Raymonds Writing Yr 2

Sunday, 26 February 2012

ED Ident Evaluation

At the beginning of this project I was unaware of the work and planning that went into creating the perfect ident for TV channels and other similar projects. It was interesting to be introduced to idents for the first time, having not previously had experience creating them, and I was excited to start a new challenge.
We started to do research on the different types of ident, such as the BBC's old and new creations by Martin Lambie-Nairn, and also other TV channels such as E4 and Channel 4. We looked into the reasons behind the styling of each ident, and how the colour, soundtrack, movement represented the channel it was advertising. We also looked into the cost of producing an ident, and further into how Lambie-Nairn changed the BBC ident from italic to straight boxes to save almost 1/3 of the cost each year.

When we were given the brief to create an ident for our ND television and film course to encourage school leavers to apply for a place at PCA, we had to plan what we wanted our ident to advertise about the course. Working together with Tash, we decided that the main aspect of the course that appealed to us when we first applied was that the course wasn't just for people who already knew everything about cameras and film, but for people who wanted to learn those things as the course progressed. So we started to look into various existing course ident such as the popular animation ident for a year 1 course in Birmingham that was circulated on youtube.com. We didnt get much in the form of inspiration from our search so we started to list all of the pro's of the course. Eventually we came to the decision that we wanted to include everyone from the group in the ident, to enhance the feeling of "Everyone is welcome" and set about creating a storyboard.

At first we wanted to have each person say one word about the course, but as we realised that this might not make sense, we changed the idea. Instead we decided on a pre-written paragraph that was created with the help of some words chosen by members of the class, read out by a few people at a time and filmed in different parts of the college. We wanted to paragraph to be short and snappy, but grab peoples attention at the same time, so we decided on a few short words such as "creative" and "imaginative" and then go more in depth about who we are as people and why we enjoy the course. After giving our pitch to Tim, he asked us some questions and challenged us to think about why we had chosen to present the course like we did. He also gave us some advice on who should say what and where we should place them to give maximum effect.

During filming we changed some of our plans last minute because we came across a few problems with sound being recorded and timing with a few groups, to counter the problems we simply got the groups to practice counting to three and then saying the words together. It took around an hour to film all of the Ident, I think this is a relatively short production time but because the idea was so simple, it didnt take very long for us to get a few takes of each part. When we started to edit we realised that we should have left a few seconds on either side of the speaking, to ensure we could have edited each piece together easily. Because of this the editing is a little jumpy and not as smooth as we wanted it to be.

If I was to re-film this ident I would leave enough time to edit and also would have tried to include more people from the group in the ident. Overall I really enjoyed learning about the work that goes into idents, and feel that our ED Ident really expressed the course well, and showed what we had learnt from the research that we had looked at.

Tuesday, 8 November 2011

ED Ident Pitch

Pitch
We showed our idea to Tim with a thought-out storyboard, we also had page of notes with the words and shots we wanted to include in our 10 second video.
The idea was to shoot lots of different people from our class, each saying what they felt about the course and how it had helped them. We wanted the end shot to be the whole class, with the tag line of "this is what we do" designed to inspire younger teenagers to try something for themselves.
After talking to Tim about our idea, he showed us how to time-line our project, and also gave us some advice to make the words quicker therefore allowing us to add more in and make the video snappy.
He also gave us some ideas on how to include different people from the group, and where we should place them for filming, this encouraged us to think more about how we wanted to film to look in each part, rather than as a whole.
We wanted to create this ident, including everyone from our class, to promote the fact that anyone with a good portfolio can get onto this course, no matter what their personal interests are, everyone is welcome.

Ident - BBC four

Self described as "Intelligent televison', BBC four was launched in March 2002 as an alternative to mainstream TV channels. Broadcasting for ten hours a day, between the hours of 7pm - 4am, BBC four was designed to produce a very vast variety of more cultrally enriching programs such as documentarys, opera shows, art and science programs and more. BBC 4 was marketed as a considered and diverse channel with the tag-line "A place to think'.

The Ident for this channel really incorporates the tagline into the enviroment they create within the short, serene like adverts. The BBC 4 logo is featured at the beggining of each ident, the original small black box with white writing showing B.B.C and in large 'four' is written below it. They show small clips of relaxing things, such as the sky, waterfalls, library's which really enhance the thought of 'thinking'. These idents reflect the Channels target audience, which lies around the middle-age+ market.

Ident - E4

Launched in January 2001, E4 is the 'sister channel' to Channel 4, created to be a companion for the already popular TV channel. E stands for entertainment and E4 was devised to appeal to the 'lucrative 15-35 age group' that Channel 4 was otherwise forgetting with some older generation programs. It also allowed the Channel to feature some American import tv such as 'Gilmore Girls' and 'Desperate housewives'
The E4 Idents are always recognisable because every single one includes the colour purple. The E4 logo is also very prominent in each Ident, it starts off small, and then takes over the whole screen. Within each 10-14 second clip, a vast variety of random things happen in a random location. This reflects the kind of programs that E4 feature on the channel, and also the target audience. By using musical techno sounds within the ident combined with artsy and imaginative visuals, a teenage/young adult audience is captured.
The E4 logo also incorporates the famous '4' from Channel 4, allowing viewers to know that they are channels run by the same company, and with the reputation that Channel 4 has, viewers can see that E4 will also be new and innocative, creating programs for the majority and minority of viewers.

Ident - Channel four

Channel four was created in November 1982, specifically to cater to a minority audience and to take risks. Channel four do not create any of their own programs, realistically they are a commissioning house, designed to show creative and diverse programs.

Channel four ident 1982

The first Channel four ident was created by Martin Lambie-Nairn in '82. Lambie-Nairn had to travel to America so he could use the computer technology that allowed him to create the logo that "became regarded as a revolutionary identity for Channel four."

Channel four ident 2011

The basic four that Lambie-Nairn designed roughly around 28 years ago, is still prominent in the Channel four idents today, however the new idents include artsy, specific pictures in the background which represents the nature of the Channel.
The idents are a 'film' that includes the logo, and are more animated that the orignial one but are less recognisable as animation, they are more interesting, daring and entertaining.