The document discusses company idents, which are logos or images that represent a brand and are shown before films. It examines how idents are used in teaser trailers for horror and thriller films. Specifically, it looks at the idents for Lionsgate in the teaser for "Blair Witch" and Warner Bros. Pictures in the teaser for "The Conjuring." Both idents are animated and placed within the first 6 seconds. The document suggests designing an ident for a student film project that draws inspiration from the Warner Bros. ident due to its dark tones fitting the horror genre. It recommends placing the ident at the beginning of their teaser trailer to follow horror marketing conventions.

1. IDENT RESEARCH
By Stephanie Wise

2. What is a company ident?
• An ident is a moving image or logo that represents a
brand. This is normally shown before the film starts.
• The use of a company ident is important for cinemas,
especially an ident that the audience find easy to
remember. This is because when films are advertised, the
audience will remember what company created it.
• The main company idents in film include, ‘Warner
Brothers Pictures’, ‘Columbia’, ‘Universal’, 20th Century
Fox’, Walt Disney Pictures’ and ‘Paramount’. These 6
company idents are known as the ‘Big Six’.

3. Examples of idents

4. Use of idents in teaser trailers
• The genre of our film is horror/thriller, so I did some research into how idents are
used in horror/thriller teaser trailers. The first teaser trailer I looked at was ‘Blair
Witch (The Woods)’ because this is the film idea that we took the most inspiration
from. This teaser trailer does use a company ident. It is the first thing seen and
the only one used throughout the whole teaser trailer. The company ident is
‘Lionsgate’, as shown below. Lionsgate is both a company and distribution
company. This ident is animated rather than a still logo and lasts for 3 seconds.
The placement of the company ident has many effects and benefits. For example,
as it is the first thing the audience see they can have an initial thought of whether
they’ll be interested in the film or not. This is because they can base their opinions
of the film before they even see any of it, if they have watched other films from the
same distribution/production company.
• (source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMEgSLetjHw )

5. Use of idents in teaser trailers
• The second teaser trailer I looked at was ‘The Conjuring’ because this film is
also a horror. . The company ident is ‘Warner Bros Pictures’, which produces
and distributes films. The placement of this ident is different to that of the
‘Blair Witch (The Woods)’. This is because it isn’t the first thing the audience
see, this ident is place 6 seconds into the teaser trailer and only lasted for 1
second. Just like in ‘Blair Witch (The Woods)’ teaser trailer, the company
ident is an animation.
• From the screen grab from the teaser trailer, we can see that the background
and the ident itself are dark in both lighting and colour. This can help the
audience figure out what genre the film is because horror films are normally
associated with dark colours due to the ‘dark’ and spooky nature of the genre.
• (source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gb-jRz7HWqs )

6. Using this research with our company
ident
• For our ident, the ‘Warner Bros Pictures’ ident design
seems most relevant for our own teaser trailer. This is due
to the visual aspect of the ident and the its background.
The dark tones of both will help emphasis the genre to the
audience, whilst making our teaser trailer look much more
realistic of that of a horror/thriller teaser trailer.
• There are a few aspects of these idents that could inspire
our own ident. For example, we would place our ident at
the beginning of the teaser trailer to establish which
company distributed/produced the film. Also, by placing
the company ident within the first few seconds of the
teaser trailer, we will be following the conventions of
horror/thriller teaser trailers. By doing so our teaser trailer
should look more professional and realistic.