STINGS

Stings are fairly similar to idents. The main difference is that an ident is generally longer in duration. Idents have a voice over played over the top as well, telling you the next programme that is scheduled. Stings do not do this. They are usually small 10 second clips that try to incorporate the channel in the sting. Some of them include a small to no relevance to the channel, such as E4. They usually have the kookiest and oddest 10 second snippets that play just before the ident.

An ident is probably slightly more effective than a sting. It gives the viewer a better idea of what they are watching, welcoming and attracting them in equal measure.

The example I have chosen to use is the ITV Sport sting. This was used during the 2010 World Cup. It is useful because it doesn’t need to be for long or have someone tell you what you are watching. That is avoided by the simple use of the World Cup trophy as the prominent image on screen. It is made visually attractive by the addition of the golden rings and stylish text.

It starts off with a sort of liquid which forms together and creates a globe. This, to me, gives the impression that the designer has done this as a way of symbolising the world coming together for such a massive, global event. By watching this motion graphic I feel like its target audience would be quite artistic.

It starts out distorted. As they 'build' the trophy, it gets more and more sharp.

You notice that the dominant colour is gold, which symbolises the World Cup and the World Cup trophy. Also, gold symbolises winning, which fits in with the tournament as the winners will be world champions. The other colour is black, which symbolises ITV's sport coverage. This is a good example of contrasting colours. The black background makes the trophy and the white text legible and clear to see - making it stand out.

There is quite a bit of movement during the sting. It first moves from just the bottom of the trophy before creating the ball that sits on top of it. It then pans out to a wide shot that reveals that trophy fully and then some rings start circling the trophy.

Around the trophy, there is some sort of smoke which is blurred. It is also around the rings too. I think the designer has done this because he/she feels like that part of the sting is not as important as the main image - the trophy. I could possibly recreate this using Adobe After Effects using the Motion Blur tool.

The rotation on show during this sting is when the rings are circling the trophy. The rings look like halo's. This shows that the designer has attempted to portray the tournament as 'Godly' and legendary

This sting was played through a website named Vimeo. The video format is a codec: H.264 - also known as MPEG-4AVC.

Pros of this codec

- H.264 delivers incredible video quality at data rates one-fourth to one-half the size of previous video formats - H.264 offers dramatically lower bit rates and better picture quality than MPEG-2, MPEG-4 or H.263+- It is 2X times more efficient than MPEG-4. and file size is 3X times smaller than comparable MPEG-2 Codec's- It is easy to integrate and covers a wide range of picture format. Hence used in large application segment.

Cons of this codec- H.264 requires longer encoding time- It is certainly not constricted and low-bandwidth friendly- More Hardware overhead is also one of the limiting factors- Licensing agreements are complicated.

The frame rate is 24, 25 or 30 FPS (frames per second) and the resolution is 640x480 for standard definition and 1280x720 for high definition.