Rough Edit Of Opening Title Sequence - "Grifter"

This is our groups rough edit of our opening title sequence "Grifter". We have tried to go for a fully abstract opening by following the conventions that it shown in "Catch Me If You Can & "Superbad". This is only the rough edit and there is much to do in terms of editing. We need to adjust the soundtrack, fix the continuity, add the required text and maybe possibly looking to add some extras that would push us to get higher marks. From now we hope to achieve well, as we had a clear vision from the start of what we wanted to create and so far have stuck to it.

Coursework - Editing Day #5

As the 5th day rolled in we began to reach closer in finishing our opening title sequence. All that remind now was too finish off the soundtrack, add the gold background & text and find a suitable sound track for the institution animation. I exported the film where the chroma key was inverted as well as the opening text, this would be the base of the edit. I created a new project and had to now chroma key in the gold background to the rest of the footage. This was very simple but of course i ran into a few problems doing so. First of i ran into a big problem. I noticed that when i tried to chroma key in the gold there was a shadow which showed to be pixelated. Since there is no feathering tool within Final Cut Express this was quite difficult so i tried my best to make it look perfect. Also at the bit where the bars fall i noticed a black bit at the bottom right. This was not a problem in the edit but a problem in the filming. What happened is that part of the black curtain came up. A way around this would be to keyframe part of the gold background and patch it up. Once this is complete then the final few titles could be added to the opening sequence. After all this it is just a matter of adding the soundtrack and opening institution animation then the opening title sequence will be complete.

Coursework - Editing Day #4

So the 4th day of editing began and we simply had to carry the task from the last editing period. I continued with the editing such as trying to show continuity between each scene as well as starting to add the text.




There are still some finalisations to do but so far the edit looks very decent. Also we sorted out our opening institution animation. Since the last lesson we all had decided on the template but decided it would of looked better if it had a logo. This was finished during the lesson and here is the outcome of it.

Coursework - Editing Day #3

 Day 3 was quite more productive we finally got down to the main editing. Once again we all worked individually but each work would assist towards the final edit of the opening title sequence. Since i have been using Final Cut Express the most and i was confident with it i carried out the required tasks. I fine tuned the editing to show continuity as well as that i chroma keyed the characters within clip. This was quite a lengthy procedure but once the green screen was chroma keyed it was easy just to press the invert button then have the characters turn into the desire colour. Also i need assistance with some of the animation that we really wanted in our opening sequence so i requested help for this.

 Samuel sorted out the desired text's for the opening sequence. For this he used photoshop and created each text. The text will use a custom font downloaded from the internet and each text will be displayed in white. It is quite vital that we use white since the colour of the objects and characters would be black and the background would be a golden colour.

 Ja'van had the task of creating the opening animation for our opening title sequence. For this we needed to use After Effects as in terms of animation this software is really needed as it has features which others do not. Since After Effect is a very complicated software and takes a long time to learn we were advised to look for a template. We did initially have a certain way for the opening animation to look but there is not other option, so we need to adapt to this. After some research Ja'van managed to find a template which has good resemblance to our original idea so we decided to use this.

Coursework - Editing Day #2

On day 2 there was much to do but i feel we could of done a lot more. Since there were 3 people in the group we split the duties between us. I started on the editing on Final Cut Express, Samuel worked on the soundtrack on the song using Garageband and Ja'van worked out how to use After Effects to create our opening animation.





I was in charge of editing and since i have edited before i was used too it. In terms of using Final Cut Express i was not that confident but i tried my best. On the first day of editing i was simply having a play around with the software and working
out how to use it, since it has been quite sometime since i used it before. I was getting my head round the video & audio tracks, placement of each individual clip as well as setting the in and out points.

Since i have edited before i had quite a good of idea of doing the muzzle flash and lens hit. It was just a matter of downloading each individual stock footage from youtube the adding it to the timeline. Since the stock footage has a black background i was having a hard time finding the composite settings, but once i found it made life easier as i was contemplating on keying out the black. The basic edit was complete it was now simply to wait to the 3rd day to get into the more complicated parts of the edit.

Chosen Font For Opening - "Titania"

We searched for multiple fonts on the internet slowly we found the Titania Font on http://www.dafont.com/. Not only is this font nice to look at it is also spaced out properly at a reasonable amount. It does not connote any ideas of horror, crime, comedy or any genre for that matter, that is the beauty of it. This font can practically work with anything. To make it more aesthetically pleasing we added a drop shadow using Photoshop. To be precise the drop shadow was at an angle of 120º as well as a distance of 4 pixels. This made it look better and when placed over our opening it looked good. We used white as it seemed to be the only colour that was not used through out the opening and white tends to go with almost everything, especially that there is much black within the opening.

Coursework - Editing Day #1

Today was our first day of editing. I tend to not work with Final Cut Express so i had to take some time and work out how to use it. Our original idea was to have a coloured background the invert then invert it to the character who the would have a different colour from the background.

Since i am unfamiliar with Final Cut Express i was having some difficulty to find the invert button, i requested help and i got it. After that i tried to work out how to chroma key because with this software it is fairly different then Final Cut Pro X.