Typography/Credits Analysis of Three Films...

After doing some further research into credits and the order they are put into film openings, I found three film openings that I thought would be significant in relation to our own film opening;

ALPHA DOG: I really like the opening to this film because it shows old childhood footage of some of the characters and lots of different names, etc. appear over the top of these images, then after that, the screen goes black and then an interview with Bruce Willis appears on screen. This is relevant to our film opening because we are using a police interview as our voice over, and it will be helpful to us when we come to record our voice over.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dk4Nalt3350

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN: This opening is also relevant to us because of the use of a voice over and the random shots that set the scene. I like the fact that all the credits are right at the beginning of the opening, so that they do not interfer with the rest of the opening.


TWILIGHT: This film opening is significant because you hear her voice before you see anything and it gives us an idea of what our film opening would sound like with 'Leyla's' voice over the top of the action that is going on. The production company and title come in after the voice over and they appear after the music starts.

Opening Credits Research...

In class yesterday, we watched a selection of film openings in order to see what the most popular order of credit appearance was and to help us decide how we should position the names/title/production company/etc. in our own film opening.

Here are some brief descriptions of the openings we watched;

BABEL: Immediately the audience sees the name of the production companies. Black screen and sound of footsteps comes before the moving image.

DERAILED: Again black screen with sound (someone coughing) before any visuals are shown. Technical name of production company comes first then names and these appear over visuals.

BOURNE IDENTITY: Sound before visuals again. Sets the scene first. Lots of action/fast-paced editing , then a black screen and then the title.

IN BRUGES: Names of people involved and production companies pop up in between still shots that are setting the scene for the film (establishing shots).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ilO75OmtUo

LIFE OF DAVID GALE: Title and production company come right at the start before any action is seen. Simple but effective.

THE MEXICAN: Sound before visuals again. Text appears very near the start. The title is in tiny red letters (contrast to the previous names that were in white).

ANGELS AND DEMONS: Title and production company names appear straight away, using the same fading effect on each one.

I think we should move the title of our film to the very start of the film opening so it appears just after the production company name and then our names can be spread throughout the film as they are now. This way, we can have the voice over of the police interview start up before any visuals are shown on the screen and I think this will be very effective.

Sixth Draft...

After watching our fifth draft a few times and getting other people to look at it, we have decided to make the present-day shots of 'Leyla' much slower and change the effect to an iMovie effect called Romantic which makes the shots much lighter, and slightly hazy around the edges. This definately gives us the dream-like effect we were hoping for and the slowed down shots definately make it seem much more like an actual film opening rather than a film trailer which is what it looked like before.

Also, when we were editing we decided that we wanted a black screen right at the start with sound over the top of that, before you even see anything happen on screen. Just as a trial run, we layered some walkie-talkie noises over the top of the very beginning of this draft. I quite like the effect this has, but we will obviously play around with this a lot more when we record our voice over.

We also made the 'Filmed and Edited By' a bit longer as we got told it was not on screen for long enough and the audience would not have been able to read it in enough time.

Fourth Draft of Our Film...

After having a few technical issues with our film on iMovie (and thinking we would have to edit everything again!) we managed to get on with editing again and this is our fourth draft of our film opening.
We discussed the name of the film again and decided it would be most effective to name our main character and then just use her first name as the title of our film and we ended up calling it 'Leyla' as we wanted something slightly unusual to reflect the odd situation the character finds herself in.
We took out the shot of the necklace at the end because we felt that it didn't really work with our initial concept. We also added in a couple more shots of 'Leyla' in the woods to emphasize her situation to the audience. We have also sorted out the credits now and made sure that they are all timed correctly, etc.

Third draft of our film opening...

Here is the latest draft of our film opening which we have temporarily named 'Pulse'. We spent a lot of time trying to perfect our credits and I am really happy with the way they've turned out although we forgot to add in an 'and' before the last name and we might have to seperate 'Filmed and edited by' from 'Aimie Condon' just so that it does not go on for too long. We made sure the timing of the credits was not too long and not too short as well, and decided that about 4 seconds was just enough for the audience to be able to read the name in time. We chose a suitably odd font from a font website and used that for our credits and we made the font a different size each time and spaced them differently each time.

We also cut up the shot of charlotte walking away down the path at the end so that she disappears and reappears which I think creates a really nice effect.

Also, we've added in the shots that involve the symbolic clock/necklace so that the opening feels like it has darker connotations and raises questions in the audience, such as, who is swinging Charlotte's necklace at the end of the opening? We also changed the parts of Sarah (the 'baddie') to colour so that it appears as though she is causing Charlotte's situation.

We cut out a few parts as well after hearing some audience feedback about there being too much repetitive footage from the car so we edited it accordingly (and got rid of the clock shot which was really out of place because of the lighting, etc.).

I am really happy with how it looks at the moment and cannot wait to get started on the voice over!