Final Title Sequence

Evaluation Part 6

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

When we were in pre-production for our title sequence we knew that we wanted to use a DSLR camera because after testing out the cameras that were available we noticed that the DSLR gave off the best image. After recording small clips we also knew that we should use a Tripod that way the shots would look better and it would flow better if the camera was as still as possible. We decided  to only use these technologies because the production company that we were going to use, After Dark, were an independent company so we wouldn't need a lot of high technologies. This also fits our genre because horror films do not use a lot of technologies for example, CGI whereas  the Syfy genre would use a lot of technologies. We knew that by using Final Cut Pro we could include the conventions of a horror/ thriller genre.

I have learned that you do not need a lot of high tech technologies to create a horror/ thriller film because it is supposed to look real and by using too many technologies it would take the 'real' effect of it away.

Evaluation Part 5

How did you attract/ address your audience?

After looking at research we knew that the target audience for our film would be for the ages 15-25 and males were most likely to watch horror films. We addressed this audience by making questionnaires that way we could get the information we needed. This was a good way of getting our information because we could manipulate the questionnaire so that we got the answers that we were hoping for which would help the project overall.

 
 

 

After receiving the feedback from our target audience we got all of the questionnaires together and looked at the similarities and differences and decided to work from the information we had, this is also how we picked the title of the film and the font that we would use for our titles.

When we planned our title sequence we knew that we wanted to use a range of different shots, for example the canted angle which would foreshadow that bad things were coming in the film and it also gives a disorientated look which would make the audience uncomfortable and so they would be more engaged in the film.
We also planned that we wanted there to be a contrast in the way the two girls were going to be portrayed and as one of the girls is a ghost we wanted to put an effect that would jitter the screen and make the audience uncomfortable when she was in a shot.

Once we got the feedback from the people in our class when we first showed our project to them they said that they liked the effect that was put on the ghost girl. A number of them also said that they liked the disorientated sound of the music and how it doesn't sound put together and that made it sound better.

My group really liked the ending for the title sequence because it shows the little girl go with the ghost which would connote her losing her innocence and the fact that she is growing up. When we got our feedback it said that the ending should be stronger so we decided to keep the girls walking off together but we added a clip which shows the two girls linking hands in a match on action sort of shot and it has the ghostly effect that way the audience knows that the innocence in the little girl has disappeared when she goes off with the older ghost girl.

 

Evaluation Part 4

Evaluation Part 4 from ImJustChloe

Evaluation Part 3

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

In our group we chose After Dark as our distribution company because they have distributed a number of films that we believe can relate to our target audience.

They have distributed some films such as:

• Reincarnation
• Lake Dead
• Dark Ride
• Slaughter
• The Abandoned

I think that they would be interested in our film due to the fact that they are known for their horror films. We chose to use an independent distribution company because we think that our budget will be small like the other films that After Dark has distributed.

Evaluation Part 2

http://prezi.com/as7tkxdtx-io/evaluation-part-2/ 

Evaluation Part 1

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

When my group first picked the horror/ thriller genre for our title sequence we had to look at the different conventions of the horror genre. We noticed a pattern in the films and most of them turned out to be based on a killer that is hunting down college kids, the setting for the horror genre is usually in a remote or urban looking area. The perfect example of this would be the well known horror film Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Due to the idea that we had, we also chose to make our film thriller. We noticed that the best thriller films had a huge plot twist at the end of the film which is one of the conventions that we chose to use for our own title sequence. The films that we looked at that had the best plot twists were Se7en and Hide and Seek.

These films can relate to our film idea because the music in Se7en's title sequence is distorted and extremely uncomfortable which makes the audience feel uncomfortable and the imagery in the shots that was in the title sequence is fantastic and inspired us hugely to do these genres.

In the Hide and Seek film a huge shock comes at the end and that the person who was killing everyone was actually Robert DeNiro due to his mental health problems and dual personality disorder. This shock plot twist is what gave us ideas for our own title sequence.


Texas Chainsaw Massacre gave us the idea we needed for the setting of our title sequence which we chose to be set in the woods which is an extremely remote area to a lost child (which we used for our title sequence).

 

Editing (2)

In this lesson we looked at shortening down the shots that way they would fit into the two minuets that we were allowed.

As the shots were long this took us quite some time because we had to decide what part of the clips that we liked best. Once this was done we looked at the whole title sequence and the time had been shortened down to roughly 1 minute and 30 seconds which we thought was a good amount of shot time as we still needed to add the titles between the shots where we wanted the titles to go.

THINGS TO DO:
Add titles and sort out the music that we want for the title sequence.

Creating Titles

After looking at the font that we were using for our production company I decided to go to DaFont to download an appropriate font for us to use for our titles. 

After looking through the Horror genre I saw a font called Black Asylum which I though suited our genre perfectly and after showing Lucy, she agreed so I downloaded the font to the Mac and started to create the Titles for our sequence.

To create the titles I used Photoshop and looked at the people that we had chosen to be in our film and got the many different names for the crew that we needed, after doing this I started creating the titles.

The titles that I made my group thought were really good and the font really suited our genre. 

We chose to use the font as black to also go with the genre, however we noticed that when we put the titles into our title sequence that the titles would not be visible as most if the shots have dark effects over the original shot. 





THINGS TO DO:
Make the titles white with a black background.

Splitting the Group into Different Jobs

On the Friday lesson we knew exactly what we needed to do for our title sequence.

After having a talk with one of our teachers she advised us to split the group into doing different jobs for our title sequence and after talking to my group we decided this:

Editing would be done by Lucy since she did media at GCSE level and knew more things about it than me, which I was happy about because the jobs I had to do suited me better.

Making the titles would be done by me which our groups was happy about and also once I had made the titles I was to start looking at the sound we would use for the title sequence.

Things To Do:

Get a font and start creating the titles for the sequence.

Editing

On the Wednesday lesson we had two hours to order our title sequence which took longer than we expected. As we took more shots than we actually needed we had to go through the shots that we wanted and after picking the ones that we wanted we started to put them in the order that we wanted them to be in.

This took a long time because we had to number the story boards and make sure everything was in the right order. By the end of the lesson we had ordered the shots and put them into our title sequence.

Things To Do:

The next thing we need to do is to cut the shots down and make them fit into the amount of time the title sequence has to be.

Putting the Clips into Final Cut Pro

Once we came back to school on the following monday we had all the shots that we needed. We did add a few shots that wasn't originally on our story board but we thought that it would look better once the sequence was all together.

After finding out how to put all the files onto the Macs we put them into Final Cut Pro but as it was only a 1 hour lesson we didn't have enough time to put them all in order. 

Things To Do:

The next thing we need to do is to order the shots and make them correlate the the story board and cut them up. 

Filming (Wednesday)

After looking through the shots that we got filmed two days prior we noticed that we needed to get a couple more of the shots filmed so we went back to the same place where we filmed on the Monday and got the remaining shots done.

The shots that we needed were of Hallie walking up the slightly angled muddy patch and a few more of her walking in front of the camera.

We filmed these shots with ease as the weather was quite similar to Mondays weather so that made our job easier. 

Filming (Monday)

Once we went on the school holidays my group planned a day where we would go out and film most of the shots that we needed. we decided to go the woods that was closest to Hallie (our main actress) because she is only young and we didn't want to keep her out for too long. Her sister (and our groups friend) came with us to help control Hallie and to give some advice about what shots we should do but mostly because she knew the woods really well since she lives close to it. 

We were originally going to film on the Tuesday of half term but due to the good weather that occurred on the monday we decided to film on the monday. 

We already had the shots that we wanted on the story board sheet so my group brought them along that way we would know what shots we had to do. 

The first shot that we did included Hallie picking up a bunch of purple flowers that we found from a random patch in the woods. This shot was not supposed to happen but because we liked the idea so much we decided to keep the shot and also make it a match on action shot.

The next shot that we did was of Hallie walking in front of the camera that was supposed to be the beginning shot on the story board. 

We had to stop filming and move out of the way of the path when dog walkers and families came past, they were nice enough to hurry out of the way and were kind to us. Once all the people were out of the shot we could then continue to get our shots filmed.

Throughout the day we got most of the shots that we needed. Hallie became tired and wanted to go home after we filmed the canted angle shot of her walking through the middle of the woods. After we did this angled shot we convinced her to do it again but with Lucy (the other ghostly character) in the background. We decided to do these two shots to make our shots vary and because the setting was perfect that day we decided to do the shot there.

Story Boarding Continued (2)

We continued storybarding, adding in the length of the shot and sound. We looked at other title sequences, focusing on what credits appeared when. We decided to keep our current credits in the same places, adding the details of the other credits as we added more frames to our storyboards (the cast and crew). We also discussed what sound we would use and what different clips we would use it in.

Group Feedback

Today we also had group feedback with one of our teachers.  We had to discuss our film and title sequence ideas so far.  We recorded our conversation:

Title Sequence Introduction

Today we looked further into title sequences. A title sequence is the method a film credits production and cast members using visuals and sound. Many title sequences aim to establish character, setting, genre, mood or atmosphere.

Common Credits are:

Production Companies
Producer
Title
Director
Other key crew 
Executive producer
Top billing actors

There are also different conventions for title sequences which are usually split into three parts:

Technical convention: Actual techniques used, e.g: cinematography, mise-en-scene, editing, sound.

Symbolic convention: Objects shown with deeper connotations/meanings.
Genre convention: Things that hint what genre the film is.

We looked at several title sequences.  These were:

The Avengers (1998)
Hulk (2003)
Se7en (1995)
Napoleon Dynamite (2004)
Juno (2007)

We discussed how the elements of mise-en-scene, sound, editing and cinematography all come together to set the mood for the film. We found they sometimes tell the story and give hints about what is going to happen. However, the audience may not always see the hints as they tend to be really slight so that it is hard to see.

We then looked at the credit timeline for Juno (2007). This showed us what credits appeared on the screen and what time.

We then went to the Mac room and analysed a title sequence of our own choice and did a credit timeline, I chose to do one for True Blood which is one of the TV Programmes that I watch.

Sound

Today we looked at different sounds that would correlate to our title sequences. We looked at copyright free music websites such as AudioNetwork. We searched "Horror" which turned out to be very successful and we got a lot of really good music that would go extremely well with the idea we have for our title sequence. For example, one music piece named 'Nightmares Before Bedtime' included piano which sounded like children's nursery rhymes yet with a creepy atmosphere which we thought would be absolutely great for our title sequence. We thought this would go perfectly with our storyboarding ideas of our young protagonist walking into the woods. We found another piece (Nightshade) that included a low, rhythmic beat which would blend well with the first piece, so we are definitely going to mix several music tracks together to rise the tension in our title sequence.

My teacher also suggested making our own music, using Logic Pro, so we played around with various sounds on that programme. This included an organ, violin and piano. However, I am not sure if we will actually use this idea in our title sequence.

Organising Filming

We created a schedule for the next week at school and over half term.  This was to plan what we did in lesson and when we filmed over half term, that way we new what we had to do on the days that we had the opportunity to do filming and other things to do with our final project.

Story Boarding Continued

After missing a double lesson we started our final story board and we started writing what type of shot we were going to use and where we would put the titles. 

After our group feedback and looking at title sequences similar to our film genre (horror/thriller), we considered what we had been told/seen and continued with our storyboards.  We focused on hinting our plot twist by showing more obvious pictures very quickly (for example, an extreme close up of a sliced neck with blood), and added these into our storyboards and then we numbered them in the order that we wanted to see in our final product.

Story Boarding

We started our story boarding and after discussing what we saw our title sequence looking like i started to draw out what we had discussed. We first did a rough draft of a story board to star us off and to leave open ideas that we may have in the future. We did our draft on one side of an A4 piece of paper. 

Questionnaires

This week we looked at receiving feedback from people that our chosen genre would appeal to as our target audience. Our homework was to do this by handing out questionnaires to our target audience and letting them fill out the questionnaire to know what they would expect from a horror / Thriller genre title sequence. We created a questionnaire with 10 questions and handed it out to people that fit in our primary and secondary target audience; males and females aged 15-25.

Typography

In todays lesson we focused on typography. We discussed what we thought typography was and after being told what it was we looked at different genres of films and how typography is used with the title sequences, we also discussed what colour and font the typography was and where it was placed on the screen.

Firstly, we looked at Catch Me If You Can (2002). This placed two different fonts next to each other.  The serif font reminded us of a typewriter, which we thought could relate to Tom Hank's character of a policeman. This was because he would have had to type up reports on a typewriter, also relating to the time period the film is set in.  
The second font was a sans serif font, which was used to create parts of the images on screen.  It is much more fluent than the serif font; changing and flowing into different objects.  This could represent Leonardo DiCaprio's character as he moves around the world with different identities and professions.  They are placed at the sides of the screen a lot, to allow the audience to focus on the images telling the story.

After looking at Catch Me If You Can, we then looked at Lord of War (2005). The font used for this title sequence gave us an idea that it was very military as it was in blocks, capitals and sans serif. This title sequence can relate to Catch Me If You Can because this sequence uses a considerably small font which will draw the attention to the video going on the the background which tells the story. An exception tot this would be the title which was massively larger text and was central. However, unlike Catch Me If You Can the text did not correlate to the action and had very little if not, no movement at all.



The last title sequence we looked at was Forrest Gump (1994). The genre of this film is drama/romance, therefore has a centered serif font, which fades in and out in a sort of dreamy manner which correlates tot eh genre of the film. The text is very plain, possibly connoting the main character. We also established that serif fonts are considered formal, posh, classic and timeless. 

In my title sequence, I will use a sans serif font as my genre is a thriller/horror film, not matching any of the films that we looked at, I will use a scratchy font that will show this and it will also better suit my genre.

Title Sequence Ideas

We were asked to make a spider diagram of ideas that we had by using the abbreviation 'STINCS' which is: 

Setting

Theme

Iconography

Narrative 

Character

Style

Our group found this very helpful as it was a good layout for our spider diagram. We split it into different topics and we came up with different ideas which are being used for our final title sequence product.

We also added another leg for Inspiration and we discussed in our group that our film inspiration to do the horror/ thriller genre was: 

Se7en 

American Horror Story 

Orphan

American Phsyco 

I feel that these films relate most to our ideas and it blends with what we want to achieve for our final product. 

Production Logo - Leanne's Task

This was the last part of our task where each group had to come up with a production company name and logo. 

In our group we brainstormed and got these four ideas for our name: 

• Midnight Pictures
• Armored Ink Productions
• Black Winged Productions
• Silver Arrow Pictures

In my group we descided to use the name ArmouredInk and this was our first try and making the logo for our productions company. 

We decided to use DaFont to get the font that we wanted and once we chose the bottom image as our logo we decided to invert the colours to make our font match our genre. 

Emily's Lesson/ homework on Roland Barthes - Enigma Codes

On Fridays lesson with Emily we were introduced to a theorist Roland Barthes who poses questions to the audience without them realising it and his theory of five enigma codes. 

Barthes says that all narratives share structural features that are brought together in different ways. Although there are differences between individual narratives, they all have a limited number of organisational structures that affect our reading of texts - this is called 'narrative/ enigma codes'.

Barthes' enigma codes is a theory that suggests a text portrays a mystery to draw an audience in, pose questions and as such, become intrigued in the piece. Whether that be through television, film, a poster etc... 

An example of this would be, a murder mystery will often not reveal the identity of the murderer until the end of the story (a film example of this would be se7en) which poses a question 'who is the murderer.' 

Narrative/ enigma codes

Barthes theory of the five codes is a way of grouping signifiers according to the role they play in the text. 

These are categorised as:

The Hermeneutic Code - the voice of truth -

This is the way the story avoids telling the truth or revealing all the facts, in order to drop clues in through out to help create mystery.

The Proairetic Code - the voice of empirics -

This is the way the tension is built up and the audience is left guessing what happens next.

The Semantic Code - the voice of the persons - 

The semantic code points to any element in a text that suggests a particular, offer additional meaning by way of connotation which that story suggests.

The Symbiotic Code - the voice of the symbol -

This is very similar to the semantic code, but acts at a wider level, organised semantic meanings into broader and deeper sets of meaning. This is typically done in the use of antithesis, where new meaning arises out of opposing and conflict ideas.

The Cultural Code - the voice of knowledge - 

This looks at the audiences wider cultural knowledge, morality and ideology.

Leanne's Planning Tasks

During the Wednesday lesson we have with Leanne we got set a task that included;

• Research Codes & Conventions of your chosen film genre - paying particular attention to title sequences.
• Write an audience profile for your film's target audience; remember to consider Primary and Secondary audiences.
• Analyse at least one sequence from your chosen genre individually and one as a group, considering its use of generic conventions. note down any features which you might like to use in your own work.
• Invent a production company name and design a logo for your production company.

For our first task my group created a PowerPoint on the Codes and Conventions of our chosen genre which was Horror/Thriller

http://www.slideshare.net/LucyHorton/codes-and-conventions-of-horrorthriller-films

During the lesson we discussed with Shaun about what the demographics and psychographics are, we used humans as an example that the demographics of a person could not be changed and these were:

• Age
• Gender
• Sexuality
• Race
• Ethnicity
• Education
• Annual income
• Disposable income

Psychographics are changeable and the example that we came up with was:

• Personality traits 

We then went off in our groups and started the task and for the audience profile of our genre this is what my group got as a result:

Saul Bass

Conventions of title sequences

In Emily's lesson we discussed the codes and conventions of film title sequences and how it breaks down into smaller chunks by using 'Stincs' 

S - Setting: where and when is the film set? 

T - Theme: what is the mood of the film? (Love, jealousy, revenge) 

I - Iconography: costumes, makeup, props etc (relevant to the genre) 

N - Narrative: what is the story about? 

C - Characters: who are they? What are they like?

S - Style: cinematography, sound, editing. What the film will look and feel like. 

Nearer to the end of the lesson we then looked at some film titles that are on ArtOfTheTitle these were:

Catch Me If You Can 

Se7en 

Presentation on Kyle Cooper

Film Pitch

Film Pitch from Welling School

Credit Timeline

Napoleon Dynamite

Napoleon Dynamite

A title sequence sets up the story for every TV series or film this means that it is a very important factor for a film to have as it sells the film to the audience. Within the film Napoleon Dynamite there are many things to think about in the title sequence and the most important of these would be mise-en-scene. Throughout the friendly title sequence of this film there is only carpet of the background places which creates a mystery for the audience as they have to evaluate where the shot is being taken. Some of the floor designs give you a hint about where Napoleon is at the time an example of this would be where he is eating at school with his school lunch. The audience see a constant close up of the characters hands and only see how the character moves around the objects that are in front of him. The objects used in this title sequence are; carpets and flooring, meals and food, food trays, U.F.O. Abduction insurance card, Preston High ID card, a plain black wallet, grass landscape, self-made ninja spike, library books, fat free sweets, chap stick, school stationary and drawing of warriors.

When the food is displayed on screen it shows different types of food and most of them are greasy which gives the audience an idea that Napoleon might have acne due to all the bad, unhealthy food he eats despite the fat free sweet. Also, when the food is displayed the audience can see that it is set out perfectly and different types of food that are on the same plate do not touch each other, this could hint that Napoleon has OCD.

When the UFO Abduction insurance card is displayed the audience can tell that Napoleon is a geek any other school stereotype, for example a jock, would never have one of these cards as it may ruin or jeopardise their popularity. The library books then back up this theory as one of the books is titled ‘Sciences and Centaurs’ this is a very geeky title for a book and therefore backs up the idea that Napoleon is a geek. Another way this can be backed up is by the ninja spike and the drawings of warriors.

The first sound of the film title is the sounds of birds chirping this suggests that it is in the morning as this is usually the noise you hear when you first wake up in the morning. The happy, friendly music then starts up before the UFO Abduction insurance is displayed is could suggest that the music picks up when it shows more of who Napoleon is as a person and what his interested in.

AS Continuity Edit

The project was to create a scenario that would include two people having a conversation, I did this and made the scenario about a gang and how a man owes money to the gang leader. In the project we had to use two kinds of shots these were; match on action and shot-reverse-shot.

For the match on action shot I decided to use the movement of walking to the door, a close up of the mans hand pushing the door handle down and finally a shot of the man walking through the door when the camera was on the other side of the door.

The shot reverse shot that I used was seen in the first part of the clip, the man makes an awkward joke before the woman says to hand over the money that he owed. The first shot is taken first from over the woman's shoulder when he makes the joke and the cuts to over his shoulder as she reply's bluntly. The scene then carries on from over the woman's shoulder.

When the man hands over an empty bag the woman gets angry and tries (and fails) to shoot the man, this then makes an object fall from on top of a cupboard as the woman's shooting skill is minimal. The man then looks at the fallen object and says 'what the?' then shoots the woman in the head. The project also required me to use people sitting down at a table which I did as they were talking about the money.