Unit 64: Motion Graphics and compositing video

Motion graphics is the combined use of live footage, pictures and/or animation to create the illusion of a real life moving image. It can be found everywhere within every part of them media industry, television, film, video games, and online video all make use of motion graphics and with sufficient knowledge the possibilities of these techniques are limitless, which can make for some incredibly entertaining and eye catching effects.

Idents a Stings are an advertising technique used to create a memorable brand. A sting is usually just a brand name or logo that appears on screen for a few moments to remind a viewer who's work they're watching, while ident is a usually more elaborate.  The more interesting they are the more likely that a consumer will remember their brand. Because of this motion graphics is often used to make a creative and eye catching ident/sting. A very good example of an ident (that clearly worked on me because its the first thing I thought of) is the one Channel 4 uses.

And an example of a sting.

Compositing is combining visual elements from separate sources to create a single image. Green screen is a form of compositing in which the green background of a scene will be removed and replaced with an artificial one. An everyday example of this would be the weather forecast on any news show, where they will replace the green screen with a image of a moving weather map.

DVD menus often incorporate motion graphics animations. They are usually fairly simple like the menu text fading in. Selecting an option may also trigger an animation to transition from one menu to another. The animations are there more or less just to make the menu a little more flashy and fun for the person viewing them rather than having a very dull, static menu.

Resolution refers to the number of pixels (points of individual colour) on the screen at one time. The more pixels there are on screen the sharper and more crisp an image will be. Resolutions settings range from 144p, one of the lowest qualities of footage to the ultra high definition 4K, the highest possible resolution. A 4K TV image is 3,840 x 2,160 pixels, thats more than 8 million pixels in total. 

This video can be viewed in 4K, if your internet connection can handle it, try choosing from any of the resolution options to see the difference in image quality.

Aspect Ratio refers to the width/height ratio of an image on screen. A variety of different aspect ratios have been widely used over the last century as cinema and television evolved and adapted. The most commonly used aspect ratios today are the following:

Aspect Ratio		Uses	TVs
4:3	1.33:1	Standard Channels	Old TVs
16:9	1.77:1	HD Channels	The majority of HDTVs
21:9	2.35:1	Most movies	Very few TVs

Using an aspect ratio that is not suited to the ratio of the screen it will be viewed on causes black bars to be used to fill in the empty space. This is not always too pleasing to the eye. Here are some examples of different aspect ratio/screen combinations.

Because of this it is very important to consider what kind of screen your media will be viewed on to ensure that it is not at all jarring to the audience.