As Coronation Street celebrates its 50th year by switching to HD, ITV's flagship soap opera will get its first set of new titles in eight years. The creative team, HerseyGoldie Films, turned to Space Digital to realise their concept via Space's trusted post-production expertise, and built-in production facility Matte Black Films.

The sequence was shot on Red, using the Coronation Street set and locations around Manchester. Offline editing at Space used Final Cut Pro, and in-house custom tools translated the project into NukeX for conform and VFX.

End frame from Coronation Street's new HD titles
Several shots were altered to subtly modify the geography. Reprising his work on the previous VFX-heavy title sequence, Simon Blackledge worked directly on the Red's native R3D files to create multilayered composites, replacing background buildings, and adding one of Manchester's updated Metrolink trams into the Granada set.

Additional enhancements were added using After Effects and the finished sequence graded in Apple Color.

The first HD broadcast is 9pm, Monday 31st May.