Practice opening title sequence

This is an opening title sequence that I edited for my friend. I created the title sequence and graphics and tried to make it look as professional as possible. I used Final Cut Pro to edit and used time lapse videos of flowers to create an interesting look to the title sequence. I made this after I made our opening and I think its obvious, although this is nowhere near perfect, how much I learnt from the previous experience.

Audience Feedback Survey

We created a survey for one of the evaluation questions to get an audiences opinion on our opening.

Process of filming

Once  we started filming we realised how much time it takes to set up, so in total between scenes we probably took about 3 hours of just setting up. As the equipment we were using ended up being too hard to man over and we didn't want to keep our actor waiting, we started to film free-hand. This ended up giving us a much nicer effect but the seriousness of the scene has lead to a change in genre.

Luckily for us the actor was on time, but because we weren't completely sure about how to work the gimbal or this new tripod we ended up having to spend a lot of time on figuring that out, meaning that the actor was waiting around, which lead us to feel quite rushed.

We took make different angles of all of our equipment so that it would be easier when it got to the edit suit,

All in all we spent about 7 hours in the filming process.

First mock-up of opening.

Here is the first mock-up of our opening. There are still a few things I want to tidy up including more titles and add more clips to make it longer but this is the general idea.

Update on progress for opening pt3 EDITING

Editing for me is by far my favourite part of the process, and although I am not finished yet there has been a lot of progress being made and I am excited about what the final product is going to look like. I decided to edit it in a more music video-style fashion, I like the way the music and the heavy bass on the song that we chose compliments the quick cuts. I played around with a couple effects including optical flow and frame blending in the montage to show time passing and create a tippy effect. I also decided to mix some sounds of news reports and anti-transgender marches into the sequence to give it more depth.

Stock Footage.

In an attempt to give our opening more depth we explored the use of old stock footage from films and tv shows etc. Because of the subject matter of our opening we wanted to use old stock footage of Drag Queens and men dressing up as females. Here are some of the videos we used for our opening and for inspiration. We also wanted to explore the use of old news footage to add depth to the story and make it easier to understand at first.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sq3KlxwV4_8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkjbLdbFFeY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVWcJNwMnY4

Update on progress for opening pt2 FILMING

 During the production stage we encountered a few problems such as faulty cameras.
 We also found it difficult to make sure we had all the shot types we needed and still make sure the story made sense to the viewer. We were planning on using the Gimble Beholder to achieve some smooth shots however we were not able to work it so all filming had to be done freehand. We tried to stick to the shot list and storyboard however a few shots we were not able to get. This has taught me that in the future I need to plan more and try stuff out before it comes to the day of filming.

Update on progress for opening pt1 PLANNING

Planning the opening went decently well, we only had to do 3 drafts of the script before we came to our final product. We also created a storyboard and shot list to help us with the process while filming. We were also not sure at this stage if the plot of our script would make sense to the viewer when we actually acted it out so we asked our classmates and teacher for advice.

Representation.

Gender: What gender are the main characters and why? How are you conforming to or breaking gender stereotypes?

Age What age are the people in your film and why? How are you conforming to or breaking stereotypes?

Ethnicity What ethnicities are you representing and why? How are you conforming to or breaking stereotypes?

Sexuality What sexualities are you representing and why? How are you conforming to or breaking stereotypes?

Class and status What social classes are you representing and why?

Physical ability/disability How are you conforming to or breaking stereotypes?

Regional identity How are you conforming to or breaking stereotypes?

Media Techniques.

Camera Shots, Angle, Movement and Composition 

• Shots: establishing shot, master shot, close-up, mid-shot, long shot, wide shot, two-shot, aerial shot, point of view shot, over the shoulder shot, and variations of these.
• Angle: high angle, low angle, canted angle.
• Movement: pan, tilt, track, dolly, crane, steadicam, hand-held, zoom, reverse zoom.
• Composition: framing, rule of thirds, depth of field – deep and shallow focus, focus pulls.

Achieving the film look

In the run up to filming I wanted to learn a bit on how the equipment we would be using would work and how I could achieve the most aesthetic looking film possible.
Here are some videos and tutorials I watched that will help me achieve the look I am going for.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnL4Z0ebcBc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDghgTznPH8

This one was particularly useful as it taught me how to achieve the look without the expensive equipment:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUXtCFpybvQ

The production cycle

When it comes to production, there is a cycle that is followed to ensure that the film is appropriately managed from beginning to end.

The three steps in the cycle are;
  - Pre-production
  - Production
  - Post-production