With so much competition for eyeballs, the new diginets have to come up with strong branding strategies to stand out from the pack, and with commercials initially expected to be scarce, the nets will have to provide much of their own interstitial material. As a result, local broadcast design shops are firing on all cylinders to make sure all the promotional spots, station IDs, show openings and bumpers are done by next month.

‘We’re waiting for September to come around so we can sleep,’ says Christian Castel, president of Toronto broadcast design and animation house Tango Media Group. Tango is doing the design for two of the Category 1 specialty services: ONE: the Body, Mind & Spirit channel, for lead partner and service manager Vision TV Digital; and The Documentary Channel for Corus Entertainment, CBC and the National Film Board. Although somewhat surprised by being awarded both gigs, Castel says Tango was prepared.

‘We organized the space and got people lined up,’ he says. ‘Basically we had two separate teams ready and we bought some more equipment, and when we got both [jobs] we were ready to go.’

Tango has added four contract staffers to its core of three employees. The shop, which had previously concentrated on CG work, has also had to expand its services into the live-action realm for the packaging of The Documentary Channel, whose mandate is to celebrate non-fiction filmmaking. The network’s logo, the letter ‘D,’ was constructed as an actual aluminum model by Laird Effects and filmed in Tango’s new tabletop/stop-motion studio. The shop also plans to take the logo to various outdoor locations and film it with time-lapse photography.

The Documentary Channel’s transitions and IDs will use cinematic icons such as film leader, in that case incorporating the station logo as opposed to a standard numeric countdown. One of Tango’s biggest challenges was to give both the CBC and NFB logos equal exposure.

‘For example, at the end of one ID, there is a film strip that plays on the side of the screen with movie clips running in it, and the clip is the CBC logo rotating on its Y-axis,’ Castel explains. ‘As it flips on edge, it turns into the NFB logo.’

Tango was pleased with the freedom it was allowed in the packaging for ONE, whose programs focus on healthy living and personal growth. The campaign’s theme encourages an appreciation for the beauty around us. Tango is doing 20 live-action IDs shot at various natural locations, some of which involve actors. For more inaccessible locations, Tango is using found footage.

Vision wants to disassociate ONE from the parent network’s sober image, and to that end Tango is creating 25 fun ‘buttons’ that play on words from the network’s blue, red and green logo name.

While some broadcasters are seeking the design services of independent shops, others, such as Alliance Atlantis Broadcasting, are doing most of the work in-house. The AAB broadcast design department is busy with the packaging for Showcase Diva, a romance movie channel, the self-explanatory Showcase Action, Discovery Health Channel and National Geographic Channel.

‘We’re doing some pretty elaborate opens and IDs,’ says Victoria Manica, AAB broadcast design art director. For example, Diva IDs will use 2D illustrations by artist Jason Munger featuring ‘girls in command’ in various scenarios. Manica acknowledges that since the Showcase channels present movies, the broadcast design must adhere to concepts and production values on par with the programming.

‘With Action, the premise is ‘We’re the action headquarters, and so everyone who works here is like an action figure,’ ‘ she says. ‘So you have people walking down the hall, a missile goes by and they all dive. We’re also doing some CG exterior shots of the building – a big helicopter lands on the roof and the camera drops through several floors and goes down a hallway. It’s sort of like the beginning of Fight Club.’

Some of the live-action material for the AAB promos was still being shot in early August in anticipation of the September deadlines. In the case of Discovery Health and National Geographic, Manica and her crew must coordinate with those companies to ensure they are satisfied with the way their logos are being presented, while at the same time bringing some freshness and distinguishing these networks from their U.S. counterparts.

Manica says National Geographic Channel will use promos built entirely from graphic elements for certain programs. For example, for Horizons, the graphics will evoke the different parts of the world the show explores, including the sea, underground, or space.

Although the AAB broadcast design department is looking to stick with its current staff of five for the time being, it is looking to double its workspace. The department has been handling virtually all aspects of AAB’s fall launch design work, with post studio Crush hired on to produce the Action logo.

Scott Greig, creative director of ChumCity’s FashionTelevision Channel, seems the most relaxed of the bunch, since FTC will call upon the well-entrenched logo and visual elements of the long-running FashionTelevision program for the network’s overall look. He describes this motif as ‘great-looking models in great wardrobe, with a lot of the bluish silvery color tones.’

FTC’s scope will go beyond skinny babes in skimpy clothes and incorporate art, architecture, photography and interior design, with the IDs incorporating those types of images as well. Much of the footage will be taken from FT’s vast archive, but certain spots will be assembled from expressly shot footage. A large degree of this material was originated on 35mm for a high-end look.

Much of FTC’s packaging was done in-house, with Crush again called upon for logo, days-of-the-week and opening animations.

‘We need to pump out a lot of material all at once to fill up airtime,’ Greig says. ‘But we’ve been working on it for a few months already, and I think we’re going to be in pretty good shape for launch,’ says Greig.

-www.onebodymindspirit.com

-www.corusentertainment.com

-www.allianceatlantis.com

-www.chumlimited.com