Here is our final thriller opening, Enjoy!
Monday 31 March 2014
Sunday 30 March 2014
Creating the film titles - Ettie Greenwood
Today after our lesson, Me (Ettie) and Natalie decided to update our titles in the thriller film. We decided to do this because we felt that the titles we had already were to plain, and after the lesson on titling and further analysis we felt that we now had the ideas and skills to create a more interesting title sequence.
Firstly we found a video displaying all the different title edits possible on our editing software (Final Cut Pro). Here the video:
We watched through them all and decided that we liked the edit called 'Feature' the best (starts at 01:14 on the video). In this effect the letters are ellipted and fade in gradually and at different times to give a more interesting look to the title sequence. We felt that this effect fitted well with our thriller, as one of the main features in our plot line is the girl revealing information about her parents death, hence the letters revealing gradually to show the whole word.
After we had sorted out our title edit, we decided on what transitions to use to reveal the title sequence. As the background of the title sequence was black, we felt that the effect on Final Cut Pro: Fade in fade out would be suitable and that the ending transition could be the effect: Cross dissolve. We chose these transitions instead of using cuts as it helped to show location changing and it was a more subtle movement (there is not much tension at this part of the thriller). This is also why we chose to place our titles here - apart from the end title- as the importance of the plot here is more limited.
Here are some screenshots of our titling:
Firstly we found a video displaying all the different title edits possible on our editing software (Final Cut Pro). Here the video:
We watched through them all and decided that we liked the edit called 'Feature' the best (starts at 01:14 on the video). In this effect the letters are ellipted and fade in gradually and at different times to give a more interesting look to the title sequence. We felt that this effect fitted well with our thriller, as one of the main features in our plot line is the girl revealing information about her parents death, hence the letters revealing gradually to show the whole word.
After we had sorted out our title edit, we decided on what transitions to use to reveal the title sequence. As the background of the title sequence was black, we felt that the effect on Final Cut Pro: Fade in fade out would be suitable and that the ending transition could be the effect: Cross dissolve. We chose these transitions instead of using cuts as it helped to show location changing and it was a more subtle movement (there is not much tension at this part of the thriller). This is also why we chose to place our titles here - apart from the end title- as the importance of the plot here is more limited.
Here are some screenshots of our titling:
Saturday 29 March 2014
Title Sequence Analysis (The Conjuring, Red Lights and Any Human Heart)- Ettie Greenwood
Here I have analysed 3 title sequences so help inspire us with ideas on how to improve our title sequence, the titles are from:
In this title sequence, the layout and overall look managed to engage the audience, asking questions and keeping focused. The title sequence does this by showing imagery vital to the story line and using interesting animation.
The first shot of the title denotes two old black and white photos of what seems like a family. The text overlayed on top (using post-production editing) says "The Perron Family".
This shot uses a combination of a dissolve and focus pull to change from one credit, to the next. Both the dissolve and focus pull have a fast pace to add tension, and a sense of action.
In the title sequence, a non-diegetic soundtrack is used throughout to add atmosphere to the sequence. The soundtrack is orchestral with added foleys positioned in time with action in the title sequence. The soundtrack also has various crescendos and decrescendos to add suspense the piece.
The first shot in the title starts off with a high pitched, screeching non-diegetic soundtrack followed by an instrumental piece with a fast tempo. The initial screeching sound may be used to shock the audience and engage their attention.
The start of shot also denotes letter 'flying' into the frame from the bottom left corner and assembling to read the name 'Cillian Murphy'. The text is also accompanied by semi-transparent circles which quickly decrease in size and then fade out. These circles look like light which refers to the title of the film.
Once the text has assembled in the center of the frame it gradually increases in size and several letters magnify and flash on the screen. This visual effect again refers to the title of the film, but it also ensures the sequence to be enticing to the audience.
The circles appearing and the magnification of letters repeats in the next shot, but once the letters have assembled, an image of two hands appears behind the text for a fraction of a second. The image is silhouetted to add enigma, as the audience do not know whose hands are displayed in the image.
In the shot denoting the title of the film, the extra colour red is used to add contrast and significance to the shot (as it is displaying the title of the film). The red/white circles also stay in the frame for longer than the previous shots which again adds significance.
The soundtrack in this shot continues to build crescendo but at the end of the shot, a fast decrescendo is present.
The text throughout the title sequence is a sans serif font and is similar to the text in 'The Conjuring'. This font is easy the read therefore making it suitable to an audience with different abilities of eyesight.
The first shot denotes a man silhouetted shape walking through a thin alley. The text then is positioned to the left of the alleyway. The font of the text looks like it has been typed on a typewriter which correlates with the soundtrack as the non-diegetic track is instrumental but sounds mysterious. Both the font and soundtrack hint to the iconography of detectives.
In the same shot, the alley widens and the text along side it moves to the left of the screen and eventually disappears out of sight. Meanwhile, the shadow of the character widens and eventually reveals a new title credit. The way that the shapes change and reveal new text/imagery is enticing to the audience therefore engaging them.
The colours in the sequence are mostly browns, creams and reds. These colours connote seriousness and a formal tone. However the red also links to the title "Any Human Heart" as a heart is usually associated with the colour red. Whilst, the texture (a post-production edit) gives the sequence a leather effect, which could also add to the idea of a formal tone.
The piece continues with the shapes flowing into new formations (without the use of cuts). This means that the elements are always moving, including the text. The text is also placed in different areas each time to make the audience look all around the frame and makes it more visually interesting. Contrasting colours are used for the text for the easy readability, but once a shape overlaps the text, in some cases the text changes colour too as shown in the images above.
Overall I think that this title sequence easily engages the audience into watching the title sequence and hints at a plot line that consists of a man travelling to the city, or a mystery/detective theme being shown?
- The Conjuring (2013)
- Red Lights (2012)
- Any Human Heart (2010)
1) The Conjuring (2013)
Click to watch
The first shot of the title denotes two old black and white photos of what seems like a family. The text overlayed on top (using post-production editing) says "The Perron Family".
A sans serif font is used to make the reading of the text easier for the viewer and the colour of the text is black to contrast the white background. The text size varies in the shot where the less important word "the" is smaller than the rest of the text to give significance to the other 'more important' text.
In this shot, the black and white theme in the title sequence continues but a different editing effect is used. Here the credits are 'laid' onto the page by using a wipe/post-production effect to make it look as if a page of a book was turning. This is effective as it catches the audiences attention to the new text appearing on the frame.
The text is placed in an empty area so it is easier to see, and once again the text is edited in a contrasting colour to the background (white).
In this shot, a piece of paper slides into frame in a turning motion from the left. The piece of paper then denotes a show with an audience, then the credits are edited onto a white space in the photo. The changing of movement in the title sequence engages the audience and makes the piece visually exciting.
The ongoing reference to photos, books and newspapers suggests that an event in the film may have been on the news and effecting the families in the photos. The photos are also old suggesting that the events took place in the past?
This shot uses a combination of a dissolve and focus pull to change from one credit, to the next. Both the dissolve and focus pull have a fast pace to add tension, and a sense of action.
In the title sequence, a non-diegetic soundtrack is used throughout to add atmosphere to the sequence. The soundtrack is orchestral with added foleys positioned in time with action in the title sequence. The soundtrack also has various crescendos and decrescendos to add suspense the piece.
Overall I think the title sequence is successful in engaging the audience before the film starts, and hints at potential outcomes in the story-line.
2) Red Lights (2012)
Click to watch
The colours in this title sequence are mostly black and white, but some red has been included in some shots to show a contrast. It also obviously anchors to the title that denotes 'Red Lights'.The first shot in the title starts off with a high pitched, screeching non-diegetic soundtrack followed by an instrumental piece with a fast tempo. The initial screeching sound may be used to shock the audience and engage their attention.
The start of shot also denotes letter 'flying' into the frame from the bottom left corner and assembling to read the name 'Cillian Murphy'. The text is also accompanied by semi-transparent circles which quickly decrease in size and then fade out. These circles look like light which refers to the title of the film.
Once the text has assembled in the center of the frame it gradually increases in size and several letters magnify and flash on the screen. This visual effect again refers to the title of the film, but it also ensures the sequence to be enticing to the audience.
The circles appearing and the magnification of letters repeats in the next shot, but once the letters have assembled, an image of two hands appears behind the text for a fraction of a second. The image is silhouetted to add enigma, as the audience do not know whose hands are displayed in the image.
Mean while, the non-diegetic soundtrack continues with a fast tempo but also gradually raises the pitch of the soundtrack to build a crescendo. This therefore creates suspense and tension for the audience. The soundtrack is however parallel to the imagery as there are 'booms/thumps' when new text is displayed to add to the atmosphere of the title sequence.
The soundtrack in this shot continues to build crescendo but at the end of the shot, a fast decrescendo is present.
The text throughout the title sequence is a sans serif font and is similar to the text in 'The Conjuring'. This font is easy the read therefore making it suitable to an audience with different abilities of eyesight.
3) Any Human Heart
Click to watch
This title sequence uses silhouetted shapes and animation to illustrate a man taking a walk on what looks like a journey. Overall I think that this title sequence easily engages the audience into watching the title sequence and hints at a plot line that consists of a man travelling to the city, or a mystery/detective theme being shown?
Title Sequence Analysis (Old Boy, Buried & Cape Fear) - Natalie Sergeant
With Old Boy's title sequence we see a strong theme of time going past. Through out the whole sequence we have this theme of time passing in a way representing all the years that the main character had spent imprisoned.
The Title sequences has a thin line text and from the animation of the text being removed for left to right, to then change from numbers to letters, we get the scene of a train station board or a alarm clock style of changing times. Through the sequence the text is changing colour from blue, purple, orange but mainly sticking with white, red and pale white. With the red this could be representing of the danger to come.
We then go into the final sequence where we are presented with the title of the movie. We zoom out form a clock to see the a letter of the title and the for the title to expand from this single letter quite faded and to sort of role into place some even carrying of the screen. Then we still stick with this clock them where the end of both words, "D" and "Y", keep on rotating like clock handles, keeping this theme of passing time being a whole main point within the movie.
When original watching this title sequence the first thought to the audience will be that the text is rising but this is not the true effect of the writing use. While the text may scheme to be rising from the bottom and then being pulled away at the top, in fact the audience is sinking.
As stated before in the beginning of the sequence we don't really see this form of us, the audience, sinking, as the letter fade in from the bottom and at the top each float up. Even when graphical lines some with images of dirt in we still don't see this image of us falling.
This is until we see the title. When the title appears this is when we notice that we are skinning because of the dirt in the background gives a more stable view and we know that the ground can not float up and from the dark atmosphere we can only tell that we are traveling down through the ground and being buried ourselves.
The writing then changes from is gold colour, that represents the ground, to a blue colour. From this change and from the graphical lines now becoming smaller and overlapping we can tell that these represent water lines the go underground. In a way the title opening is an establishing shot of just how far in the ground the character is located. We then go back to this gold colour writing but this time get image off bullets and money, this gold colour that we first represented with the ground is not representing danger and greed. This creates foreboding into the movie as now we know that someone is under ground and that it could do about money and a dangerous deal.
Wednesday 19 March 2014
Finished Editing - Ettie Greenwood & Natalie Sergeant
Today Ettie did the final touches to out thriller opening. As mentioned before when I edited the opening I had added a fade to black near the end of the sequence to keep continuity this theme was then carried on when a group, Ettie added a fade to black when the girl goes down to the dog and also from the dog moving away from the bridge. She felt adding these would also help to keep continuity to the shots as sometimes our character or prop moves from one location to the next.
Ettie also added the sound that she had edited to the opening and then fixed our diegetic sound as it was louder than the music. She also got ride of parts of sound that was unwanted such as an plane flying over head of the sound of wind. After the unwanted diegetic sounds where gotten ride of she started on working on how loud the diegetic sound should be when compared with the background.
The final decision made by Ettie was to turn the thriller black and white saying she felt that the colours where too happy and didn't suit the thriller theme. After seeing the thriller in black and white we all agreed that the idea was best suited, though I suggested that we decrease the desiderated slightly to keep some of the colour. The overall results works as it adds a serious tone to the piece when compared to before was to bright with vibrant colours even after editing.
Original:
New:
Ettie also added the sound that she had edited to the opening and then fixed our diegetic sound as it was louder than the music. She also got ride of parts of sound that was unwanted such as an plane flying over head of the sound of wind. After the unwanted diegetic sounds where gotten ride of she started on working on how loud the diegetic sound should be when compared with the background.
The final decision made by Ettie was to turn the thriller black and white saying she felt that the colours where too happy and didn't suit the thriller theme. After seeing the thriller in black and white we all agreed that the idea was best suited, though I suggested that we decrease the desiderated slightly to keep some of the colour. The overall results works as it adds a serious tone to the piece when compared to before was to bright with vibrant colours even after editing.
Original:
New:
Tuesday 18 March 2014
Sound Editing - Ettie Greenwood
Today Natalie and Olivia continued with editing our footage, while I (Ettie) started with the editing of the sound:
After opening up the original track that we wanted to use for our thriller opening, we realised that we had to pay £10 to download the track in order to be able to use it. Therefore we had to look again to find a new track that we didn't have to pay for.
The track that we found was from the website Incompetech and the track is called 'Awkward Meeting'. We liked this track as it builded in crescendo as the track developed, and it sounded 'journey-like' which suited our thriller opening.
However, one of the problems that we did have with the soundtrack was that it was too short: it was only 1:24 and our thriller opening was just over 2 minutes. Therefore we had to edit the track in garge band and overlapped the track to make it loop and start again.
After this we imported the track into our footage and discovered that the track fitted with our footage well -the decrescendos/crescendos were in the correct place-
We will now continue to edit our footage, then import our soundtrack at the end, and tweak it if necessary.
After opening up the original track that we wanted to use for our thriller opening, we realised that we had to pay £10 to download the track in order to be able to use it. Therefore we had to look again to find a new track that we didn't have to pay for.
The track that we found was from the website Incompetech and the track is called 'Awkward Meeting'. We liked this track as it builded in crescendo as the track developed, and it sounded 'journey-like' which suited our thriller opening.
However, one of the problems that we did have with the soundtrack was that it was too short: it was only 1:24 and our thriller opening was just over 2 minutes. Therefore we had to edit the track in garge band and overlapped the track to make it loop and start again.
After this we imported the track into our footage and discovered that the track fitted with our footage well -the decrescendos/crescendos were in the correct place-
We will now continue to edit our footage, then import our soundtrack at the end, and tweak it if necessary.
Monday 17 March 2014
Editing - Natalie Sergeant
Today I came in and did some of the editing of the opening. I started off with editing the ending sound of our sequence as from how we cut it the characters crying would cut and wouldn't flow so I re-opened the clip and found a section with no talking to use. After this I went through and did some small final cuts to some of the shots to keep a flow.
After that as I looked for music for us to use due to the song of "Remember Me" wanted us to pay for the track so I searched for other option in which we could use. These are the three songs that I found on Incompetech that I though we could use, I will show the others and we can discussed if we want to use any and if we do which one.
I then finalized by stating to do some edits to the shots such as decreasing the color balance of when we have the sun setting and having a strong red and also made the lighting go down so that it wasn't so bright. I kept a record of all the edits I made so that changes can easily be made :
After that as I looked for music for us to use due to the song of "Remember Me" wanted us to pay for the track so I searched for other option in which we could use. These are the three songs that I found on Incompetech that I though we could use, I will show the others and we can discussed if we want to use any and if we do which one.
After finding the song I then went through the video again and decided to add a fade to black when our character backs away from the bridge as I felt that the shot of her being under the bridge to her suddenly walking away didn't look right and didn't flow properly. After the adding of the fade to black this problem was rectified.
I then finalized by stating to do some edits to the shots such as decreasing the color balance of when we have the sun setting and having a strong red and also made the lighting go down so that it wasn't so bright. I kept a record of all the edits I made so that changes can easily be made :
Tuesday 11 March 2014
Editing today- Ettie Greenwood
Today we started editing our thriller opening. At first we put all the rushes (Uncut footage) into the editing software, then started to cut the clips down to there desired length. We even started to add some video transition effects where planned and changed some of the brightness's of some shots where the lighting was not how we intended it to be.
I think that we made a lot of progress on our opening today and I think that we will easily be able to finish the editing by the deadline (21st March).
Next editing session, we plan to add our soundtrack to the piece, and edit it if necessary. Then hopefully continue with the editing on our thriller opening. We may split up and do the soundtrack editing and footage editing at the same time in order to make the time as productive as possible.
Thursday 6 March 2014
Filming - Olivia and Ettie
Here are some photos of us doing our thriller opening filming and of our lighting set up on Wednesday 5th March:
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Here is a photo of us filming the extreme close up, and I have placed the animatic storyboard shot next to it to show on how we intended the shot to look like. I think that this worked out on how we intended it to look like.
The last image is our lighting set up: we had a fill light and a key light on to illuminate the subjects face and to eliminate some of the yellow tones created by the light bulbs indoors. We did not need a back light as the subject was placed in front of a door.
One continuity issue that we did have, was that we filmed both the indoor shots last when itwas dark outside. This therefor meant that the light would be different. However we tried to overcome this by using more extra lighting to add light to the room, and we may use post-production editing to add extra brightness/ change in colour if needed. We also made sure that the actor (Rosanna) did not open the door for wider than necessary to leave, as if it was opened too wide the area outside would obviously be dark and would easily show to the audience that it was nigh time. If left visible this could confuse the viewer and give a false sense of time passing.
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