Today, I'm going to be writing a report on the creativity and imagination creators have when expressing an ethos and a brand in their minds. This report will cover the main details of Ethos, Brands and an example of the opportunities and limits an ident can give towards the creator and the company.
Ethos is a term used to show how certain things want to be seen and perceived by viewers. For example, ITV1 has an ethos to inform and entertain family audiences at home. They like to build up the anticipation of their shows with high rated programmes (X Factor, Game shows etc.) and then feature "teasers" or "trailers" for their shows at peak times. This entices audience viewers at home/online to get into 'the mood' to watch their favourite shows at the time it's shown on air. Thus, this is how ITV gains additional revenue and finances with more and more people tuning in to their channel.
Another example can be BBC2. Their ethos is to be thought as a warm and intelligent channel towards the viewers. Personally, I think it attracts me with its genre of comedies and documentaries, compared with BBC1 as they feature a whole bunch of genres ( News,Game Shows, Films etc.). This gives me to open up my mind and take a bigger view on the other stuff that goes on around the world. Wildlife has always been the biggest thing with BBC. So with the warm welcome of their channel, I feel invited to watch their wildlife programmes and other genres of shows.
Every channel has a moral element to reach out to audience members with its engaging and appealing aura it shows. One channel that particularly tempts me is FIVE (UK). The channel brands out into many forms (Five, 5* and 5USA. Also they have + channels for viewers to watch On Demand). This gives me a great variety of alternatives to pick upon. Each channel uses the same format of alluring viewers into watching their shows (Trailers, Teases and Idents). It has the ideology to captivate viewers into thinking that although this channel is higher down the list of reputation, it's reputation of the content they feature gives audience members something to connect to and rely on.
One thing I love about branding is the creativity it can give. BBC1 is a prime example. They re-branded their whole entire channel to feel connected towards us. This payed off. Instead of working on the inside products, they focused on the visual outer presentation.This is known as "image wrapping" The logo of their first channel creates the symbol of peace and togetherness. The circle and colour of this makes me feel that I can get a feeling of happiness towards the show, thus, viewers get equated with the channels warm welcome to keep the channel on.
Channel FIVE caught my eye again. They re-branded and took a risk. The use of the "five" was turned into "FIVE" because they could relate to audience more with it's dominant look. Quoted, the company that designed it, Dixonbaxi, said it looked "creative, more vocal and expressive". They even dropped the word "channel" to just make it look more fashionable. And with it's red circle visually representing the channel and their idents, BARB recorded a rise in viewers by 6.6% in 2004. However, they re-branded again and reworked it into "5". It's still effective in my perspective, but with all the change to the idents and visual imaging, it looks cheap and basic to me.
Idents gives us the visual image of what a channel can represent in a 10-20 second advert. The purpose is to self promote or brand their company of who they are but also to remind the target audience what their main ethos is. The visuals and audio reflect what they want to be portrayed as. an ident should unique and inspirational to their target audiences.
I'll start talking about E4. This is my favourite for idents. Diversity, randomness and creativity is what they supply. This makes it appealing towards it's targeted audience. They don't create the idents, they feature user-submitted content. A few good reasons they do this is
- Saves a lot of money. Companies spend over £1 million on creating idents for their channels and some just flop due to it's uncreativity and general sloppiness
- It promotes the channel more. If E4 didn't let themselves feel connected towards the general target audience, how would they gain the reputation they have now? E-Stings or Estings is what they call their idents. And with the challenge to inspire viewers to feature their work on their channel, they get them involved in their work and this gains them the reputation they have today.
- Opportunities. Not giving audiences what they desire can be a big blow for such a huge company. They need to be directly involved with the viewers in the way to let them feel part. E4 has an ethos to be entertaining and engaging towards all of their watchers. If that fails, they'll be left having to spend money which might cost the company a huge percentage.
However, there comes limitations when it comes to idents. This applies to most TV companies that want to invest in idents.
- Cost. It's always risky to invest in idents. BBC invested £1.2 million into 8 different idents. These seemed to be highly rated amongst viewers. Some companies may invest a huge sum of money and then end up taking it off air after several months.
- Getting it right. This is the main issue. If you have the money to make an ident, you need to make it appealing and illustrative. An example of a poor ident can be ITV. They made an ident which only lasted a week or two. The main reasons were that it wasn't even interesting to the point where I can visually recognise it. Second being that it looked too cheap and simple. BBC did the exact same thing, but caused controversy. They replaced the ident that lasted over 30 years on the channel to 3 handicapped men 'attempting' to dance. This only got mixed reviews due to it's sudden change and that people couldn't adapt to its attempt to be creative/stylish. This lasted 4 years and if you put that on BBC standards, that is considered a fail.
One example of a brilliant ident can be found on Channel Five.When they aired "The Walking Dead", they created a 20 second ident with visual images and voices to allure the target audience into making them feel connected and appreciated into the ident. It features a zombified face pushing through the FIVE logo in a horror way. It also features a man giving a brief synopsis of the episode and content the audience is about to watch.Creepy visuals of faces and zombie hands creates a sense of ambiguity and interest of the programme. Personally, I trust this channel to feature one of my favourite shows. The fact that they can create a powerful and stylised ident in just 20 seconds shows that I can feel more personal with their work and the way they represent the show.
If I were to create an ident, I would mainly focus on the format of the ident and how I need to evaluate my ideas to relate to the expectations of audience members and how I can connect to them.
- Colouring scheme is important. Just look at the E4 idents. They're all purple. The branding of this relates to the logo. You don't see all idents/logos in a bright purple colour? It's funky & cool colours represent who they are and with user-generated content being advertised, they make it look the uncommon look exclusively common.
- Pacing the ident is a major importance. You need to have some form of build up or story set up into a 10/20 second ident. Rushing the ident makes it look tacky and lacks the creation from the maker. I would pace it like a story. Beginning, middle and ending. Throwing some random form of creativity into it isn't that creative in some aspects. It just makes it confusingly bad or an off balance ident.
- The representation. E4 being the example once again. You don't want to make an Esting that is smart and educated? You want it to appeal towards its targeted audience. So making it range the amounts of imagination someone can think makes it effective. Personally, I would think it would need to have a young adult vibe. Comedy can be a good use of entertainment. It engages everyone that's in the target audience
My E-Sting is going to be aimed for the comedy genre. I will use all the techniques that represent what a successful ident is and how I can power my idea into my target audience's mind. I've taken a lot of inspiration from user-generated content on E4.com and YouTube videos that give a visual style of comedy. I'm entering the 2013 Estings competition. The requirements are set. So all I have to do is stick by the guidelines and be imaginative/creative. I've got to connect with my audience and the branding of E4 and I'll have to be mindful of what I actually produce.
An example of inspiration is the video HORSE by TomSka. I like the idea of diversity and randomness in my ident. So I've decided to go with a horse mask which I've purchased and I'm going to create a hilarious styled ident of a person wearing the horse. I will use creativity and put my mind to what I believe will be inspiring and significant to what I'm aiming for. I plan to use the Hip Hop track beat. I discussed this with my partner Tanaka. We thought that the smooth beat can give a short build up in the track with a short stop in the middle to symbolise a change in the ident story. With the synopsis, treatment and pre production documents set, I feel that we can create an ident that is aimed at young adults which represents what E4 is all about.
