Final Edit Of Opening Title Sequence - Grifter

This is our groups final edit of our opening title sequence "Grifter". I can honestly say we have put in 100% effort into our work trying to get the best out of it. We kept going over it trying to fix minor issues and constantly looking for ways to improve our opening sequence. I am very pleased with what we have been able to create with in this time as well as not falling behind but meeting the deadline. As a grope we worked together well and did each of our part to create the opening. There were some extra bits added that took much more time then we expected but we managed to get though it. Now that this is complete i am able to now answer my evaluation questions and see what and how i have developed over the period of doing this coursework.

Evaluation Planning

1.  In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge form and conventions of real media products.

For the first question i plan to use the 9 key frame analysis. Reason being to use this is because it breaks up the film in 9 individual frame and allows me to go in depth with each one. As well as showing my analytical skills, it displays the main parts of the opening sequence and show's the emphasis it has with forms and conventions.

2.  How does your media product represent particular social groups.

For the second question i plan to use a website called www.powtoon.com I find this website to be very professional and interactive. 

3.  What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why.

To answer this question i have decided to make a vlog, other wise known as a video blog.

4.  Who would be the audience for your media product.

To answer this question i have decided to use Voki. I like using this software because it is quite a different style. With it we can see a basic outline of what the character may look like. 

5.  How did you attract/address your audience.

To tackle this question i have decided to make a reaction video. The way i would do this is i will place some of my desired target audience in front of a camera and show them the opening title sequence. Then i will edit this as Picture In Picture (PIP) to show the reaction and the opening title sequence playing at the same time. This gives a nice effect and show's how my target audience actually feel about the opening title sequence.

6.  What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing the product.

For this question i plan to use the website http://infogr.am/ to create an infographic. Reason for this is because it allows my work to look more creative and overall making it aesthetically pleasing.

7. Looking back to your preliminary task, what do you feel that you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product.

Personally i feel this may be the strongest question in the whole evaluation set of questions. So for this it occurs to me that i may have to do something special as it may be the last question i answer. The way i would answer this would be set up as a fake interview. I would play both roles one as the interviewer and the other as my self. A few questions will be asked in regards to the preliminary and opening sequence and seeing how far i have transgressed.

Evaluation Questions

Today we were told about all the 7 evaluation questions. This is the first time we have properly seen the evaluation questions and initially they look very simple to me. There are 1 or 2 questions where i thought of how i would answer them, but originally i was thinking of all the different techniques of the way i got present each question.

As we looked at them we decided to put them in a specific order, starting with the most significant all the way to the less significant.

The reason for choosing the first question where it is because we see it to show a big significance in the way we progressed. The idea of re-calling the day of the preliminary task shows how far we came from our first official piece of work.  From there everything goes down until the least significant. In this case; 'What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why.'
Either way i do see all the questions significant. As in order to achieve the marks all the questions must be answered.

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.