Client: CHANNEL 4
Director: MANVSMACHINE
Production 4CREATIVE MANVSMACHINE ANALOG
Design: MANVSMACHINE http://www.manvsmachine.co.uk

ManvsMachine in London: "Following a successful creative pitch, ManvsMachine were challenged to create a film channel rather than a TV channel, covering all on-air aspects from the idents to the OSP and beyond. "A custom motion technique – a contemporary take on a classic film strip/projector effect – was developed to span graphic and live-action elements to give the package a visual signature beyond the logo.

"Needing to cater to ultimate film buffs and occasional action movie fans alike, every aspect of the rebrand had to work on multiple levels. The specifically unspecific demographic, i.e. 'everyone', meant that we had to be clever about making it accessible to all without diluting it. It meant us focusing broadly on the love of film, film-craft and its wonderful diversity. "In creating a film channel not a TV channel we were also tasked with designing a unique typographic system to really hero the film titles. This led us to create a system that intelligently resizes the titles to give an equal prominence to all films based on a set of rules, regardless of the length of the titles.

"The idents see the technique applied to cinematic live-action compositions, presenting the Film4 logo in various locations. Each location/scene carefully crafted to elicit a variety of different moods.

"Idents begin ambiguously before seamlessly branching off into one of three possible endings, making minimal adjustments to shift the mood dramatically. Each of the idents is constructed from a vast array of film references and homages from the iconic to the obscure. "Developing the custom motion technique proved an interesting challenge. The technique involves a camera moving down through the ceiling plane and then through the floor plane. We shot this part and then stitched together a sequence of these to create the technique.

"Due to the camera having to pass through the ceiling and floor planes of the shots and our desire to keep as much as we could in camera, we couldn't shoot in existing locations like a motel or hotel corridor. We had to build sets that were raised up off the ground, dig huge holes in car parks and forests and at times create our own canopies/ceiling planes.

"Figuring out all of the seemingly simple fundamentals, such as finding the optimum level of foreground parallax to get the frames moving across the screen at the most pleasing of speeds took a lot of thought and testing. This, in addition to the staggering mixed array of subtle (and not so subtle) practical VFX and CG augmentations kept us all very busy.

"The technique itself became a celebration of film craft, allowing us to mix live action with stop motion (the logo), and a healthy dose of post-production, applied by the talented team at Analog. Not forgetting the beautifully cinematic score by Resonate." For Channel 4: Creative director: Dan Chase Producer: Liz Arnott Concept, design & direction: ManvsMachine DoP: Alex Barber Art direction/set design: Simon Davies (UK), Max Orgell (US) Post-production VFX: Analog Colorist: Aubrey Woodiwss (Electric Theatre Collective) Offline editors: Alex Lea (Envy), Nick Armstrong (Envy) Music composition: Resonate

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