New C4 Idents Are Loved!

Most of them were pure luck. They just so happened to be filming a documentary in Nevada when some alien spacecraft started buzzing them, forming the Channel 4 logo. The same happened whilst filming a bowling match - the hedges just started hovering up as if by magic. Oh yeah, and there are some buildings in New York which levitate every afternoon at 3.30pm.

Of course they are all based on locations and are all basically locations with effects added.
They may have created the neon lights one, as that simply pans round items that could be connected, but as for the rest, they duplicated and morphed items that were part of the location filmed. For example taking a pylon or part of it and morphing it into on of the pieces of the 4 logo.

I think in those days before multiple idents came along, you just never expected to see anything other than the one standard ident. These idents contained little action, they were nothing more than a logo or symbol, so they did not become boring very quickly. Plus you knew they were going to stay the same for several years so there was simply no expectation for anything different to come along (Although having said that I did think that by the mid-1980s the mirror globe did look terribly old-fashioned and boring and was long overdue for replacement!)

Whereas for the current BBC2 idents they have become 'tired' very quickly because most of them rely on a joke which becomes boring on repeated viewings. For example, the domino 2 falling over the wrong way and the other 2 waving its arms at it actually made me laugh on first viewing; on second viewing it was mildly amusing; by the time you get to the 1,000,000,000th viewing it's plain annoying! Not to mention the all-pervading yellowness which gets a bit much... The same argument could be applied to the BBC3 idents, but at least they are continually introducing new variants to keep them fresh. The reliance on a 'joke' or a 'surprise' is possibly the main failing of modern day idents.

But it's not really based on a joke, it's a short piece of film used to introduce a programme with a distinctive set of action that instantly identifies the channel to the viewer and builds up brand awareness and (possibly) loyalty.

I sometimes think all this talk of 'tired' idents or 'tired' news titles or 'tired' news sets is more a reflection of the low boredom threshold of some posters here - 'we want change for change's sake'.

These things cost money to produce and if they're going to be good value for money and achieve the desired effect they need to run for some time (and, when you think about it, the basis of the 2 'joke' as you put it is well over 10 years old, as it's basically a variation or refresh of the original ideas - and has proved a phenomenal success in identifying BBC2). Even the Rhythm and Movement idents for BBC1 have successfully stuck the idea of BBC1 in people's head, even if many people here hate some or all of them.

I'm not talking about the 2 itself being a joke. The 2 idents of 1991-2001 were not based around jokes and right to the end they still seemed fresh and not at all boring even though some of them were ten years old.

I mean that the action in several of the post-2001 idents is based around jokes, eg the domino falling the wrong way, the 2 doing a double take when it notices the box is the wrong way round, the 2 getting dripped on, the 2 painting a 2 on the screen and then turning it into a face etc etc etc. These are amusing at first but become tedious on repeated viewings. I think the least tired of all the current 2s is Invisible Walls, and that is probably the least jokey of the lot.

Agreed. The yellow is the thing that really needs to change. Although there were set colours in the first set in 1991, ther wern't all coloured the same. plus the fact that soem of the originals still look modern & frsh in 2001 proved something.

If the two's were varied in colours (some yellow, some blue, some green , some red) they would probably last longer.

Also some more sensible ones like Bounce & Invisible walls are needed, these two still look best even now.

Surprise us make domino fall the correct way & create a 2 made of domino's. Now that one would be good

They were, all of the idents were cyan - cyan paint, cyan light etc.

But then you had cyan with red, cyan with yellow, cyan with orange etc. And in some of the later idents the green/blue content became very tenuous, particularly in Duck, Swan and Kebab. The current 2 idents are all exactly the same shade of yellow (except for Fire, of course, which provides a refreshing change from the others!)

and now you've got the white christmas ones, and the fire one which goes black and orange.

Thanks for your reply, fanoftv.

That certainly makes more sense than the locations conveniently exisiting in their natural unmodified state. The one I was specifically thinking of when writing was indeed the pylons. I guess hats off to the creators for seamless use of special effects. Really quite ingenious.

Is it just me or are there two versions of certain idents - fast and slow? I'm sure I've seen faster versions of both Pylon and New York

Probably, to suit the mood of whatever follows.

A bit like upshots and downshots in radio jingle parlance.