This document provides information about a motion graphics and video compositing unit at Salford City College Eccles Centre. It describes a BBC ident titled "Magical Forest" that uses animation, visual effects, color rendering, graphics and movement to tell a story involving a butterfly, frog, trees bending, rabbit, and fairies. Techniques used include animation, visual effects, color rendering, graphics, movement, blur, sharpening, distortion, rotation and opacity. The document also includes a glossary defining terms like motion graphics, compositing video, interactive menus, ident, animated captions, web banners, video format, screen ratio, resolution, frame rate and compression.

1. Salford City College
Eccles Centre
Creative Media Production
Motion Graphics and Video Compositing Unit 64
Use of text: Idents – BBC 1 – Magical Forest
(Title, Credits, animated captions, stings,
indents, interactive menus, web banner)
Brief description: At the first there was a butterfly sitting on the rock then the frog jumped out of the pond and
What do you see? landed on the grass.
The trees are bending quickly in towards each other.
Rabbit hopped out of his hole and a fast moving fairy flies out from the leaf and more fairies
begin to fly around the rabbit as it hops out of the hole and away.
Then went down to the rabbit hole with BBC 1 symbol twirling around in a circular motion.
Techniques used: Animation-is used when the fairy appears onto the screen.
Animation, Visual Effects, Colour Rendering, Visual effects-the trees bending in towards each other at great speed.
Graphics, Movement Colour rendering-the brightly lit fairies as the sunlight shines onto them.
Graphics-
Movement-there are a lot of close ups of the rabbit, butterfly, fairies as they move speedily
through the forest almost preventing you from truly being able to see what is happening.
Advanced techniques: There are a mixture of blurred and sharp images-the rabbit is sharp whilst the fairies and some
Blur, Sharpen, Distortion, Rotation, Opacity of the scenery is blurred creating an ethereal feel.
Distortion-
Rotation-the fairies rotate around as does the BBC symbol at the end creating a circular
motion
Opacity-
Technical comments:
Video Format, Screen Ratio, Resolution,
Frame rate, Compression
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2. Salford City College
Eccles Centre
Creative Media Production
Glossary
Motion graphics - Graphics that use video footage and/or animation technology to create the illusion of motion or rotation, graphics are
usually combined with audio for use in multimedia projects.
Compositing video - When there are several different clips of video are layered over one another to create a single image.
Interactive Menus – DVD Interface or Interactive Menus on a web page
Ident – The ‘call sign’ of a channel or production company to identify themselves on screen, usually shown before a programme.
Animated Captions – Animated Graphics layered over an image / video
Web Banners – A form of web advertising that is embedded into a web page. They are used to attract a viewer to their website. A Web
Banner usually a mix of motion graphics and video
Video Format - 3 Main Formats HD, PAL, NTSC. HD is the highest resolution (720 or 1080 vertical lines in the image). PAL is the UK
Standard definition image (576 vertical lines). NTSC is the US Standard definition image (480 vertical lines). Now in the
digital age we now look at video format in terms of pixels (i.e. High definition 1080; 1920 x 1080 or 2,073,600 pixels)
Screen ratio – Standard TV ratio is 4:3; this means that for every 4 units wide it is 3 units high. It is likely that the screen ratio will be
Widescreen (16:9) in a cinematic sequence.
Resolution – The amount of detail in an image or signal, such as Standard TV Definition and High Definition. See Video Format.
Frame Rate - The number of video or film frames displayed each second (frames per second; fps). PAL frame (standard UK TV) is 25
fps, NTSC (standard US TV) is 30 fps, film is 24 fps. This means as NTSC updates more regularly there is less strobing
(jerkiness).
Compression – The use of Codecs (WMV, DivX) to reduce the file size of a video by a variety of methods. This sometimes means a loss in
image quality (a “lossy”). Codecs are found in Video Cameras, DVD players / recorders, Editing Packages, Video upload
sites)
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