[sparky_75]

The C4 "Roto" was entirely computer generated - designed by Central TVs in house promotions team

Not a surprise it was computer generated, it was very similar to Central's style at the time.
Were they able to animate that to completion in house (similar to the idents) as I'm sure I read somewhere (it may not have been ITV Schools on 4 related) that this sort of work computers didn't have processing power and it had to be done in the States?

Of course if you know what you're doing these days you can knock that up to completion in an hour or so, as demonstrated here:
tvforum.uk  (although it quickly became the Ballyboy show ) - but in the 80s...

The original Central brand - used from 1982 - was developed in conjunction with Minale Tattersfield - an outside design consultancy. This company was also responsible for the Thames skyline ident in the late 60s.
The Central Autumn 1985 brand (when the 'cake' ident first appeared) was developed mostly by their in house promotions and graphics department. The animation work carried out elsewhere and struck to 35mm film.

The Head of Promotions at Central - Jim Stocko was involved with the re-design of ITV Schools for the move to C4.
Not sure what computers they used for definate, but many were using some form of Commodore Amiga and Archimedes at the time. Around the same time YTV introduced their CGI Chevron - this was aparently created on Amigas - according to an article/feature run by Ace Magazine in 1987. (This work was outsourced)
I don't think Central had the equipment at the time - due to the expense - so it was likely to have been outsourced to a specialist company.
Central had been using a version of Quantel Paintbox for a little while - but not sure if those versions had the capabilities required.
By 1990 - they were using Quantel Harry and Harriet for most of their captions and graphics work - which had greater capabilities.

At some point between 1986 and 1989; Central set up The Image Facility - their Graphics Dept hiring out their services.
They would do a lot - if not all of the design work - and the Computer/Animation/Post Production work outsourced.
One of the companies used Autodesk software initially to create the wire meshes.
I'll dig out some industry magazines to see if I can find the articles.

All this would be simple and cheap these days - esp the CGI work.
I can't find it, but there was a re-creation of the C4 Schools roto on Youtube.
And quite decent job too. I think it was done in Blender.

[Si-Co]

Jim Stokoe (I believe that’s the correct spelling) also co-composed some of the Central jingles and at least one of the ITV Schools tracks from 1986.

Is this the reconstruction you were referring to, Sparky?

youtu.be 

This video can only be viewed on YouTube.

[sparky_75]

Jim Stokoe (I believe that’s the correct spelling) also co-composed some of the Central jingles and at least one of the ITV Schools tracks from 1986.

Is this the reconstruction you were referring to, Sparky?

youtu.be 

Jim had worked in the Graphics & Promotions unit at ATV since sometime around 1972-4. He arranged/composed (jointly) with Peter Bennet the ATV-Today theme used to accompany the striped titles / old counties titles used between August 1976 & August 1980. (Titled something like Highway Traffic)

At Central, he was head of promotions and as you say - was responsible to composing quite a few of the jingles used in the Central re-brand post 1985 - and - alongside Johnny Patrick, music used for ITV Schools (on ITV)
I think - for the schools stuff, he worked alongside Errol Reid.
Around that period - there didn't seem to be a lot of variation in music on ITV Schools - much of the music seemed to consist of handful of tracks composed by Errol Reid / Jim Stocko / James Aldernham.
Around this time, they ditched screening the Mechanical Clock live on air; using a recorded caption free, colour synthisized version shot to VT.
There was also a 20minute bulk print  of captionless black backed clock too (10 runs if clock seperated with 60sec leader)

---

Jim Stokoe (I believe that’s the correct spelling) also co-composed some of the Central jingles and at least one of the ITV Schools tracks from 1986.

Is this the reconstruction you were referring to, Sparky?

youtu.be 

Love the video BTW.
Who did this?

[Milkshake]

Jim Stokoe (I believe that’s the correct spelling) also co-composed some of the Central jingles and at least one of the ITV Schools tracks from 1986.

I take it he created the music from 1988?  Im sure the late Aug/early September  85 rebrand used alot of stuff from a library.  However there were other piece like Herald = was that one he made?  A shortened version ended up on one of the libraries.

[Spencer]

At some point I obtained MP3s of some of the original 1982 Central themes and idents. The metadata on these credits the composers as P Bennett / J Stokoe / M Moran, so, assuming this is correct, he was composing Central music right from the beginning.

As Milkshake mentions though, they did use a lot of library music with the cake idents. I seem to remember some heavy use of the Bruton library in the early days of the cake.

I’ve always felt many of the otherwise wonderful cake idents were let down by some rather naff and cheap library music.

[Andrew Wood]

Or was it that the music composed for Central became library music? Ad Vision, Vision On, Pre Vision - all synonymous with the early cake presentation and composed by Brian Bennett - were release in '92, years after being on screen. (If the release dates on APM are correct).

[Milkshake]

I thought Ad-vision, vision on, pre vision were all burton?

While the The 1986 stuff may have been part of Rainbow music which ended up in the hands of EMI/KPM via music house = Daylight, Daytime, Document, gusty, fizz, telepromt.

As said Herald is also in music house but its only a shorter cut and there is no knowledge of anything of the 3min version,
im sure there is another one somewhere. Its this clip that makes me think there all got merged into another library.

www.youtube.com 

[Andrew Wood]

I thought Ad-vision, vision on, pre vision were all burton? 

They are all Bruton. The release date for the Bruton Music album was on the APM Music site.

FANFARES, LINKS, STINGS 3
LIBRARY: Bruton (BR)
COMPOSERS: Various
RELEASED: 1992-01-01
TRACKS: 204

[sparky_75]

Jim Stokoe (I believe that’s the correct spelling) also co-composed some of the Central jingles and at least one of the ITV Schools tracks from 1986.

I take it he created the music from 1988?  Im sure the late Aug/early September  85 rebrand used alot of stuff from a library.  However there were other piece like Herald = was that one he made?  A shortened version ended up on one of the libraries.

From what I was aware, Jim was head of Promotions at Central - having worked in either Graphics and Promotions for ATV; and on the side happened to compose music too.

He and his team were responsible for the Autumn 1985 re-brand - when the 'Cake' first appeared; the various updates thereafter and that of the rebrand of the Schools Programmes.

Much of the music used from 1985 onwards - as far as I was aware came from a Music Library.

So it's possible, he composed the pieces and published them through a library.
Bruton and Regency seem to spring to mind.

---

At some point I obtained MP3s of some of the original 1982 Central themes and idents. The metadata on these credits the composers as P Bennett / J Stokoe / M Moran, so, assuming this is correct, he was composing Central music right from the beginning.

As Milkshake mentions though, they did use a lot of library music with the cake idents. I seem to remember some heavy use of the Bruton library in the early days of the cake.

I’ve always felt many of the otherwise wonderful cake idents were let down by some rather naff and cheap library music.

Totally agree, I wasn't set on the music used with the Cake idents.

As mentioned in a previous post; Jim had worked for ATV since sometime around 1972-73ish.
He - alongside Peter Bennett composed "Busy Highway" in 1975 - which was used in a re-jazzed up version for the replacement 'striped' and 'old counties' titles used on ATV-Today (midlands local news) between Aug 1976 & Aug 1980.

The Central 1982 brand was composed specifically for Central, by Bennett/Stocko/Moran.

From 1985 - the re-brand work seemed to feature a lot of music from Bruton/Regency/Library. Sadly.

[Milkshake]

I think your right, he composed the piece and then published most of the piece through a library. Just a shame he only give them Shorter pieces.