E4 idents are really a disparate & disjointed set of elements. Some animated in different styles, some live action, some just plain weird. I guess its all part of the 'quirkiness' of the channel. But it feels to cheapen the brand somehow to me. That logo doesn't help.
Like MTV where the logo appeared in a variety of different animation styles. I liked that period of MTV idents in the 90s.
Something else I noticed about Everybody Loves Raymond is that Channel 4 are still using the SD 4:3 copies of the later episodes. By that point they were being produced in 16:9 HD, and actually produced two separate versions of each episode with the HD captions being outside the 4:3 safe area. So on the episodes going out on C4 you're missing part of the picture (the original picture, not re-framed for 16:9 like Friends)
I’ve not really seen Raymond so I can’t comment, but certainly the last couple of series of Frasier were filmed in HD also, Channel 4 have never shown them outside of 4:3 (quite literally) but Comedy Central did when it used to be shown on there.
Yeah the only reason I noticed is because I remember when Comedy Central HD launched, and noticing that their SD and HD channels showed different versions of Raymond like I mentioned in my earlier post. I don't think they did that for other shows.
I've actually just done a quick comparison between the two (watching it on 4seven and an HD rip on Dailymotion) and I wasn't quite right: it appears that for the 4:3 version they've just panned the picture to the left so the credits don't get cut off. This explains why the picture at the start of the show looks so off-centre… they've compromised the framing just to keep the credits in shot. So odd.
:-(
A former member
Is it just Animals selfies and swimming/ocean ident that have 20sec and 30sec cuts?
Now that there's been about a week to see the junctions for Film4, it does look like only a small subset of 8 of the idents have made it over with the refresh. Unless anyone has spotted any others sneak out, the only ones I've seen in use are.
3 x Staircase
3 x Gas Station
2 x Forest
I don't know whether it was decided the corridor/lodge ones just didn't work well without the squarer logo. And the remaining ones from the other themes just had action too close to the logo to be updateable.
Its got to be one of the worst things i've seen in a while! It looks so ugly and unprofessional. First of all, it just appears, it doesn't slide in or anything, it also takes up the bottom half of the screen, pushing the programme credits to the top half, which defeats C4's style of having all end credits on the left so the right is clear for promotion without having to squash credits, but E4 now just ignores that completely.
There also seems to be a dark line at the top of the purple box which makes it look even worse. Sorry i'm unable to screengrab, i'm sure others have seen it though.
I agree the way the ECP appears is very jarring. It would look much better if it was to animate by sliding the credits from the bottom of the screen upwards.
A video of the ECP is available at the bottom of this page https://presentationarchive.com/uk/e4/e4-2018-miscellaneous/
Edit: YouTube video of the ECP also available on Pg12.
Going back to this, it would seem there is another film4 ident out there, https://vimeo.com/186967236 I dont remember this one being used that often in the old set...
While we're still waiting on dancing robot, Pirate, dog holding stick and monster in bling.
Now that there's been about a week to see the junctions for Film4, it does look like only a small subset of 8 of the idents have made it over with the refresh. Unless anyone has spotted any others sneak out, the only ones I've seen in use are.
3 x Staircase
3 x Gas Station
2 x Forest
I don't know whether it was decided the corridor/lodge ones just didn't work well without the squarer logo. And the remaining ones from the other themes just had action too close to the logo to be updateable.
:-(
A former member
That Film4 clip is mainly used when advertising the Film4 venture as a whole. I don't believe it's ever been used as a channel ident.