Yeah I agree, it would be nice if they used it. Whether they have a copy of it or not is another thing. I suppose even if they did have it then work would have to be done on it (e.g change it to widescreen/HD and put 50 years of BBC on it). I watched a video of this ident on youtube and if you look at the BBC logo, it doesn't appear until towards the end (in a similar manner of the post 1997 idents).
:-(
A former member
Im starting to think people are drinking to much dizzy water when it comes to what we could expect..
I take it they showed Paint Pot the once, thought 'little 2s hitting a paint can, I don't get it, what's the gag' and have decided never to show it again?
It is a little incongruous without Paint but the soundtrack and abstractness make it a nice, sombre ident to have on hand for serious stuff... rather than Swan, again. Network only seem to be showing Swan, Car, Dog, Duck and Predator at the moment.
I suppose any ident that didn't survive the 1997 rebrand is probably out of the question. For standard idents, that rules out Paper Cut Out, Glass, Shadow, B&W Copper Cut Out, Water Reflection, Crystal Ball and Balloon, as I can't see them going to the trouble of altering any of those for widescreen, especially if they're only going to be in use for a short while. Though you can't rule out anything from BBC Northern Ireland.
Network's crying out for a more neutral or melancholic ident or serious programming, which virtually all of the original 1991 line up qualifies. They should bring back at least one of these. Powder and Optics would also be good shouts.
:-(
A former member
Optic really should have been back by the network.
For standard idents, that rules out Paper Cut Out, Glass, Shadow, B&W Copper Cut Out, Water Reflection, Crystal Ball and Balloon, as I can't see them going to the trouble of altering any of those for widescreen, especially if they're only going to be in use for a short while.
It's a shame. Glass may have looked quite nice in broadcast quality.
I think I read somewhere that the less visually interesting idents like Glass, Shadow and Papper Cut Out were dropped because they didn't fit in with the rest of the idents, even though 'Glass' was always intended to be used before serious programming like Newsnight.
Crystal Ball was supposedly dropped because the '2' is hardly ever on screen, and Balloon because of the impending launch of the BBC One balloons in 1997.
As for B&W Copper Cut Out and Water Reflection, we can only presume that with the introduction of new idents in 1997 they no longer needed variations of the existing ones.
and Balloon because of the impending launch of the BBC One balloons in 1997.
Is that true? It was one of the less interesting idents anyway, nothing much happens although the audio (as with most, if not all, of the set) had a sublime ambient, surreal quality. Which was lovely.
The '2' also floats quite close to the top of the screen, which may have made cropping difficult. Maybe a number of factors and the BBC1 Balloons story is a nice little angle, if just a coincidence?
Or perhaps they did think it would look like BBC2 were taking the p*ss?
I think I read somewhere that the less visually interesting idents like Glass, Shadow and Papper Cut Out were dropped because they didn't fit in with the rest of the idents, even though 'Glass' was always intended to be used before serious programming like Newsnight.
Crystal Ball was supposedly dropped because the '2' is hardly ever on screen, and Balloon because of the impending launch of the BBC One balloons in 1997.
As for B&W Copper Cut Out and Water Reflection, we can only presume that with the introduction of new idents in 1997 they no longer needed variations of the existing ones.
There was also another factor of why Crystal Ball was dropped because it looked like the BBC One Virtual Globe at the time. I never saw the point in the variants particularly Water Reflection as I couldn't see the difference between the 2 of them. There were more idents dropped in 1999 (Copper Cut Out, Silk, Steam, Diary and Firecracker). Was there any reason why those particular ones were dropped?
