Our Rule Britannia Ident Ideas

Me and my partner have looked at a lot of ideas for this ident. Since it had to be a well-researched and well-thought idea, we've been through enough research and brainstorming to come up with our final idea.

The first idea my partner came up with at first was an establishing shot of a street party with a bunch of British citizens eating dinner together. It was going to focus the group in the party individually and the idea was that these are the types of people you find in Britain.

It's a decent idea to start off with, but I don't think it would have portrayed Britain as realistically as Vice would have wanted.

The second idea was also thought of by my partner, and it was sort of working with the theme of the the first idea, that UK is a place of varying individuals. The idea would have been a digital painting of Buckingham Palace (presumably traced over a photo) with a bunch of Brits and subcultures climbing out of the windows, again symbolising the varying individuals in UK society. I kind of brushed this idea off to be honest, since I didn't really engage with it, plus it kind of painted a pretty picture of Britain when Vice wanted a realistic one.

While my partner was having a blast in Animex, I was still at home thinking about some ideas. I thought about how to incorporate realistic themes into the ident, as well as how bleak I can actually be. I watched the current Rule Britannia ident, and it was... pretty damn bleak. It was literally just an image of the British flag only wrecked. I guess they are fans bleakness and anti-British government imagery. Not only that but the guidelines did say the ident had to portray Britain realistically, so I wondered how I could possibly portray my views on the state of the country realistically. After all, I think I've experienced enough to describe it in my own imagery. I got to thinking about society and how it functions, then I thought about how to incorporate my thoughts into more bleak and surreal images, since my partner wanted to get a bit more gritty during our partnership, and one of the reasons Fiona decided to work with me was that I can be quite dark with my work. Granted, my style is usually more comedic but I can try and go for seriousness this time around.

I was heavily influenced by Silent Hill when I thought of my idea. I developed the idea from Fiona's idea of the dinner party, and I wondered how I could take that idea and make it bleaker. I then thought, "what if they were being watched by eye balls protruding outside the walls?", since I happen to love that type of imagery involving human-like eye balls. I then thought, "what if they weren't even brits but rather minorities, hence the government watching them constantly?". I then remembered that the constant watch minorities get is not just from the government but even most British citizens do it, so I added a much closer brit that is so mistrusting that he watches them with the intent to kill, and he represents the average brit and his ideals. Then I thought "what if they weren't having dinner but instead watching a British Flag on the TV that symbolises British ideals being forced into their minds through TV like propaganda?". At the time I thought this could be well-established with one still image, with some slight motion graphics thrown in.

We wrote a list of ideas on this page. 

I also did an animatic for it. The music used is just to get an idea on what the music would be like.

Fiona liked this idea but was able to improve it. Firstly, she didn't want the people in the video to all be minorities, since the connotations behind that might not be clear to people. She said they should be a group of subcultures/lower class citizens rather than just minorities. I agreed it was a little more appropriate, given the context of the conservative government and upper class brits looking down on lower class brits. They are also no longer watching British propaganda but instead Vice Britannia.

This was developed into a final idea, in which it's basically the same only the setting changed from a generic living room to a tunnel, based on the Las Vegas tunnels that homeless people live in. It would also contain more of a narrative, in which the characters are watching TV but then the man with the Union Jack knife enters, and they all attack him by throwing the TV at him. This has the same connotations as before, but the added ending is symbolic of revolution, the poor fighting back at the upper class for oppressing others.

I think this idea is way more refined, and while it may take more time than I initially hoped to spend on this, I'll still go for it, because I think it conveys the message a bit more, and it gives me and Fiona a chance to be creepy with our animation.