9 Frame Title Sequence Design

We took clippings from the opening credits of Catch me if you can. The film is a comedy starring Leonardo Dicaprio and Tom Hanks. The credits to the film are in animation and link together. For example the 'y' in the title goes downwards leading to a new animation clip and so on.

Video Tagging Genre Conventions

This is the title sequence of the movie seven. I think this makes a good thriller opening as the images are blurred and you cant see fully what is happening within the cuts. Also the way the images cut quickly across almost makes you drawn into the sequence as you really want to see what is happening. The music adds tension to the opening as the images cuts in time with the music.

Mind Map

This is the mind map I made with Joe about what a thriller consists of.

Learning to use Final Cut Pro

Learning to use Final Cut Pro

Yesterday we used final cut pro for the first time. This was a software that no one in the class had used before. We uploaded pictures and videos on the application and then 'cut' them to the amount of time we wanted them to be used. We picked a series of images and began to set out a theme for the opening to a thriller that we were 'making up'. We then picked sections of the burglary video and 'cut' part of this to use with the sequence of images. We also then played with some of the effects so we could make the piece look grainy or change the light settings to make the colours darker or lighter. We also added text and called the whole piece 'surveillance'. We played around with the text settings and made the writing zoom in and out. It was difficult at first learning how to use final cut pro, how to play the piece and cut it down to the length we wanted and then adding it to the timeline bar. After a while though we got used to it and could do quite quickly.

In the next half of the lesson we looked at the beginning of 'Rear Window' we looked at the sound, camera, editing and mise-en scene of the whole piece. We then got into our groups that we will be in to start production of our thriller piece. In our groups we have to find the history of thriller, the typical synopsis and iconinc directors of thrillers. My group consists of Joe Fitzpatrick, Danica Ebers and myself. Joe will be finding out the history of the piece and Danica will be looking at the typical synopsis whilst I look at the 3 iconic directors we chose; Alfred Hitchcock, David Fincher and Quentin Trantino.

Media Camera Shots

Media Camera Shots

In media on Thursday 15th September we learnt different camera angles. I learnt;

Extreme close up

Two shot

Establishing shot

Extreme long shot

Long shot

Mid shot (to be cut from below waist, top of legs to show actor has legs)

Close up (to be cut below chin, on shoulders to show actor has body)

Also in the lesson we viewed another students work who received an A for their piece. This helped us to understand the work and different effects we would need to learn in order to achieve a high piece of standard work like that.

We all learnt how to reject and put in the tapes correctly without breaking the camera and how to change camera settings to record in sunlight and artificial light by changing the white balance and how to check and set the camera to its manual setting.

We then got into groups and went off into the academy and we able to try and record a stalker scene using a sequence of shots given to us. This proved a challenge as this was our first time with the cameras and we weren’t allowed to move the camera to 'sweep the scene' the actor had to move out of the shot. This was difficult enough without only having 20/25 minutes in which to complete the task.

In the 2nd half of the lesson we set up our blog.spot accounts. We also looked at the opening credits for seven (se7en) to see how the opening make the audience see that the film is a thriller. We learnt about the mise-en scene and what makes a thriller opening; the art of the title. The design aspects of the opening sequence, the images used, style, visual, font, animation and the editing of the whole piece make this.