Ident Research

Idents are sequences that appear at the beginning of films to show which companies had produced and distributed it. They are essentially like a seal or signature, often assuring quality as well as simply showing ownership. Most idents of popular studios and companies are instantly recognisable due to their frequent appearance on our screens. The most common are those of the studios often reffered to as "The Big Six".

Adam and I decided that, since we can't use "Motion" (which our teacher ordinarily recommends to students for the creation of idents) and neither one of us is particularly good with technology, we should attempt a stop-motion ident instead of a computer-generated one. At the moment, we're thinking of using coloured plastic and a light box to do this, but of course we'll have to see if that's even possible. Not to mention, we do not yet have a name or idea for our studio. However, at the moment I personally am leaning towards linking the name/imagery with one of the four elements, especially fire, because the colours we could use would look very effective if lit up correctly. A previous student had also made a stop-motion ident and, hopefully, we can make something similar. 

One particular ident that I personally would like us to draw inspiration from is that at the beginning of this video, which is a trailer for the previously mentioned video game "Alice: Madness Returns" created by American McGee. Of course, we won't be able to do anything even remotely as complex, but I like the idea of the paper-effect triangles forming the face of the Cheshire cat in this ident.

Since we will be using coloured plastic and a lightbox, the effect we wish to achieve can also be likened to that of Pathé's ident.

Additionally, it is to be noted that a lot of some of the most successful idents use multitudes of bright colours in order to appear more eye-catching. The circles often implemented in them is also telling of the aesthetic appeal of that particular shape, and as a result we've concluded that we are likely to create an ident in a similar overall shape (circular or elliptical) as well. TV channels such as Watch and BBC One are instances of this. 

Similarly, some video examples of this idea also include studios such as Firefly Entertainment and Criterion Collection.

Adam was particularly impressed by the revolving effect in the above idents due to the feeling of style and professionalism this created, and so I think this may be something we will attempt to recreate in our own work. However, as we will likely not be using Motion, our ident will hopefully look more naturalistic and unique due to our planned use of stop animation techniques.

AF