First Look: Coronation Street’s New 2010 HD Main Title, Retrospective

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First Look: British prime-time soap opera institution, Coronation Street, is getting a much talked about new look. The ITV show is getting a brand new title sequence (first time in eight years) as the show moves to high definition on Monday. Rival EastEnders revamped its title sequence for the first time in ten years last September.

Corrie Executive Producer Kieran Roberts tells us, “In our new titles Coronation Street remains the star but we see it as part of a busy, modern Manchester through our opening shots. The overall feel is livelier, more intimate and more colourful and they look stunning.”

Manchester’s own HerseyGoldie Films produced the titles (post by Space Digital) on a four week concept to final delivery timetable.

When US soap As the World Turns ends in September 2010, Coronation Street will become the world’s longest running scripted television show.

Coronation Street’s first set of black and white titles was viewers’ first glimpse of the show in 1960. The simple sequence, preceded by the Granada television ident, was very short. For serious Corrie fans and other main title enthusiasts, click keep reading for a short retrospective on the national institution…

Aside from a change in typeface in the logo in 1961 onwards to a condensed version of Times New Roman, the sequence stayed the same until 1964 when the shot of Archie Street from the front was replaced by an opening clip of rows of terraced houses.

Occasionally in the 1960s  when the first scene of an episode was in the street, the sequence would be cut short and the logo and music would play over the start of the scene instead. During the decade, some or all of the title sequence would be dispensed with if the Street set had been erected in the studio for the episodes in question and on occasion in the middle of the decade the title caption would be displayed over the opening scene of the episode, irrespective of where it took place.

In 1975, Coronation Street updated its opening credits sequence. It included for the first time, a shot of the actual Grape Street set, along with a series of close ups of chimneys of houses similar to those found in Coronation Street.

On 15 Oct, 1990 the title sequence received its first major revamp since the mid-70s. In accordance with the show itself, the sequence was recorded on videotape rather than film as it had been before. By this point, there were no streets left in Salford that resembled Coronation Street, and the limitations of the outdoor set made complex establishing shots impossible, so some variations of this sequence did not include any shots of the street. It was also the last to include the Granada television logo at the start.

The beginning of the just current title sequence, the sequence ended with a typical shot of the Rovers end of the street, although this shot was left out from the mid-1990s onwards. From October 1999, the title sequence began including writer and director credits, and the Coronation Street logo was moved to the start of the sequence rather than the end.

The most recent title sequence was introduced on 7th January 2002, when Coronation Street started being broadcast in 16:9 widescreen aspect ratio. Improvements in CGI allowed establishing shots which included Coronation Street and previously unseen surrounding streets, which weren’t part of the set but instead computer generated.

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