What is an ident?
- An Ident is a short video clip that ID's a channel
- Like a graphic
- Carries the channels logo
- Carries the brand identity
Why do we use an ident?
- To introduce a programme is going to start
- Help identify a channel
- Help introduce a genre or season
- Marketing tool, to keep the audiences intrest
- More than one ident to keep it interesting
This ident is targeting young girls. It's suitable for this gender because of the music box like music in the background, young girls usually listen to music box type music, it sounds light and floaty and girly. The ident features a young girl which is why it is more targeted towards that specific gender. The colours in this are blue, bright and happy.
This ident is targeting the mystery genre. You can tell this from the voice over specifically talking about mystery programs. The setting is a table and a guy writing on a typewriter. You typically see this in mystery programs.
What is the purpose of an ident?
The purpose of an ident is to persuade, idents are a marketing tool so that you don't change the channel.
To create a sense of brand identity, to keep a sense of consistency. (The same logo, colour, font etc)
To sell programmes, to sell a program coming up, making people carry on watching.
People use idents break up their programmes, they do this because certain shows don't have adverts so the programmes come up quickly. Also people use idents to keep peoples attention before the advert break. To map out the TV schedule, like when they say "This Lunchtime ____ is going to be playing" so you know that around 12/1pm you can look forward to a TV show.
TCM
- Camera
- Tripod
- Final cut pro
WATCH
- After effects/Cinema 4D
BBC
- Tripod
- Camera
- Sound
- After effects/Cinema 4D
- Cast
- Crew
- Cast: Background characters walking
- After effects/Cinema 4D
- Location
- Camera
- Tripod
- Sound
- Cast: Swimmers
- Editing transition
- Camera
- Location
- Tripod
- Sound
- Prop: Everything in the swimming pool, the big "one"
- Logo
- After effects/Cinema 4D
- Sound effects
- Logo
Opportunities for an ident designer:
For the ident designer, creating a good ident for a known channel could get you a good reputation meaning you'd get more people coming to you. More people coming to you means you get more money, also because you're experienced you could offer charge more money for it. You could get hired by a channel meaning you'd be having constant work.
Opportunities for a channel:
For the channel having a good ident could change a lot for you, if you're viewed by the public as a particularly boring channel, they could completely re-brand you and entice more viewers into watching your channel by your exciting ident. As a channel you could get a contract with that ident designer so that they will continue to work for you and make good different idents. This will switch it up all the time so it's not just the same boring ident, people are surprised each time they view your channel cause the ident will change say every month to a different new exciting ident. (But with the same brand and logo.)
Limitations for a designer:
ASFC approach you and say they want you to make an ident for Ashton TV. 15seconds long has to use the ASFC logo has to target 16 to 18 year olds.
Depending on the brief you might have to keep colour, timescale or an audience in mind.
You might not fit the age bracket you're designing for therefor you will have a lack of knowledge and experience of the brand/channel/audience
Software limitations. You might not have the software at home to create the ident.
You will gain a bad reputation if you don't get the ident done on time. People will think that you are inconsistent, they will think you're a failure, they will think you have a poor skill set.
Your idea may not fit the channel brief. If the brief isn't clear, your criticisms may not be direct. (Take it personally?) You may want to work in a really creative way but you can't.
Limitations of Idents:
Sky Thursdays ident
I think that this ident is rubbish because the design is quite boring and doesn't fit with the colour scheme of the 'SKY' channels. (Which are blue) This is literally the only logo that is a different colour and doesn't incorporate any blue in it whatsoever. This might throw people off. There is no explanation of what sky thursdays is. There's no voice over or no thing before or after this. To make it better I would of put a voice over on it to explain what Sky Thursdays is and why people should tune into this particular channel on Thursdays. I might put pictures of recognisable film stills in the background maybe appearing then disappearing so there's a variety.
BBC Two Ident
I think that this ident is quite boring. The voice over doesn't start speaking until the actual logo has completed it's transition and is shown fully on screen, there's no music to make it interesting. I'm sure a lot of people would of turned over before the voice over even started. The voice over guy has quite a monotone voice, not interesting a lot of people. At the time it was shown this was probably quite good for an ident. But now, there are many limitations of it. I would change the fact that there's no music in the background just to make it more interesting. I would have the voice over talk as soon as the ident started so people aren't waiting around. I would also have a better voiceover, a more upbeat one so people aren't bored to death listening to it.
ITV 3 ident
This ident is really boring, the voice over sounds like a news reader and there's not any music to go in the background of the ident. The only movement on screen is the beams of light moving around in the background. The music only kicks in at the end. The logo doesn't do anything interesting all throughout. I would change the music so that it plays throughout I would make the music upbeat so it keeps people interesting. I might make the voice over guy more exciting. There could be more movement on screen so that people just aren't basically staring at a picture for 15 seconds.
BBC FOUR IDENT
The text was the same BBC 4 text throughout. The speed was faced paced using hand transitions. The space was lots of extreme closeups of different things. There was an extreme closeup of a squid.
The ident is used to persuade people, shows a wide range of interesting images. "BBC 4 is an interesting channel" The purpose was also to sell the programmes. The target audience are 35-44 year olds who have an interest in factual programmes.
The most creative parts are the hand transitions pulling images across octopus ecv - shot of lizard. Hand moves with lizard.
The brand identity that BBC 4 are trying to create is that it's an exciting factual program.
BBC 4 birds ident:
The colours were very monochrome, it was black and white and those were the only colours. The only text was the BBC four logo in the middle of the screen, this is good because it keeps the identity of the BBC brand. The speed of it was quite slow, like there weren't any fast transitions (because there weren't really any transitions it all looked like one "camera" shot. (Though It might of been done in after effects/Cinema4D)) The birds were moving slow but it looked like the camera was following them through the air so it looked kind of fast. Throughout it was one continuous camera shot, it kept usually at a wide shot or a long shot of the birds (00:10-00:14) but it also sometimes went to a mid shot. (00:25-00:29)
To me the most creative part was where it looked like it went underwater then above water. The brand identity is to make BBC 4 seem like an interesting channel that has nature programmes. The people who it's targeted at are 35-44 year olds who have an interest in nature programmes.
The birds are distorted and blurry from (00:19 - 00:25) this keeps people guessing as to what is actually being shown on screen, keeping people interested.
The audio of the thing was calming music, this plays into the whole nature vibe. Usually when we think of nature we think of calming scenes.
BBC bee ident:
The key colours for the bee ident were blue and yellow. The text was 00:02-00:07 the text appeared up with the time, black and white conatating seriousness. The speed of the ident is synced in time with the music for example at 00:02-00:07 when everytime the bell dongs the action on screen changes the music gets faster and the stuff on screen got faster. The space was filled with lots of colour, there was always something interesting going on in each corner of the space.
The fact that there were bees and the sea in this ident is showing that it's sticking with it's brand identity of the channel (BBC4) also nature because they used animals and nature.
The most creative part for me was definitely where the music synced with the action on screen. I think this because it flowed really well and the bell noise made you wonder what was going to happen next (after you realised that the action was being synced with the audio)
Comparison:
I think that the bee ident was the most creative one because it was a lot simpler and clearer than the other two idents. The first ident was too fast and might of put people off in how weird it was, it was also quite abstract, older people who watch the channel might not of been able to keep up with it. The second one was also a bit too abstract, whereas the first one was easily understandable. I liked the way that the music was in sync with the action on screen, I thought that was very creative. The other ones their music was just a background track really. This one was more thought out. The ident that showed the genre off more was still definitely the bee one. This is because of the fact that they used two bees and two seas pictures to phonetically spell out the BBC 4 logo as it appeared in the middle of the screen. You definitely got a nature-y vibe from this ident. Overall the ident was simple, not boring to watch, very easy to understand and kept the brand identity, I definitely preferred it over the others and thought it worked most effectively.
