Evaluation 1

I compared mine to insidious and have seen some differences in the sound. Their music plays through the whole opening whereas mine plays at the start and at the end of the opening. My music has different time frames of when the volume changes because I wanted to make it seem like you were hearing when he hears instead of what he sees. Insidious on the other hand, look at furniture and the music is at the same volume the whole time. The camera in Insidious moves a lot more then mine mostly because they have a way of making the camera movement flow however, I never needed to move the camera much because they wasn't any real much of a build up that would make moving the camera necessary although if I could I would of liked having to make the over the shoulder shot smoother but since I don't have the right equipment to do it I had to improvise and tried to not shake the camera. Panning the camera was also quite hard, there is a way of doing it without a good tripod but I have not tested it out to see if it works. Using only my hands and the tripod to move the camera around made some shots quite questionable in terms of quality for example,  (1:24) When Ben was in the chair I thought about resting the camera on the side of the chair as he moves to show the struggle he is in however, the outcome was different from what I wanted it to be. The same can be side for the camera because when filming at night the camera has a hard time focusing and due to my lack of knowledge of cameras I have no idea how to change that which is why I tried to move the camera as little as possible to avoid having to a million retakes.

The voice acting was not the best which is a little bit disappointing but since I have limited resources I had to make do with my friends help. There is little emotion behind his voice making you feel less attached to the character however, his movement wasn't bad, at the start when he was walking I normally see people walk like the nutcracker but he just walked like he would normally which gives the idea of realism. The difference in acting in Insidious is that one actor is standing still whereas the other is sleeping which makes it hard to judge but from watching lot's of different film openings I can make the assumption that he could of been better if we had the time. The lighting of the opening is off in some places but one part got me which is at (1:20) because the lighting doesn't make any sense when it turns from light to dim but I did this because there was too much grain in the scene, I tried to get rid of it in after effects but all it did was blur some of the film which didn't look nice. The only way I could get it to my standards would be to buy the plus in that does it in better quality but again I had limited funds.

The background sound in mine consists of wind and the rustle of the trees, it helps fit with the atmosphere deceiving the viewer into thinking that it's all nice only to be tricked. The sound in insidious is to build tension to freak out the audience which can play tricks on the mind because they think that something might jump out at them any moment (nothing does). Although the wind and rustle are not constant it still provides a good level of suspense in it's self making the audience question why it's so calm for a horror movie. The same can be said for the ending of the opening of insidious as the camera zooms into the man's face, he's just standing there smiling not knowing what he might do which causes discomfort.

The making of Company logo 2

Based on the idea of eyes i thought of making something that looks nice and something that flashes out at people so I created my own version of and eye by using fractal noise as the base layer. I over lapped the same layer with a replica and rotated it around to give a different effect. 

The next step was making it seem more like an eye so I added a black dot in the middle of the eye which was taken from a picture of a real eye. It changes shape based on the music like its having light pointed at it.


The company title was the hard part as it took time to make match how the logo looked and how to animate it. The choice was to pick something simple and easy to read so I chose bold letter and added fractal noise in the mix to give it life.


The Company logo looked nice however, when looking over it, it looked to plain and the title of it didn't jump out so I added one more layer to give it a more distorted look.



The final layer gave a static tv effect so I used it to my advantage and added sound to it of an old fashioned tv which gave off a nice sound to go with it.

The making of the film title

When I was making the title Dream the length of it was much longer than the one shown in the opening with it's own sound and different camera movements. The choice of changing it to be shorter was because it was too long and the sound didn't have to implemented to the title as the music worked much better.

The base texture of the title was an ice texture that i found on google images. It was used as the first layer of the title with the text that was going to be place behind it. The texture of the ice was not very transparent so i had to map it and change the opacity of it so that the text behind the ice could be seen and.

The colours that are shown are the lights that have been place in different areas to have different effects and in doing so I was able to make a creepy image that lurks behind the title. The colours are are to match the atmosphere of the opening to help emphasise the horrors the are soon to come.

The text was a hard choice as most of the text would not be able to be seen due to the dark colours and dim lighting however, changing it to a 3D layer and making it bolder helped make the text visible and readable. The text has movement to it so that it looks like its trying to escape but since there is a thick layer of ice in the way it is trapped never being able to escape.

The making of Company logo 1

The company logo wolfston started as nothing more than basic static text on a page that faded in and out. I changed the text to give it a more unique look to it and added fractal noise a bit later on to see what would happen.

When the fractal noise was added I waned to change it to make it look at lot more like fog and give it a nice flowing texture to give it life and realism.



I chose to narrow down the fractal noise and make it softer to make a gentle fog, at the same time I feathered to edges to make it seem like it was fading around the outside. When I looked at how the text looks in front of it I thought it could look much better, how it looks when you see it enter and how to exits.




For each of the letters and the picture at the end I made t so that they draw themselves in by bathing each of them. This effect played a big part in the making as it too time for each of them to be outlined however, it gave a more professional entrance instead of a basic entrance. With all of this put in there was still something that could be added to make the text much nice instead of a solid white.




I decided to add a light behind the text while taking the colour of the text away to make it black when you see it without the light. The light glided along behind the text revealing the mystery of the company title. Altogether the company title too a few weeks to make but the minor changes too around a month.

The whole opening turned out to be a success and worked well with the opening as it flowed with he music and the scenes with its own audio the quietly plays.

How my work progressed

When I was in production of the film I didn't like the lighting so I had to change it but that wasn't the only issue. I noticed that the actor glimpsed at the camera meaning that we had to do a retake.
This gave a clearer effect because there was too much yellow lighting and just by doing this it made the scene less amateur like.

Throughout the opening for approx 2 minutes i decided to have music playing but only to give the impression that the sound is really coming through the earphones.

In the original layout i was going to have the title sequence at the start but as i progressed i realised that it didn't flow as well as i wanted it to so i changed from the start to the middle of the opening.

 Over all i can see that the opening now looks much better with the few minor changes and the duration of the cuts are well balanced making for a smooth transition.

This is what the first company logo looked like. I kept on looking back at it and thought that it looked quite bland and boring so I changed the fractal noise to something more horror like.

This is the outcome of the changes I did to the original one making for a better looking title sequence.

The second title sequence is the better out of the two of them. I didn't make any changes to it as I was happy with outcome. 

I'm using audition to mix some sounds together from my own voice to give an ominous effect. I am going to use echo a lot to make the effect stand out and sound better.

 When I was editing I noticed that I didn't have enough clip for a shot so I had to improvise and reverse a clip to make it work. The way it looks works because it doesn't look like it's been changed which it great making so that I don't have redo a clip.

These two show the colour difference between the middle of the first scene to the end of it. The colour goes down as the opening progresses as what he is in is a dream however he doesn't know this and nor does the audience so by changing the colour people might be able to pick up that something is off and get the idea that none of this is real or normal. All of the settings go lower every time the "Monster" appears for a reason I am not going to give as it leaves the "thing" with more a mysterious appearance. I think I will reduce the amount of times I change the colours because it doesn't go well

Both of these shots are the same clip but I wanted to make the text more interesting so I made it so that the text dissipates when the shadow comes across it almost like it's dragging it along.

When i was making the audio for the "monster" I wanted to make it seem unnatural and out of this world so I decided to change the pitch to give it a deeper voice an make the sound, sound unsettling and hard on the ears because the thing is still going to be left a mystery and the only one who can understand it is main protagonist.

I changed company logo 2 once again because I didn't like how the text bounced everywhere so I changed it to a static text with 'productions' at the bottom due to confusion of people thinking that, that was the movie title. The change is little but i think overall it will make the turn out better.

When I was doing the credits I thought I would use he path to my advantage who I decided to make the text almost walk the other side of his but I came to the conclusion that it didn't look very professional so like the first text I made it fade in and fade out as it's simple yet effective.

There was a change in colour in one part of the clips that i didn't like as it stars with a strong colour which looks horrible so now it's changed to one colour.

Due to how loud some of the sound is I had to change the dB a little bit. Some sound still over power other sounds but they are on purpose so they won't be changed.

When I was editing I got a bit carried away and went a bit over the maximum mark meaning that I had to shorten it a bit from 2:26 to now 2:12 I think the changes aren't affecting the opening much in fact i think that it looks a lot better now.


When i looked back at the exported film there was something missing from the end as it had no audio other than breathing which i found quite boring to conclude the opening so I added a bit of dialogue for the monster to leave the opening on a bit of a cliff hanger.

Going back over the exported film openings I started to become nit picky and have seen how the colours in the opening aren't the same as each other so not only did i change them at the start I notice that I could reduce the amount of grain if I change the colours a bit so now it look clearer.

Before: 

After: 

Before: 

After: 

To help me with this change I have been asking people for feedback on how I could improve or change the opening to make it look better and some people have given me so great advice (this will be in a different post).

When I was listening closely to the sound I didn't think that the music in the first half and the rustle of the trees where on par with one another in terms of dB making it off putting in the ears.

I did a back to back comparison on both of the exported openings I did to see which on I'm going to finalize and in my opinion I'm going to use the newest on because with the colour change in place it look better and the sounds are much better as well because I added a few more with a few more changes to them.

This is the Film opening finished however, I am going to make a few changes to it because I have noticed that in one scene the chair is still then Ben is shaking in it then it's still again so it doesn't flow very well which people have noticed making it an issue I need to consider. 

During the making of the title my idea was to make it seem creepy and different to what the films was really about. The ice represents cold isolation and the dark colours show the emotions of the protagonist. The lines that are shown are to point you to look at the hidden face in the ice behind the logo making the view feel uncomfortable having something watching them.

I changed the duration of the Dream title sequence as I though that it was too long and it dragged o the run time leaving em with little time left. The reason why it was long was because the original had sound include to give it a horror vibe to it however, it was not needed. Since i made the run time of the title shorter I was able to add different sound to make the whole sequence flow.

Diary 8

When I had all the clips I edited them all and put the all in and still though something was missing so I thought about adding some background sounds in and adding music as well. It took a while to find the right sounds but when I did get them they worked so well with the opening it couldn't pass the opportunity so I had to change some scenes again to make the music and opening fit well together.

Diary 7

We went out filming to film the second part of the opening in the shed which means that it wasn't as cold but I was dirty and quite a small space to work in due to all the clutter. When filming it we had one little LED torch that we used as the lighting which wasn't much but it provided enough light to make the scenes look creepy. We had one more actor that we brought along with us to use as a dead persons friend (James Ross) however, it was going to be a girl originally but she couldn't do it so I change to a guy instead and had to change the story a bit which wasn't to bad.

When using the camera we had to be careful not to show any shadows which was quite difficult in some cases be we did our best and got some good shots in. We all had a good laugh in some places and finished the filming in around 2 hours which was good.

Diary 6

Editing the work that we did was basically replacing the excising work that I had which means that I just had to make it fit. The process took a little while as I had to make some changes to some scenes by making them shorter or changing how they look but in the end it turned out okay.

The sound was another concern as the sound that you can hear isn't very good due to no using a mic so I have to think of a different alternative.

Diary 5

We went out filming again today with Ben Davies and Fillip to do the first part of the opening again and we had a lot of fun making it. we have some funny bloopers of them mucking up and some on screen dancing. The night was cold on that day to but their spirit didn't change which was great.

The camera didn't mess around as much as last time which made filming go a lot smoother. The filming that we did was pretty much the same as we did last time just with a different actor to make the editing process easier.

Dairy 4

Today I was editing the clips together that we filmed as realised that the actor James Ross was hesitant and nervous about how he walked and his facial expressions weren't the best so I had to consider the possibility of changing the actor or keeping it the same.

The final choice was to change it to someone who I think could do a better job out of no disrespect of the other actor. The new actor is going to be Ben Davies who I think would work better as the main protagonist.

Diary 3

Went out filming down Sugarway today to film my product with James Ross as the protagonist and Fillip as the antagonist. When doing the filming we had a few interruptions from people passing by so we had to retake a few times but each time we did it we got better results. We all had a good few laughs as we were making it with some dancing and jokes along the way as we changed setting.

The camera was messing around for a fair few shots but after a while we managed to fix it from going out of focus every 2 seconds. The lighting was one of the main issue of why it couldn't work properly but we worked our way around it as best we could.

We had the right clothing on the actors and the sky was clear so we didn't have to worry about the rain but the actor got really cold during the production so they wanted to finish as quick as possible.

Diary 2

The company logo's were the second things that I wanted to do and making them was going to be a challenge so I looked up 1 tutorial to make the font of the first one to look how it does and changes the background colours at the same time animating it to give it life.

The second company logo was made using my imagination with no tutorial giving to more originality. The idea of using an eye was because eyes have beauty and they can show a lot of emotion so I wanted it so show fear as best I can. The process took some time but turned out great in the end.

Diary 1

The first thing I wanted to do was make my opening title 'Dream' and I spent a lot of time making it to make it look and sound great but realised that I only needed the look of it as I can add sound in with the rest of the opening to make it fit. I looked at some way on how to make different titles on YouTube and managed to mix a few to get a great outcome. The bend of colours in the background managed to make a skull face behind to text if you look carefully which a was great addition.

Locations

For where I chose to film my opening I wanted to film where it was dark but had street lights so that you can see the protagonist. The main issue was that there was a lot of people who used the path so I had to make sure that when we started to film we had to make sure that the path was clear to prevent any sound that was unnecessary.

For the second location I wanted a place that would look familiar to some people in terms of them knowing that it was a shed but also to give the impression of isolation and trapped. since there was no lighting we had to improvise and use an LED torch which was bright but in some shots there was some very visible grain which proved to be quite a challenge to try and remove or reduce.

Risk assessment