Electronic Image Making - Final Project

My Title Sequence

I have chosen a sci-fi theme for my film title sequence.

When decided which direction to go in I started drawing out things that I related to sci-fi, and ended up with rough childish drawings of spaceships, spacemen and planets. I ended up liking the look of these drawings and decided to create a ‘spoof’ sci-fi title sequence, using images such as the one’s I initially drew. I wanted it to look rough, and ‘home made’ much like many ‘spoof’ films, so I decided to make (almost!) the entire thing with just paper and a pen.

I considered making the entire thing using film but decided that this wouldn’t be an effect method, considering I decided to limit my resources to just paper. After doing some research I decided that creating the titles using stop motion would be the easiest way to achieve the effect I wanted.

I looked at other mainly home-made videos involving stop motion and paper. I found that the best videos were the ones that had alot of pictures with quick changes in between them

I like the rough quality of this film, and they it isn’t at all neat, which is something I wanted to incorperate into my titles.

The brief stated that the titles must include both film and stills, so I decided that it would be easiest to take the stills i would need for the stop motion effect with the same video camera I would use to film. The downside of this was that the stills were poor quality and there were very limited ‘camera’ functions.

I took each of the photos and laid the titles over the top of them, using photoshop. This allowed me more freedom over were I placed the titles. The program I used, iMovie had certain restrictions over the titles, and only allowed them to be placed in set positions.

One of the main things i have learnt in this project is to account for technical error when time managing and more importantly SAVE AS YOU GO ALONG.

Favourite Film Title Sequence

My favourite title sequence is the opening credits for the series True blood, a program about vampires.

“We knew from the start that the best way - the only way - to create a powerful introduction to True Blood was to insert ourselves in the middle of Louisiana and find out what happens - unmannered and unvarnished.” 

The titles contain images both disturbing and captivating. Perfectly innocent footage is twisted, such as the boy eating the red fruit. Scenes shot in a church are along side footage of writhing bodies in bars, creating an uncomfortable juxtaposition. And not a vampire in sight. I like this title sequence because I think the footage used was chosen well. It is slightly uncomfortable to watch but in a way that is also intriguing. It gives the viewer an idea of the dark side of South America, which is where the program is set. I also like that the sequence does not include vampires, the assumed ‘bad guys’, and instead shows us many things that are deemed ‘wrong’ with humanity, turning round the stereotype, onto us.