Film Intro Credit Idea [Keelan]

Here is a mock up of a credits sequence that I created using Adobe After Effects. This isn't the final idea, this is just an addition to Elliott's credit mock up, therefore we will have a few to choose from.

However, after creating I did think that it would be better to super impose the credits into the film rather than using an actual credit sequence as it's not normal that is done in short films.

Credit Mock-up - Elliott

Here is a mock-up I have made for the end credits and title card sequence for our short film. It isn't the final idea yet but, as well as helping me get back into editing, it helps give an idea of what the credits may look like.



The awful drawings do seem to go well with the opening to Se7en,
so that's something.

Unfortunately, to help better tie in the film with the promotional poster I want to use the same photos of our actors in each. This means that until my group gets together to make the assets, I have had to bust out my 'mad-1' art skills and use some weird/creepy drawings as placeholders. They would probably fit right into some horror film about a mentally-challenged artist, but don't quite cut it for our film.

Although the use of my art degree was nice it did make it quite hard to gauge what the final piece would look like, despite finding the mock-up very useful for developing ideas. It also helped me to find 'bugs' such as this insanely annoying one that made the whole video jump around like a Jack Russel on meth.


There was no cause or reason for this glitch out and the only solution was to move to a different editing software and start all over again (First problem I have ever had with Sony Vegas 11.)

The audio can be found here and is from a very small Youtuber I know who does not mind anyone using his music yet produces some very good stuff. I picked it because, with some alteration, it started to sound like the music that is often used for the credits in recent action movies (the new Die Hard in particular) and because the somber start seems to compliment the ending shots of our film.

The black on white credits will also lend a great effect to the piece, contrasting it to the many that use the standard white on black slow crawl. When looking for a good credit font I also received some great advice about this from a VFX expert on one of the better film-making websites saying:

If white is to be seen over a large area, like a white background instead of a black background, or a large dominent shape is white, then bring it all the way down to around 75%. Yes, indeed, the big "white" bar on NTSC color bars is actually only 75%! 75% looks slightly gray on a computer screen, but quite pleasing (not blaring) on a video or film screen, when it is the dominant color.  

 I was unsure about this at first because the off-white colour looks pretty bad on a laptop screen but after watching back on a TV it turned out to be great advice, the brightness is not as annoying or uncomfortable as with a large amount of pure-white light and that way makes the credits much easier to read.

Thanks to Red Giant for their Unmult plugin which I used excessively when making this.

VFX Breakdown #3 Graphic-Match transitions - Elliott

This is a very rough test of a technique which would be useful in the final project (in eye-destroying quality as I was in a rush for college), which allows me to emphasise a transition between two scenes or locations in a very cool way like in several blockbuster shows. (Sherlock is a great example as they are a fan of this transition)

The first shot is a great example of what can be done with the very same effect I used.

The bed transition though (as seen here) requires a rather higher budget

The yellow shape in this picture is the mask I animated

To make this effect I filmed both shots (kitchen and bedroom) with an identical left-right panning motion and tried to make the colours of both doors match as closely as possible. Unfortunately this was hard to do due to lacking a thousand pound camera tracking kit (meaning I had to shoot by hand) and the different lighting in each area.

To combat the lighting difference I had to use my least favourite form of editing (because I'm terrible at it) - Colour Correction. I did this in After Effects 6 (a great program which I have got since last year's thriller opening) and adjusted the hues and hightone colours of both shots to match in the middle.

It's a graphic match. ahahaha no.

To make the effect I used a mask and keyframed it to move with the edge of the bedroom door, then feathered the hell out of it to make the edge between the footage less noticeable.

I then used slow-motion and time-stretching to make the kitchen shot move at a slower speed, all within AE, This was particularly challenging and made the editing take much longer than it otherwise would have but, luckily, I don't think I will have to do this with the other graphic transitions me and my group have filmed.

VFX breakdown #2 Focus pull and Camera Flare - Elliott

I covered both of these effects in preparation for my AS film last year, but due to equipment constraints was never able to use them in the finished product.

      

An example of a 2-shot that would
benefit from a focus pul

This year I have a laptop and my preferred VFX software (AE) so I should be able to finally make use of these effects. The focus pull will be very useful for a variety of shots that we have planned, especially during the poker scene where I hope to use it to show reactions in a two-shot, which is much more dynamic than
the normal way of taking a separate shot for each character's reaction.

While a separate camera could be used to do focus pulls without VFX the hassle of carrying two cameras and trying to get both bits of footage to match means this is a much more efficient way to pull off the effect. Another bonus of this effect is it can be used to achieve very technical shots like dynamic (moving camera) focus pulls such as this example from Jurassic Park.

experiments with different stages of lens flare

You can see more detail on both effects, including how I made them, on these posts:
Camera Flare
Digital Focus Pull

Music and soundtrack - Elliott

Non-Diegetic soundtrack is perhaps the most important aspect of sound editing, in terms of how it controls the aesthetics of a scene, and encompasses all form of music that is added to the product post-production.

For our short film we have an added complication that big-budget productions do not run into: having to avoid copyright in our music choice as we don't have money to spend on licensing fees.


This is the Lord of the Rings 100 piece orchestra - showing what soundtracks
multi-million pound productions have access to.

Unlike Lord of the Rings, which had a budget of £57 million (source), we also cannot afford to hire an orchestra (surprising, I know) which leaves me 3 main options for sourcing music:

• Use music so old it does not fall under copyright law
• Use Royalty-Free music
• Record our own music specifically for this production

 

While there are undoubtedly some great songs that are old enough to avoid copyright, the main trouble is finding some in a style that fits with the themes of our short-film. One song that could work very well is, I believe, 18 with a bullet.

Using Royalty-Free music has it's own drawbacks in that it is normally of very substandard quality compared to normal music and using it could end up making the film sound completely unprofessional. To try and avoid this I hope to limit the amount of royalty free music to the sort of instrumental soundscapes that are (hopefully) of no noticeable quality drop

Recording our own music is another avenue to explore, whether it be with help from a friend of me and Ziaul who has a band or with my own, not so great, musical skills. The downside of using this method will be in the quality of the recording/mixing as we would obviously not have access to the inanely expensive equipment most recording studios use. One way I could get around this is by hiring a studio for the day such as this one in Brighton http://www.metwaystudios.co.uk/ however because of the amount of money I will have to spend on props I am reluctant to put down more cash for the project if I can avoid it.

Because of the drawbacks of all these methods I aim to go with hidden option 4 to source most of the music for this production:
This involves using the huge amount of unsigned potential of artists on the internet, especially YouTube. Because I have quite a large subscriber base on YouTube I hope to be able to get permission from smaller, but talented, artists to use their music for the film in return for promoting them to a larger audience. One limit of this is that most music artists that exist like this make only electronic style music which may cause trouble in finding the music that would fit our production.