Friday 18 February 2011

Overall Summary of Feedback

It was important for us to get both positive and negative feedback so that we could better our title sequence.  

To get feedback we posted our title sequence on YouTube where people could comment on the video; overall the comments we got back all praised our film knowledge at the same time they offered some criticisms on areas we could improve. One criticism we received was that when the title 'Seized' appeared it was very fast paced; we took this into consideration and after watching our title sequence back a few times we agreed with this comment therefore we chose to lengthen the time which the title appeared which we believed benefited the title sequence. 

Another way which we gained feedback from our audience is by doing a few screenings to different types of people. Our media teacher offered to do a screening to one of her Media Studies classes where she gave out some of the feedback sheets we made up. A reoccurring answer throughout the feedback sheets was that the music was in some ways annoying to listen to. Taking this into consideration we realized that a possible reason for this was that the audience the title sequence was shown to, were of a much younger age than our original predicted viewing age; therefore they may not have appreciated the effects of the composition on both the pace and emotion of the title sequence. One more issue we found from analysing the feedback sheets was that the genre of the film was being mistaken for a 'Horror' rather than a 'Crime'. Although this mistake could be due to the fact that more is revealed to do with the genre throughout the film rather than within the first few minutes of the opening titles. 

Finally we showed our title sequence to one of our media teachers as we were happy with the final product. Unfortunately we had failed to complete research into the format in which the titles appear in a title sequence. After viewing some more title sequence we had realised the directors name always came at the end of the opening credits. Ourselves -being unexperienced title sequence creators- placed the directors name first in the credits. We decided to change this mistake we had made to make our title sequence more professional in the format which the titles appear. 

Friday 11 February 2011

Comments we have received on YouTube

So far all the feedback we have received on YouTube after having uploaded our title sequence has been positive and has credited our creative skills which we are very pleased with; we think much of this positive feedback has come as a result of our regular review of the title sequence and finding places where we could improve.




Some of the feedback sheets we got back

From these two feedback sheets we received we found that the genre of the film was being mistaken for a 'Horror' rather than a 'Crime'. Although this mistake could be due to the fact that more is revealed to do with the genre throughout the film rather than within the first few minutes of the opening titles. 


Wednesday 9 February 2011

Journal: 09/02/11

In today's lesson we created audience feedback sheets, we managed to get two filled out but we are going to receive more feedback when our title sequence is screened to Year 11 Media Studies students. Apart from preparing the audience feedback sheets we also continued to add to our blogs improving previous posts- this is because the construction section of our title sequence is now completed.

Audience Feedback Sheets

This is the audience feedback sheet Sophie made, we plan to hand these out to people who see our sequence; then we are going to have a look at the comments we get and possibly change some elements on the sequence itself if we think that there is any reoccurring issue that needs to be addressed. 

Screen shots of using Final Cut Pro

The first step of the editing process was to import all the scenes we had shot, to do this we attached the camera and imported all the clips; we made sure any important clips were named so they became easily accessible if we needed to use them. 



Our next step in the editing sequence was putting the clips we needed on a time line, to do this we simply dragged which ever clips we needed onto the timeline (from the previous screen shot where we named all the clips originally).


Now we began cutting the different things we had filmed into smaller chunks so they could all start being arranged in a way which enabled us to continue on and edit them further. 


Throughout the sequence we used fade in's and fade out's, this added a good effect to the title sequence because the filming flows and doesn't look as harsh as it would if the shots were to come straight in after each other.


This is the production logo I designed, as a group we thought this was our best option as it fitted in well with the sequence and was just bold enough for it to be noticed rather than take over the whole screen. The production logo is followed by a title which follows the same colour scheme. 


This is where we started making the text jump to give it a jumbled look. We thought this added depth to our title sequence because it was very deranged like our main character. 



Next we added music to the sequence, myself and Sarah spent a long time searching for a suitable soundtrack that went with the genre of the film- without it being predictable or giving too much away within the first few minutes of the film. As a group we decided on the final choice of music and we thought it worked very well with the narrative; the music itself flowed well with the different climax's in the sequence . 


This is our final title sequence, as a group we are extremely impressed at the final product it reached all of our previous expectations. The music, the setting, the filming and the editing itself all came together at the last stage and made the title sequence look really good. 

Final Typography Choice


This is our final typography choice, we chose this because we thought it resembled our genre and narrative in a way which did not reveal a great deal of information to the audience.  We decided the white typography would be best against the black background because it made the title stand out. The reason for choosing this font was the fact that the lettering itself is not sharp or neat and is slightly decaying, this resembles our main characters state of mind- he is constantly having to deal with issues which are mentally destroying him; therefore the breaking of the white onto the black shows that our main character is slowly falling apart. 

Monday 7 February 2011

Casting for our title sequence

During the filming of our title sequence we used two people: 
Emily Neil: Emily played our main character as the girl who was being followed by our stalker; she also contributed the scream which is heard towards the end of the sequence-which added great dramatic effects to the entire sequence.

Jon Purday:Jon acted as the part of the stalker/follower, it didn't take long for him to get into character and throughout the filming he gave lots of variety in his acting which allowed us to have more shots to choose from during the final editing of the sequence. 

Final Chosen Soundtrack

This is our final choice of music which we have used in our title sequence, we thought it would be a good idea to fins a certain soundtrack which represented our genre but was not an obvious choice of sound. 


The music begins with soft under tones of wind; these created a mysterious feeling which added suspense to the narrative of the title the sequence. After the intro of the wind noise a sharp set of harmonics kicks in- this is shocking to the audience as it is not expected, the dark droning background in the music creates a sense of menace which accompanied the sequence greatly. This is because although we had varying shots the music fluently followed the increase in pace but still allowed a faint dark under tone throughout allowing the genre of the film not to become lost in the soundtrack. 


Our soundtrack first appears when the production logo appears on the screen which is when the sharp harmonics begin, followed by the rest of the music. The soundtrack finally comes to an end before the final shot in the title sequence- when the music stops the screaming sound and breathing sounds are heard. 

Click to listen: In the beginning

Journal: 07/02/11

In today's lesson I continued editing my blog and adding more to the different posts, making a more detailed analysis of title sequence's. Also we took pictures of the cast members involved in the title sequence and added them on a post about casting on the blog. 


In the next lesson we will be preparing audience feedback sheets which we will take comments from on the positives and negatives of our title sequence. 

Friday 4 February 2011

Journal: 04/01/11

EDITING COMPLETE

We managed to complete all the editing today way ahead of schedule which gives us a lot of time to write a very detailed evaluation. As a whole we are very pleased with the final copy of our title sequence; from previous audience feedback we received we made sure all the negative comments were addressed and in turn the sequence adjusted to suit those comments.

Music Research

A major part of our title sequence is finding the right piece of music which sets the tone without becoming too over powering, we found searching for a soundtrack which meets all of our expectations extremely hard. We began we looking for non-copyrighted music on the audio.lgfl website which had every kind of music anyone could want. Here are some of the tracks we found...


Click the track to listen to the song:
Track One-Cold City
This was our original choice of music to go with the title sequence, we thought this was not too typical or predictable to go with our genre of the film because it had a slight edge to it.One issue we had with this particular composition was that the pace changed throughout the song therefore it was difficult to make it fit with the pace of each different frame. We thought the effect the music was having on the title sequenced messed with the climax and anti-climax. 

Track Two-In Memoriam
We thought this track would be better suited to a T.V series rather than a film; the composition itself did fit the crime genre although we found it to be far too predictable for our liking. 

Track Three-Hell's Harp
Our third option of a suitable soundtrack to go on our title sequence; the song itself was very eerie and added great suspense and action to the sequence but we felt it was too extreme for our sequence it would be better suited to a title sequence for a 'horror film' rather then a film of the crime genre. 

Wednesday 2 February 2011

Journal: 02/02/11

In todays lesson we managed to find music to add to our title sequence after looking for about 2 weeks.
We settled for a mix of wind noises and sharp harmonics; we thought this fit not only the title sequence perfectly but also the genre we had chosen in the beginning-crime.

Towards the end of the lesson we saved our almost complete edited edition of our title sequence, in a suitable format to show the whole class and our teacher to gain some feedback on areas we could improve at.

From the feedback we received, we found we needed to:


  • Fade out the titles, so they didn't just disappear 
  • Alter the spelling of one of the titles
  • Decide whether we wanted to keep our opening scene
..........we will be sure to adapt our title sequence to suit the feedback we received in our next lesson on Friday. 

Tuesday 1 February 2011

Journal: 31/01/11

The search for music continues......

Luckily in this lesson the majority of the editing is now completed so we are defiantly on schedule to have completed our title sequence by the 18th or maybe even before- if we find our music within the next week.