Ident Proposal Letter Final

BTEC National

Park Hall Academy

Water Orton Road

Solihull

B36 9HF

Dear Sir or Madam,

I am writing to propose that I create a promotional ident for the media department at Park Hall Academy. The Ident will be created using stop motion animation and will represent the work done by the students who are part of the media department community at Park Hall Academy.

The primary target audience for the ident would be students from eleven to eighteen as they are the ones who will have to decide whether or not they wish to take the media subject. The secondary target audience will be parents and teachers who are usually from 35 - 47 because they are the responsible adults in charge of the children and will influence the child’s decision greatly. As the client of the ident is an educational facility there may be others who are not students or parents who will act as an audience, such as ofsted or guests to the school.

The storyline my group intend to use involves a mixture of iconic stop motion animation figures such as Morph and Pingu, this is so people of all ages will recognise the character and give their attention to the ident. Usually stop motion animation is aimed at small children but they are not our target audience so it may come across strange but we are aiming to represent the technique not the audience of it so if it is done well it will work to our favour. We will also use a lot of techniques used by the media to create this ident, such as the use of green screen, editing software, stop motion animation, imposed images, etc. Everyone in the group will take the footage gathered and edit it differently using our own views and opinions to create multiple idents, all of which suit the media industry and in turn the department.

The budget of the project isn’t much as we already have a lot of the stuff we will need available to us such as editing software, video cameras and a green screen. The only thing money will be needed for is the plasticine, aesthetics (googly eyes and coloured paper) and coloured printing used in creating the characters and the props that go along with them. We can cut back on this budget by removing the paper elements of it and making everything out of plasticine which may cost more in the plasticine but the added cost to plasticine will be removed from the cost of the paper and the printing and may become a cheaper option.

One issue for us is time restraints, we have discussed a variety of ways to cut down on time such as splitting up to do different parts of the project at the same time and then coming back together afterwards to briefly go over what the others have done. We have most of the equipment we will need nearby so travel will be no issue and won’t make an impact on the time constraint. Although the equipment we need is in high demand so the times it is available to us is limited and may drastically impact the time it takes to get the ident finished.

Other issues we may come across in creating this ident are things such as no being able to get enough shots as every shot is about 0.2 seconds of the film and if we do not get enough shots the footage will look jumpy and badly done. There is also the possibility of the camera shaking or something being in shot and none of us realising, these problems are easily overcome if the creation of the ident is done taking great care, we can also use certain pieces of equipment we have available to help stop minor problems that may occur, such as tripods that should stop the camera from shaking too much.

The technologies we will be using to put the entire thing together in a smoothly done way include the following programmes:

• Power Director
• Adobe Photoshop

We already have access to both of these programmes so having to use them will not affect the budget costs and obtaining them is no problem whatsoever so it won’t make much impact on the time constraints although using the programmes may as some members of the group aren’t as efficient with the programmes as others.

In our group we have discussed the time constraints issue and worked out how to most efficiently get everything done within the time limit that has been given, here is what we have come up with for the 20 hour period (5 hours per week):

2 Hours planning

1 Hour resource gathering

4 Hour resource creation

2 Hour set creation

4 Hour of actually producing the raw images of the stop motion

6 Hours editing

1 Hour review and Final edits

After that process everyone in the group will get together and decide who has the most professionally done ident and that ident will then get shown to a group of people who will be in our target audience (a focus group) and receive their feedback in the form of questionnaires. Once we have the results from the questionnaires we will gather up all the information to work out what the average opinion of the ident is and then we will have a group meeting on how we can use this information to improve our product and move on as a group. We will also meet up with the client to discuss the results and find out what they wish us to do or add to the ident to improve it or if it is fine the way it is.

Yours faithfully,

                    Daniel Gregory

Media Ident Pitch Final

Above is our pitch, if for some reason the iFrame is not workng, you can check it out here.
Unfortunately, that powerpoint doesn't work correctly when published to Google Docs, so here is a download for the powerpoint version, the idents themselves can be found on the shared drive on either the academy network or the VLE in the following location: W:\media studies\Teachers' Folders\Miss Raison\BTEC NAT 10-11\final animation

Ident proposal letter first draft

BTEC National

Park Hall Academy

Water Orton Road

Solihull

B36 9HF

Dear sir or madam,

I am writing to propose that I create a promotional ident for the media department at Park Hall Academy. The Ident will be created using stop motion animation and will represent the work done by the students who are part of the media department community.

The primary target audience for the ident would be students from eleven to eighteen as they are the ones who will have to decide whether or not they wish to take the media subject. The secondary target audience will be parents and teachers because they are the responsible adults in charge of the children and will influence the child’s decision greatly.

The storyline my group intend to use involves a mixture of iconic stop motion animation figures such as Morph and Pingu, this is so people of all ages will recognise the character and give their attention to the ident. We will also use a lot of techniques used by the media to create this ident, such as the use of green screen, editing software, stop motion animation, imposed images, etc. Everyone in the group will take the footage gathered and edit it differently using our own views and opinions to create multiple idents, all of which suit the media industry and in turn the department.

The budget of the project isn’t much as we already have a lot of the stuff we will need available to us such as editing software, video cameras and a green screen. The only thing money will be needed for is the plasticine and aesthetics used in creating the characters and the props.

One issue for us is time restraints, we have discussed a variety of ways to cut down on time such as splitting up to do different parts of the project at the same time and then coming back together afterwards to briefly go over what the others have done. We have most of the equipment we will need nearby so travel will be no issue and won’t make an impact on the time constraint. Although the equipment we need is in high demand so the times it is available to us is limited and may drastically impact the time it takes to get the ident finished.

Other issues we may come across in creating this ident are things such as no being able to get enough shots as every shot is about 0.2 seconds of the film and if we do not get enough shots the footage will look jumpy and badly done. There is also the possibility of the camera shaking or something being in shot and none of us realising, these problems are easily overcome if the creation of the ident is done taking great care, we can also use certain pieces of equipment we have available to help stop minor problems that may occur, such as tripods that should stop the camera from shaking too much.

Yours faithfully,

                    Daniel Gregory

Doctor Who's Child Bollards - Journalism Piece

Child shaped Bollards outside Plymouth's Compton Church of England Primary School  have been rejected by parents who claim that they are too scary and are "like something from dr.who".

The aim of the bollards were to make drivers slow down when entering an area with a school nearby.
Each bollard individually costs £350 each.

The idea was leaked to a local newsletter which made it's way into the hands of the parents and carers of the children that attened the school who then in turn complained in mass to the Plymoth City Council .

The city council came to this decision of Bollards due to the complaints that the roads near the school were dangerous.
One mother commented that she would like to see Zebra crossings and a lollypop man "because the roads are so busy".

The makers of the bollards remain 'proud' of their creations even though the school recieved the largest ammount of comments it had ever recieved for a consultation.

It is still unknown as to wether these bollards would work any differently to slowing down traffic than normal bollards which are cheaper.  It is currently unknown what they are actually going to do to slow down the traffic near the school, One thing is for sure, the Plymoth City Council are deffinetley rethinking the Dr.Who-esc Child Bollards.

Strengths and weaknesses of idents

This is BBC 1's 2009 Christmas ident, i believe that it is a successful ident as it manages to advertise the channel, give across a christmas feel by using music, reindeer and scenery. It also advertises the programme dr.who which is shown on BBC 1 which will get the hype up for it and in turn make more people watch the programe which gets the channel more views. It also uses the circle to represent BBC 1 like other BBC 1 idents, the circle is a homage to the idents of old.


This is the 1993 children's channel's ident, i personally think that it isn't a very good isnt as i believe children wouldn't find it very interesting. It tries to be interesting for children by using effects, bright colours and music, which at the time of it's release probably would have worked but i think that in current times there isn't enough going on for it to grab someones attention and it could easily be ignored.They have updated their ident since this and It has incorporated some of the things i mentioned.


This is a MTV ident from 2007, i think it is succesful but also has it's faults. The good points about it is it expresses the 'feel' of the channel by the use of key words and its also colourful and eye catching, but on the flipside of that there are negative points too, such as the length, in itself it is too long but as a solution to that (which im unsure if they've done or not) they could edit it into a few smaller idents saying one word that represents the station then showing the logo, instead of showing multiple words.


This is the Channel 4 ident from 1982. I think this is a succesful ident as it has become iconic and it is so simple. It is also advanced for the time it was created and it's bright colours grab the eyes attention.


This is ITV 2's 2009 nail polish ident. I think it is succesful but has it's faults. Such as the audience targeted. It is clearly targetted at females which means most  potential male viewers will simply switch over because of the femanin vibe. Apart from that it is succesful at grabbing attention, is creative and is easy on the eyes.


This is Thames Television's 1970's ident, i think it is succesful because it is short, simple, shows the station and is goo rather advanced for the time it was created compared to some other idents from around the time.


This is Film 4's Car Chase Ident i think it is Successful because it grabs the eye of the watcher, displays what the channel is for and also uses a creative way of showing the '4' part of the Channel name by seperating the screen into different shots.


This is the Nicktoons Gear Ident which i think is both Succesful and Unsucessful because it attracts the attention of the viewer which is important for a childrens television programme but the gears part of the ident seems irelivant and doesnt really link to anything the channel has to offer.


This is Fiver's Station Ident that was created in 2010 i think that this is an Unsuccesful ident as i dont think it gives any kind of view into what the station is actually like.


This is Ant1's Sports Ident I think this is a Succesfull ident as it is eye grabbing, interesting, displays all the sports that will be shown on the channel in a creative way.

Televisioin questionnaire results

Do you own a television?
13 Yes
How much tv on average do you watch in a day?
1 >1 Hour | 9 2-3 Hours | 3 3-4 hours
When are you most likely to watch television? (allowed to pick multiple answers)
1 Afternoon | 11 Evening | 10 Night
Are you a..
13 Teenagers
What is your favourite tv channel?
3 BBC1 | 2 E4 | 2 Channel 4 | 2 ITV | 1 BBC3 | 1 MTV | 2 Sky Sports
What is your favourite genre of programme?
4 Soap/Drama | 6 Comedy | 2 Sport | 1 Music

The sample had the following demographic features:
-British white ethnicity
-Teenagers
-Upper working class/lower middle class
-Students

In quantative terms i found that

BBC1's Current Ident

A circle symbol was decided upon as the theme for the idents of BBC 1 since it was described as a 'symbol of togetherness', and also a 'nod' towards the channel's past, in particular the use of a globe logo for much of its history. All idents involve the basis of the action to be shown, be that footballers kicking a ball or children playing with flowers before the circle is shown to form and the BBC One logo animates onto the screen. The channel currently uses 15 idents that all use this theme they also have a vast variety of speical idents that user the theme but were made for a specific event, such as christmas or red nose day, or it coulf just simply be promoting the programme that comes on afterwards. The idents play once in every advertisment break and within 3 hours can be seen a total of 7 times, according to my calculations.

History of BBC1's idents.

With the advances in technology BBC 1 has updated their ident multiple times, one notable change is the move from black and white to colour. Another is when they got rid of the iconic globe in 1969 which returned again in 1985 and then in 2002 it disapeared again only to return in spirit in 2006. The first time the idents became coloured the channel established blue as their colour scheme, this changed to yellow then green and eventually settled on red which is the current established colour of BBC 1.

According to the bbc website "BBC One's remit is to be the BBC's most popular mixed-genre television service across the UK, offering a wide range of high-quality programmes.
It should be the BBC's primary outlet for major UK and international events and it should reflect the whole of the UK in its output. A very high proportion of its programmes should be original productions."