Concept and creative process
FETV stands for Further Education Television - it was a strand that was broadcast late at night with the idea that students would record programmes of interest and watch them at their own convenience. FETV was viewed as a pre-Open University production service, spanning post-14 school pupils, higher diploma students on the Modern Apprenticeship and youth trainees on the new National Traineeships. Many and varied subjects were covered and the BBC programme archive was used to fill the schedule. Christine Buttner’s idea for the branding of the channel was to make an audiovisual logotype or ident in a number of variations in order to give the producer the possibility of using a different one as punctuation between each of the different programme items that made up the strand. The sequence was created using a polyboard model held together with pins, all very low budget and analogue! The variations were filmed live action in a studio with the night time colours of deep blues and contrasting oranges and yellows projected onto it from lights through coloured gels. Each shot evolved into the FETV logo, or FE or TV at the end of the camera move, thereby creating a continuity of branding whichever version was being used.