Ident research

I researched some existing idents to see what professional idents look like and how they differ depending on their audience and company type.


The first ident I looked at was the Channel 4 one set in what looked like a busy street in Japan. I chose to look into this one because it's city theme is the type of ident I may make. The ident shows a 4 logo being made out of the neon street signs. The design of this ident is very urban and both dark and bright, the contrast works very well. I'd say the intentions of this ident is to draw attention to itself. I imagine that it's something that you see on TV and you watch the entire ident simply because it's interesting watching the 4 logo coming to shape. Obviously another purpose of the ident is to represent Channel 4. I think that they make most of these idents with the locations being their primary part of the design. All their idents have interesting locations and I think that's an important theme that makes them memorable. This ident was likely created using motion tracking and the floating signs are 3d elements which use the x, y and z axis's'. The position and rotation of these signs would be created using key frames.

 I next looked at this E4 'esting' ident. This is a short animation with a short song with no music. The design is very simple. A simple background, simply coloured and simply animated. I think this ident's intent is to sum up their channel in idents. Most of their idents are completely nonsense and random. The channel pretty much only shows comedies so they want some of their idents to be funny. This one has a humorous song that is clear and easy to remember. The purpose of this song is to make it memorable and make it the sort of song that is stuck in your head for hours, and personally I think it works. This could have been made in an specific animation programme or it could be after effects. If it had been made on After effects the characters would be layered separately and the positions of the characters may have been done using key framing. They would have added a camera layer to this ident so that it could sharply zoom into the E4 logo.

I thought I would have a look at some idents for production companies because that is what my ident is for - my 'productions'. This Paramount is a very memorable ident because it has been seen so many times by each person. So many films are made through Paramount. This ident has lasted a long time but has been tweaked over time to make it a better quality. I think the original intent behind this design was to make something smart but sort of epic. The use of the mountain conveys the epic feeling and the stars are simple but smart. The Paramount text font is quite ornate and old fashioned but still easy to read. The purpose of creating this ident is to make it obvious that the production following is a Paramount film, they want to be know for what they've produced. In the recent remakes of this ident they are likely to have used something like or after effects. The layers would have been moved using key framing on position and rotation. The text and star elements were likely 3D; using x, y and z axis's.

MGM's ident is one of the most memorable idents when it comes to film companies. Everyone remembers the lion roaring in the middle of the logo.  The design for this ident is very simple because it is a very old ident from 1928. There have been 5 versions of this ident each with a different lion. The only changes are to colouring. They've kept it simple all of this time because it is now their identity and if they changed it, people may not remember them as much as they used to. I think the use of the lion is another use of something 'large scale' that is intended to be epic. Films aren't always, but they can be seen as epic and a lion really gives that feeling. The purpose of this ident is to give MGM an identity and over the years it has certainly worked. This was made a very long time ago so most versions would not have been made using software like after effects. In the most recent version it may have been made on something like after effects. They would have used key framing to make the logo fade in using the opacity level.