BBC One is the flagship TV channel of the
BBC, which is in the UK, Isle of Man and the Channel islands. It was released
on the 2nd of November 1936 as the BBC Television service, but was renamed
to BBC TV in 1960. When its sister channel BBC2 was launched in 1964, it was
again changed to BBC1. BBC One is no stranger to TV idents, and has been
creating TV idents since the 1950’s. Since then they have excelled in TV
idents, and the work they produce now is amazing. Their current themes of TV
idents are all circular and are very aesthetically pleasing.
The first second of the ident you see a man
on a skateboard with another man on a skateboard alongside the first person. The
first person does a flip with the skateboard, as the other keeps going. You can
then catch a glimpse of another man behind him, revealing that there are 3 men
on skateboards. The camera stays with the first person and then shows him jumping
into the air off the skateboard, causing the skateboard to flip in the air.
This part of the ident is slowed down, and I think that the use of slow motion
in this ident was used at the right time, as it made the shot have impact and
made the skateboard the area of focus. The man then regains control of the
skateboard after touching his feet down on the skateboard, which is followed by
the slow motion returning to normal speed. As soon as he hits the ground, you
see the second man go up a ramp of sorts and jump onto a thin beam. While this
happens, you can see how smoothly the camera transitioned from shooting the
side of the skateboarders to in front of them. As the second man is about to
get off the beam, the third man jumps over a large wire reel and jumps straight
through the middle of it. This part also goes into slow motion, as it is where
the ident wants you to focus and is the part of the frame they want you to see
the most. The camera speeds back up to normal speed while he is still in the
air, giving the atmosphere a very elegant feel. As he touches the ground, the
three continue to ride, but this is where the ident abruptly stops. I feel they
could have done a better job at finishing the ident, as it was a complete stop
rather than a fade or a finish. I did like the combination of audio and video,
as the sound was a piece of music played on a piano, and was part of the reason
why it was elegant. I feel the music and video synced when the first two
skateboarders jumped up onto their ramps, but not so much for the third. Overall
it was a good and quick ident, and was a pleasant introduction to the next
program.
At the beginning of this ident you see the
same foot kick the same football, and has a lagging effect, where the editor
replayed the same footage to give the effect that someone was kicking a
football instantaneously. In the next few frames you get a blurry clip of
someone doing kick-ups with a football. Already you can tell this will be a
very quickly edited and fast paced ident with many different cuts and camera
shots. You then see a very fast clip of a man doing a kick-up, then immediately
the frame cuts to probably the same man kicking the football on his knee, then
a different angle of the same thing in the same second. You then see a very strange
warped effect that I have never seen in an ident before, which is almost
morphing the players together in a circle shape, and is warping their bodies in
a transparent way to create a very trippy effect. This is slowed down a lot,
while the footage of the players in the background is repeating. The next shot
is of a man heading a football, and then another shot of a man kicking a
football with his knee. You then see a foot, probably the same man, ready to
kick the ball, but this camera moves all the way round in a circle fashion, and
this has a very strange effect on how the eye sees this. You didn’t see the
same man kick do that, but because it was so quick it looks like it is one fluid
motion. You then see the same trippy effect as before of the man kicking the
football, and, just as before, the warp footage is slowed down hugely and the
footage of the players in the background is repeated. You then see a quick shot
of a man heading the football and then a different use of the warp effect. This
time it looks like all the different players are morphing together, almost like
some sort of energy transfer. This part is really psychotropic and gives you a
very brief insight into the endless possibilities of computer imagery. You then
see a group of players kicking balls, then the camera does an action shot, zooms
back and moves all the way up for a birds eye view, BBC One’s favourite view,
and this is when you see a circle of players all with their own football to
kick. They then kick their footballs in the centre, where the balls bounce off
other balls and go back to the owner, and this is repeated. The ident cuts off
again rather abruptly, and I think this is because the ident was not correctly
ripped, which is the reason behind this. The audio is one of the main reasons
this ident is so good. All of the beats match up to whenever someone kicks a
football, which is the reason for the repeating lagging footage, which adds to
the glitchy style of editing the ident was going for.
This ident begins with the camera quite
low, showing you two lines of people riding bikes. The line on the right is
wearing red capes, whereas the line on the left is wearing yellow. These two
colours are good for creating contrast between the two and help distinguish
colours. There is then a quick birds eye shot of the cyclists on a road, which
helps make the scene look less forced and more relaxed, as there is a car
parked on the side and a woman with an umbrella, to signify the weather, which
I assume is rain. The ident then cuts to a much higher, centered bird’s eye
view of the roundabout, and shows you all the cyclists. You could only see the
red and yellow in the beginning of the ident, but in this shot you can see many
different colours which makes the shot varied and adds much more colour to an
otherwise bland pavement. To add to the yellow and red, there is also lilac,
purple, dark blue, light blue and green. These cyclists are all circling the roundabout
in a clockwise motion. The logo of BBC One begins to form right in the first
shot, but has completely finished its animation by the time the bird’s eye view
shot arrives. You then see the red circle sweep around the logo and disappear
very quickly. The camera continues to move further upwards, revealing the
four-way roundabout, which shows cyclists coming from each road to join to the big
circle of cyclists. The audio is ruined by an echo in the announcer’s voice,
but this may not have happened on the actual channel. The music in the
beginning is very positive and uplifting, making the mood of the ident quite
cheerful.
BBC One’s logo has changed in a great way,
as it went from harsh and serious to much more relaxed and casual. Their idents
have also been pushed up a notch, and are of much higher quality and expertise.
The very common element in these idents is the use of colour. BBC One’s colour
scheme for their logo is red and white, and has been for a very long time. They
incorporate these colours into their idents to stand out from other colours and
to have a high contrast. All of these idents also seem to be using a lot of
real life footage rather than any form of motion graphics, which could be seen
as reflective on their channel, as they are a somewhat serious channel when
they need to be. There aren't a lot of differences in their idents, as they all
feature some form of sport or active exercise in the idents I have researched. They also all have the same uplifting mood
which is created by the music. They also seem to have less saturation in the
background shots to really emphasise the colour on their subjects. Their target
audience is older people, as their idents are relatively quick and don’t seem
to have any content in their idents to appeal to children or young teens. Their
use of colour in the first ident contained more red than any other noticeable colour,
as the skateboarders were wearing red as well as the steel beams. This was not
the case for the second ident I analysed, as that had much more white. White is
usually seen very often in football, so this could be the reason why the players’
shirts were white, or it could have been the fact that red on white can be seen
very clear and it is also BBC One’s colour scheme. The third incorporated many
different colours in a spectacular and innovative way, as each line of cyclist
was wearing a different coloured cape. These were also very clear against the
darker roads and pavement in the background. The first ident was quite quick in
terms of movement, and had no majorly slow footage. The second ident was very
fast paced and, because the players were moving faster, it felt much quicker.
The third was much slower and relaxed, which means it had more of a chilled atmosphere
rather than everything happening at once. There wasn't much typography or any
extra wording other than the logo text, as the idents much rather relied on the
editing of the footage for a good video. I quite liked these idents, as they
have a lot of consistency, unlike many other channels. The second ident was
created in 2007, and the same style is still being used today. The third ident
I researched was created in 2010, 5 years ago, and is still being used today.
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