How Motion Pictures Work

Back in February (as a duty of editor of the NAS Times newsletter) I took part in a group that visited various places in Glasgow.
On our first trip that month we went to the Mitchell Library. At the time of our visit, it was holding an exhibition about cinemas in the city. Glasgow had a lot of cinemas. In fact, in the 1930s Glasgow had more cinemas per head of population than any other city in the world.

It was after seeing this exhibition (which showed a few old projectors and various other pieces of cinema paraphernalia) that I thought about making another informative strip (like the one I did back in November).

I didn't chase this idea until just a few weeks ago when I was in the mist of making this animation.

The subject of this strip is motions pictures. As someone who loves animation, I'm fascinated how it is possible for drawings, models or photographs to become "alive" on screen. Its a very interesting thing to investigate. It involves biology as well as technology. Reading about how movies were invented is a very interesting story, involving many characters, especially Eadweard Muybridge, and mysteries, like the disappearance of Louis Le Prince. I might one day do something about this, but for now here's how motion pictures work....

Featuring The Masked Pidgeotto.

Took a bit longer than expected to make.

UPDATE: June 2017

Last night I wrote this paragraph. I think its does a better job than this strip...

“The Illusion of Life”

Human vision has the sense rate of about one tenth of a second. This means that if an object travelling across a human’s field of vision takes less than one tenth of a second to do so the eye won’t see it. If an invisible person moved an object in small intervals in that field of vision, if those movements happened in a rate more than ten times a second, it’ll appear to the eye that the moving object is “alive.” The same thing happens with still images. If you flash still images into someone’s field of vision at least 12 times a second (with some mechanism to block the image briefly as it changes to the next one) they will appear to move. But the more images you flash a second the smoother the movement appears to the eye, as the blank spaces between images become less noticeable. According to Thomas Edison, the ideal minimum rate for “flicker-free” movies is 46 images per second - "Anything less will strain the eye." 

It demonstrates what I am trying to do with my computer book.

A surprise appearance of Kai Hiwatari

Just recently (when browsing this month's copy of MyM that I bought from Forbidden Planet) I was taken aback when I instantly saw this page....

from page 6 MyM Issue 39 (June 2015)

Regular readers of this blog will know that I have a sort of.... fraternization with this particular character. So much so that he occasionally makes an appearance in this blog. It's the result of research I did for a proposed piece of fan-fiction which I talked about (a bit) back in March.

Reading the article, I'm intrigued that Paramount Pictures is planning to make a live-action movie for the franchise (and the fact that these spinning tops has made $2.5billion!).

I can pretty guess that the resulting film will involve a lot of colour-filtered CGi, as (despite the existence of real-life remote controlled tops) its nearly impossible to control the direction of a top. It's like taming a cat.

My final thought about the idea - I think it would be as successful as the live-action Dragonball movie.

Good luck Paramount, because your gonna need it!

Act of Cultural Vandalism - The Art of the Ident - The Legacy of Channel 4

Some time a few months ago I discovered this documentary made by a You-tuber called Applemask (real name Matthew Harris). His YouTube Channel is one of those channels that is mostly made of old TV ads, trailers and idents. But, unlike most of them, its creator has some attitude. If I was doing my own act of cultural vandalism on the history of Channel 4 idents, this is what it would look like. He's ready done the work.

4Sight: The Changing Face of Four (2012)

After finding this, I decided to do this mini act covering a brief history of the TV ident. They are more comprehensive histories out there on the net, if you want more details. Its the sort of geeky thing the net was made for. I can't imagine a book been made about this subject. Idents are mini moving pictures. And (as anyone who has tried to explain "bullet-time" to someone who has never seen The Matrix can tell you) moving pictures are much harder to describe in words than still images.

Please note that I'm assuming that most of the world's TV channel branding followed a similar development to the UK's (which I know a lot about), so sorry in advance for the accidental bias.

Until the 1980s most TV channels branded themselves with just their logo and a voice-over saying something like"This is CBS." Much of them usually used visual memes that reflected the national identity of the channel's audience. But a number of them did a more flare, by animating the graphics on screen. Rotation seems to be a common meme in these idents.

WABD ident (1948)

NBC ident (1949)

BBC "Bat Wings" ident (1953)

Scottish TV ident (1957)

Anglia TV ident (1959-88)

ABC ident (1960s)

ABC ident (1960)

CBS ident (1967-9)

The introduction of colour didn't change much...

NBC "In Living Color" ident (1962-75)

ATV colour ident (1969-81)

BBC 2 ident (1972)

BBC 1 ident (1969-72)

It is worth noting that many of the more animated ones were made using mechanical mechanisms.

Thames TV logo been operated by character from Camberwick Green

More artistic flare could be seen in the things shown during sign-on and sign-off of the station (this was before 24-hour broadcasting, remember). It's in these you'll find the most patriotic of TV graphics, such as the country's flag.

Channel 3 Closedown (1983)

TVB Closedown (1987)

The most artistic I have ever encountered (by chance) was this sign-on/off from Japan....

Hato no kyujitsu (Dove's Day Off) 

Nippon Television's sign on/off ident (1953-2001)

Apart from these, most TV channel branding was... well, boring. Even with the introduction of computer graphics in the 1970s didn't change much....

Ident history of Globo (1977-99)

OECA ident (1975)

BBC 2 ident (1979)

That was until November 1982, when this appeared on UK TV screens...

Hamlet Cigar Ad parody of Channel 4 ident (1984)

Sorry, wrong clip. This appeared on UK TV screens....

Channel 4 ident (1982)

This ident was a massive game-changer in television graphics design. It wasn't because it was a first in the history of computer graphics (as shown before, computer-generated idents have been used for years on TV way before 1982).

What is significant about Channel 4's ident was it was just one facet of something bigger - the branding of an entire TV channel. Until then, their was nearly no design consistency throughout a channel's own graphic design. The sign-on/off and the captions used to tell what was on were only matching in what fonts and colours were used. And it gets worse when you consider the seasonal decorations they do during holidays, such as Christmas. 

These graphics from BBC 1 in the mid-1970s are typical of what I'm talking about.

 

BBC 1 graphics from 1975-7

You see, no true design consistency, especially the Christmas one. 

Martin Lambie-Narin's work for Channel 4 changed all that. Although (to begin with) everyone else didn't exactly "get it." Everyone else thought it was the use of CGi that was key to this success. This resulted in a rush for many broadcasters to create their own computer-generated idents....

BBC 1 "COW" ident (1985)

LWT logo (1983-6)

TSW ident (1982-5)

Scottish TV ident (1986)

Eventually (through Lambie-Narin's later work and the increase of TV channels brought on by developments in satellite and cable services) other channels finally got what he had done to Channel 4 and followed suit. Lambie-Narin himself helped sort out the BBC's own identity in the 1990s, beginning with the idents for 1 and (especially) 2, eventually doing over the whole organization. 

The creation of the 90s "2s"from

How Do They Do That? (BBC 1,1995)

For those who haven't exactly worked out why Lambie-Narin's a genius, note what Alan Yentob said about the previous BBC 2 ident, the boring "TWO." 

"I realised there was a problem almost as soon as I took over the channel [BBC 2]. It was obvious that the logo made absolutely no impact. In fact, it was something anyone could have told you. It was singularly unmemorable, and told you nothing about the personality of the channel." - Alan Yentob

The reason Lambie-Narin's Channel 4 ident worked because it stood out. Let me describe this impact with an analogy. Imagine you are in a supermarket browsing the shelves. The products on the shelves are TV channels and your eye movements from one product to an other is you pressing buttons on the remote. 

Until Lambie-Narin's blocky 4, TV channel idents were like the design of packaging used on supermarket own-brand stuff. They don't "shout out" to tell you who or what they are. Imagine an aisle full of own-brand stuff. It would be a very dull site. That blocky 4 was the first introduction of eye-catching branding in that aisle. Ironically, to have the same impact today, you have to do the reverse....

"Brand Identity" xkcd (21th December 2011)

This web comic strip also illustrates another thing that affected Channel 4's impact at the time - the increase of channels. The boring branding of the past worked fine when their was few TV channels (The UK only had three until Channel 4 came along (duh)). But with more channels coming on air that supermarket shelf in channels that boring branding couldn't work any more. Channels needed to stand out from the crowd. And that was Lambie-Narin's big idea. To grab viewers attention, TV channels needed to brand themselves like washing powder. 

Today, every channel on TV around the world has (in some form) an instinctive visual brand. You'll see it every time you change channel between shows. And that is Channel 4's legacy.

One final note; in the end of his documentary, Harris made a prediction that the next redesign of the Channel 4 logo will involve coloured blocks. Have you seen the recent ads about Channel 4's on-demand service?

Introducing All 4 ad (2015)

I know this isn't technically an "ident," but it is regularly-used graphic on the channel, so it counts as an ident to me.

And another note; the animation at the start of this post is the first piece of animation I have made in three years. I had plans for many cooking up in my mind during that time, but it is only now I finally developed the willpower to do it. So, watch out! More may be coming soon (but don't hold your breath. This isn't a regular service.)

UPDATE: On September 29th 2015 Channel 4 finally changed its idents... into something very bold and kind of unique... and unexpecting (except if your Applemask).

Channel 4's new idents (2015)