1. From my previous title sequence analysis I have highlighted several key areas for
the construction of a successful Local TV News intro. Putting this research into
practice I worked with my group to create our own title sequences. Here is the
finished title sequence and analysis of the process and finished product.
1. News Station name: As a group we chose the following name ‘Morning
Midlands’
After completing some earlier analysis of TV News we decided that this title
would best fit with our research since our timeframe was focused in the morning
for our target audience and uses the language device alliteration to make it more
memorable for my target audience, it also makes the audience feel more friendly
to the name and helps us with our logo as it’s based on this name.
We asked our peers within the class about our news station name and they liked
the idea, especially the use of the alliteration as they thought it made it upbeat
and lively, having happy connotations associated to it.
2. 2. As a group we then created a Logo based on our name to use within the
title sequence and on our final news programme to be used as a bug.
Through the use of semiotics companies use their logos to remind their
audience of their services, products and brand so that they are recognizable
for them to notice and for them to familiarise themselves with the logo, TV
news also uses this technique to remind the viewer who they are.
3. • 3. Through our research into audience theory we studied ‘The Hartley Classification’ and knew that is
was important to appeal to our audience demographic through these 7 socially grouped categories:
• 1 Self – ambitions or interests of the audience
• 2 Gender
• 3 Age Group
• 4 Class – different social classes e.g. working, upper etc.
• 5 Ethnicity
• 6 Family
• 7 Nation
One of the ways we did this was through our use of still and moving images. I chose these images because they
appeal to my target audience members using famous landmarks to remind them that my local is for and about their
area. For gender, we show a range of ages, races, genders and class groups within out still and moving images to
appeal to a wider target audience and show diversity. For Nation, all of our images are focused around the West
Midlands to make it clear that we are local news.
4. 4. Using this work we constructed our TV title sequence in a programme called Video Studio Pro
x8 which is a video editing programme.
We edited together our Logos and footage from our filming day. Trimming footage, adding
transitions, effects and text based on our groups storyboard.
The transitions we used were the crossfade as this helped the images run through smoothly and
this transition was simple rather than a highly dramatic transition as it needed to be kept
professional and suitable for my news programme. We also kept the same transition throughout
the whole of the introduction for continuity.
The effects and transitions we used on our logos and images we layered our logo on top of a
moving image for the introduction of our title sequences to remind the viewer of our brand and
of the city in which our local news is based. We also used circle moving graphics which mirrors
the shape of our logo and we used the colour yellow for these circles to reinforce the house style.
The length of our title sequence is 20 seconds, this is because we needed to capture my target
audiences attention for a certain amount of time but not too long as the news programme itself
is mostly focused on the soft news and hard news not the introduction. The introduction is used
to give my target audience an insight on the location where the news may be focused on,
showing the famous attractions across the local area.
The order of Logo, still and moving image has been constructed this way by putting it at the
beginning and at the end of the title sequence to remind the viewer of our brand identity.
5. 5. We then added Music to our title sequences. We originally chose a piece
of music that was too short therefore we had to loop it and during our
audience feedback we discovered it was too repetitive therefore during our
amendments we changed our music to a longer piece with no loop. The music
we chose is straightforward and simple yet professionally produced to fit in
with our desire to appeal to a wide audience, not specialising to a specific
genre of music which would alienate some of our audience. We wanted to
choose a piece of music that wasn’t dramatic so it could suit our title
sequence.
6. 6. Once our title sequences were completed we asked an
audience panel to review our intro and give us some feed
back on what we needed to improve or change.
7. 7. Based on this feedback we amended our title sequences such as inserting the crossfade transitions
and changed our music so that it was better suited for our title sequence and for it appeal to my target
audience.
8. I feel I have made a successful title sequence because I have researched the codes and conventions
needed for my title sequence and have altered them to make them original and unique so that the
target audience can easily recognise it is ‘Morning Midlands’ . I have also researched specific theories
that are suitable for my target audience such as Galtung News values, these values are broken down
which the story would be judged when putting a news broadcast together, this can be applied to most
TV news programmes as a judgement to evaluate the news values. I have applied the news values such
as proximity by focusing my news programme locally within the West Midlands so that the stories are
more newsworthy than distant locations. Not to mention, we planned the design of our logo and made
previous drafts before choosing the right one to attract our target audience.
9. In preparation for the main task I will use both our groups logo, the music style and the colours we
thought about the house style and chose certain colours associated to our time frame since it was
based in the morning. We had decided to use colours such as blue and yellow as this had connotations
to the sunset and we base the shape of our logo as the sun setting and place the ‘M’ in the circle of the
logo and reflected the ‘M’ again to give it an effect of it being reflected in the sea to show that the
letters stand for ‘Morning Midlands’. Before we created our logo’s we researched other logos and
compared them to see how each one was different and how the colours were relevant to their house
style and how each logo showed a representation of the location or nation so it was clear on what each
logo was based at.
