Titles Again

As we discovered in lesson today it turns out that our project will require 3 more titles. These titles include "Warner Bros Presents", "A DynamiteKitty Production" and "A film by Katie Boal, Reece Wilkins and Barry Stubbs". Therefore there is good news and bad news, the bad news is that this may be time consuming once again as we will need to create the titles once again, however the good new is that it should not take too long to create and also these titles are shown before the first scene of our project, therefore there should not be a major issue in inserting this into our sequence. These titles will obviously need to follow the same style as the other title sequences, which will require using black and white text along with the same transition used previously. Overall this should help amass us to the highest grade possible,  if we did not include these titles we will risk losing 1 or 2 marks which is not a very substantial figure however it could help be the difference between an A grade project and an A* grade project. I think with Katie's absence today as well as a likelyhood that she may not be in tomorrow as well means that it may take a considerable amount of time for us to complete these titles, although in retrospect 1 or 2 marks is not an incredibley big deal so we will not panic for now.

Absents

Unfortunately Katie is ill today and thus will not be in the lesson, this means me and Barry are limited to how much work we can do as Katie has the contents of our project on her laptop in her house. Therefore me and Barry have decided to dicuss our porject in detail and discuss representation within our project. Hopefully Katie will be in the lesson tomorrow.

New Film with Comparison

http://katiesawesomeasmediablog.blogspot.com/2012/02/tweaking-and-extras-film.html -

Above is a link to Katie's blog in which she has posted two videos, the first is effectively a comparison to our old footage to our new film. As you can see there are many differences between the two I.E the newest edition has titles and the audio level is more consistent. You will also note how some shots have changed in order to add more effect towards the audience. I've already explained in an early blog about this but in a nutshell we were able to change shots thanks to us spending 3 hours filming during the interrogation scene, in which we shot at a various number of angles some of which are included in the newer project and some others which aren't. Therefore when Sir asked us whether we could change some of the shots such as the pan shot (at 0:38 in the "before" half) it was not a major issue for us to change it.

The second video is our new project in all its glory on its own. I am quite happy with it overall, as you can see the issues i have addressed in previous blogs have almost completely disappeared now so that if there are any issues its mostly extreme nitpicking. There's also the title of the film which appears at the end, I showed in a previous blog that the title of the film should have the same font and should appear in the same transition as the titles of the people working on the project, therefore we have now completed this so that "Decipher" is now shown at the end in the same font and the same style as the previous titles, it keeps the black and white imagery just like them but is notably much larger than them signifying that it is the most important information.

Nitpicking

Today me Katie and Barry continued to edit our project, we concluded that although the shots and narrative etc was all brilliant there were still issues with the titles, this was because we placed the titles in the wrong order as we were not fully certain that the order was "starring...", "music", "editor", "producer", "writer" "director". This caused us to spend the majority of the end of the lesson working on rearranging the titles in order to suit the requirements so hopefully we gain full marks. When Sir watched it again he pointed that our project was "phenomenal" which was a very positive influence on us, however he did express that the music and sound was slightly off at some points this means sometimes the dialogue between me and Barry in the interrogation scene changes tempo frequently which is frustrating as it meant we had to change the sound for each shot so that it stayed the same, however because of the fact that some shots were filmed in different places it means that it will be very hard for us to continue consistency, however we will continue to work on this within the oncoming days. Also Sir pointed out that the title of our film "Decipher" should be changed to match the previous title shots I.E using a swipe, he also said that the title of the film should have exactly the same font as the titles, this means we will need to change the title of our film to match these requests. Overall however these are not major issues which is why the title of this blog is called "nitpicking" as we're simply trying to make the project slightly better than it already is in order to achieve a slightly higher mark in the end, these issues are not major and although getting the sound right may be tricky we should hopefully be able to achieve the other issues as soon as possible without issue.

Sounds On Institutions

Recently we have noticed that our Warner Bros and DynamiteKitty logos did not have any sound, therefore we discussed what sound effects would be best suited to our institutions and logos. We subsequently have now included the typical Warner Bros logo music which is always seen in Warner Bros films, this makes our film much more authentic as opposed to having no sound whatsoever. We were originally confused about what sound would best suited to DynamiteKitty logo however we eventually opted to use the sound of a black panther roaring a bit similar to Lionsgate however it is not the same sound effect which means we wont have any issue with copyright, I think using the sound of a panther is very suited to us as it fits the logo almost perfectly and allows us to continue using sound as opposed to having moments where there is no sound which may have damaged our chances of gaining very high marks in the end.

Almost Finished

Today we continued to edit our project, overall I am very happy with the way we are working and progressing as a group. So far we have had no eceedingly harsh issues with the project however there has been some minor faults, Sir realised some of these and posted a review of our rough cut on Katie's Blog, I read through the review and took notes as to how we could change each part to make the video better, he expressed that we needed to add titles, after today I can say that the titles are now included into the project along with the DynamiteKitty logo and Warner Bros logo, we also included the title of our film at the end, we chose to place it at the end in order to help link with other crime films such as The Dark Knight which has its title shown at the end of the opening sequence, we have decided to use inter titles within our sequence, this means there is a short bit of narrative followed by a brief title then another bit of narrative. The use of inter titles allows us to link alot with crime films such as Lucky Number Slevin and The Departed. We have also now changed the contrast within the interrogation sequences in order to make the scene more gritty which helps link with film noir. Also we have decided to slow down the flashback sequences as well as the music throughout the whole sequence, this helps create a more dreamlike quality to it  which emphasizes the mystery element of my character as well as the narrative of the story. The music was slowed down primarily in order to suit the sequence a lot better, since we made a few changes and have to add intertitles we discovered that the sequence became much longer and thus meant that the music was increasing its tempo before the appropriate moments, this caused us to panic for a short period of time until we found help from a friend whom stretched the music so that it became longer, this helped dramatically and also allowed us to continue working on the sequence without issue with music.

Possible Titles and Logos

http://katiesawesomeasmediablog.blogspot.com/2012/02/titles-additons-to-squence.html

Here is a link to Katie's blog in which she has posted some samples of titles and logos which we may use within our sequence. The first video posted is another option for us to use for our logo of Dynamite Kitty, before this it was simply a spin logo, we felt this was ok for us however we felt we could possibly do better so Katie ended up creating this, I feel as though this logo is by far superior to the previous spin logo, therefore I would be much more tempted to use this logo as opposed to the spin logo, I feel this way due to the logo being far more unique and in turn looks much more effective. The logo still stays the exact same and remains black and white which links into film noir as well as the flashback sequence.

The second video posted shows the Warner Bros logo (our institution, due to  Warner Bros being known for creating many crime thrillers and dramas) as well as our Dynamite Kitty logo (our studio) and the titles we are thinking of using. Overall I am very satisfied with the titles here, I think they fit in well with the logos and should fit in with the sequence. Originally me, Barry and Katie actually considered whether we should use titles at all, this was due to films like The Dark Knight which shows no credits at all (apart from the film title) until the end. However we ultimately decided that titles should be included within the sequence as this would hopefully be more effective and should also help us link with film noir even more (as the titles are black and white still). We discussed that the titles should be only two things, sophisticated (I.E. simple) and remain black and white. This  would again help us link with classic film noir and would also allow the audience to be more intrigued to the story as opposed to being distracted by the titles. These were made using linear wipes on Katie's laptop and allows us to stay both sophisticated and intriguing towards the audience at the same time.

The third video shows the logo, titles and interlinks them within our sequence (rough cut version) using the titles and logos first and then showing the sequence naturally with the film title at the end. After watching this I feel as though it may possibly be best for us to use intertitles which will mean showing a little bit of footage and then showing some titles followed by more footage and so on. This would probably allow the sequence to flow more and keep the audience interested to the story arch. I think using the film title at the end fits in much better and is far more effective towards the audience, this should also help us link to films such as The Dark Knight, Inception among others who all show an opening sequence and then the title of the film afterwards. So far, we're very happy with the sequence however we are starting to wonder about the music which should be used throughout the titles, this may require us to look at secession studios again to try and find some music which matches the titles, this will need to be discussed in due course with the rest of the group.