Fonts & Colours for Our Opening Credits...

Now that we have finished filming, we are now starting the editing process. Firstly we started by decided on a font and colour for the titles. We looked at different fonts, and played around with different colours until we created a look which we thought fitted well with our film's genre and our actual film...

This font we looked at, shown above, wasn't right we felt. We thought it was too sci-fi, rather than action like. The colour was too light and airy, and needed to be darker. We looked at lots of different fonts, similar to this and played around with the colours until we found the font and colour we liked.

We then found this font, we liked the style of it as it looked like a font which would fit in an action movie. It wasn't too over the top, and you can still read what the text says. We then added colour, we decided to stick with the metallic grey colour scheme to match with our production company logo, and used a gradient style to create the metallic look. We also decided to stick with the black background as it went well with the metallic colour of the font and the logo. 

Music...

For our main music, we decided enlist the help of some A-Level music students. We told them what sort of music we wanted which was a fast, guitar, drum & bass piece for the beginning of the opening, and for the end, a sad but short piano piece. Once we heard the finished pieces, we knew they would definitely work with our shots. We faded the first piece of music out just before the three gunshots, it the goes silent, dialogue then starts, piano music fades in once dialogue ends, and fades out at the end, here are the two pieces of music: 

Guitar/Drum/Base Music...

This is the first piece we wanted. We liked the fact that it was fast, and that you could imagine it playing in a major action film. When we placed on top of the shots, we found that we had to make it slightly longer, but it did match with the shots on screen, and gave it that little boost. It really does create that mysterious impact, it causes the audience to ask themselves; Who is this person? Where is he going? & What's going to happen? It fits really well with our chosen genre which was Action/Thriller, and we are really pleased with the results.

Piano Music...

This is the second piece we wanted. When we first heard it, we thought it sounded okay, but after a few listens, we then thought maybe it didn't sound quite right. We thought that we should put it in the opening, and then see what it sounds and looks like. I think it sounds okay, it sort of matches the shots and what's going on, but it's a group decision and we will see whether or not we should keep it or change it. I have shown the first finished edit with the music to a family member, and they think it suits the scenes, they were happy with it, but we shall see. It's not happy, but it's not too depressing either.

Filming...

Now that our prep work is finished, and we now know how it's going to look, we have decided to start filming. For one of our scenes, we needed a kitchen setting, so what we did was we used our Common Room, but used to sink and cupboards, we kept them in shot, but not the rest of the room. We moved a table and two chairs in front of the cupboards, and thus creating a simple kitchen scene. The rest of the shots were easy to film, and did not require too much adjusting in the setting aspect. 

We have a few more shots to film, we need to work out how we are going to do it, seeing as we need a child to feature in the scene. We may have to ask the younger years, possibly a drama group. Apart from that shot, all the others have been quite easy to film. Now we need to think about the editing...

Final Evaluation Question - Preliminary Task

What areas will you need to improve when working on your main project?
I think one area I may need to improve is my analysis. I can edit quite well, I find filming pretty easy, and I work well within the group. So apart from these areas, the only thing that I can think of is my analysis and evaluation, and probably my research skills. These will be easy to improve on as I do both in the exam part of the course as well as within my blog. I will have to use the right terminology, be specific in  my research, and evaluate well.

Evaluation Questions - Preliminary Task...

How did your target audience react to your finished piece?
They were very happy with our finished piece. They liked our choice of shots for each scene, they thought that our sound effects, such as the bell chime were quite effective, they also liked our choice of transitions, the fades, and the cutting. Finally they all thought that our 180 degree rule was very effective, and done well within the final piece.

What ideas/skills will you take from this to your main project?
There are a few ideas and skills that we have decided to use in our final piece. We thought that making certain parts of our preliminary task black & white was very effective, and have decided to use that in our main film. We may stick to the same transitions used, such as the fades and the cutting, we don't want complicated transitions. We are also going to take the idea of showing the main character getting ready and incorporate it into our main project as we thought it went well with our chosen genre and idea for our opening.

Opening Titles Research...

For our final piece of research we had to look at opening titles, we looked at the font, colours used and whether or not they start before, after or during the opening. We each looked at films within our genre, these films are; 'The Batman Rises', 'Skyfall', 'Goodfellas' and 'The Expendables'.

The Dark Knight Rises:

Black & White

Dark

Metallic

Digital animation

Image manipulation

Red font

Sans Serif

Appear before action starts

Skyfall:

White font

Colourful background

Fades in, fades out

Medium size

Capital Letters

Appears after action has happened

Goodfellas:

Quick animation

Black & White

Sans Serif

Normal/medium size

Capital letters and lower case letters

Red title

Black background

Credits start after action

The Expendables:

War type font

White

Fades in, fades out

Small

In corner of screen 

credits are shown during action

Diegetic & Non-Diegetic Sound...

Diegetic sound is sound which is sound which comes from a source within the scene and can be heard by both audience and characters, for example T.V playing, dialogue between characters, phone ringing, footsteps etc. Non-Diegetic sound is sound which has no source within the scene, the audience can hear it, but the characters cannot. Diegetic & Non-Diegetic sound can be used in many ways, some of which are shown in these two clips;

http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/video/283936/L-A-Confidential-Movie-Clip-Open-Hush-Hush.html#

This is the opening of LA Confidential. Diegetic sound is used in the end of the clip, as it starts off with non-diegetic sound, the voice over and the music. The effect of this is to introduce the film, the plot, the era etc. It then turns into Diegetic sound as we hear the type writer sounds, and we see who is talking. This is an effective technique as it allows the audience to be introduced to a key character straight off, and are introduced to other key characters within the film opening.

The second film opening is similar to that of LA Confidential in that it starts off as non - diegetic sound, for example the creepy music playing while the key character moves up the stairs towards the victim, and keeps playing until the victim wakes up. We then hear waves splashing just after the opening credits finish, we are then shown where the characters are, in this case the beach, we then see where the wave sounds came from and the sound becomes diegetic. The effect of this is to create not only tension, but suspense. We don't know where the characters are in the beginning, but the audience can tell, from the music that something bad is going to happen. We are also introduced to key characters, through not only dialogue but who we also saw on the screen.