Idents: What are they? And, what are their uses?

What is an Ident?
An Ident is a logo for a production company that is shown before their Films or TV shows. Some examples of idents are the Universal Studios Ident (shown to the right). Idents can have a series of different factors that are incorporated into them. These includes; animation, 3D designs, title sequences and opening/closing credits. In fact, the Universal studios ident shown to the right is a great example of 3D design as the camera movements show that indeed the globe in the image isn't 2 dimensioned but instead, third.

Animation
For years, Idents have been using animation to enhance the way their visuals. Animation have changed the way idents flow. Originally, Idents were still images displaying the logo, name and some imagery to make it look fancy. Nowadays, thats quite standard. We see it everywhere, magazines, newspapers, websites etc. So, too keep their Idents memorable they have to step up their game and keep reinventing them. One of the techniques was animation. Animation has been used for many years, and Universal Pictures began with their very first animated ident back in 1941. Where text, orbited about the planet. Nowadays, a similar animation is still used. At the beginning you see the text appear over the horizon of the Earth and then swoop past the camera. This is the same movement as the 1941 ident, but with a few difference. In the new ident, the words stop in the centre instead of continously flowing round and in the new ident, we see the words pan in a close up whereas before it was always a wide shot.

Away from Idents, animation is used for many other things as well in aspects of motion graphics. If you ever see anything move on your screen (i.e. text, shapes, effects, people) then you can say they have been animated. Animation is the illusion of giving something fake, life. For example, Toy Story (1995) is completely animated and each of the characters would have been designed and moved to look real and further, tell the story. As the years have gone by, and the rise of visual effects replacing most of practical effects nowadays, animation is being used more then it ever has. For films such as Transformers (2007) the robots are visually designed and calculated with mathematics for the components to work as the animator moves the rig of the model.

3D Designs
Just like animation, 3D design is a relatively old format but in recent years its usage has increased dramatically due to its huge technical enhancements towards reality. The way designers can composite imagery into a frame with a 3 dimension axis is becoming a sense of trickery. In the 2009 reboot of Star Trek, the closing credits was one of the best I have ever seen, and still is. The mixture between VFX and Motion Graphics created an mini-galaxy tour displaying the key names of the films production. Since we aren't talking about the visual effects, we'll ignore that and talk about the text in the image found above. Of course, the first name displayed is the director JJ Abrams, but the techniques used to blend the text with the background as it slightly pans from the left to the right from that rapid zoom in with used by key framing which is a technique used in post to animate certain layers to control their properties (i.e. Scale, orientation, movement, opacity and more.) These techniques are used to animate the text and change it from an image into a graphic. These techniques are used all the time in film, such as in girly soap operas on MTV where they display a text message on the screen, the stars in Paramount, the WB slow upscale, etc.

The main difference between Visual Effects and Motion Graphics is that Visual Effects are computer generate elements that are implemented into a frame purposed to be blended in as if it was there when shooting. Motion Graphics are just graphic designed animated in and around the frame. So, in the screen shot above, I've stated that the typography is an example of motion graphic where as the visual effect is everything else from the flares, shading, planets, debris, etc.

Example of Motion Graphics in House of Cards (2013-)

Title sequences
In Hollywood films, it very rare to ever see title sequences but some films have them. These can be in the format of opening and closing credits. But an example of a title sequence would be Guy Ritchie's character introduction on the film Snatch (2000). At the beginning, you follow the diamond going from one character to the next, then again and again until all the main characters have been established. But the trick is, when each character get the diamond, they film stops in freeze frame and a 3D design is placed over the top with the characters posture and their name. Another big director who enjoys his Title sequences is David Fincher who makes similar abstractly themed imagery to what Bond does (but obviously Fincher and Bond films are wildly different genre and therefore themed films.) An example of an opening credits is The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011) its imagery stays true to overall colour palette, with the play on a lot of greys and black being manipulated into 3D models of oiled objects. I.e. Faces, liquids, etc. This is done for to engage audience's attention from the beginning as people are fascinated by the weird, or abstract. It also conveys the tone of the films with pacing, colours, and some of the objects that are being made give hints into the film, though the majority of them are either random or are currently beyond me.