Channel Genre: Paranormal
Potential Channel Names: Unknowable TV - Spirit TV - Mystery TV - Abnormal Channel - Fantasy TV - Phantom TV - Paranormal TV - Cryptic TV - Unknown TV
Target Audience:
When it comes to creating a television channel, it's really important to start with deciding your target audience. When you've decided who you want to watch your channel, you can then begin designing the logos, names, idents and programs to fit the specifications. With me creating a channel specifically for paranormal programs and films, it was pretty clear as to what age range I would be aiming this at. Through personal experience, I began watching TV shows like Most Haunted from the age of 9. This may seem pretty young, but staying up late on a Friday night with my Mum on Halloween, watching a bunch of people talk to ghosts was awesome.
I will be aiming my TV Channel at Adults 16-34. This target audience group has some factors that I have taken in to consideration, such as:
- 16-34 Adults watch 2 hours and 44 minutes of linear TV a day, 2 hours and 2 mins of this is commercial TV
- Young adults unsurprisingly time-shift more than many other audience groups, yet 91.6% is still viewed as the same day as the live broadcast
- Spend more of their time watching TV whilst using other devices than the average adult
It's quite hard to justify why I chose this specific target audience, as I guess it's not just adults within this age range that watch it. My ident, logo and trailer will be a very dark and mysterious theme, which will contain *beeped* out swear words if necessary. This then gives the audience a slight insight as to what the TV channels will contain, and may not be inappropriate for the younger generation. Not only due to the fact there are possible swearwords, but it may also be quite scary, as I plan to put horror films on the channel after the witching hour.
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What my ident will say:
Font and Use of Text -
The font I will be using for my final logo is Albertshal Typewriter, which I downloaded off dafont.com. This creates a old-school and haunted font which will obviously fit in to my television channel. Although it's quirky, it's still easy to read and identifiable. I will only be using 'PHANTOM TV' in my logo and throughout my ident, as I feel this is quite catchy and easily rememberable.
Throughout the ident, there will be a set font that I will use, no matter how many idents I proceed to make. I want there to be a strict theme throughout, as like I said before, I want the channel to be indentifiable. For example, when people see the fonts, I want them to think of my channel or a certain programme straight away.
Graphic Imagery:
As such, there will be no graphic imagery used in my idents. Adobe After Effects will allow me to experiment with certain design aspects for my third ident idea. My first and second won't be needing any graphic imagery. I plan on making my idents quite simple, as I'm a perfectionist. So if I make them simple, yet effective, then I can perfect them and make them look as professional as possible.
Size of Text vs Size of Image:
The text on the ident that I plan on producing will be situated in the centre of the screen. It will be easy to read, bold and the centre of attention as this is the main part I want people to remember. The text will be white, with an outer glow of a green noise and this will contrast well with the background.
Colour Scheme:
The colour scheme of my ident will be a night visioned video with very dark and gloomy colours. The logo on top will be white so it contrasts and stands out.
Movement:
The background of the ident will be the 'walking through the woods scared', so this will happen quite quickly, as if it's a victim running from something. The logo will be slightly jolty to give it extra movement on top of the background, as I feel if it didn't move, it will look quite dull compared to the background.
Soundtrack:
Sound effects will be downloaded from various different sound effect sites. There are a number of sound effects I would like to try but it all depends on how the filming goes, and what sort of shots I film, and I will then work out what sounds and timings I use from there.
I uploaded this image to my social networking sites to ask people to give me a number, choosing their favourite, and I would then use this for my final logo. Almost like a survey, people responded pretty quickly. There was a clear winner when it came to the viewers choice, and that was number 1. I feel like this is the right decision and my favourite, because the logo is focusing mainly on 'Phantom', and not TV. Number 2 and 3 were too crowded and didn't have much depth, where as Number 1 worked well and would look good in any ident, and on other pages of promotion such as social media, websites and posters.
I altered it ever so slightly by making the outer-glow larger and adding more 'noise', which creates the static effect and ties in with the 'ghostly' theme the channel has. The 'TV' is less prominent and this would mean if the logo was to ever change for promotional pages, or I completely dropped 'TV' and just stuck with 'Phantom', it wouldn't affect it too much.
Another part of my research was to contact someone in the 'Paranormal television' world and maybe get some tips and information from them. I took to Twitter and tweeted Yvette Fielding, producer and presenter of the ever-loved Most Haunted, which has been going for 8 years now. She kindly gave me her email address and agreed to answer some of my questions:
1. What is the main target audience, in your eyes, for Most Haunted?
The target audience was females 16yrs-40yrs but over time and many programmes the audience has changed to both sexes from children up to 60yrs.
2. What is the best way to promote Most Haunted? Is it social networking, a website or on TV?
All social media, press, television and radio.
3. Does the feedback you get from fans of the show almost persuade you to do more? (Especially after your long break away from filming!)
The show is driven by fans, especially the live shows. The reason the programme was brought back was because of high demand from the fans via email and social media.
4. Throughout the years, you have down your own reality shows - Living With / In Bed with Yvette and Karl. Do you think this show has helped your audience figures increase when it comes to Most Haunted?
Filming 'In Bed' was fantastic fun and was very successful with fans. Yes it helped more people to watch Most Haunted who had never seen it before.
These answers have really helped shape my television channel and what it will contain for the viewers. Yvette's answers prove that social media has a huge impact on her show, and in this day and age social media is always going to take a big role in the promotion of televisions shows and channels. I chose to incorporate social media into a possible television schedule which would give the programmes and idents a way to interact with fans online.
Above is just a rough sketch I put together of a possible television schedule that would run on weekdays for Phantom TV. It's pretty basic as viewers that choose to watch this channel won't want much more than the bog standard original ghost hunting programmes which they've learnt to love over the past 10 years or so.
Viewers clips / Behind the scenes:
What I thought about doing here was giving viewers a chance to send in their own personal clips of sightings that they have maybe seen or witnessed with a group of friends. Ouija boards, ghost hunting nights and horror house experiences are such a popular thing to do in this day and age, people are always wanting to showcase them online and get them out in the open for people to see. I thought that people could send in their clips via email/post and Phantom TV could play them throughout the duration of the day, when most of my target audience will be at work.
Behind the scenes clips would work slightly differently. These will be the bloopers and making of horror films that will be shown on the channel later that evening, to give people a taster on what the films will be about. This could attract audiences that are out of my target audience by word of mouth, as there may be a film advertised that someone is watching, and they could let their friends know about it. It's just a case of trial and error.
My final ident was quite a simple idea, and I would put most of the features in the editing such as music, sound effects and video effects. The general idea I had was I would take a number of different shots of trees, both close up and far away, and incorporate them with different layers in the editing process.
The filming process took half an hour. I took myself up to a graveyard near my house and filmed a number of different shots, such as; a bench, running looking at feet, grave stones, trees, bushes, the grass. I figured it would be easier to do this, then I would have more to experiment with when it came to editing. I filmed with a Canon 600D and used a light on top of the camera, as it was pitch black when I filmed. In total, I took 30 shots and used 10 in the edit. There are a number of things I'm happy with in the final ident, and there are a few things I would change if I had the editing skills I desire!
Colour Scheme:
The colour scheme of my ident will be a night visioned video with very dark and gloomy colours. The logo on top will be white so it contrasts and stands out.
Movement:
The background of the ident will be the 'walking through the woods scared', so this will happen quite quickly, as if it's a victim running from something. The logo will be slightly jolty to give it extra movement on top of the background, as I feel if it didn't move, it will look quite dull compared to the background.
Soundtrack:
Sound effects will be downloaded from various different sound effect sites. There are a number of sound effects I would like to try but it all depends on how the filming goes, and what sort of shots I film, and I will then work out what sounds and timings I use from there.
.......................................................................
I uploaded this image to my social networking sites to ask people to give me a number, choosing their favourite, and I would then use this for my final logo. Almost like a survey, people responded pretty quickly. There was a clear winner when it came to the viewers choice, and that was number 1. I feel like this is the right decision and my favourite, because the logo is focusing mainly on 'Phantom', and not TV. Number 2 and 3 were too crowded and didn't have much depth, where as Number 1 worked well and would look good in any ident, and on other pages of promotion such as social media, websites and posters.
I altered it ever so slightly by making the outer-glow larger and adding more 'noise', which creates the static effect and ties in with the 'ghostly' theme the channel has. The 'TV' is less prominent and this would mean if the logo was to ever change for promotional pages, or I completely dropped 'TV' and just stuck with 'Phantom', it wouldn't affect it too much.
.......................................................................
Another part of my research was to contact someone in the 'Paranormal television' world and maybe get some tips and information from them. I took to Twitter and tweeted Yvette Fielding, producer and presenter of the ever-loved Most Haunted, which has been going for 8 years now. She kindly gave me her email address and agreed to answer some of my questions:
1. What is the main target audience, in your eyes, for Most Haunted?
The target audience was females 16yrs-40yrs but over time and many programmes the audience has changed to both sexes from children up to 60yrs.
2. What is the best way to promote Most Haunted? Is it social networking, a website or on TV?
All social media, press, television and radio.
3. Does the feedback you get from fans of the show almost persuade you to do more? (Especially after your long break away from filming!)
The show is driven by fans, especially the live shows. The reason the programme was brought back was because of high demand from the fans via email and social media.
4. Throughout the years, you have down your own reality shows - Living With / In Bed with Yvette and Karl. Do you think this show has helped your audience figures increase when it comes to Most Haunted?
Filming 'In Bed' was fantastic fun and was very successful with fans. Yes it helped more people to watch Most Haunted who had never seen it before.
These answers have really helped shape my television channel and what it will contain for the viewers. Yvette's answers prove that social media has a huge impact on her show, and in this day and age social media is always going to take a big role in the promotion of televisions shows and channels. I chose to incorporate social media into a possible television schedule which would give the programmes and idents a way to interact with fans online.
Viewers clips / Behind the scenes:
What I thought about doing here was giving viewers a chance to send in their own personal clips of sightings that they have maybe seen or witnessed with a group of friends. Ouija boards, ghost hunting nights and horror house experiences are such a popular thing to do in this day and age, people are always wanting to showcase them online and get them out in the open for people to see. I thought that people could send in their clips via email/post and Phantom TV could play them throughout the duration of the day, when most of my target audience will be at work.
Behind the scenes clips would work slightly differently. These will be the bloopers and making of horror films that will be shown on the channel later that evening, to give people a taster on what the films will be about. This could attract audiences that are out of my target audience by word of mouth, as there may be a film advertised that someone is watching, and they could let their friends know about it. It's just a case of trial and error.
.......................................................................
The filming process took half an hour. I took myself up to a graveyard near my house and filmed a number of different shots, such as; a bench, running looking at feet, grave stones, trees, bushes, the grass. I figured it would be easier to do this, then I would have more to experiment with when it came to editing. I filmed with a Canon 600D and used a light on top of the camera, as it was pitch black when I filmed. In total, I took 30 shots and used 10 in the edit. There are a number of things I'm happy with in the final ident, and there are a few things I would change if I had the editing skills I desire!
Overall, I'm pretty happy with my final ident as it's clear what the TV channel is portraying and the audience will be clear on the content of the channel in terms of genre. The most challenging part was adding the logo to the quick pan of the tree at the end of it. I had to use two programmes to make this work - Adobe Premier Pro and Adobe After Effects. On After Effects, I followed a tutorial which would mean the logo would stay in the same place as a particular point I chose, and in my case, it was the centre of the tree in the final quick pan.
Adobe After Effects allowed me to create a process called 'tracking' which would allow the logo to stay in the same place and almost embed itself into the video and move in synchronicity with it. I followed a tutorial online which made it fairly easy and with the help of a good friend, it turned out pretty good. I feel like this tracking method is something I would definitely use in future productions as it's such a simple technique, yet looks really effective when the whole production is finished and put together.
On Premier Pro, the editing method again, was pretty simple. Putting two different clips on top of each other and lowering the opacity of the clip on top created a ghostly effect that would obviously incorporate with the TV channel's theme which is paranormal.
My Premier Pro set up was pretty straight forward. Import the clips, import the music, and put them on the timeline and make them work with each other. It took a while to get the timings right, and work out which clips looked good on top of others, but after 6 hours at the computer screen I finally mastered it, I think. I just chose two clips that I thought would work well together, and put one on the above layer, lowering to opacity and making it a higher frame rate. This insinuates that it may be the point of view of a person 'running through a woods' like in a generic horror movie.
I added the night vision as this is also a key factor in paranormal television. It emphasises what the channel will consist of and give viewers an idea of what is upcoming on the channel. Television shows like Most Haunted and films like Paranormal Activity will be the overview of what will appear, and with both of these being predominantly in night vision, it portrays it well. To create the night vision styled filter, I added a green layer over the top of all of the clips and again, lowered to opacity.
Incorporating the final ident to advertise television shows was quite tricky as there was a specific theme I wanted to keep to and the font seemed to be hard to read no matter what position I put it in. The layouts proved to be quite tricky as there are a number of obstacles that I had to overcome, but the main one was the tree. As tree was the main feature of the ident, I had to work around this and try and make the text readable to all viewers. I still wanted to make the ident a 'scary' and 'paranormal' theme to incorporate the upcoming shows and again, give the audience a taster of what's to come.
The safe-zone is practically non existent in the above idents and I completely forgot about it when I was designing them. The safe-zone is a really important feature that all television channels must bare in mind as it could make or break their idents and advertisements. It's where there is an invisible boarder around the edge of the frame to ensure that no matter what viewing platform the ident or advertisement is being viewed on, none of the important stuff is cropped out (i.e. text, important images). So for example, if the above idents were going to be aired on television, there is a high chance that numbers 2 & 3 wouldn't work, as the text is so close to the left and right hand side of the frame.
This is the type of design I would use as an ident to advertise what show was coming up next. The ident would be around 10 seconds long, with moving text and a short clip of the upcoming show (shown above). The voiceover will be a crystal clear voice, as this will be easier for my target audience to understand (especially as it's possible that the older generation will be watching) and this way, it gets the right message across.
Voiceover:
"And now get ready for some scary scenes with Yvette and her paranormal team as they indulge into their next spooky location. Some scenes may contain strong language and flashing images."
These idents are well situated in terms of the safe zone as they're all very central based and will in no way overlap, no matter what the viewing platform. I also decided to mix up the logo, as the original one was very long and was an awkward shape to add any more text onto it. People should easily identify it as all I've done is make it a little more quirky and slightly changed the layout, so it's three letters per line. I focused on keeping the font the same throughout all the advertisement campaigns as I feel it's quite distinctive, and I want people to see the font and instantly know it's Phantom TV.
I added the night vision as this is also a key factor in paranormal television. It emphasises what the channel will consist of and give viewers an idea of what is upcoming on the channel. Television shows like Most Haunted and films like Paranormal Activity will be the overview of what will appear, and with both of these being predominantly in night vision, it portrays it well. To create the night vision styled filter, I added a green layer over the top of all of the clips and again, lowered to opacity.
.......................................................................
The safe-zone is practically non existent in the above idents and I completely forgot about it when I was designing them. The safe-zone is a really important feature that all television channels must bare in mind as it could make or break their idents and advertisements. It's where there is an invisible boarder around the edge of the frame to ensure that no matter what viewing platform the ident or advertisement is being viewed on, none of the important stuff is cropped out (i.e. text, important images). So for example, if the above idents were going to be aired on television, there is a high chance that numbers 2 & 3 wouldn't work, as the text is so close to the left and right hand side of the frame.
This is the type of design I would use as an ident to advertise what show was coming up next. The ident would be around 10 seconds long, with moving text and a short clip of the upcoming show (shown above). The voiceover will be a crystal clear voice, as this will be easier for my target audience to understand (especially as it's possible that the older generation will be watching) and this way, it gets the right message across.
Voiceover:
"And now get ready for some scary scenes with Yvette and her paranormal team as they indulge into their next spooky location. Some scenes may contain strong language and flashing images."
These idents are well situated in terms of the safe zone as they're all very central based and will in no way overlap, no matter what the viewing platform. I also decided to mix up the logo, as the original one was very long and was an awkward shape to add any more text onto it. People should easily identify it as all I've done is make it a little more quirky and slightly changed the layout, so it's three letters per line. I focused on keeping the font the same throughout all the advertisement campaigns as I feel it's quite distinctive, and I want people to see the font and instantly know it's Phantom TV.
.......................................................................
Overall I'm quite pleased with how this project turned out. I feel like I have improved my editing skills on both Premier Pro and After Effects. The tracking method is something I would definitely use in the future and it's a really simple feature, yet works really well.
My favourite part of this whole project was filming shots for the ident and picturing how they would all fit together in editing. It took around half an hour to film the shots in a local graveyard and editing them took a little longer, as I wanted to make it the best I could. 9 seconds isn't a long time so I wanted to make it as good as I possibly could, so it looks professional and to the best of my ability.
- O
