Theme Music and Opening Sequence
From January 2008 to November 2009, News at Ten used a different title sequence and music from other ITV News programmes. The theme music was a re-recording of an excerpt from The Awakening, a piece of library music composed by Johnny Pearson. Since 1995, The Awakening, in various arrangements, has been used as the theme for all ITV News programmes. A longer version of the music was used during the opening credit sequence (involving a cyclone) at the start of the film Journey Back to Oz. It was also used for some of the action sequences for the film Five Bloody Graves, and as the theme tune for the fictional political discussion programme Capital Beat on the Warner Bros. Television show The West Wing. The 2008 News at Ten theme package, composed by Dave Hewson, was based on various musical arrangements used for the bulletin between 1967 and 1999. Since 1992, Hewson has composed all theme packages for ITN's ITV bulletins (the first project Hewson worked on for ITN was News at Ten), most of them based on Pearson's The Awakening music.
The history of the News at Ten music is displayed in the official 1999 book released by ITN, which incorrectly refers to the title music as Arabesque, the name of the suite of music, of which The Awakening is the last piece:
| “ | The tune is called Arabesque and was written by Johnny Pearson, who went on to write many other television theme tunes. The decision to use it was taken only at the last minute and after the first week it was nearly dropped. Viewers were complaining it was too harsh. A composer from Disney was called in during the first week to write a new theme tune. But an ITN sound mixer called Alfie Wilson wanted to stick with the old tune. He took the original recording of Arabesque to a nearby music studio and got it remixed—smoothing out some of the strident tones of the original. By the second Monday of News at Ten there was still no decision on which piece of music to use. Just before the programme started, editor Geoffrey Cox said, "Let’s go with what we’ve got for the time being." Alfie played his remixed version on air and that’s the one that was played five nights a week until a new arrangement of Arabesque was created for the revamp in 1992. | ” |
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—News at Ten: A Celebration, 1999 |
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News at Ten's opening sequence consisted of a chime of Big Ben (commonly referred to as a "bong") and a newscaster reading out a headline about the main news story of the day; this was followed by the title sequence—a computer-generated travel across night-time London, passing London landmarks such as the Canary Wharf and the London Eye, before zooming in on the "Big Ben" clockface on the Westminster Clock Tower showing the time of 22:00; between further chimes, headlines were read out by each newscaster; following the headlines, a camera panned across the studio, passing a VR "glass screen" with the News at Ten logo emblazoned on it and swooping past the newscasters at the desk. (The jib camera pan across the studio at the start of ITV News bulletins were pre-recorded 10 to 15 minutes before transmission. This was because it is an especially difficult shot to achieve and cannot be done if other studio cameras are already in place.)
The current title sequence, used on all ITV News bulletins, features a camera pan past five clear glass panels, each featuring a picture related to the news of the day. The title music retains orchestral features but also incorporates a modern drum backing. The famous elements of The Awakening remain in the new music.
Read more about this topic: ITV News At Ten
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