Making the Production Title

My group and I had quite a few ideas for the production title, but none of them went according to plan. Lewis had worked on our original idea for the title, which was 'Terror Films.' This did have animation with it, which consisted of the text moving towards the screen, and then fading out. However, I wasn't too happy with this, and suggested to have a glass shattering sort of effect, and Lewis had tried this out in Adobe Premiere. This turned out to not look quite as we hoped it would, and then Namibia and I decided that we should change the name of the production title altogether. 

When I came home, I was playing about with iMovie on my MacBook and came across some production title's that were available on the software. 

I thought these looked really good, and professional too, so I showed it to the rest of my team the next day. However, it was pointed out that we couldn't exactly use these, as they are the actual productions of real companies, such as Universal Studios and Paramount Pictures. I then came across another type of title which iMovie had, which wasn't linked to a real company.

I then came across this title which was also available on iMovie, and thought this looked good as the colours seemed to be just right, as they were dark, linking it well to the movie. I showed it to my group and the liked it too, and we came up with the name 'Pyramid Films' for the production title, as it relates back to the image. It was fairly straightforward to do this, as I just had to fill out the name and some other details in iMovie, and select which title I wanted to use. 

Green Preview Screen

While we were editing the footage for the trailer, I remembered that in order to make it look like a professional trailer, we needed to include key conventions which are used. This consisted of having a green screen right at the beginning of the trailer, which would only last for a few seconds. We decided to use Google for research, and to see whether they had one that we could use.

As it shows from the above picture, Google didn't appear to have many images of the green preview screen. Furthermore, they were mainly to do with American movies and audiences, whereas we wanted to have a British one as this is where out movie would show first.

Originally, we thought it would look better if we had the age rating on the green preview screen too, somewhere in the corner. However, after looking at the images, it came to our understanding that this isn't included here, but at the end of the trailer and also on the actual certificate of the movie, which wouldn't be in our trailer, as this is only shown before the movie starts.

After doing more research, my group and I realised that a green preview screen is more to do with American audiences; nevertheless, this didn't stop us from wanting to include this in our trailer, as this does make the trailer look professional.

We then decided to just use an image from Google, verifying that our movie has been certified.

Horror on Twitter!!

I was on Twitter last week, and was interested to see that #HowToSurviveAHorrorMovie was trending! This instantly reminded me of my coursework for media, and decided to go through the tweets people were sending. Obviously some of the tweets were jokes, but most of them made sense. Here are a few which I thought were true, but also funny :)

After a while, this trend became the first Trending Topic on Twitter and lasted for quite a long time! 

Choosing the font for 'Damnation'

When it came to creating our trailer, we wanted to brainstorm ideas beforehand for the title, and how it would look like. We had a few ideas in mind, such as:

- having a black outline - stands out more
- text should a blood red
- having some sort of symbol implemented in order to relate back to the storyline. E.g - having a cross for the 'T'

We first started of with this font, placing it on a black background, with no added effect. However, it seemed much too plain, and it also looked amateur, as it doesn't exactly look too scary. This was a helpful beginning as we then able to expand from this.

With the help of Photoshop, we were able to add shadows and glow to the text and all around it. We changed the font colour to white, as we thought  having a red glow would be effective. Also, this is a great contrast between the meaning of the three colours used, as black and red can denote a dark side, whereas white is more of a pure and innocent colour, which then relates back to the storyline. As I originally wanted to have a cross for the 'T,' we inserted it upside down to represent the anti-christ. Nevertheless, it didn't seem to look right, which may have been to the type of cross we used, but we decided not to use this idea as we were sure we could think of something as effective.

Elaborating from the previous image, we then came up with this title. We decided to keep to the white text, but lessening the red glow and shadow behind, to add emphasis to the black background. Also, taking out the cross for the 'T' and having it as normal. This was a nice look as it was effective, but I still wasn't too sure about the font as it seemed to plain. The size of the lettering looked a bit too thin as well, which is why I wanted to have something a bit broader.

We then completely changed the style of the font, and decided to go for a simple look, as this would then be much more bolder, making it effective. Changing the text colour back to red, we decided to take the red glow and shadow away too, but having a white borderline. In relation to having a religious symbol present in the title, we added stained glass windows to the 'A's, which was suggested by my team member. However, when I first saw this, I didn't realise what they were straight away, as it didn't look clear, which is we decided not to include this.

Lastly, this is our final piece of title that we included in our trailer, magazine cover and poster. I wasn't happy with the shade of red that we previously used, which is why I decided to change it to a darker shade. Overall, I am happy with the last piece of work, as I think it is rather effective, regardless of the fact that it is simple. It turned out that the ideas we originally planned to include didn't work out too well, as we couldn't have a black borderline because the background was black, but I think that white does look better. We couldn't use a religious symbol as it didn't look right, but it still looks fine without it. The only idea we stuck to was having a red colour text. I think that all three colours work really well together, and it highlights the trailer too.