the diamond does not completely disappear, but on a few occasions it actually does. I've since discovered that I could have got the sort of "liquid" look of analogue keying on this animation by applying the Virtual Dub "Warp Sharp" filter.

[stupidrubbish]

@presheaven It's by Chris Spedding and it's called Backwoods Theme. I a copy on the Harvest Records sampler "A Breath Of Fresh Air", and thought it would be perfect as diamond music.

[presheaven]

@stupidrubbish Getting the diamond to look really authentic is very hard indeed. Firstly, as you say, the diamond is usually a bit distorted because of various things like the mirror and the camera lens, so it should be squashed slightly horizontally. Then, there is the effect which means that the diamond never 'blinks' completely out of view, possibly due to light leaking.

[presheaven]

What is the music?