Tuesday 7 April 2009

This is the end of my media blog.
Thank you to Lucy for helping me with the making of the title sequence and thank you to the teatchers for helping on the way as well.

this blog is now finished.

Friday 6 March 2009

Evaluation

Question 1:

When watching our opening title sequence you can automatically tell that the genre is thriller, you can tell this by the scratchy effects and also the long noted music, as well as the quick cuts in the sequence.
Also we kept the murderer in the dark, to add to the creepy effect and to also keep you on the edge of your seat.

We haven’t showed much in the sequence and haven’t given much away about, to who the killer is, we done this because we want the audience to be drawn into the movie and for them to want to watch the rest of it to find out who the killer is and to see what happens on the way to finding out who it is.


Question 2:

I think that the opening title sequence that we called ‘Probability’ would be aimed at ages 16 and above as there is a few scenes that would be inappropriate for young children.

I think that the gender for the opening title sequence is for both male and female as there is nothing init to segregate it in to genders.

The characters that could be linked to our murder could be the murder from the series messiah as the murder is very obsessive and leaves a signature object behind like the murder from our title sequence leaves a playing card as his signature piece.

Question 3:

The title sequence was produced on a very low budget, and only targets small audiences like friends, family and teachers. It is very unlikely that it would get far and make it to the big screens.

There for we would have to promote it in other ways, we came up with some ideas on how we could promote it, these are:

· The internet, to use distributors such as i.film to promote the viewing of small budget internet films. But these can be quite expensive.
· Posting it on websites such as my space and hope that people begin to watch it and to hope that it gets noticed by some one who may be able to produce it.

Question 4:

Our target audience, and my personal audience would be aged 16 to 25 year olds as the style of our film, I would think would be appealing more to the younger generation.
The film would be for audiences that like suspense and creepy music and the usual thriller style.

Question 5:

To attract the target audience, the main criteria was made up from:

Mise on scene, music, camera and casting.

There are in order of importance.
Mise on scene, because with out all the props we wouldn’t have much of a good title sequence.
The music which also adds suspense and tention to the whole sequence, with out the music the feel to it wouldn’t be eerie.
The camera angles are also important as these also build up suspense and the eeriness.

The casting, from the begging was just going to be me and Lucy as we both get on well with each other and we would get the work done.

Question 6:

From filming the title sequence, I have learnt a lot about the technologies as either of us have used a camera before.
When we where planning the title sequence out, we wanted to keep it basic, but effective at the same time, so we used really basic equipment like, tri-pods and lighting and dark rooms.

I learnt that for a thriller to work the most important things are the sound and the lighting, these where the things we focused on the most , because with rubbish lighting and sound the title sequence can go wrong and not turn out very good.

Question 7:

From the very first task we had done which was the continuity piece, till now I feel that I have learnt a lot of things to get where I am now. From co-operating with each other to working independent, also on how to edit which played a big part in our title sequences.

With out good editing the whole thing could be very jumpy and not very clear for audience to understand. Also the camera angles to me played a big part that I have learnt about. The different ways in which you can make people feel, just by the movement of the camera and the angles.

Both the editing and the camera movements put together are the most important thing when making a movie.

I feel that I have learnt a lot about, both of these techniques and how to master them both, especially the editing process on i.movie, since I have never used this before and it was my first attempt.

Friday 13 February 2009

Our Resolved Title Sequence

Finally we have managed to upload our title sequence, but theres still a small problem, the video is really pixalted for reasons we dont no, the video is not like this when it is played on the apple macs so it must have happened during the uploading process.

The Whole sequence took around about 6 hours to film all together. We done all the shooting in 2 places, in school and at my home.

The hardest and longest process to do was the editing process, sience ever of us have ever used i.movie before we found it a little difficalt to do.

The editing process took us about 2 and a half weeks to do as we added shoots in and played around with the type of effect you could, also we tryed to make the music go with what was happing in the title sequence, for instance when you see the bloob spray up the wall we got the music to build up to it and then when the blood did splat then music went loader and faster the after it slowed down again.


Animatic

This is our animatic for our title sequence. Sence this video was made we have changed some of the shoots around and also added shots in to make it better and also to make it last longer.

Each shot should last for about 5 seconds and the whole thing goes on for about a minute. The whole proces of making this took us about 20 minutes which includes editing it on imovie hd.

We made this by recording each of our shoots on a plain white piece of paper and filmed each shoot for about 5seconds then paulsed the camera to change the shoot.

Wednesday 11 February 2009

we are still having difficulties uploading all our videos which is very annoying.
will try and upload them as soon as possible.

This is the wound we made for the scene with the dead body in it.
We did some research on how to make fake wounds. We found out that you can make them out of latex with a bit of paint and then once its dry you cut it to make it look shredded and cut.
We had some troble making this look real on the neck, it woudnt stay stuck to my neck and kept peeling of my neck. we sort of solved the problem by putting a bit of fake blood on my neck and using it as glue and it also covered up the bits that where peeling of my neck.

Wednesday 4 February 2009

At the moment we are having trouble uploading our videos to the blog due to the internet not working on the apple Macs, we will try and upload them when the internet is working or we will find another way to do this.

Names for our movie
We are having some trouble with the name of the opening title sequence and we are not sure on what ones to go with. Some of the names we have so far are

1) Card sharp: A person who is an expert at cards

2) Odds: Ratio of probabilities

3) Edge :An advantage over an opponent

4) Toke: A tip given to the dealer in the form of money or chips

5) Underlay: A bad or unfavorable bet

6) Probabilty

We got these of the internet. We typed in card phrases and came out with some of the language they use when playing card games.

The cast is just me and Lucy, the reason for this is that I think it makes things a lot easier to work with when there are just two of you putting in ideas, and we also have the same time table so it makes it easier to work on the project in our free time.

Friday 9 January 2009


We have to do an animatic of our title sequence so on the 7th of January 2009 we filmed our animatic.


Our animatic is on post-it notes, we choose them because you can rearrange them if you want, into what order you prefer.


We will be uploading it soon.


Here is a picture of the to show that we have done the task.

Thursday 11 December 2008


mind map of ideas we might use in our opening title sequence.

Friday 28 November 2008

Soul Bass


Saul Bass was an American graphics designer he was not only one of the greatest graphic designers of the mid-20th century but the undisputed master of film title design.

soil bass quoits him self about title sequence's:

"My initial thoughts about what a title can do was to set mood and the prime underlying core of the film's story, to express the story in some metaphorical way. I saw the title as a way of conditioning the audience, so that when the film actually began, viewers would already have an emotional resonance with it."

He's made title sequence for alot of films, some of the films that he has done are:


Carmen Jones (1954)
The Man with the Golden Arm (1955)
The Seven Year Itch (1955)
Around the World in Eighty Days (1956)
Bonjour Tristesse (1958)
Vertigo (1958)
Anatomy of a Murder (1958)
The Big Country (1958)
North by Northwest (1959)
Psycho (1960)
Spartacus (1960)
Exodus (1960)
Advise and Consent (1960)
Ocean's Eleven (1960)
West Side Story (1961)
Walk on the Wild Side (1962)
The Victors (1963)
Nine Hours to Rama (1963)
It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963)
The Cardinal (1963)
In Harm's Way (1965)
Bunny Lake Is Missing (1965)
Grand Prix (1966)
Seconds (1966)
Broadcast News (1987)
Big (1988)
The War of the Roses (1989)
Good fellas (1990)
Cape Fear (1991)
Doc Hollywood (1991)
Age of Innocence (1993)
Casino (1995)

the two I've decided to look at are ocean 11 and Break on Through.

starting with ocean 11



i really like the opening sequence to this, i like the way it starts of as small little dots which are forming different shapes and patterns at first. then the dots begging to convert in to numbers and the names of the producers of the film. the numbers start from one and work there way up to 11 and counts up to the begging of the movie.as soon as one number disappears another number appears, it runs smoothly and theres no stopping between each. once the numbers have reached 11 the music becomes more up beat and faster as it is working its way further in to the movie. theres not much use of colour in this sequence, the colours are mainly blues, reds and purples. once the numbers have reached 11 they start turning in to different designs and shapes, i think they've been made to look like showbiz billboards with lights. the sequence moves on from shapes and starts show the king and queen of heart playing cards, show that the movie maybe be about a casino, it then moves on to slot machines also could show an incite of the movie,to show that its about gambling. two dice get thrown in to the scene and get pulled back out again and the movie begins to start.

the music through out the whole title sequence is sort of like a jazz tune which turns in to a serious tone in some places.

in all i really like this opening title sequence, its clever the way the whole opening evolves in to another scene.

the second title sequence is Break on through





I didn't really like this one much. he doesn't really use any bright colours through out the sequence (dark blue, white, red, black and gray).

this title sequence is all lines which turn in to different things. the first thing the lines turn in to is a piano, then which two hands come in to the shot and start playing it. the piano then splits apart and the hands pulls them of the screen . i think this could be one of the first title sequences that Saul Bass made because he has used really basic colours and images. the music to me sounds jazzy, and i don't really think it goes well with the sequence itself. this title sequence doesn't really give you any information about the film and i think that it wouldn't get you in the mood to watch the film before it starts.

over all i relay like Saul Basses work, i think that most of the title sequences that he has done are really interesting and are different to all the others and get you hooked in to the movie before it even starts.

Wednesday 26 November 2008

Intorduction to the A/S coursework Brief





The aim of my project is to plan and shoot a opening title sequence to a fiction film, My chosen genre is thriller. We have 3 weeks to plan this and we will be filming sometime in January.
I have chosen to work with Lucy Hart in this project.

The opening title sequence has to be about 2-3 minutes long.
In class we have watched several opening sequence to different films. The one we liked the most was Se7en by David Fincher, We found this very clever and inspiring because the use of typography and the way it flashes through the different scenes throughout the opening. When me and Lucy come to shoot our opening sequence we will consider the way that David Fincher uses confined space in the frame and the scratchy writing and images that appear.
At this moment we don't have many strong ideas, But we have some locations in mind e.g school.

Continuity Piece




this is our continuity piece,it had to involve opening and shutting the door so we done a short prison visit.
the camera work was done by me and the actors were lucy hart,emily peachy and shazna khalique.