The Avengers- title sequence

Update

We have been unable to do any group work for the last 2 weeks because the Macs got stolen. This means that our editing work is lost and so we need to re-do this again which is annoying as we did finish it the first time round. However, now that the Macs have arrived, tomorrow we will need to start editing again in order to get this finished and to the standard we want it to be. This does mean that we have to work as harder and have more lunch/ free periods/ after school sessions in order to get this done in time and as good as we had it before. Despite this, I think we all know exactly how we want the sequence to be as we have had it completed the first time, and so it wouldn't be too much of a hassle. 

Credits

In the creative arts, credits are an acknowledgment of those who participated in the production.  They are often shown at the end of movies and on CD jackets. In film, television, theatre, etc. the names of actors and behind the scenes staff who contributed in this production. 

Opening Credits

The opening credits show the most important people at the beginning i.e. the actors that are taking part, the director, producer editor and more.  They are usually shown on a blank screen, at the bottom/ top of action and even next to the characters and where the action is taking place. This for me makes it more visually interesting and we are able to see exactly who the characters are, and doesn't bore the audience by looking at just plain text on a plain background, but the action keeps their attention drawn to the movie.

Opening credits since the 1980s, identify the major characters and crew, while the closing credits list the extensive cast and production crew. Here is a typical way of how credits are being layed out:

Common opening credits order

While there are numerous variations most opening credits use some variation of the basic order^[4] noted within:

• (NAME OF THE STUDIO)

Name of the studio that is distributing the film and may or may not have produced it (Walt Disney Pictures, Columbia, Lions Gate, Universal, Marvel Studios, Dimension, Miramax etc.).

• (NAME OF THE PRODUCTION COMPANY)

Name of the production company that actually made the film or name of the investment groups or companies that financed a substantial part of the film (usually credited as "in association with" or "A (studio name) production.").

• (PRODUCER NAME) PRODUCTION or/and (director only) A FILM BY (DIRECTOR NAME)

Director's first credit, often "a film by XY or "a XY film".

• STARRING

Principal actors and the most important cast in the film.

• (FILM'S TITLE)

Name of the film.

• FEATURING

Featured actors

• CASTING or CASTING BY

Casting Director

• MUSIC or MUSIC COMPOSED BY or ORIGINAL SCORE BY

Composer of music

• PRODUCTION DESIGN or PRODUCTION DESIGNER

As a variation some of the below may be noted:

• SET DESIGN
• COSTUMES or COSTUMES BY or GOWNS (older movies)
• HAIRDRESSER
• MAKE-UP ARTIST
• SOUND RECORDING (older movies)
• VISUAL EFFECTS DIRECTOR or VISUAL EFFECTS BY

• EDITOR or EDITED BY

• DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY

• PRODUCER or PRODUCED BY, EXECUTIVE PRODUCER

Producers, co-producers, executive producers, 'also produced by' (credited for various reasons according to contracts and personal scrutiny of the principal producer). Often, though, the name of the producer will be the next-to-last opening credit, just before the director's name is shown.

• BASED ON THE BOOK (PLAY, GRAPHIC NOVEL etc.) BY or FROM A PLAY/BOOK BY (older movies)

If based on a book or other literary work.

• BASED ON THE CHARACTERS BY or BASED ON THE CHARACTERS CREATED BY

If based on characters from a book or other media.

• STORY or STORY BY

Person who wrote the story on which the script is based, gets "story by" credit, and the first screenplay credit, unless the script made substantial changes to the story.

• WRITER(S) or WRITTEN BY

• DIRECTOR or DIRECTED BY

Director. The Directors Guild of America usually permits a film to list only one director, even when it is known that two or more worked on it. 

Distribution Openings

As our genre is between romantic and a coming of age genre, me and my group wanted the distribution opening to be creative and interactive, which would capture the audience's attention immediately but also be creative as well. For example, looking at some of the major distribution companies, their opeinings prior to the actual movie is very creative.
This is the way Dreamworks Pictures open:

I really like this opening theme because what we see is parallel to their title' Dreamworks' and the use of the colours blue & white and puffy clouds creates this dreamy feeling. It also has a calm and soothing effect which is important because Dreamworks  films are animation and adventure movies aimed at young people, therefore this suits nicely for their type of audience and genre. 



Below is the Paramount Pictures opening theme for their 100th Anniversary: 

I thought again this was very creative, and the use of pink sky, beautiful mountain and lake, this helps to create a sense of enchantment , which is effective because this could be what their movies are about.  For example films like Transformers and Iron Man 2 are distributed by Paramount Pictures, and are adventure films. Therefore, this is effective in creating this feeling and it is something we also want to create in our opening sequence. We want it to be exciting right from the start, preparing our audience to feel in a thrilling/ happy mood. 

Feedback

One of the lessons we had to peer assess each others opening sequences in the classroom and see what he have produced so far. The overall feedback we got was helpful because it helped us to improve. For example, we have re-filmed the part where I am at the phone call and we are also re-filming the main girl, Ruby's phone call, as it was slightly of the frame. 

Here is the feedback we got from people in our class: 

Credits

This week and next week we need to start creating our credits to go into our opening sequence. I have found some examples below which I enjoy and think are effective: 

 Lord of War

Although the credits are very basic and just appear in standard font and are of one colour, I think this is effective because it doesn't distract the attention of the visually creative and entertaining action in the background.  Some of the letters actually appear quite long and straight with no swirly letters which you might see in a romantic or chick flick genre; therefore this is perfect for this type of genre and target audience who might be older. The bright font is easy to see from the dark/ uncanny atmosphere we are being shown in the background which makes it easier to see but the style is not too distracting so that viewers do not miss the important action. 

Thank you for smoking 

 

I found the credits on this opening sequence very visually creative and entertaining to watch. I liked how the credits appeared on the vintage cigarette packets which is effective because it matches the title of the movie, which is obviously referring to cigarettes. The names of all the people are in different fonts, shapes, colours and sizes which I also found effective because although there is no particular important action, the fast pacing of the credits and different colours capture the readers attention, drawing them in to want to watch more. Overall, I liked the whole idea of the way they presented the credits and I think it  was different from any other opening sequence I have watched. The fact that it is so original is what makes it unique and interesting.

The Notebook

The title credits for The Notebook are very simple and basic, which is effective because they aren't distracting from the enchanting and breathtaking scenery we are presented with. They also very small and usually at side of the corner which I thought was very unusual. I liked the simple and elegance to these credits although I did find this a bit boring because I thought it dragged on for too long. In order to make our opening sequence enteratining I think we should make our credits for eye-capturing and entertaining which is unique. This way people can be drawn in, because the opening sequence is what will determine whetehr people will wathc the movie.

What we still need to do...

Overall, I am happy with the progress we have been making so far and I think that our opening sequence is nearly completed. Tomorrow we have a final thing to re-film which is the phone cal,l which I will be doing and also  Ruby's part as she was slightly off frame on one of the shots for the phone call.

Next week we will be editing on Garageband our music because although we have experimented a lot, the music sounds like something you would listen to a club so we have been trying to find some vocals to go alongside the music. We also need to complete adding the credits over the boy and the girl's products.

Progress

Today in lesson we had to review each others opening sequences and look at rough cuts of what it might look like as a finished sequence. I found this lesson effective because some of the people gave us some really constrictive criticism which me and my group will take on board in order to improve our opening sequence. 

Overall, we got some very positive feedback from others. They particularly liked the match on action from the girls dress into the boys hair product and they said it was very creative. They also said that it was easy to understand and none of the parts were ambiguous or difficult to understand. This was particularly important for us because we want to create an sequence which our viewers and others can understand, because if they don't then they will easily get bored or distracted.

However, we did get some criticisms such as the beginning the of the party was slightly darker and so they couldn't see the characters as well. Although being the party this was the effect we were going for, we will try to improve this by adding some light from final cut and making the whole scene easier to see. Also, some of the people said that when Ruby was talking on the phone, the extreme close-up of her face was slightly off frame so we will try to re-film that part in order to improve it.

Re-filming

We have finished re-filming the parts we had to do of the main girl and the establishing shot. I think overall it went well because this time we had managed to show close-up shots of Ruby's face which is just what we needed. 
Tomorrow we just need to edit these into our opening sequence and start adding in the music which is important in order to get a sense of realism in this sequence.

4/ 2/ 2013

Progress-

In today's lesson we had completed the opening sequence as a rough cut in order to see the overall flow of it and what else we still need to re-film. As we are re-filming some of the main girls part's today, we shall replace the old footage from our opening sequence and edit in the new ones.
A problem is that our opening sequence is quite long at the moment (3 minutes), exceeding our maximum of it being around 2 minutes long. In order to reduce these we have found that some of the shots we had which weren't as vital were too lengthy so during this week of editing we shall need to cut these down so it fastens the editing pace. In a way this can be effective because during the inter-cutting between the characters we do want to maintain a fast pace in order to keep the viewers entertained and create a sense of excitement.
We still haven't found the right music and we have found that quite challenging because the music we have created on garageband so far is like club music and not house party and so we would need to try and find some vocals in order to fit in with our edited music.

Editing

During the last week we have focused our attention a lot on focusing both during the lessons and some of us even stayed after school in order to finish the editing and make sure that we finish the opening sequence before showing it to everyone as a rough cut next Thursday ( 7.2.2013) 

What I like so far...

So far I really like how the opening sequence has turned out, but I like our graphic matching the most because it turned out just the way we had hoped. It really does make the whole sequence more interesting and it shows off some of the techniques we have learnt during lesson. As our target audience is younger people, it is important that we have interesting shots like these ones but also have a relatively fast pace of editing in order to create a sense of excitement and I think we have definitely done that in the inter-cutting of the 2 characters. Some of the shots which are less important but needed i.e. showing the boy put his hand on his ipod to change the song, these type of shots are perfect to put the credits over them. 
When the main girl, Ruby is walking to the house party, some of the shots we had I thought were really good because we had varied them a lot from close-ups to long shots. This establishes were she is but also again showing the close details of the girl such as showing her pretty shoes; an important aspect in order to fulfil our target audience's expectations, who are mainly girls.
 When the girl is getting ready the shots we had are really good because we have maintained our aim of showing only close details of her face such as her eyes and lips, in order to not reveal her face until the actual party. However, some of the times we do show her face so those will need to be re-filmed otherwise this effect would not work.
 The party scene I thought also had good shots, especially at the beginning where the camera moves along the dolly across the room to create a very flowy feel, which makes the viewer feel as though they are there, which is important as we want to make the viewers part of our opening sequence and not bore them. 

Feed the Fish- Preliminary Sequence

Feed The Fish 

I think that we had some nice shots in our sequence and we tried to vary them as much as possible in order to apply what we have learnt. At the beginning, I like the establishing shot because it captures the place really well and the panning shot allows the audience to see the entire location, which is important. The reason why we did this was because we wanted to draw attention to our main character, which I played. However, I do feel like this was quite rushed and so the camera did shake a little, so next time, when using an establishing shot like this in my  opening sequence, I need to make sure to put the camera on a tripod so it doesn't jog. Therefore this can make the sequence more realistic but also flow more coherently. 

     We then have a low angle shot which I thought was a good way of making the whole scene a bit more interesting but thought that it doesn't really make that much sense because normally when making a low-angle shot this is for someone who is important/ higher status and this was not the character who we were trying to present. If I had to improve this I would make sure to pay more careful attention on the types of shots I use and whether they have a particular intention. 
     In term of sound here I think this was an issue in this sequence because we did not block the sound out and so you can hear background noise of other students in the hallway, which was hard to control. Therefore, in my real opening sequence I would make sure that we film in a quiet environment or be able to control the sound to make it realistic, where there's no disturbance.

When I walk through the stairs this was a good long shot because it really does show the character well and the viewers can clearly see what I am doing. However, I think this shot would have been better if the camera was again still on a tripod, and it pans slightly when I go up the stairs.
  The shot of opening the key I thought would have been better if we had included a close-up shot of what I'm doing because I think that was important and we needed to divert the audience's attention to that. We also move quite quickly to the sign, so to improve, better control of the camera would make this more smooth.
I think the over the shoulder shot was effective because we can see the other character which is also important in this sequence; also it makes it realistic as the audience can see who I am directly talking to.
  The shot if Fahad in the background is also effective because we can see him acting as the 'security guard' as he appears really tall and masculine but cannot see his face which adds some kind of tension as to who he is.
  Other shots I don't think quite worked was putting the camera at a low-angle again because it doesn't appear to make that much sense.To improve next time, I think a simple over the shoulder shot would have been better because people can focus on the actual conversation, which is vital. The flashback part of the scene of putting toilet paper in the toilet could have been better by actually having better props such as real fish food, adding to the humour, but yet again for the actual opening sequence I think that we will be a lot more prepared and feel confident, taking on boards the skills we had learnt and applying them.
  Our peers in the classroom also gave us constructive criticisms such as they didn't understand why I was walking up the stairs and suddenly we were outside, so planning before hand is something I will take on board in my opening sequence in order for us to know exactly the type of shots we are filming, location, etc. 

  Shot Types

Establishing shot: We start off with an establishing shot in order for the audience to be clear where the who sequence is going to be set, the environment and location they are in. For example, in this case it is clear that this is a school. I liked how we panned this shot and so this gives an overview of the whole building, but it also follows the character as she enters the door.

Low- angle shot:  We then decided to do a low angle shot. A reason for this is that we not only want to experiment and use varied shots but we also wanted to maintain some suspense by not showing the character's face. However, I do think that a low angle shows higher status and power, this is a problem as this character is not the powerful one and so this may convey a misunderstanding in our audience. In my main opening sequence I should pay more attention to the type of shots I use and the meaning they may have.

Panning: As I am walking the stairs, we used a panning shot in order for the audience to see my at the top of the stairs. However, I do feel it would have been much more smoother and better if we had used continuity editing here and filmed me on the other side of the stairs coming towards the camera in order to create realism. This can also minimise the camera shaking and so the overall sequence may have looked professional.

Close-up:  In this shot we tried to show that what the girl is doing is something dangerous and secretive  hence the close-up shot of the sign 'danger of death'. I think this was effective in creating this a close-up shot in order to shock the audience, however, I think we should have held this shot for longer or gradually have zoomed in to create some kind of dramatic tension and suspense.

 Shot-reverse-shot:  We then decided to use this shot in order to show the two characters having a conversation. This gives a sense of intimacy as we are able to see the conversation of these two characters and follow up what they are talking about so keeps the audience hooked.

High- angle shot: The reason we used a high-angle shot was because we wanted to show the two characters talking to each other and give a whole over view of where they are, their body language, position and surrounding, which is important detail in keeping the audience interested in knowing what's going

Credits

For the opening sequence it would be best if the credits for our opening sequence are shown onto the products of the girl and boy getting ready. 
For example, for the girl's parts, while she is putting on her make-up some of the credits could be on her blusher, mascara, lipstick etc while the boys credits could be on his hairspray. I think this is effective because I found that while looking at some films which have their credits with no background action which I found very boring and ineffective. However, I think that for our target audience of 15- 25 year olds who are mainly girls, we need to make sure that we make it as interesting as possible in order to attain their attention and avoid making it boring.

For example, the pictures on this post is where the credits will go on top of them when showing the inter-cutting of both the two main characters. This also sets the scene as well because while looking at the girly products of different make-up and hair products, the audience would immediately know that this would be stereotypically a girl's bedroom. The use of colours therefore can give vital information away; such as whenever we've used pink and light colours, this represent the girls and the more darker colours represent the boy. This also makes it easily recognizable by the audience and we do not need to show their faces in order to tell them who is getting ready or which character we are showing.

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31/ 01/ 2013

Progress-
Today we spent editing our opening sequence and continued working on making the footage flow together nicely. We need to still re-film some of our footage because of lighting issues so we will hopefully do it on the weekend.
Overall, today was successful as Nicola and Kirsten spent time finding the right music and have tried to create something on GarageBand which would fit when the girl and boy are getting ready. We have all decided that it would be best to have different types of music on the boy and girl so it appears like realistically what they might listen but also looks like diagetic sound i.e. they are actually listening to this type of music whilst getting ready.
Meanwhile, me and Natalie carried editing the sequence together; I think that the graphic match from the girl's red dress and his red bottle works really nicely and is visually entertainer/ creative. 

 

 

29/ 01/ 2013

Today in lesson we were beginning to edit all our footage together. We split our group up so half of us were editing our opening sequence and the other half of us were trying to create some music on Garageband. While editing some of our footage we found out that some bits were good but too dark so we shall need to re-film those over the next couple of days using the lights this time in order to see the characters more clearer.
Here are some pics: 

Editing opening sequence

On Garageband

At the end of the lesson we managed to complete a rough draft of what our music for the party scene would be like which gave us all an idea of what it would sound like, what we need to improve/ add in future lessons. 

Our first draft of music we completed

Storyboard

Pre-Production

Before filming the actual footage for our opening sequence, we have created a storyboard which is part of our pre-production stage.
Creating a storyboard helped us immensely when it came to filming because the first day of filming we were still have did not complete our storyboard so had trouble finding the right type of shots to film. This was also not ideal because it wasted a lot of time. SO we then created a storyboard and the weekend period of shooting the opening sequence (26-27th January) we had all the shots we needed, and dealing with so many people we were able to be more organized and confident in what we needed.

Here is the storyboard we had created: (although during the filming day we did add more shots we thought would be good at that time)

Progress

28/1/2013- So this weekend we have managed to film all of our footage and this lesson we were looking through it to make sure we have captured everything we needed or whether we need to re-film. We have started to edit some of the bits of the footage and some of us are using garageband in order to create the music for this opening sequence.
We are planning to edit as much as we can all week, swapping around so everyone gets a turn to edit and have an input in this project. 

Filming Day 2

On Sunday we completed out filming by managing to film the boy's and girls parts with the party scenes. Overall I think it was a successful day because we managed to get a variety of different camera shots and varied them in order to apply what we had learnt.

On Saturday some of the girls in our group had to 'dress' a room in order for the mis- en- scene to look like it's a boy's room. I think this was effective because we wanted to make sure that all the details were correct and it was realistically a room which a boy would be in. Here is a pic of the room: 

 

For the girls part, again we tried to stereotypically create a room which would be ideally for a teenage girl in order to fulfill out genre of a romantic/ coming of age film. We made sure the props were suited for this so we placed a lot of makeup, magazines, perfume, etc which helped us achieve this aim. 

 

For the party we had to dress up a living room again and make sure that there was enough props in order to make it look like a real party. Here are some location photos:  

 

Overall, this weekend of filming and setting up the rooms was successful because we managed to get a lot done and the pre-planning (pre-production stage) of storyboards, costumes, lighting  was helpful because we know what we had to do or the types of shots we wanted. Now we will be editing this and hopefully we have done a great job! 

Filming Day 1

We did some filming on the 17/ 1/ 2013 which was quite successful as we managed to film some great shots of the main girl, Ruby.  

What went well? : We had really good close-up shots of the girl such as of her eyes, close detail of her answering the phone etc. We had also filmed half of her face when she answers the phone because we didn't want to reveal her full face or outfit yet until she finally arrives at the party, which is why we filmed a lot of variety of extreme close-ups, close-ups and medium shots. We have also managed to film a point of view shot of her spraying hairspray on her face but towards the camera so its as if the audience are the main character. We will inter-cut this with the main guy as he is getting ready in order to make this more visually interesting.

What could be improved?: Whilst filming the main girl walking outside and going to the party, when watching this back it was quite dark and not as we hoped. To improve this we have arranged to re-film this on Monday the 28th of January in order for the viewers to see it clearer and improve the quality of our footage.



Here are some of the 'behind the scenes' of us filming for the first day:

Filming

We filmed last week the first half of out whole filming project which was the girl getting ready such as putting on her makeup and doing her hair for the party scene.
We decided that it would be best if we didn't show too much of the girls face but only extreme close-ups of the details of her face such as her eye. This would be effective because no one would have seen her yet until the final reveal at the party- building some tension.

Some shots we had done were like those:

For one of the shots we are filming the main girl, Ruby put her shoes on which would be a similar close-up shot like this one