Title Sequence Essay

 

Title Sequence

 

Theme of Video: Horror

 

The task we were set was to create a title sequence for a film. The film could be of any genre and could be a film that we made up. We were to make the video at least 3 minutes long and use a range of filming techniques. We were also set the task of thinking about what is seen in professional title sequences and how they are laid out and shown and develop our ideas from there.  By doing this project, I was hoping to develop my understanding of title sequences as a hole and the process professional film makers go through. Also the importance of the style used when creating the title sequence. In the title sequence even the style of text is important. This must represent the genre and be something that can be memorable and not plain and simple. For example, the font used for Star wars if so iconic it will always be recognised and linked to the Star Wars films. Obviously I cannot create something on this scale but I want to understand how something as small as text is important. I also wanted to work with and understand how the title sequence introduces the audience to the film and eases them into it. A title sequence gives the audience an idea of what type of film it is, what it is about and in a way, the style of filming used. This is an important part of the title as it begins the film and has to grab the viewer’s attention straight away. This is something I brought into my own work.

For this task, I worked in a group of three, including myself.  The people I worked with were Kirsty White, Charlotte Bowden. We made the decision to go with theme of horror. We chose this theme because it is something that appealed to all three of us in the group. We also saw it as an opportunity to work with different, low lighting for example. This is a technique we could build on in a horror title sequence but not as much is other films, such as a romance which usually uses bright, natural lighting. Moreover, when brain storming ideas, we found we had a lot of ideas we could link to horror and develop. We found that the type of ideas we were coming up with were always leaning to the horror side of theme and we did not have much in the way of other ideas. I feel this is because this is the theme we were mainly thinking off and focusing. We were more than happy with the ideas we had a chose to stick with it.

In terms of planning, I feel I took the lead role in this group. I was the one that led most of the organisation and in lessons, I found I was the one giving Charlotte and Kirsty the task that needed to be done and what I wanted them to do. They would often work together on these task but they would also carry out independent research and work.  When we worked with research, we all worked together to get the information we needed.  When we carried out the TAP (Target Audience Profile) we made the decision to use a questionnaire as the best way to gather information on what people expect to see in horror films. As well as this we went and asked people what they expected to see I a horror film and filmed their answers so we could take information from there. We devised this questionnaire as a group, working together to come up with the questions. We thought this was the best way of creating a successful questionnaire as we had some different ideas of what needed to be included. . I then went onto a website and created an online questionnaire to help our group. Charlotte and Kirsty did also have an input with this. However, once again, I feel I took the lead role. Once the questionnaires were created with worked together to gather the information and then we separated as a group. We had handed out the questionnaires and got people of our age range to fill them out.  Charlotte and Kirsty analysed and collected the data from the completed questionnaires in a different way to me. I think this is mainly to do with how we understand and look at data like this. They worked together to collect the data and I became more in depended at this point. We worked together again however when collecting information from the video answers.  Once we had all collected the data we begun working together again to process this data and work on our ideas. When coming up with the ideas for our introduction, we worked together. I think this was important because it meant we could all have an input into what was shown in our video and we all had a chance to pitch our ideas. What we did not want to happen was for one person not to have and ideas used. We each came up with a few ideas and then we agreed with some ideas or in some cases we would build on that one person’s idea as a group. I found this was an efficient way of carrying out the task and all three of us having a say.  I think all our ideas were listened to and considered equally. When creating the storyboard, Charlotte and I created it together. This is because Kirsty was absent on the day and Charlotte and I made the decision it was important to get the story board done even though we had a member of our group absent. We still made sure to include Kirsty’s ideas how she described them and how she had written it down. We got the storyboard completed and showed it to Kirsty to see if she liked what we had done, once again working to include everyone in our group. She agreed with what we had done so moved on to the next part. This was location planning. We thought about where we were going to film the scenes we had chosen. We worked together to come up with the ideas of where the filming would take place.  We decided as a group that we would do the some of the outside filming in a woodland area, as well as at a house and in someone garden. We made the choice to film at my house as it is close to a woodland area and I have a garden suitable for other outdoor filming. It was later that Charlotte and I sat down and planned exactly where each shot would be filmed. This consisted of labelling each clip, for example, we chose my garage as a place for some filming to take place and like specific clips to that area. We did the same for woodland filming and outdoor door filming. We found this easier as we could them grope the clips and get them all done when in that area rather then moving from place to place. This was an area of organisation both Charlotte and I worked on together; once again, Kirsty was absent. As well as working as a group on the majority of the work, we also did some individual planning and research during the project. This consisted of us doing our own research for blog work including research on title sequences, although we did research this breathily together, we did our own research on it. This was because we did not always get the chance to work together and the research was important to our work. Time planning was also a key element to planning. We had a deadline for this project which we had to stick to. A lot of the work was done in lesson but we also did work outside of lessons to reach this deadline. I personally worked in free lessons I had during the day as well as other free time I had, if I knew the work needing doing I set my self a deadline and worked to ensure I met that so I could move on. In terms of group work, if we did not complete it in lesson, we worked on it together to get it done in the chances we had to work together, mainly in free lessons.  One of the problems we faced when filming was finding dates to film. All out filming was to be done outside of the school and this meant we would have to work with weekends and in the afternoons. We made the decision that in the afternoon after the school day was not an option. We would have very little time to get any filming done and it may seem rushed. Ideally we wanted a full planned to film. Luckily, we had a half term and took advantage of this and set two days free to get together and film. Absents in the planning stages did take place but was not a problem, the people in the group who were present worked together to insure the planning was done. 

When we started filing, some changes did take place from the planning stage. One of these changes was added scenes. When we started filming, we were going with the storyboard. However we found that while we were filming and in the filming environment, we came up with more and more ideas to include. This benefited our work because a lot more was included and showed a wider range of ideas. These added scenes also meant that the storyboard need change so Charlotte and I (Kirsty was unable to attend the first day of filming due to illness) worked together to redo the story board and add in the new scenes. This is the most major change that took place. As for the scenes, they were all filmed how and where we planned apart from one. This was a clip where a photo was burnt. Originally, the photo was to be held in the hand of the main character and he would use a lighter to set fire to it. However, this became a problem when filming as we could not get the photo set alight. This was due to both the weather and the lighter. When we tried with matched, we were met with the same result; the photo would not set alight. We moved on to using a large metal bin with a lot more paper in it, already alight and the photo would be thrown in to that. This worked much better and we were able to get a really good, successful shot.  This was a smaller change but did have an effect of our video and was a change from what was planned. However my group and I agreed this was a change for the better. I do not feel they affected our organisation to much; the redoing of the story board took more time to do but was vital if we wanted to include the new scenes.  I do not think it affected our planning but I do think it improved it.

A change that took place in editing was linked, once again, with the story board. We put the clips in the order we had planned. However when we watched them all linked together, there were some clips that did not look right on after the other. The example of this was a body falling to ground filmed in day light after a shot of a murder and the body being laid on the ground. We, as a group working on the editing process, made the decision theses clips did not fit together so we made to choice to spread them out in the full video. This made a difference to the video and improved the look of it. Another place we changed the order was a body falling to the arm and then a clip of just the arm falling. However we found a continuity error so cut the arm clip out completely, once again making an improvement to the video. Luckily this did not affect our time as both actions were very quick. However it did mean we had to change the storyboard again. We did not see this as a problem as when we had to make the first change, Charlotte made a storyboard on the computer. This meant it was just a case of moving the names of the clips about until they were in the correct order.

 

From this project I learnt about the importance of the layout and the order of the title sequence. I did not realise before this project that the names in a title sequence are in a set order, for example, the directors name is always show before the names of the actors. I also learnt how title sequences are use. They are not only used to start the film and list names but also to introduce the film and introduce the viewers into it. On top of this, my group and I  worked on our filming techniques including how to keep the camera steady and the importance of having a still shot. Two ways we develop and used as a group in filming was ways you keep the camera still. In some shots we attached the camera to a tripod to ensure it did not move.  In another shot, when the camera moved along the old table, we put the camera on top of a toy bus with wheels and pushed the camera along. This gave it a much smoother, steadier shot compared to if we had filmed it holding the camera. This is one of the main techniques we developed and learnt doing this project.

I do not reel any problems occurred in the project, just changes that we made to improve what we were doing. I don’t think this should be avoided as it is development on our work and is just something that came up during the project. 

I am happy with the resources we had to carry out this project. We used Windows Live Movie Maker for all the editing and, personally, I found this really easy and simple to use. It allowed us to complete the task and ass the elements we wanted. I found no complications using the software and I am happy with the result we got. We also used a online resource to get the type of text we wanted, I found this efficient and offered a lot of text for us to choose from allowing us to find the text to match the style of our title sequence.

 

I feel this was a really successful project. We did not come cross any problems and complications, we reached our deadline and the end result looks good and is the high standard we wanted.