Final Cut

 

CCR#1: How does your product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues?

CCR#2: How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media text?

 

CCR#3: How did your production skills develop throughout this project?

This is a trailer for my movie if it were a horror mystery film. I used my favorite shots and edited the audiovisuals to show how my skills improved. Credits to Gestalt for the audio.

CCR#4: How did you integrate technologies - software, hardware and online - in this project?

 

My Work and Organization Process (Reflection)

Improving My Director's Title Card (Implementation)

 Hello reader, welcome to my blog. In this post, I'll be showing my process of improving the title card (already made by the Director, Gestalt) for our film opening. Let's get started.

Context:

Most film openings feature a title card. This element may or may not be closely related to the film itself, or it may even offer clues about the movie. For our film opening, my group and I wanted to do the same.

We had already discussed the idea of ​​making it animated, as this would elevate the quality of the film and tie it in with the plot. Since our film's protagonist—Maria—is an artist, and the entire movie is closely intertwined with art, an animated title card would suit us perfectly.

We wanted to create that hand-drawn effect for our title card. My director took the initiative to create it himself using drawing software.

Director's Title Card

My director really did a great job creating the title card. However, I had a few suggestions, as there were two minor things I didn't like. #1: The cursor was visible while the drawing was taking place (I simply felt this wasn't the most appropriate aesthetic choice for our specific purpose, animation). #2: The speed (41 seconds was far too long for our film; and while the process could be sped up, it wouldn't look quite right compared to using a precise number of frames with each letter drawn at a consistent speed).

My solution: I created a new title card in IbisPaintX—a very useful drawing tool with which I was already familiar. I started working letter by letter, stroke by stroke, obviously following the director's instructions. Each image lasted 0.03 seconds, and I believe I used a frame rate of 20–24 frames per second.

Image of the process of animation

The director asked me to focus on the word 'AI' embedded within the title, 'Daisy'—specifically, 'dAIsy'. I did just that; he also requested that I color the word 'AI,' the final stroke, and the daisy dotting the 'i.' I executed this using a color palette derived from real daisies.

Image of the color added

Thoughts: My director was very gracious in accepting feedback—and giving me feedback in return; in the end, we even used my version of the title card. Also, unintentional occurrences (such as having to repaint every element, stroke by stroke) can actually turn out well, since the letters 'AI' ended up animated as if they were drawn with crayons.