After having watched many thriller trailers, we felt it was an obvious notion not to opt out for a solid black background to display the shot with our film title on. The rationale behind this was that initially during the production of the animatic storyboard, we had difficulty making the film name stand out amid the promotion titles; this then gave us the incentive to utilize a piece of software called Adobe After Effects CS6.
Having obtained the aforementioned software, we each had the idea to display our film title amid a cloud of smoke and have the writing appear and evaporate. We analysed, after having created this animated text file, that the colouring of the text - whilst it had connotation of innocence admist the mask of the countryside - did not stand out and adhere to the colour scheme we exploited in our two ancillary texts. We thought that this movie title shot would be effective in promoting the style genre of our trailer, however we reached the consensus that the smoke effect did not look realistic and this therefore would not look effective in maintaining the serious tone we produced throughout our three media texts.
"Whilst the idea of the smoke is fitting to your genre, I think it would be more effective if the smoke were to move in a realistic manner, rather than appearing static. I do, however like the transitions of the text, especially when they fade and become part of the smoke". This feedback allowed for us to see where we could improve if we were to carry out this project again. To address the issue of the smoke we would have to look further into how to create the more realistic look, perhaps this could be created through changing the pace at which the smoke moved through out this title shot.
During our developing stage we experimented with the colours - red, black, white and grey. This is an exemplar shot to demonstrate how we started to evolve our initial ideas...
"Although the colour red stands out well against the background and keeps to the theme of fear and danger, I feel that it does not work on the same level as the first shot - this is because the transition of the words does not compliment the smoke effect."
Taking in this feedback which we received, we decided that if we were to redo this task again, we would address the issue of making the transition accompany the smoke effect. We would do this by increasing the 'feather' transition percentage and make the words disappear from left to right and not word by word. Also maybe by going for a softer red.
The overall consensus in our group was that the red did work well against the background and gave continuity to our promotional package, however the main reason we decided to not choose this option is because we felt that the smoke did not work well, it did not move in an organic way and looked very manufactured.
This is one of our attempts to create our very own movie production logo - Cameo. Out of all of the animated shots that we made, this one by far took the longest and was more complex due to elements such as creating a shadow, sourcing our own image for the background, making sure the right amount of wall crumbled and that the dust was visible.
"I think that this example of a movie production logo is unrealistically long, and does not have a continuous and professional flow. Although the effect used is very imaginative and interesting, I feel that this production logo could only accompany certain movie genres e.g. thriller/horror."
This statement which we received sums up what we thought after having placed it among our footage sequence in Final Cut Express. The duration of this clip was of an unfeasible length and when we stepped back to look at what we created, we realized we did not want to create such a specific logo that could only be applied to a thriller/horror film. So, in terms what we had in mind, this example did not work for us on a professional scale. However, we all felt that this was very effective in exploiting our knowledge and talent working with Adobe After Effects to a certain extent.
If we were to include this shot into our trailer, we would tackle the aforementioned issues by cutting down on length and speeding up the rate of the crumbling effect. Furthermore, we could test other backgrounds so that our movie company production logo can be more generalisable.
When evaluating each of the products that we created via Adobe Ae, in comparison to the others, this was a fairly simple design and led us to ask the question "Is it too basic?" As a group, our general reaction was "yes it is perhaps too simplistic" as there is not any presence of colour used and the writing could be much bigger to grab our audience's attention. However there are some very good points. For instance, the pulling back effect of the text foreshadowed the closing shot of our trailer when the protagonist of Queensdown Warren is being physically influenced by the boys. In addition, the effect worked well as it displayed the fast paced action that will feature in our film and the element of a chase.
"I feel like this shot could be slightly longer as it is a chance for the audience to take in and remember the title of the movie. However I do like the fade in and fade out transitions used and the way the title sweeps across the screen."
In response to this feedback, I am in complete agreement that this animation could be longer as it is only three seconds in duration which is not of reasonable length. This is something which could be easily altered. In terms of changing this shot, I think we would benefit from making the text larger and in bold, as well as researching with different colours.
Having came to the conclusion that this effect for the film title shot was not suitable, we wondered if the design would work instead for the other text shots which usually appear in a trailer.
We came to the opinion that this effect would work extremely well to foreshadow the chase and by asserting this captions admist the increasingly fast paced shots, this would emphasize the fear and hurried response of the girl to find her friends and get out of the country.
"The effect used in both of the shots shown above is effective in the way that it rapidly moves across the screen. However it is a very simple design and I think that the use of more colours would have benefited the shot."
This response reiterated what we initially thought about this overall design and persuaded us to not go with this idea, this was because we asked a number of other people what they thought and they said the same thing - that "it looks a little simple". Taking the criticisms on board, we could address the concerns raised by possibly adding in the smoke effect by including some sort of background...
Official Film Title
This is the shot in which we chose to represent our film title and we decided upon this one for several reasons...
The colour scheme is really effective and works well with the narrative of our film. The red light has been noted to look like a torch light (mentioned in the quotation below) and the car's headlights as the girls are driving along the country road. Despite the colour of the writing is different to that of the magazine and poster, we feel like even though this does not show continuity in all three of our products, that the change in colour actually works well in advertising our trailer.
"I think that the official film title shot is very effective as it is in keeping with the theme of red and also suggests darkness as the effect gives the impression of a torch light searching in the dark which adds the element of mystery that is explored in the film trailer. I also think the title stands out well against the red background and the title itself is on the screen long enough for the audience to take in the name of the film."
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