Idents - Low/Mid Budget Influences

These are a selection of many different influential Low/Mid budget idents. They are clearly less 'glamorous' than the 'big six' for example but each have influential qualities, especially the light colouring on the dark background as seen in almost all of these idents. I particularly like the 'Impact Pictures' ident with the words written in 'blood red' inside the light bulb as seen in the collage just below.

I am also particularly fond of the 'Impact Pictures' Ident (above left), which has a high-budget sic-fi feel to it that I think is particularly powerful. I like the blue glow moving in from the left and lighting up the words 'Impact' and 'Pictures' either side of the half moon image splitting the titles. I particularly like the colouring on this Ident as it is relatively simple yet it empowers the title's, which is undoubtedly the most important part to most film company idents/logos.

I am also fond of the 'inFilm' logo, despite its simplicity. I particularly like the use of font, with the 'F' clearly standing out on the black, block background. The 'Infinitum Nihil' logo also stands out for me as the red square image is very striking. I was instantly drawn to the logo as it is again extremely effective when placed on the block background. It would be good for us to use a block background of any colour and then employ the logo/text (name of company) over the top of that background.

'Initial Entertainment Group inc.' employs an interesting use of colouring for its logo/ident and I especially like the beaming circle of light in the middle of the image with the title of the company placed inside. The contrasting blue's here is extremely effective and is something we would like to employ in our very own ident. This idea of contrasting the same colour in different shades as seen above is something of influence to us. The icon is also something that needs to be thought about in order for it to be 'eye-catching' and memorable for the audience. I feel that the 'Illusion' logo (bottom left) does this extremely well as the image of the bird is quite striking and stands out in comparison to the rest of the idents around it. We would perhaps like to make something similar using their logo as an influence to us. 

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Ident - Research/Influences

Despite the fact that I view myself as the 'next next' Martin Scorsese, our film does not have the equipment/budget like some of the top films released today, such as 'The Hunger Games' and 'The Hobbit' and for this reason we will not attract companies, such as 'Universal' and 'Paramount' or even any of the 'big six', when producing our film. Having said this, the 'Big Six' are still influential as they are an excellent example of some of the things we can strife for when producing our own ident. The smooth/transitional way they move is interesting and something we should be looking to recreate but on a much lower scale.

We have to be careful when producing our ident as we do not want to sell to the audience a film that is extremely 'high-budget' as it is not something we can deliver. This is why we would like to use some ideas from the 'big six' but will not attempt to emulate them otherwise we could mislead our audience. For this reason, some of our major Ident influences have come from slightly lower-budget movies, whereby the Ident's/logos are more 'edgy' and 'independent'. This fits with our style and is more accessible to create, given our resources/budget. However, due to the 'glossy' nature of our film, we are not looking to create a completely 'independent' style ident, but instead something in-between high and low budget productions.

These are a few examples of some of our mid-budget production ident influences not including our major film influences.

I particularly like the style of the 'Legendary' logo with the unusual symbol and the bold title beneath it. We would perhaps like to create an iconic symbol for our ident/company in order for it to stand out in comparison to other lower/mid-budget companies out their today. To do this, I will sample many different designs until we find one that we particularly like and think would work as an Ident for our film.

Film4 use their same ident in multiple different locations often depending on the genre of the film, which is something I find extremely interesting. They idents are 'littered with references to films in various genres to reflect the channel's diverse output and audience' - (Creative Review - film4's new look). Their different idents have been influential to us as the design is relatively simple and easy to produce but the way they have chosen to present them to the audience stands out in comparison to other idents we have seen. The way they present the audience with their ident in front of different 'ambiguous' surroundings is also influential as the different surroundings suggest a lot about the genre of the film they are about to watch, which is helpful for us when producing our own ident. 

These are just a few of the film4 selected idents as seen above in a video from YouTube:

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Aims for Graphics Overview

Our aim for the graphics in our trailer to highlight this idea of 'Two-Evils', which is strongly connected to the storyline of our film. Our protagonist has to fight against both the police, who want him for murder and the 'bad-guys' who set him up in the first place, linking in to this idea of two-evils and how our 'hero' character has to fight against it. We decided on this at an early stage in the research and planning and would like to reflect these themes in the graphics/titles of our trailer. We were drawn to the style of 'Cabin Fever' but wanted to put our own twist on them by placing the London skyline (cityscape) at the bottom of the titles, almost merging into them. We want to combine the two to highlight the theme of two-evils and also create a high-budget feel to our graphics, which will be both recognisable and memorable to the audience watching our trailer. 'Urban Jungle' is the style of font we found that fitted almost exactly the style we wanted for own film and so have used it as our main influence:

   We particularly like the way the font stands out and is almost fading away at the bottom revealing the Skyline. We feel that this not only adheres to our crime/thriller genre but also adheres to the storyline of our film.

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Storyboard - Photoshop

After drawing the pictures for our storyboard from hand, we exported them into photoshop in order to add colour to the pictures. We wanted to do this in order to make the images more clear, but also for us when it comes to the filming stage as we can easily identify, which characters are in which scenes along with the help of our shot list. The colour not only improves the overall quality of the storyboard photos but provides us and early viewers with a clearer view of how our film will eventually look like. 

This part of the process was particularly useful for me as I was relatively inexperienced with using photoshop and it was a good way for me to get to grips with the workings of the programme before we moved into the graphics/research stage. Due to the fact that I was heavily involved in the credits & Ident research, being able to use photoshop was particularly helpful as we could sample a few ideas before finalising them.

Above are just a few of the many storyboard images we altered and then coloured in using photoshop. I found it particularly difficult to get to grips with the different layering involved on photoshop but am now much more confident when using it.

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Storyboarding

After completing the shot list we decided to draw up a storyboard in order to visualise the different shots we were going do and thus be able to view the trailer as a whole in a more adaptable way. We would like to turn the pictures into a moving animatic, whereby we can almost see the full trailer in it's simplest form. We split the three acts between the three of us and have now returned after half-term with all of the pictures drawn up ready to fit them together as an animatic.

MT

Shot List - Rough Act 3

	Fade to black – Girl actor		1
	Girl running		1
	Girl stops and hides behind wall/pillar/door – main bad guy approaches slowly, looking for her	Heavy breathing	2
	Fade to black  - main bad guy actor		1
	Main bad guy laughing evilly	›:D	1
	Fade to black – protagonist actor		1
	P running along Southbank (maybe a few different shots)		1-3
	Fade to black – When you’re caught between two worlds…		1
	Close up of main bad guy	MBG: You find him and you kill him, tonight, or we’re all screwed!!	2
	Close up of angry boss	Boss: I want (protagonist) in my questioning room by tomorrow morning! Find him god damn it!!	2
	Fade to black - …which way do you turn		1
	Shot of P holding gun out one way…		1
	…And the other way		1
	Cut to black	Gunshot	1
	Running girl		1
	Running P		1
	MBG throws glass		1
	P holding up gun shaking		1
	Fade to black – a GameChanger production		1
	Sidekick’s door shoved down		1
	Sidekick reaction face		1
	Corridor, P walks in, sees Boss, runs	Boss: (protagonist)!!	1
	Girl, scared, next to wall with mbg close		1
	Shot of london		2
	Film Name		3

Shot List - Rough Act 2

Shot	Position/Movement	Visual Content	Actor/directions	Sound	Time (secs)	Script
13	Panning to follow protagonist being arrested (low angle shot)	Fade Into slow mo shot of man leaving house, having been arrested.	Protagonist & officer			Fade into news report voice ‘protagonist has been arrested for murder’
14	Head onto protagonist at desk.	Interrogation scene – boss circling P	“			Boss ‘ this looks bad (protag), I knew how badly you wanted ti take this guy down’.
15		Fade to black			Very very very short.
16	Camera could track around desk? Shot reverse shot?	Interrogation scene again.	“			Boss ‘ but you’ve gone too far’
17		Close up on boss				Boss ‘ we are gonna have to take you in’
18	Pan with tracking shot perhaps?	Protagonist being led outside	“
19	Close up with zoom out?	Close up of hands being held together? Suggest he will break away?	“
20	Mid-shot to pan of running away?	Breaking away from officer outside and running away	“	Soundtrack		Boss ‘oi come back’  - something along those lines?
21	Slow zoom cutting to fade to black	Fade to black		Sound boom
21B	Close up of tv screen?	News moment?
22	Fade/zoom out to establishing shot of bar?	Bar scene with man sitting at bar and girl behind it. Zoom out from tv to see the bar scene?	Main Protagonist and female character.	TV on in background or something?
23	Shot reverse shot	Man talking to girl	“	Soundtrack continues		Woman says something (Charlie)
24	Close up of P	“	“			Man answers (charlie)
25	Fade to black	Fade to black with graphics? Award winning…..		Sound boom
26	Tracking shot behind two characters (perhaps low angle or even high to suggest danger)	Fade into man and girl walking to front door of house	MAN AND WOMEN	soundtrack
27	Close up on door	As sidekick character opens it	Man, woman and side-kick?			Says something to P
28	Shot reverse shot with Protagonist	Conversation between two characters with woman present	“			Protag says something (Charlie)
29	Shot reverse shot/match on action as enter?	Inside living room/kitchen?	“			Sidekick says something (Charlie)
30	Low angle on P	“	Just protagonist in shot			P says – (Charlie)
31	Fade to black	Fade to black with some sort of graphics (perhaps start of names?)		Sound boom?
31A	Fade into close up/mid-shot from behind? Of bad guy	Bad guy	Antagonist - main
32	Close up of P	P looking scared or apprehensive?	protagonist			P says – (Charlie)
33	Close up of Bad Guy smiling or something?	<<<<<< Perhaps these are all fade ins and fade outs?	Antagonist - main

MT