Ident Production

For our 2 minute film opening, we need to create our own Ident. An Ident is the branding identity for moving image companies. Famous Idents include Paramount pictures with their stars around a mountain, and 20th Century fox with their monummental '20th Century Fox' surrounded by searchlights as triumphant music plays.



First Ident Creation
Myself and Adelle have no experience with creating an ident, therefore we used adobe photoshop to create an animated practice version of 'Sunshine Pictures' which demonstrates a simple sequence in which certain layers, such as the clouds, people and sheep move across the screen to reveal the sun.

For our actual Ident, our ideas consisted of sequences containing some of the codes and conventions of a Crime-Heist genre, Such as:

• A Roulette board
• 2 Die rolling
• A pack of cards
• A stack of cash - burning

With brainstormed ideas in our minds we decided to discuss feasability and decide upon a realistic idea. After deliberation we decided that burning cash would not be appropriate and a roulette board is hard to acquire. So we decided on testing: 2 Die rolling and a pack of cards.
Both these are feasable and relevant to the genre we are doing.

Here are a few storyboards indicating our ideas for the ident.

Adelle and myself attemted to film 2 Die rolling, but the die were too quick for the camera we had, the die also moved too fast and would not fill the time required. We could slow this down using Final-Cut express but this did not look realistic. The main problem however was that we had no control over where the die would land, they bounced and rolled out of camera shot conastantly.

We also tested the Pack of Cards idea and fanned them out in camera shot. This proved alot easier and overall looked much more professional. The cards are slowly left behind one by one by the cardholders hand as it moves in a curving motion. This will be a memorable association for the audience.

After deciding to go with the Pack of Cards idea, we used Final-Cut express and Live Text programmes to add sound effects and animated text to attract the audience's attention. These both link with the genre of the film 'Crime'. The annimated text appears on top of an image of blank cards and moves in a slot machine motion, side by side revolving around virtically. The cards and slot machine motion connotates to gambling which has potential and popular crime associated with it. The sound effect as the annimated writing appears is a typewriter, this is a relevant convention of the 'Crime' genre as a typewriter may connotate to the conclusion of a crime, the police officer typing up the report of the events. This also may connect with the opening of the film itself as the character has already been caught.