Art of Title Design

People remember films from opening title sequences, this is how many people describe and recognize films.

Titles in silent films

Words and letters were the biggest part of this type of film, they had to provide essential information for the viewer because of such things as ease of production. This was usually provided by white letters on black backgrounds. In addition to hiring lettering artists, the biggest film studios began to employ typesetters in the production of title cards.

Titles with music

Movies got more popular and producer started to invest more money into sounds with the titles. For example the dog they liked to convey the tone of a movie through the dressage of its main title. For example black and red letters conveyed horror. Hollywood animation studios, including Warner Brothers and MGM, did give some license to their artists to indulge in title antics. Disney took it upon themselves to put the characters into the title sequence.

The birth of title sequences

In 1950 Saul Bass, Pablo Ferro, Maurice Binder and Richard Williams At that time, independent filmmakers made commercial headway by doing things differently, spreading utterly fresh ideas about the possibilities of title sequences. This is the era in which the discipline of film title sequence design was actually born. Experimentation on the fringes, where title sequences really thrive, have led to all kinds of innovation.

The Modern era of film titling

Every film title has been effected in some way by computers this is excellent for designers. Creating film titles means participating in the apprenticeship tradition continued The revolutionary title sequence for “Se7en” (1995) by Kyle Cooper was named by New York Times Magazine as “one of the most important design innovations of the 1990s”: The potential of digital graphics and typography has attracted some of the most creative minds to motion design. Pixar and Disney have reserved crucial parts in the branding of their films for the title sequences, using animated character to represent the film.

Conclusion

Over the years the titles for movies has changed due to the fact that fashion has changed, however the value of the title has stayed the same as it has always been used for the same reasons. The only difference that you can see clearly is that titles get more creative over the years.

Pete Fraser's Blog Planning and Ideas.

Ideas

Planning is the biggest stage of the production, its best to have a record for all the planning that happens. Story boards are the best way of getting the planning easily across. We need to do a visual plan also. With the storyboard, we need to do get across the location of the camera, how long it last and any music. Feedback on the storyboard and ideas can be vital and can bring about lots of improvements.

Planning

Keep the ideas simple. If the idea gets to complex then there is more likely to be more problems, recently The Film Council awarded cash to four young scriptwriters who pitched their thriller, horror or comedy movie ideas in 25 words or less. This 25word approach was raised last year. Research for this kind of project really means getting a full understanding of what the task involves by looking properly at real examples and at examples done by previous media students.

Evaluation

If you keep your Idea simple and focus on how you shoot the film, you will find the whole project easier hence Peter saying 'keep it simple'. If you plan well than your less likely to encounter problems when you are filming, 'Planning is the biggest stage of the production'.

Sound tracks

I have been researching soundtracks, getting an idea for the music we could use in our film. For the opening scene of our film we wanted music that would build tention as the camera is zooming out from Georges (the actor that is playing our main character) face and then stop imediatly when it cuts to black at the start of the montage. I've listened through many OST's and the following I have liked enough to get several songs from iTunes. Sunshine, American Beauty, Lost Highway, Requiem for a Dream, Inception, Pulp Fiction, The Social Network, Trainspotting and Misfits (TV series). The music used in these varies greatly. Some films have a soundtrack specially made, they can be made of orchestras (e.g. Sunshine, Inception, Lord of The Rings), electronic music is also used (Social Network, TRON legacy).

Notable film composers:
- Clint Mansell
- Ennio Morricone
- Hanz Zimmer
- John Murphy
- Thomas Newman
- Trent Reznor

For our project of making a film opening to work we agreed that we would have to be organised, therefore we have made a plan of when we are going to plan, make and edit our film opening. 

Monday-Thursday

• Decide on our storyline, so far this has been our main problem. We have a start and an ending but the middle is still do be decided, we are finding it hard to make up a realistic middle that isn't to confusing.
• Where we are going to film, as the start of the project is going to be mainly a montage of our main characters day we decided to do it mostly at my house, we also managed to turn my dads studio into a torture scene.
• What Props we are going to need, apart from the normal household items for the montage we had to find the right props for the torture scene, things like tools and the chair our main character is going to sit on are very important.
• Extra research into what techniques we can use, thing like how montages are normally displayed in films, they way they are editted and how long the clips are.

Friday

• Film the opening torture scene, this will take a while to get the lighting and the camera angle right.
• Experiment with props, seeing which kinda of chair looked like it would fit more into a torture scene and which tools would be behind the character hanging on the wall to give  

Saturday

• Review all of our progress so far, possibly looking at what we could improve on.
• Finish our filming 

Sunday 

• Research music, seeing if we can find a good tension building sound track for our opening scene

This is a section of the story board we wrote.

  The gist of the story is a man witnesses someone being tortured on a webcam chat website (e.g. chatroulette.com) and has to save them.

   The film will start with a shot of the protagonist tied to a chair himself having been tortured, with the camera slowly zooming out to reveal that this is actually on a webcam. Cut to black and title at the bottom of the screen stating its the day before, we hear an alarm. The black will fade away as if it is from the POV of someone waking up, he will turn the alarm off. We get a montage of his daily activities- eating breakfast, brushing teeth, cycling to school, a lesson etc. He comes home, goes on chatroulette and come across a person being tortured. He calls the police but they disregard it, they think that it is a hoax. He uses his skills with computers to find out where the victim is held and goes to save him.

Film openings that relate to ours

Inception -

Unfortunately I can't find the opening scene from Inception because it's not out on film yet. But the idea of the film starting off in the past is something we want to incorporate into our film, for instance, in Inception the main character wakes up having been washed up on a beach, he then goes inside a house and meets the older version of the man he's been working with for the whole film. Like Inception, we want to start the film off with the main character in the position of the person he see's on his webcam and then you would watch the rest of the film to find out why and how he gets himself into this position. The reason we decided to do this was because it gives us a chance to use a lot of different camera shots.

Pictures of the places we are going to be filming the start of our film.

This will be the road that we will use for the main character to cycle down at the start of the film on his way to school. We chose it because its a nice road and its fairly quiet so we won't be interrupted when trying to film. 

This is the spare room in my house and will be used as the protagonists bedroom. It will be used for the scenes in which he wakes up near the start of the film and when he gets onto the webcam and find the other character.

This is my dads studio, the reason we are going to use this is because we needed a warehouse looking place and this is the closest thing we could think of. Fortunately we won't be showing the outside of it, only the inside for some dark scenes.

This will be the wall the character that is being held hostage will be sat against, the reason we chose this as the  place the character will be sitting is because of the tools and all the mess behind it, we wanted to make it so you don't see the torture but it is implied by the fact that there is a lot of dirty tools in the back ground and the fact that the character looks a little beaten up.

Another reason we decided to choose the studio at my house was because of this large window which is opposite the wall that the character will be sat against, our idea was to shine a light through it so it creates a dim, dirty light that would show a little bit of the character sat in the dark room or hang a light from the ceiling and swing it so you only catch glimpses of the character sat on the chair.

Criminal justice - season 3.


FADE IN:

INT. IDI'S HOUSE - CORRIDOR.

DIEGETIC SOUND: POLICE MAN BANGING ON DOOR.

CAMERA AT THE BACK OF THE CORRIDOR SHOWING THE DOOR AND THE BLURRED OUTLINE OF A POLICE MAN.

CUTS TO: OVER SHOULDER SHOT OF THE POLICE MAN AT THE DOOR.

CAMERA SHOW THE BLURRED FIGURE OF IDI RUSHING TO THE DOOR WHILST TRYING TO DO UP HER DRESSING GOWN.

Idi: Do you have any idea what the time it is?

CUTS TO: OVER SHOULDER SHOT OF THE POLICE MAN.

Police man: Yes mam, I'm sorry to disturb you at this hour, may we come in?

Idi: Not until you tell me whats going on.

CUTS TO: OVER SHOULDER SHOT OF IDI.

Police man: We have arrested Raza on the suspicion of murdering Frank Cordingley.

Idi: I think you've got the wrong house, Raza would never do anything like that.

IDI STARTS TO CLOSE THE DOOR BUT THE OFFICER STICKS HIS FOOT IN THE WAY.

CUTS TO: POLICE MANS POV.

Police man: Mam, If you would please accompany us down to the station, we need you to answer some questions.

FADE IN.

INT. POLICE STATION - INTERVIEW ROOM.

NON-DIEGETIC SOUND: CELL DOOR CLOSING IN THE BACKGROUND.

CUTS TO: EXTREME CLOSE UP OF RAZA SITTING IN AN INTERVIEW ROOM.

INTERVIEW ROOM: A SMALL, DARK ROOM. THE ONLY LIGHT IS A SPOT LIGHT SHINING ON RAZA. THERE IS ONE POLICE MAN BY THE DOOR AND ONE MAN SITTING INFRONT OF RAZA.

CUTS TO: BIRDS EYE VIEW OF THE TABLE WHICH RAZA AND THE MAN ARE SITTING AT.

Enter the interviewer, he places some files down on the table.

Interviewer: So Mr. ...

Raza: Mohammed.

Interviewer: We are going to have to get you to answer some questions, they will be taped in case we later need to rely on them in court.

Raza: Ok.

Raza starts to shake and a tear starts to form in his left eye.

CUTS TO OVER SHOULDER SHOT OF RAZA.

Interviewer: How long had you known Mr. Cordingley for?

Interviewer: Did you and him get along well?

Raza: I didn't know him that well but he seemed like a nice guy.

Interviewer: Apart from the University is there anywhere else that you would see him?

Raza: He lived on the same road as me.

Interviewer: Is there anything that you and Mr. Cordingley disagreed on?

Raza: Like I said, I didn't know him that well so we didn't speak a lot.

CUTS TO OVER SHOULDER SHOT OF THE INTERVIEWER WITH THE SEE-THROUGH MIRROR BEHIND HIM.

Interviewer: You are currently in in a lot of debt am I right in saying?

Pause

Interviewer: £26,000?

Raza: Yes.

Interviewer: Are you aware that a few week before Mr. Cordingley had won £32,000 cash price from the Lottery?

Raza: Yes.

CUTS TO: OVER SHOULDER SHOT OF RAZA.

Interviewer: Is it true that all that debt has now been paid off?

Raza: Most of it, yes. 

The interviewer looks at the police man at the door.

CUTS TO: POV SHOT OF THE INTERVIEWER LOOKING AT THE POLICE MAN

Interviewer: Don't you think it's strange that shortly after Mr. Cordingley's murder your debts suddenly disappeared? 

Raza: It was inheritance from my grandma who recently passed away, it's bad enough I'm accused of murder but now your saying I did it for money?

Raza starts to break into a sweat.

The police man at the door smirks. The interviewer starts to get more aggressive with Raza

CUTS TO: MEDIUM SHOT OF THE TABLE WITH THE TWO CHARACTERS ON EITHER SIDE.

Raza is starting to talk quietly. Raza is crying now with his head low, looking at the floor.

Interviewer: Did you kill Mr. Cordingley?

Raza: No.

Interviewer: Theres no point in lying to me Raza. Did you kill Mr. Cordingley.

Raza: No.

CUTS TO: CLOSE UP OF RAZA WITH HIS HEAD IN HIS HANDS.

Raza starts to mumble.

Raza: This can't be happening, this can't be happening.

Interviewer: Do you have something to say?

Raza gives no reply.

CUTS TO: WIDE SHOT WHICH INCLUDES THE WHOLE ROOM WITH THE POLICE MAN AND THE DOOR IN THE CENTRE.

The interviewer gets up and walks out of the room leaving Raza in pieces at the table.

Raza: I didn't kill him, why would any one think I did, I barely knew him, I barely talked to him, I barely ...

The interview room door opens and a policeman shows Raza to a cell.

FADE IN:

INT. POLICE STATION - RECEPTION.

DIEGETIC SOUND: THE MAN NEXT TO HIM GRUNTS AND TURNS THE PAGE OF HIS MAGAZINE.

CAMERA SHOWS IDI SAT, WAIT QUIETLY ON A CHAIR IN THE CORNER OF THE ROOM.

Idi looks up.

CUTS TO: MEDIUM SHOT OF A POLICE WOMAN BEHIND A DESK.

Police woman: You are free to see your son, although he will be held in the police station under we get further orders.

FADE OUT.

The art of title design

The art of title design

People remember film from good opening title sequences. 


Titles in silent films: 
Words and letters were the biggest part of this type of film, they had to provide essential information for the viewer because of such things as ease of production. This was usually provided by white letters on black backgrounds. In addition to hiring lettering artists, the biggest film studios began to employ typesetters in the production of title cards 


Titles with music:
Movies got more popular and producer started to invest more money into sounds with the titles. For example the dog they liked to convey the tone of a movie through the dressage of its main title. For example black and red letters conveyed horror. Hollywood animation studios, including Warner Brothers and MGM, did give some license to their artists to indulge in title antics. Disney took it upon themselves to put the characters into the title sequence

Pete Frasers Blog ideas and planning

Pete Frasers Blog ideas and planning

Ideas
Keep the ideas simple.  If the idea gets to complex then there is more likely to be more problems, recently The Film Council awarded cash to four young scriptwriters who pitched their thriller, horror or comedy movie ideas in 25 words or less. This 25word approach was raised last year. Research for this kind of project really means getting a full understanding of what the task involves by looking properly at real examples and at examples done by previous media students.


Planning
Planning is the biggest stage of the production, its best to have a record for all the planning that happens. Story boards are the best way of getting the planning easily across. We need to do a visual plan also. With the storyboard, we need to do get across the location of the camera, how long it last and any music. Feedback on the storyboard and ideas can be vital and can bring about lots of improvements.

AS Media Studies: Preliminary Task

For our preliminary task our group created a chase scene for an opening to a film. Before filming we drew out a simple story bored to plan the premises of the story and plan the shots and position of the camera. We decided to use the underpass because it was close to school and the steep slope, graffiti and tunnel created a dramatic mise en scene.
We took close up shots of just the legs of Harry and Adam running past, we tried to pile leaves in the way to make the running more dramatic. The close up of the two running accross doesnt reveal who they, drawing the audience in to learn more.
Next we had a shot from the balcony of the underpass to film a tracking shot so that we see the two fully for the first time. Adam is bigger than Harry and the title is called The Chase so the audience may have guessed that Harry is in danger (we could have dressed more appropriately to emphasise this).
It Cuts to another tracking shot from the balcony from a different position. From here we see that they run into the tunnel, only one way to go for Harry.
A cut to the two running through the tunnel (we considered doing this in slow motion for dramatic tension. You can see from our deleted scenes that we tried simply running slowly but that didnt work and we didn't know how to create a slow motion effect). It then cuts to me waiting around the corner. The audience knowshat Harry cannot escape, this creates dramatic irony. I grab him and it cuts to a medium shot of us. t

Continuity

This is a fundermental principle of moving image production. Continunity is normally secured by producers following the conventions of the classical realist text, this allows the plot and story to unfold in a way that the audience can assume what happens inbetween each shot or sequence. For example a person travelling on a train, the audience will not think it is short and they will assume inbetween shots there is nothing of significance. But if the character moved then the continunity rule has been broken.

The 180° rule

The 180° rule is a basic guideline in film making that states that two characters in the same scene should always have the same left/right relationship to each other. If the camera passes over the imaginary axis connecting the two subjects, it is called crossing the line. The new shot, from the opposite side, is known as a reverse angle.

Shot reverse shot

Shot reverse shot

Shot reverse shot or shot/countershot is a film technique where one character is shown looking at another character (often off-screen), and then the other character is shown looking back at the first character. Since the characters are shown facing in opposite directions, the viewer assumes that they are looking at each other

The Inbetweeners Advert

The Inbetweeners Advert


The advert starts off with a medium shot of a school child in the foreground and some of the school in the background to give us a view of where most of the T.V program is set. After that we are soon introduced to the four main characters, the camera give us a close up of each of them showing us their personality and the way they act, the camera's then follow them into their school and we get the impression that they are very unpopular by the way they are treated. 

Poster Analysis

- A list of the actors to draw the audience in.
- A slogan, combined with the general look of the poster gives the audience an idea of what the film will be about.
- The fact that Simon Pegg's character is in front of Nick Frost's gives us the impression that he is more of a side kick.
- The over all look of the poster is very serious which is very misleading seeing as the film is a comedy.
- The reflection in their glasses shows us the town that the characters, as police officers protect.
- The darkness of the poster shows us that there is obviously something wrong.
- Underneath the title it tells the audience that it's from the makers of Shaun of the dead which was a very funny, successful film, this would interest people that have seen other films by those people.

Camera Shots

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AF4DWljYcac

The first shot is a crab shot which starts close to the ground and the characters move closer to the camera this denotes to the audience that these characters have more power and are more important because we are looking up on them. Next the camera arcs round and quickly edits into a medium shot of the man.
After that the camera slowly zooms into the prison this anchors the audience to the prison because it make you feel like you are going into the prison. This shot would of cost quite a lot of money because they would of had to pay for the equipment to allow the shot to take place.

Media


In class today we were looking at media as a whole and what is it and what the media is. Within class discussion we were talking about everything that make up the media from, Newspapers to the internet to T.V. One word that is very important in media is medium. Medium is something that is in the middle, media denotes this word because the media is in the middle of something happening and people finding out. For example, someone famous dies, the media is in the middle of that and it reaching people. Also we were looking at what is the media, this is individual aspects that make up the media.
To conclude, in this lesson i found out what the media is, what it does, how it does it and how important the word medium is in the subject media.

Juxtaposition


- In the second lesson of media studies AS level, we were looking at juxtaposition. Juxtaposition is the contrast between two things. These two elements can be very different or have a slight relationship. Within the lesson we were assigned to create a juxtaposition and then evaluate it. I chose to look at the contract between big and small, i collected two pictures. When evaluating the juxtaposition, we were looking at aspects such as what the background signifies, what themes are present within the picture, what the foreground signifies and also to look at the powers that this juxtaposition represents.

Media Studies Lesson: 13/9/10


- Signifier's aren't only visual, they apply to sound as well. Semiotics is the study of signs. We look at three types of "signs".

• Symbolic - The learned codes. E.g numbers, letters and punctuation marks.
• Iconic - Resembling or imitating the signified. E.g photo or realistic sounds.
• Indexical - Where something is directly connected to the signified