Assignment 2
Opportunities - creation of corporate identity
A corporate identity or corporate image is the manner which an institution presents themselves to the TV viewers. The main objective is to maintain and build the idea of an identity within the channel and fit it in with the channel ethos. An Ident requires a corporate title, logo and supporting devices containing a set of guidelines which contain how the identity is applied and laid out.
Stuart Hall's theory of reception is used quite a lot in the thought process behind an Ident. It is split up into negotiated, oppositional and preferred reading. Negotiated is when the the audience feels like an Ident conveys corporate identity but is not sure whether they do. Oppositional is when the audience thinks the Ident does not portray any corporate identity and preferred reading is when the audience can clearly see the corporate identity.
Below is an example of an oppositional Ident as it does not show corporate identity:
Below is an example of an oppositional Ident because the content of the does not correlate with a corporation:
Opportunities - display of text based information
A clear opportunity of on-screen graphic representation is the ability to give information and ideas on a visual scale. Some information has no other way of being shown apart from the use of text, this may not seem like a visually appealing way to communicate with an audience however through a visual medium TV on screen graphics make it more than a boring block of text.
As you can see from the clip above, the Film4 Idents are nothing special however they embed textual information to further communicate with their audience. The Idents conveys a short clip of the film that they will be displaying at a specific time slot within the evening, then at the end the text overpowers the visual by being enlarged. The text being enlarged attracts the audiences attention and causes them to remember the name of the film rather than the visuals.
Opportunities - branding of content
On screen representation encourages brand loyalty. Channels such as BBC three will include their most watched shows within their Idents to reassure the viewer to why they watch BBC three programmes. An example of this would be the "Family Guy Christmas Ident":
As you can see, a viewer that watches channels on BBC three will be enticed by the characters appearance from the most favored show on the channel. This enhances the brand within the channel and as a result impoves the brand image of the channel in which the programme is aired on.
Opportunities - Creation of tone
One opportunity that a producer would have is to install their own ethos and ideology. One way that this can be reflected is through the tone of an Ident. A serious tone is more likely to attract a mature audience where as a comical tone will attract viewers who are more interested in comical content rather than factual.
Below is an example of an Ident which includes a serious tone:
As you can see from the Ident above, tone can be manipulated in numerous ways. The tone in this Ident is manipulated by the lighting. Dark lighting can represent seriousness.
Below is an example of an Ident which includes a comical tone:
As you can see from the Ident above, the tone is manipulated through the use of fictional animated moments such as the card board box gaining legs. For the viewer, this Ident represents fiction and interesting/ comical animations.
Opportunities - appealing to a target audience
The target audience for a channel such as Film4 aspects to see visuals that relate to the movies. The target audience would be 16-34 year old people. The Ident below includes a key convention of a movie which is "Pop corn". This indicates the viewer to anticipate that a movie with a streaming time of over an hour will be aired, therefore be prepared to get comfy.
Opportunities - encouragement of brand loyalty
Idents have an opportunity to encourage brand loyalty via repetition and audience involvement. The greater the involvement the greater the chance the institution has of securing the audiences loyalty. For example, the Eefer that represents E4 has successfully encouraged the audience to stick to the channel. The Eefer has done this by interacting with the audience through social media and actively using comments in their branding.
Another example of a channel encouraging brand loyalty through their Idents would be ITV2 promoting Family Guy. Due to Family guy recently being moved channels, ITV2 has the opportunity to incorporate the Family Guy programme within their Idents to improve brand loyalty.
Limitations
Resolution is a limitation to Ident producers. There are four types of resolution for TV's in homes, standard, enhanced, high definition and ultra - high definition. For Ident producers, they cant dictate which Idents will be shown on which resolution. As a result the viewer at home could be watching the Ident on a standard resolution and it would not be as appealing to someone watching on a high resolution. Idents purpose is to catch the eye of the viewer and it becomes limited when the audiences TV is at a low resolution because it cannot enhance the effect.
Analogue and digital recording and transmission can be a limitation when it comes to the creation of an Ident. Digital representations are discrete, the information represented can be either be discrete or continuous. Uses discrete or discontinuous values to represent information. Digital can reach a higher quality of signal however can not always reach very far. A disadvantage of digital is that it is expensive and there is a low availability of models with digital interfaces. Analogue recordings limit an Ident because it cannot produce high quality sound. Also, the other limitation it has is that it's harder to remove and move sound whereas digital can perform this easily. This means that when creating an Ident, using analogue recording will make the process longer.
Creative communication
BBC ONE has enhanced the idea of Idents over a vast period of time. BBC ONE started of with simple moving Idents such as the moving hippos and the circle of red footballs emulating the O in ONE. Since then, BBC wanted to enhance the idea of an Ident to communicate with the viewers further than entertainment. They started to embed multicultural ideas to enhance the impact of the audience viewing an Ident. They included everyday life into their Ident such as the "exercise class". For the viewer, seeing day to day life on a television screen can be intriguing to watch due to the fact that they experience it. Furthermore, they enhanced the Ident to relate to the programme which is one next. For example the "Eastenders" Ident was created and shown before every episode of Eastenders to inform the audience that the show was up next. BBC created a number of Idents for a number of different programme such as World Cup. They created the Ident which conveys fans in the stadium roaring and cheering, this correlates with football and gives the impression that football will be up next.
Pushing the technology
The availability of new and up to date software allows you to have no limits when creating and displaying your ideas. Creative ideas in the past would have been laughed at due to the realization of them being physically incapable to create. In this day and age, you can create almost anything with the technology available. The advancement in technology allows the ability to enhance ideas and interact with graphic designers to transform ideas into on-screen graphics. Lambie Nairn was the creator behind the floating puzzle Ident for Channel 4. An Ident which makes the audience wonder how it was created would be considered a successful creation. The better the graphics, the more likely the audience is to remember the brand.
Below is an example of the Channel 4 floating Ident:
Communicating visual ideas to a non visual audience
A producer has a choice of multiple ways in which they can communicate visual ideas to a non visual audience. For example, employing favored characters, seasons or animals is an effective way of attracting an audience who are perhaps ordinarily verbally focused. Pulling on the heart strings or bringing out emotions from past experiences can attract non visual audiences. Idents can also achieve this by incorporating relatable visuals to attract the audience in ways in which they can relate.
Creating under pressure of time and budget
Time: Depending on the contract, a new campaign will be billed by time. This means that there will be deadlines in place for the designers, as a result a lot of pressure will be unleashed on the designers to get the the job done in time. This could be a problem for the designers of the Ident because if they work close to a deadline, it could lead to rushing. Rushing will reduce the quality of the Ident and as a result will reduce the impact that the company wants the Ident to have on the audience.
Budget: The BBC unveiled their first eight Idents costs £150,000 each. BBC1 aims to produce as many as 15 over the life of the new range of promotional clips, the total cost could rise to nearly £2.5 million. Smaller scale channels can indeed compete with this because they can focus on other aspects that attract an audience that do not require vast amounts of money such as including conventions which pull on their heart strings/ emotions.
Appealing to a target audience
A channel can appeal to its target audience in a number of ways. Some Idents will employ celebrity endorsement to attract their audience. An example of this is the channel 4 Ident where celebrities where asked where they are most ticklish:
Using celebrities means using recognizable faces. For the audience they are interested in watching how celebrities act when they are normal rather than when they are acting or formal.
Other techniques that an Ident can include to attract a target audience would be themes that represent real life.
Appreciation of desired tone
An audience will appreciate the desired tone of an Ident if it is fitting with the ethos of the channel and the interests and demographics of the audience. An example of this can be seen in the video below:
The producer has decided to incorporate a creative tone for the audience. The target audience for this Ident would be young children and the parents who may watch with their children. The producer wanted to amuse the target audience by rapidly changing color of the Ident. Viewing multiple colors in a short amount of time can be fascinating for the mind to process.
A corporate identity or corporate image is the manner which an institution presents themselves to the TV viewers. The main objective is to maintain and build the idea of an identity within the channel and fit it in with the channel ethos. An Ident requires a corporate title, logo and supporting devices containing a set of guidelines which contain how the identity is applied and laid out.
Stuart Hall's theory of reception is used quite a lot in the thought process behind an Ident. It is split up into negotiated, oppositional and preferred reading. Negotiated is when the the audience feels like an Ident conveys corporate identity but is not sure whether they do. Oppositional is when the audience thinks the Ident does not portray any corporate identity and preferred reading is when the audience can clearly see the corporate identity.
Below is an example of an oppositional Ident as it does not show corporate identity:
Below is an example of an oppositional Ident because the content of the does not correlate with a corporation:
Opportunities - display of text based information
A clear opportunity of on-screen graphic representation is the ability to give information and ideas on a visual scale. Some information has no other way of being shown apart from the use of text, this may not seem like a visually appealing way to communicate with an audience however through a visual medium TV on screen graphics make it more than a boring block of text.
As you can see from the clip above, the Film4 Idents are nothing special however they embed textual information to further communicate with their audience. The Idents conveys a short clip of the film that they will be displaying at a specific time slot within the evening, then at the end the text overpowers the visual by being enlarged. The text being enlarged attracts the audiences attention and causes them to remember the name of the film rather than the visuals.
Opportunities - branding of content
On screen representation encourages brand loyalty. Channels such as BBC three will include their most watched shows within their Idents to reassure the viewer to why they watch BBC three programmes. An example of this would be the "Family Guy Christmas Ident":
As you can see, a viewer that watches channels on BBC three will be enticed by the characters appearance from the most favored show on the channel. This enhances the brand within the channel and as a result impoves the brand image of the channel in which the programme is aired on.
Opportunities - Creation of tone
One opportunity that a producer would have is to install their own ethos and ideology. One way that this can be reflected is through the tone of an Ident. A serious tone is more likely to attract a mature audience where as a comical tone will attract viewers who are more interested in comical content rather than factual.
Below is an example of an Ident which includes a serious tone:
As you can see from the Ident above, tone can be manipulated in numerous ways. The tone in this Ident is manipulated by the lighting. Dark lighting can represent seriousness.
Below is an example of an Ident which includes a comical tone:
As you can see from the Ident above, the tone is manipulated through the use of fictional animated moments such as the card board box gaining legs. For the viewer, this Ident represents fiction and interesting/ comical animations.
Opportunities - appealing to a target audience
The target audience for a channel such as Film4 aspects to see visuals that relate to the movies. The target audience would be 16-34 year old people. The Ident below includes a key convention of a movie which is "Pop corn". This indicates the viewer to anticipate that a movie with a streaming time of over an hour will be aired, therefore be prepared to get comfy.
Opportunities - encouragement of brand loyalty
Idents have an opportunity to encourage brand loyalty via repetition and audience involvement. The greater the involvement the greater the chance the institution has of securing the audiences loyalty. For example, the Eefer that represents E4 has successfully encouraged the audience to stick to the channel. The Eefer has done this by interacting with the audience through social media and actively using comments in their branding.
Another example of a channel encouraging brand loyalty through their Idents would be ITV2 promoting Family Guy. Due to Family guy recently being moved channels, ITV2 has the opportunity to incorporate the Family Guy programme within their Idents to improve brand loyalty.
Limitations
The type of font used can be a limitation for Ident producers because companies will stick to house fonts. Within the Ident, some channels will want the same font as the logo to further embed the brand into the viewers mind. The channel "E4" is a prime example of this.
As you can see from the image above, their Ident consists of a walking version of their logo. Their logo has been created in a certain font, the live version within the Ident is the same font as the logo.
Resolution is a limitation to Ident producers. There are four types of resolution for TV's in homes, standard, enhanced, high definition and ultra - high definition. For Ident producers, they cant dictate which Idents will be shown on which resolution. As a result the viewer at home could be watching the Ident on a standard resolution and it would not be as appealing to someone watching on a high resolution. Idents purpose is to catch the eye of the viewer and it becomes limited when the audiences TV is at a low resolution because it cannot enhance the effect.
Color can be a limitation for Ident producers. Idents are used to attract viewers and brand the channel, if the colors clash it can become an eye sore for the audience. Some colors link and some colors clash, the Ident could become very hard to understand if for example the background was red and the text was pink. Ident producers need to think very carefully about their choice on color to ensure that the Ident is easy on the eye. The target audience will remember colors that are vibrant and correlate them to the brand. Black and white TV's will not pick up color therefore becoming a limitation for the producer, especially if the Idents main feature is the color to attract the audience. Another limitation would be the color red, the color red is prone to create noise which means the pixels become scrambled.
Sky use translucent font to correlate with the name of their brand. This means that there are a limited amount of colors they can use because translucent font would be extremely hard to see on certain colors, for example the color white.
Another limitation is the aspect ratio of Ident in comparison with the monitor. If the source is 16:9, on a 4:3 monitor is created a letter box effect. This is where the the image is pressed inwards from the top and the bottom. If the source is 4:3, on a 16:9 monitor it created a pillar pox effect. This is where the image is pressed inwards from both sides. This is a limitation because they can not identify which house hold contains which monitor, therefore viewers at all time could either have the letterbox or pillar box effect.
Analogue and digital recording and transmission can be a limitation when it comes to the creation of an Ident. Digital representations are discrete, the information represented can be either be discrete or continuous. Uses discrete or discontinuous values to represent information. Digital can reach a higher quality of signal however can not always reach very far. A disadvantage of digital is that it is expensive and there is a low availability of models with digital interfaces. Analogue recordings limit an Ident because it cannot produce high quality sound. Also, the other limitation it has is that it's harder to remove and move sound whereas digital can perform this easily. This means that when creating an Ident, using analogue recording will make the process longer.
Creative communication
BBC ONE has enhanced the idea of Idents over a vast period of time. BBC ONE started of with simple moving Idents such as the moving hippos and the circle of red footballs emulating the O in ONE. Since then, BBC wanted to enhance the idea of an Ident to communicate with the viewers further than entertainment. They started to embed multicultural ideas to enhance the impact of the audience viewing an Ident. They included everyday life into their Ident such as the "exercise class". For the viewer, seeing day to day life on a television screen can be intriguing to watch due to the fact that they experience it. Furthermore, they enhanced the Ident to relate to the programme which is one next. For example the "Eastenders" Ident was created and shown before every episode of Eastenders to inform the audience that the show was up next. BBC created a number of Idents for a number of different programme such as World Cup. They created the Ident which conveys fans in the stadium roaring and cheering, this correlates with football and gives the impression that football will be up next.
Pushing the technology
The availability of new and up to date software allows you to have no limits when creating and displaying your ideas. Creative ideas in the past would have been laughed at due to the realization of them being physically incapable to create. In this day and age, you can create almost anything with the technology available. The advancement in technology allows the ability to enhance ideas and interact with graphic designers to transform ideas into on-screen graphics. Lambie Nairn was the creator behind the floating puzzle Ident for Channel 4. An Ident which makes the audience wonder how it was created would be considered a successful creation. The better the graphics, the more likely the audience is to remember the brand.
Below is an example of the Channel 4 floating Ident:
Communicating visual ideas to a non visual audience
A producer has a choice of multiple ways in which they can communicate visual ideas to a non visual audience. For example, employing favored characters, seasons or animals is an effective way of attracting an audience who are perhaps ordinarily verbally focused. Pulling on the heart strings or bringing out emotions from past experiences can attract non visual audiences. Idents can also achieve this by incorporating relatable visuals to attract the audience in ways in which they can relate.
Creating under pressure of time and budget
Time: Depending on the contract, a new campaign will be billed by time. This means that there will be deadlines in place for the designers, as a result a lot of pressure will be unleashed on the designers to get the the job done in time. This could be a problem for the designers of the Ident because if they work close to a deadline, it could lead to rushing. Rushing will reduce the quality of the Ident and as a result will reduce the impact that the company wants the Ident to have on the audience.
Budget: The BBC unveiled their first eight Idents costs £150,000 each. BBC1 aims to produce as many as 15 over the life of the new range of promotional clips, the total cost could rise to nearly £2.5 million. Smaller scale channels can indeed compete with this because they can focus on other aspects that attract an audience that do not require vast amounts of money such as including conventions which pull on their heart strings/ emotions.
Appealing to a target audience
A channel can appeal to its target audience in a number of ways. Some Idents will employ celebrity endorsement to attract their audience. An example of this is the channel 4 Ident where celebrities where asked where they are most ticklish:
Using celebrities means using recognizable faces. For the audience they are interested in watching how celebrities act when they are normal rather than when they are acting or formal.
Other techniques that an Ident can include to attract a target audience would be themes that represent real life.
Appreciation of desired tone
An audience will appreciate the desired tone of an Ident if it is fitting with the ethos of the channel and the interests and demographics of the audience. An example of this can be seen in the video below:
The producer has decided to incorporate a creative tone for the audience. The target audience for this Ident would be young children and the parents who may watch with their children. The producer wanted to amuse the target audience by rapidly changing color of the Ident. Viewing multiple colors in a short amount of time can be fascinating for the mind to process.
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