BBC Two Rebrand and Onwards

That one off special that pre-empted Agents of SHIELD in the US the other day? Shouldn't it be on Channel 4?

Fairly obvious, I guess - a black and white film gets a black and white trailer...

http://tig.gy/?m=bbc2-artist-bw.jpg

It was still needed for the "888" caption.

And even without the garish colours it still looks awful.

I have just found this whilst browsing the web. It's the full (original) Sunroof track.

This was discussed on an older thread.
http://www.tvforum.co.uk/tvhome/familiar-ident-music-samples-heard-38998/

Why can't BBC2 just reinstate the old BBC2 idents from 1991 to 2001? They were so much better and iconic than the current lot. On these Happy Birthday BBC2 programmes, they look just so fresh no matter how many times you see them!

Only once in the channel's history has the regular logo/ident been anything other than a figure of "2" of one kind or another (i.e. the "TWO" logo of the late-1980s). Which I think is a shame.

Maybe the time has come for BBC Two to try something that is neither a "2" nor a "TWO"?

After all, BBC One's principal identifier has almost always been something other than its numeric value. Even the slim stylised "1" of the early 1990s was in conjunction with (rather than entirely replacing) a version of the traditional "globe" symbol.

In the same way that the original BBC Choice idents used "three meanings for the same word" as a concept, maybe some similarly abstract way of thinking about the idea of "two (of something)" could be pitched? I'm not sure exactly what, but my point is that there's no reason why some sort of "2" or other absolutely and necessarily has to be the primary symbol of the channel.

As long as either "BBC 2" or "BBC Two" is captioned somewhere on the screen during the ident, the main focus of the idents could easily be something else, if a suitable concept can be thought of.

http://eatock.com/projects/one--one/ ?

Okay, maybe not *that* particular (non)-concept! (Which appears to be just "any two random things put together for no apparent reason").

Here's an example of a possible pitch, that involves creating a false cohesion between two elements of a scene (so that's the number 2 covered!), by making one of them artificially super-sized:

1. Balcony of a concrete high-rise tower block (much like the one in a certain current Channel 4 ident).
2. Zoom into one of the flats via front door or kitchen window (or whatever).
3. Person in living room is doing a pile of ironing.
4. At the climax of the accompanying "quirky" music, and just as the person puts the steam iron back into its vertical position in the rest at the end of the ironing board, we cut to...
5. A shot of the broader high-rise community, with the whole tower block visible in the left half of the screen, and set within its wider environment. In the right half of the screen, an enormous version of the vertically-placed steam iron that we have just seen, now of an identical size to the towerblock, in lieu of a neighbouring tower block (or whatever is at the location in real life).

Both objects will have the signature aqua type colour involved, courtesy of more computer jiggery-pokery if necessary. For example, the towerblock could have aqua horizontal stripes painted around each balcony level. Or something. And some parts of the steam iron's casing also be the signature colour.

Try to avoid there being any other "strong" colours on-screen as much as possible throughout the ident, so as to accentuate the aqua against as "neutral" a palette as possible. Introduce elements of the signature colour wherever possible throughout the ident (e.g. the decor/furniture inside the flat, the colour of the items being ironed, etc).

Another example of an ident in the set could be: Someone boarding a train at a busy station, getting to their seat and opening a bag of ring donuts that they have (with aqua-coloured icing!), and about to take a bite. Final shot is of train leaving the station and going straight into a nearby tunnel, the entrance of which is now surrounded by an enormous version of the ring donut!

And various similar such idents. You get the general idea.

The "marketing speak" blurb to justify what the flip these idents have to do with the channel would be something like: "Picking out a detail within a scenario and focussing on it, as being just as "big" (i.e. important) as the wider scene". Or something.

This blurb is the sort of thing that can be extrapolated as describing what anything from Horizon to the Natural World to Newsnight does. Just about.

You may think my concept stinks. And you're probably right. But it just illustrates one example of the *kind* of abstract thinking that can be employed.

Remove the core element that has wide public recognition (even affection) and endless possibilities and replace it with... something that would work (and is seen) on 99% of any other channel, essentially?

I wouldn't remove the numeral but I wouldn't be opposed to changing the logo for a new interpretation of the "2" - one thing these retro idents show is that the "2" has always really worked for them. A modern version of the 2 lined logo could be interesting - I imagine the two lines going through real scenes then forming the 2 within the scene.

A shame to they didn't update the 40 year documentary and add a fifth part to cover the last 10 years.

All they did was edit the caption to show The Weakest link ended in 2012.