Unit 32 Assignment 2 (Planning and Production Diary)

Production Diary

4th of December: Started mind map today, I'm thinking about the ideas of musical icons and I'm thinking about the brand identity of ITV so that I can form a better idea of what type of audience would watch the channel and therefore watch my idents. I began looking at what an audience aged 16-25 would like to watch by looking at the kind of things that age range are interested in. I gathered that that generation are particularly interested in social media and they are a big fan of the most popular/mainstream music.

5th of December: Continuing with mind map today. Today I will look in more detail what the brand identity of ITV is and I will think about the types of things that could be included in my ident.

9th of December: Plowing on with the mind-map again today. Should have it finished by the end of today's 3 lessons. Looking at words that I could include, looking at words/images that could be associated with the similar idents and idents that I could make. FINISHED MIND MAP.

9th of December (continuation): Finished mind map, now have the basis of 3 ideas will move on to the sketches/collages for the individual ideas. I will base my designs on being entertaining and featuring things that are interactive and social to reflect the target audience and the variety of the brand identity. I will find similar imagery and ideas to my own to help me analyse my own idea ready to show others and gain feedback. 

9th of December Continuation part 2: Designed an idea for an ident before a music countdown. My idea is very vibrant and based on it being heart-warming and lively which is the brand identity of ITV and will appeal to their target audience in the brief which is 16-25 year olds. This idea is using light trails and colour to show how music can be colourful and almost magical and that ITV is not always what it seems. I gathered pictures and ideas from light trail imagery and other idents and adverts which featured music in some way or another. 

'Music is magical'

1. The setting is of headphones left on the side, we can hear music playing softly and as we zoom in slowly it gets louder. The headphones glow and are colourful -full of light trails transforming into music notes and pulse rates. Camera moves to focus on the headphones with light trails spiralling around the headphones, the tagline and the ITV logo appear under the headphones saying 'the heart of popular culture' 

• Techno soundtrack or an RnB song could be playing in the background as the light trails move on every beat.  

10th of December: Designed another idea for a different ident which would run before a reality TV show on a music channel. My idea would feature a cast and would be like the BBC Ident featuring both visual shots and green screen. It will use social media to show "reality" of two teenagers messaging one another about a new show. We would see graphics of the messages being sent, the ident would use a soundtrack and sound effects. The logo would appear in the right hand side of the screen -transition in -the colours would stand out against the white background. 

Society meets reality

2. This ident is set inside, would use a green screen to make a transparent background, it would be white with two girls sat a few paces away from one another. They are tweeting one another, we hear sound effects going off as notifications sound. As they are tweeting we see it appear behind/beside them using editing to make the "messages" appear. They both phone one another talking about ITV's new reality show and they walk off in different directions still talking about the new show. The ITV logo appears in the right hand side of the screen with the tagline "a new reality..."

•  Soundtracks playing lightly in the background making it light and fluffy.  

10th of December (Continuation): Designed another idea for the final ident which would run before a music documentary. My idea would be filmed like the TMC Ident so filmed almost totally not using a set but then editing the ITV logo into the ident by use of Photoshop and Final Cut Pro. It would go back to the simplicity of music to listen and to have fun, featuring cutaway shots of music references and different ways that people can enjoy music by using several locations and different props.

 'Music is where the heart is'

3. The setting of this is constantly changing and adapting. It cuts smoothly transitioning between people singing and dancing to someone with headphones on or to someone playing an instrument. The music is changing showing different styles and variations,and showing different locations. The ITV logo appears at the end when we see a guitar leaning against a wall, the logo will appear against one of the bricks on the wall. 

10th of December: The design ideas took me a while because my creativity was momentarily stunted. I now have 3 ideas and I can't decide. I think I would like to film it mostly like TMC or possibly use green screen like the BBC but I know for certain that I am not just animating it because I am stronger when filming and gradual editing in Final Cut Pro or Adobe Premier Pro. Therefore I think that I will either do my idea of light trailing headphones/music notes for the music countdown ident or my idea of "music is all around" for the music documentary ident. 

11th of December: Started on creating the storyboards for the 3 ident ideas. It is proving to be a bit difficult to actually formulate a clear structure for my idents but I have finished one around an ident running before a music documentary. I would film it in the style of TMC only adding little editing effects later on in post-production and it would be similar to a montage in style featuring different people listening to music/singing/dancing/performing/playing instruments to show people having fun and it would be a nice heart-warming ident showing people of the target audience and music allowing people to have fun and get involved in culture which is similar to the ITV brand identity. 

Music Is Where The Heart Is.

11th of December (Continued): Second storyboard has been completed. This was for the ident that would run before a music countdown. I would film it again mainly like TMC using editing and photoshop after I have filmed the majority of the content. It follows light trails to show how music can make you feel free and how music can be colourful making it different which is what the target audience could like and it features a heart which is the tagline of ITV -'the heart of popular culture' which is hopefully what this ident could carry across.

Countdown the light trails for ITV

11th of December (Continued): Third storyboard has been completed. I do not feel very confident with this idea, it was really hard to come up with an idea for a reality tv show ident. This ident would be filmed like the BBC Ident which was a mixture of live action and green screen. It shows two girls messaging one another about a new reality show to show how the age range of 16-25 year olds are obsessed with social media but I think that it could come across as a bit boring.

Social Media Versus Reality Television

9th of January: After starting to learn how to use Adobe After Effects to edit the visuals for the logo part of my ident I realised that I could make similar things happen via editing instead of taking a lot of time to film parts of an ident which would require a lot of specialised camera specifications and settings to attain the shots I would have liked. Instead I decided on completing it all on After Effects. After making this decision I chose to expand on my original idea of light trailing for a music countdown by following video tutorials to give me more knowledge of the software and with this I managed to make an ident successfully, only using Final Cut Pro to add in audio and adding in last minute transitions/effects.