Post Production Saves Blackadder?
The educational value of Blackadder can never be underestimated. Having grown up with a weekly installment of Blackadder’s version of history every Thursday night it not only created the main topic of conversation in school the next day but but it equipped us with an absolutely stunning catalogue of one liner put downs.
This year marked the 25th anniversary of Blackadder and with it came a brilliant documentary on the making of the programme featuring the key stars. Twitter guru Stephen Fry was interviewed in Africa, Hugh Laurie was interviewed on the set of ‘House’ and Rowan Atkinson visit the set of the first series. It was brilliant.
The end of the documentary featured a brilliant insight in to the power of editing and thus a great resource for Moving Image Arts. The last thirty seconds of Blackadder goes Forth (series 4) were set to be a disaster. A rushed 1-2 take ending looked pretty ropey when played back. The following footage demonstrates how editing software created one of the best endings of any comedy series.
At that stage it was likely to have been Avid editing software but the same come have easily been produced in a class situation with Final Cut Express or similar. Even the poppy scene could be recreated in Final Cut using two video lines or if you really want to make it look great a mix of Final Cut and Photoshop.
Perhaps it shows the importance of experimenting with footage you are not happy with. I wonder with editing software having improved massively over the last twenty years would they have done anything different ?
I deliberated whether to put the clip on YouTube and if there are an issues with it being there and used for educational purposes please contact me and I will remove it immediately. I don’t want to get into any hot water but it is a great clip for Moving Image Arts.
If you haven’t really watched Blackadder before then you have missed out on of the best comedy series ever. If you want to get the full glory buy the DVD box set and watch it over a few weeks, brilliant stuff.
2 Comments
Can’t imagine anyone seriously objecting … given the number of clips ripped/recorded and littering (augmenting, I mean) the posts on Slugger etc. And the beeb’s blog posts have been known to embed YouTube clips from other broadcasters … more like all publicity is good publicity!
But that portion of the documentary was so fascinating. Without it, the last episode of Blackadder would have been nowhere near so heart-wrenching and tear-jerking. And yet, it so nearly wasn’t.
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I totally agree with Alan. As a teacher myself being able to mention great examples of the power of editing is difficult but this is a great one. I really don’t think anyone will mind given the massive educational value of this clip and the fact you are so pro Blackadder.
In the words of Baldrick, “I have a cunning plan” on how to use this example in class (sorry).
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