Post production: ident creation

Last year, to create our ident we used a preset website that had designs already present for us to customise. We did this because it was the quickest method of creating the ident, and as we had minimal technological skills, it was the most effective way of us creating it. To build on our knowledge that we have developed over the A2 course, we made the decision to create our ident from scratch, using photoshop and Adobe After Effects. When brainstorming, we felt that an ident that would be bold and eye catching, advertising the production company that made the trailer would be based on the idea around a house logo. As we didn't feel that we would be fully able to create the outline and shape from the beginning, we consulted with our teachers who suggested that we use an already existing image and edit it to fit the style of an original ident.

To begin this process, we used the internet to search for a front facing detached house that could be converted into the ident using grayscale and the lasso tool. The below image was found and downloaded, then opened in photoshop.

As we were unable to find a suitable front facing detached house, we used a semi detached instead; because of this, we had to carefully erase the house towards the right of the image to leave a stand alone house, as two wouldn't have the same effect when opening the film trailer. This was done using the eraser tool where I carefully removed the house to the right of the drainpipe as well as the trees on this side. After this, we used the threshold setting on photoshop, to drop the contrast and create the effect that we wanted. 

Although we had created the ident, we still had no name for the production company; we knew that we wanted to base the name around the picture, so would be something based around a house, but we hadn't considered any options. To create a name, we wrote down words that were associated with the image and brainstormed potential ideas. Having written these down, we asked for assistance from our class mates to give feedback on which name they preferred; we had three different name options,  "House Company", "House Designs" and "House Picture Productions". Having asked our classmates to choose between the three, just over 80% of them came to the conclusion that "House Picture Productions" was the best production company name; we took this audience feedback into considerations and made the decision to carry this name forward and include it in our film trailer.

When analysing existing film trailers, I saw a production company that introduced the company name  using a type writer effect. We wanted to recreate this with our own as it had a professional look, but also would show our technological skills and how these have improved since last year. We opened the ident up in Adobe After Effects, and selected the animation tool; we were then given options as to which animation we wanted. Because of the extensive list of animations, it involved us selecting multiple animations as we weren't sure which one to choose; eventually, we found the typewriter animation we wanted, and timed it so that the text appeared just after the animation came onto screen.