Snow

The "snow" ident came about during heavy snowfall in York in January 2003. Jonathan Bufton and Chris Thornton both had the idea of using the snow to do some form of ident for YSTV and so teamed up one Friday morning to film it before the stuff all melted. Initially the idea was to use the patch of ground where the entrance to the Roger Kirk Centre resides today (and was a snow-covered building side at that point), but as Chris lived at the very back of Halifax next to untouched fields there was the opportunity to do something much bigger.

Being filmed from Chris's bedroom window a very cold Jonathan, clutching an A4 print-out of the YSTV logo, attempted to "draw" with his feet, and it was planned that this would simply be sped up later. However it proved virtually impossible to stay within the confines of the camera shot and to get it right in one go, so they cheated. The "close up" sections of the ident at the start of the sequence were filmed in a different area of the field, one letter at a time, on a much smaller scale (indeed on the penultimate shot you can see the "real" logo in the distance). Only the final pull-out shot was filmed from Chris's window. Not long after someone drew a giant URY logo underneath!

When it was edited and sped-up the "Benny Hill" music seemed apt to set the ident to. It went on to win Best Ident at NaSTA 2003, judged by ident guru Lambie-Nairn.

It is thought of as the first of the "natural" themed idents, which would run for many years afterwards.