This is the research Chloe has done into the production the ident. She created the ident and has documented her hard work below.
The letters MCMV and numbers 1905 will fade in and out, intermittently, on top of a hammer and sickle. The 1905 will then move, and the word ‘productions’ will appear next to it.
The reasoning for these letters and numbers is that our initials combined create MCMV which is roman numerals for 1905. It was then brought to our attention that this was the year of the Russian revolution.
Hence the image of the hammer and sickle, as it is a communist symbol which arose during the Russian revolution.
So after drawing out the basic idea for our ident (as shown in the post Ident Planning), I set to work on producing the real thing. I have never used Apple Motion 5 before and had a bit of difficulty trying to figure out how to actually get started. After playing around with the software for a bit to get a feel of it and reading theApple Motion 5 Cookbook by Robert Chelsea, I was ready to get started.
I began by researching a suitable picture of the hammer and sickle on Google Images. I needed a picture which had no background, and luckily this was one of the first results.
The checkered background meant that the red icon could be placed in front of any background without the usual white background from the image. This made it very easy to import into Motion, as I simply copied and pasted it on to the black screen, which created my first layer.
I then chose an appropriate, bold font. I started off with a font style called ‘Chiseled” and typed in the 1905. I then used the curser to drag the writing to the write position and to alter the size. I liked the way that this was done, and both the width and length could be changed which meant that I could make the text fit perfectly into the handle of the hammer. I then copied this writing into another layer and typed in the MCMV. This meant that the font, size, width and position of the writing was exactly the same and thus saved me time as I no longer needed to waste time re-positioning it. However, when editing I realised that the 1905 was slightly longer and more bold that the MCMV which looked really untidy. So I changed the font style of both pieces of text to ‘Old Steel’ and altered the length and width of each, which thankfully was exactly the same for both.
I then began to edit the text so that they flashed in and out with one another. This took a very long time but I finally managed to conquer this task. We had planned for the MCMV to show for about 80 frames before fading out and 1905 fading in, but when I realised that this would equate to about 3 seconds, and considering an ident is only supposed to be a short piece of animation and this was only the start of it, I decided this was far too long. So, I cut down the first fade to 40 frames which I felt was much more feasible. To do this, I moved the selector along the MCMV bar, and then clicked the ‘key frame’ icon. Apple defines ‘key framing’ as “the process of assigning a specific parameter value to an object at a specific point in time”. Thus in doing this, I was able to divide the entire MCMV bar into sections, so that I could edit the text so only the first portion would be affected. After pressing the key frame button, I dragged the opacity of the MCMV down to 0. I then clicked the left arrow 20 times to move upto 60 frames, key framed it, and dragged the opacity back up to 100. I repeated this several times alone the MCMV bar in order to create the illusion of it disappearing and reappearing. To have the 1905 fade in and out at opposing times to the MCMV, I had to start the key framing from the beginning. So, I dragged the cursed to 0 frames on the 1905 bar, pressed the key frame button and dragged the opacity down to zero. I then moved the cursed to 40 frames, key framed it, and set the opacity at 100. I then continued to change the opacity from 100 to 0 every 20 frames, in opposing sections to the MCMV. As you can guess, this was very time consuming and took about 3 lessons, as in some places human error came into action and meant that either both the text’s were at 100 opacity or both at 0 as I had gotten confused as to which one was which. However, I managed to rectify my faults so I could carry on with the rest of the animation. This is how the ident looked at this point in time:
After spending some time trying to work out how to make the writing move position, I decided to seek help and I was shown how to do it. To make the 1905 move, I needed to key frame the part which I wanted to move, and then dragged it into the desired position. After a fair bit of key framing and altering the rotation of the writing, I managed to make the movement look clean and professional.
I thought it would be easiest to insert the word ‘productions’ in another text box, and have the 1905 fade out using key framing, and then back in with the productions next to it. However, as you can see in the picture below, the shine effect on the productions faces in a different direction to the 1905, and even after attempting to alter the direction of the shine, the two still looked fairly dissimilar and I wasn’t very happy with it.
So, to divert away from this issue, I had the 1905 fade out, but did not fade it back in. Several frames after the writing had faded out, I had the text ‘1905 productions’ fade back in, in the same font, size and position as the 1905 initially was, although it was now more central. It was then brought to my attention, that the R in the Russian alphabet typically faced the other way:
So I changed the direction of the R in ‘productions’ by copying and pasting the R from the Russian alphabet. I did this to enhance the Russian theme of the ident even more greatly.
I now needed to select appropriate music to be played alongside the ident. I wasn’t really sure what kind of music or sound effect to use, but after some input from other people, we decided that a Russian Cossack song would fit appropriately with the theme of the ident. And after listening to several songs on YouTube, this is the song we thought would be most appropriate:
Now came the dilemma as to have the music playing from the very beginning of the ident, or just from when the ‘1905 productions’ faded in. I tried the latter option first, but thought that the rest of the ident was just too quite so we went with the first option, and had the music begin in the very first frame of the ident. Now, after doing this and playing through what I thought was the finished ident, Megan suggested to me that it looked a bit strange, as the fading in and out was not in time with the music. Obviously I was a little disheartened at the fact that I would have to re-do all of the key framing and change all of the opacities, but I felt that it would be totally worth the effort in the end. So, after spending another lesson re-adjusting the opacity and ensuring that the fading in and out was in sync for both the MCMV and the 1905, the ident was almost complete:
But it seemed to last too long so I cut the ending down:
Unfortunatley, I forgot to cut down the length of the music to match the ident fading out. Something still seemed wrong, and I decided that if I were to have both the audio and image fade out at the same time, it may look a lot more professional. Here is the final ident:
It is clear that Chloe has produced a very professional and effective ident from the ideas that we came up with. This is definitely something that my group and I were hoping for.
However, the whole revolutionary theme of the ident doesn’t really suit the thriller genre of our opening two minutes, I feel that it offers a sense of empowerment and think that it could actually pass as a genuine production companies ident.
Megan Jackson's AS Media Studies Blog 