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Final Ident

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Stage 3 - After Effects

To start off with the compositing for my Ident, I first imported my rendered TIFF sequence, that I set to alpha in order to further the build up of layers and to create mattes over the top of my text:

I then added my footage sequence beneath and changed the colour to black and white. I wasn’t sure whether to have it in colour or not, as my first idea was to have it in colour, but setting it to black and white seemed much better as it made the logo stand out much more. I then went on to create a small black solid that crossed over the ‘X’ and the ‘I’ of the Netflix logo, and duplicated my text layer to use as a matte for this solid. The reason I did this is because my text is positioned slightly below the building next to it, and so I wanted to cast a shadow on it to add to the realism of the scene:

I noticed that in the original footage, a cloud slowly passes over the space where my logo is placed. So to combat this and add further depth and realism to my scene I created a very soft black shape layer that I also matted to another duplicate of my text. It looked like this:

This then gave the effect that the cloud in the sky of the original footage was also passing it’s shadow over the top of the text layer.

Then I needed to add a slight bit of Rotoscoping, because there is about 1 second where the text is behind the main building, which I simply did my duplicating my footage layer and animating the mask path over time to match up with the footage. I then placed my text and shadow layers below this mask layer to achieve the roto effect:

Finally, I added an overall grade to the shot, using Lumetri colour. I also added a slight amount of noise, curves and a small vignette just to bring the entire piece together:

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Stage 2 - Cinema 4D

The next part of the process was to take the exported sequence from Boujou into Cinema to place the logo within my scene. Firstly I opened up the Cinema 4D file that Boujou had made and it had automatically created a camera set up that matched the exact movement of my footage. It looked like this:

I then downloaded an EPS file of the original Netflix logo and merged it into my scene so that it imported as a spline. I then used Extrude to make the spline 3D, and added a standard red texture with a slight fresnel reflection. I also created another texture and imported my footage into it, creating a background layer that I applied the texture to, and then animated preview which meant I could see how the text was placed within the scene itself:

I then changed the built in render from standard to physical and added Global Illumination. Then I added a Physical Sky and a Daylight from GSGs light kit pro. I adjusted the temperature and rotation of the sun on the daylight, as well as the time of day to get it to fit nicely with the rest of the lighting in the scene:

Now that I had my textures, lighting and track completely set up it was time to set up the render settings and take my scene into After Effects for the final composite. During the creation stage I also had the idea to include a series of spheres that surrounded the logo, and these spheres would then roto around the buildings and slowly float around, but I tried this effect and wasn’t too happy with the results and found that I liked the simplicity of having the logo on it’s own:

After I’d decided to just have the logo, I then exported as a TIFF sequence using Alpha channel without my background so that I could then use mattes and other adjustments within After Effects to help blend the footage into the text.

Here was my entire Cinema 4D project window:

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Stage 1 - Boujou

The first part of the process required me to track my footage in Boujou so that I could then export the camera data into Cinema and add my logo. Firstly, I rendered out the section of my footage that I required as the original clip was roughly 30 seconds long and I only wanted between 6 and 10 seconds. For this to work correctly within Boujou you have to import an image sequence rather than a movie file, so I exported my section of footage as a 25FPS TIFF sequence.

After I imported my footage into boujou I had to first click the Track Points button, which establishes which parts of the footage can be applied to the track and then eventually the camera data.

This is what the shot looked like whilst I was tracking the features:

After this had run through the duration of my clip, I then clicked the Solve Camera button which took my tracking points and transferred them into useable camera data that I could export into Cinema 4D.

The final stage within Boujou was to use the Scene Geometry button to tell the camera where exactly I wanted my text to be placed. So I set the origin which was the centre point, and the x, y and z axis. This is so that when I take this data into cinema, the camera will assist my track by automatically knowing the geometry and layout of my scene.

Luckily Boujou has a built in Cinema 4D export feature, which meant after I had completed the solve and the scene geometry, Boujou created a Cinema 4D project file with the camera data built into it so then all that followed was to add in my Netflix logo and complete the texturing and lighting in Cinema to match the scene as much as possible.

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My Idea

My idea is to create an Ident that uses the arial block of flats shot. Because this is footage that I haven’t shot myself it would be better to focus mostly on correctly setting up and applying lighting, texturing and compositing techniques. As we aren’t being marked on our own footage I presumed that using found footage was also acceptable as long as there is a fair amount of documentation into the creation process.

I will probably be using the standard worded Netflix logo, and my aims are for the logo to fit nicely within the scene, tracked perfectly with no jolts along with a heavily blended composite to make the scene as realistic as possible.

I was fairly inspired by the Ffresh Ident that i created, as I thought it would be slightly more interesting doing the same aerial type shot but using 3D. The best aerial shot that I found that was similar to the Ffresh one, but higher quality, was this one:

Luckily this footage is 4K which means hopefully the track will be cleaner as hopefully Boujou will pick up more tracking points. Also I really like the arrangement of the buildings in the shot, and think fitting the Netflix logo directly in the centre of the buildings will look best.

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Ffresh Lower Third & Category Divider

Here is a very simple lower third that I created using the Ffresh branding. All I did was create the background shapes using the pen tool and then duplicated the layers, and adjusted the fills. I then also added a large logo in the background which I matted to my BG layer. Then I simply put some text into the lower third box along with another smaller logo on the right hand side.

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Ffresh Ident

So I set about to create an Ident for Ffresh as we are required to for this project, and my first thoughts were to create a simple track within After Effects using the 2D logo over the top of one of the bits of footage that I have already collected for my research for this project. Here is my process of creation for this Ident:

First I took the base footage, and created a composition matching the frame rate and dimensions:

I then added the built in After Effects plugin ‘3D Camera Tracker’. This gives detailed analysis of a 3D environment without having to use any external third party programs. Here is what my track points looked like within my scene:

I then chose an appropriate set of tracking points and added my logo into the scene, rotating it around to fit along the straight alignments of the surrounding buildings:

I then added a grade using Lumetri Colour and also added a Vignette. I added the effect mosaic to the text layer as well just to ensure it matched the pixelation levels of the backplate footage. To further my composite, I create a shadow matte layer than highlighted each part of shadow from the footage beneath that passed underneath my text layer. I then set this black shadow layer to matte over the top of a duplicate of my text layer. This created an overall more realistic lighting effect for the scene:

Here is the final video outcome. Unfortunately the footage isn’t the best in terms of quality and jolts quite a lot as it moves from one place to another, which makes the overall track look fairly rough:

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Client Stings

As it is incredibly relevant and also coincidental, I thought i’d include on my blog a series of 4 different 2D and 3D stings that I created for a client called Ditto. This was part of some on going freelance work, and these Stings were actually a pretty influential help with my ideas process, and deciding exactly what to do for this project.

It was also a good challenge to try and create 4 completely different animations all just using the same fairly simple logo. They asked for as many examples as possible and I thought that these 4 would be the best variety to give them an idea of what exactly could be achieved with their logo within budget.

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Stock Video

Another one of my ideas is to use some very cinematic city scape shots that I find on Pexels Video. Pexels is a website that has tonnes of free-to-use stock photos, videos, graphics etc. They have a wonderful database of footage that would be perfect for tracking my Netflix logo into a shot, using Boujou for the tracking and Cinema for the lighting and texturing, then finally taking the piece into After Effects for the compositing. This is a likely option for my ident, I just have to choose a piece of footage that I’d like to try and use. So far my options are as follows:

I think both these shots would make for interesting Ident’s, as there is lots of potential for interesting tracks along with an interesting lighting set up. I like the idea of it being a city scape more, because it fits in with the idea of Netflix being used mainly in cities.

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Logo Off Air Re-Design

For this I designed 4 different logos which I will post below. I wanted to stick with the classic and iconic colour of red that Netflix use with their current Logo, but just re-design the vector illustration and paths of each letter.

I think the top right Logo is my favourite as its simple and would convey the brand identity with just one simple letter. As Netflix is fairly recognisable throughout the world now, just that letter would probably shout Netflix at anyone who was looking at it.

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More Tests

I’m trying my best to get as used to Cinema 4D as I can, so thought it would be useful to keep playing around with textures, lighting, camera settings, depth of field etc, just to gather and develop on existing knowledge. Here are some screenshots from my tests on these things, and hopefully I can keep updating this list of screenshots as I conduct more tests, and these will then inspire the idea for my piece.

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Brand

I think for my chosen brand I’m going to go with Netflix, because they don’t really have a proper existing Ident currently. Before you play something on the streaming service, the logo does animate, but in a very simple fashion. So I thought it would be interesting to come up with an Ident that would play for about 5 - 10 seconds just before a show was streamed.

I think there could be lots of potential to create a clever Ident for Netflix, and because there isn’t much competition with any previous ident’s it wouldn’t be too difficult a challenge to come up against. For example if I was creating an ident for Channel 4, I think it would be very hard because of the masses of incredible Ident’s they have produced in the past.

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Further Research / Inspiration

As part of the pre-production for this project, and to allow myself to think of an idea, I feel it’s important to find as many examples of existing Ident’s as possible, along with screenshots of different 3D styles so that I can try and think of an idea.

Also I think it would be crucial for me to conduct more tests and complete more tutorials with Cinema 4D, so that my knowledge of the program increases for when it comes to the production stage. Also, just playing around within Cinema would probably help me come up with some ideas.

Here are some of the screenshots I have found that have helped me get inspired for this project:

I really like this shot because of the depth and the texturing. It gave me the idea that I could have an Ident that includes multiple shots but focusing on one single target or point. I could have some kind of an abstract mesh (like the pink bubbles), and I could create interesting textures to fit around it, and then animate different camera moves around this, to then finally reveal a logo in some fashion.

I also began digging around on Google looking for Netflix logos and other Netflix based imagery to help me establish a base idea. I found this photograph that looks like it’s from a conference of some kind, and I thought it had potential to be adapted into a fairly interesting ident.

I could have loads of small - large screens all broadcasting the same video and use clips from Netflix shows, and then possibly grow them outwards and inwards to finally display the logo screen. Just a thought.

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Research

Off the top of my head, I tried to think of some classic Television ident’s that have inspired me in the past. A few of my favourites include Film 4′s set of ‘scrolling room’ ident’s. I saw these a couple of years back when they were released and at the time they got me very inspired into figuring out how they were achieved. Here is the entire collection along with some screenshot of each one:

https://www.dandad.org/awards/professional/2015/branding/24367/film4-idents/

The lighting for these pieces are completely on point, and I feel that’s what makes most Ident’s these days go from amateur to professional. If I am going to be going down more of a 3D route, I definitely need to ensure that my lighting is set up to the best possible standard.

Most of the ‘4′ group create the best Ident’s in my opinion, and another set that I find absolutely incredible are these:

These Ident’s came out in 2004, which baffles me considering how perfect these are, right from the concept through to the execution. It’s very clever in itself how they manage to come up with this idea, but then absolutely perfecting the 3D work in every way, makes them one of my favourite Television Ident’s.

Since then they have gone on to more of an abstract style, which I’m not as much of a fan of, but I think the concept is still interesting:

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Initial Ideas

So before I start on the research side of things with this project, I wanted to take some time to create some different 2D & 3D scenes to try and get my creative juices flowing, and to get some inspiration and ideas for this project.

Obviously conducting the research needed for this project will probably help me with my idea the most, but I wanted to do these tests to figure out as soon as possible whether I wanted to go down a 2D After Effects route, or more of a 3D Cinema 4D route.

As I have some experience using Cinema 4D before, but not masses, I think I might prefer to go down this route, as it would give me a great opportunity to learn some new techniques and add some variety to my portfolio of mostly After Effects work.

Here is the 2D one that I made in about 10 minutes but instantly gave up on when I realised I would much rather do 3D for this project.

And here is the 3D scene that I created using Netflix as a possible channel / Ident brand. I much prefer the idea of using interesting lighting and 3D animation techniques to create an ident, especially because the majority of idents you see on TV nowadays include some sort of 3D work.

I created this scene using a studio preset from GSG’s HDRI Kit, I extruded the text and adjusted the colour and depth to my liking. I then added a sphere and added a cloner tool along with a random effector. With this I then added a collider body simulation tag to create the animation of falling balls. I upped the bounce so it was a bit like bouncy balls were falling around the logo itself.

I then animated a slight Z position track in, to add some extra movement to the scene as a whole, and took the finished 2 second shot into After Effects to grade it and add some pixel motion blur. 

After completing this I was inspired to find more similar tutorials linking to spheres and the possibility of animating them using the cloner tool. I found this tutorial by GSG which came out this month, that i then went ahead and completed to further my inspiration & ideas process. It also went through some very useful tips to do with lighting and materials that I will be able to implement in this project.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDyD1gzoq9A

Here is a screenshot of the outcome of this tutorial:

I then took this idea slightly further and used to Netflix branding again to try and develop on my ideas more. Here is the final video outcome of this project test.

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Brief

Our brief for this project is to redesign and reproduce a Television Ident utalising software we have learnt this year. We have also been tasked with creating a series of lower thirds & bumper stings for the company Ffresh.