This is a blog for our movies typface development, title and credits.
- Example that we like:
1. Fluroescent Adolescent
2. Teenage Dirtbag
3. Decent Men
4. Buldingsroman
- What credits/names will you include:
1. Actors: Sagara, Alex, Panji, Kenneth.
2. Director.
3. Production Company, Distributor Company.
-Typeface Exapmles:
Originally we struggled to find what theme or style of text we want our title to be in, eventually though we settled with a style that resembles grafiti as we believed that it'd resonate best with our film genre and the story we are trying to bring up. Some of the fonts we chose looked handwritten in the form of grafiti, implying that the youngsters are responsible for writing the text which in this case is our movie title. Grafiti is also heavily associated with anti establishment, anti authority, and in general rebellion by the youth, this somewhat relates to the character and plot of our movie opening.
Some of the chosen fonts display the text in grafiti form with excess ink dripping from the text itself, this enforces the fact that characters are improper, untidy, and in general displays their chaotic and immature nature.
After much consideration, we ended up with 2 promising choices.
Option 1
The first option sticks true with our preference with the grafitti aesthetic. We like it because it is not uniform in terms of the angle that each letters are presented in, it reflects the personalities of the characters as it is not formal and messy. The font also displays a degree of eccentrism, since it seems bold, bright, and thick, showing it in a way that makes it feel like it's in their face. The color used (black and white) also reflects the fact that our movie will also be displayed in black and white.
Option 2
The second options somewhat diverts from our prefrence of the grafitti aesthetic, instead it looks akin to a thick highlighter font. We like it because it is less bold, less formal, and more uniform in contrast to the first option, we think that the fact its less bold and formal means that they aren't brash and open as a group, instead they're simply a underground, small time group of misfits who simply wish to do their own thing.
We ended up choosing the second option because we believe that it is more toned down, as compared to the first one which I believe is a bit too much.
After careful deliberation, we as a group decided to branch out and try to find other options for our film name since we believe that "Decent Boys" sounds a bit off. Our options included; Fluroscent Adolesence, Teenage Dirtbag, Bildungsroman (German for Coming of Age), The List, Marked For Death. Eventually we agree on the name "Marked For Death".
- This is our final decision on the typeface.
Self Reflection:
Unfortunately we did not use any of the typeface I originally researched since they all felt either somewhat too much or just didn't fit our inteded theme and vibe of the movie, the website I used also had a large variety of typefaces but none of them fit what we wanted. For a while the typeface research went AWOL, but eventually our editor thankfully got a good one that I think fits our theme and looks somewhat similar to Se7en so many thanks to him.
In the beginning the editing job was Arnolds duty where it took him a while until, our teacher got mad at us because we didn't show him anything for like 2+ months which was understandable but after that day Arnold sent the video which our teacher had some very strong words to describe our not so final work, such as "it doesn't make sense" and some others.
Our teacher gave us a lot of INVALUABLE feedback on this first draft of our video to improve because in his eyes was very lack luster for how long Arnold took to make it. Such as
The second fix I implemented was to remove the filter Arnold put in the title sequence. Sagara also changed the quote to make it fit better to the film
Previous quote
New Improved quote so summaries the messaging of our movie
The third fix is that I changed the title of the movie to make it sound better and fit the meaning of the movie better
Previous title didn't fit because quote "it is a reference to a song that didn't align with the meaning of our movie"
This title fits the movie better since Panji (our main protagonist) has a list of people who wronged him and him crossing them out after he beat them up
The next fix was to remove the flashing paint filter on the clip that Arnold did for the Regents media productions I did this by asking him for the original clip he recorded
I removed it because the teacher said it made the title way to noisy and frankly it was unnecessary
An improved version with way less noise I added the strobe effect to the typeface to add more "eye candy" and to keep the viewers engaged
After all of that I finally got the fixes implemented and added some edits for some more intrigue
I personally was very surprised that we managed to finish this in the time that we did which wasn't a lot. Our teacher said it was a great improvement from the first draft that Arnold did.
some more feedback that was given
- Remove the strobe effect from the texts
- change the regents media productions to appear at the same time
- add more dialogue during the parking lot scene because it didn't have enough meat on its bones
The first fix I did with the new feedback is to remove all the strobe effects from the titles, personally I thought they were a cool touch but the teacher said it looks "unprofessional and childish"
Another fix is that I needed to make the color grading consistent with the scenes where we are getting beaten up one by one, this fix was courtesy of panji one of our group members. I couldn't make it all normal without all the effects and stuff because Arnold our camera guy recorded the first beating up scene in the bathroom with the filter on so it's baked in the footage, so I can't get it to look normal
bathroom scene with baked in color grading
previous stairs scene, as you can see it's not similar as it's not blue
garage scene where I got beaten up. I tried to make it similar but since we recorded it during the APEX of day it's impossible to make it similar to the bathroom scene since it's way to bright with the sun. I tired to make it similar through the color grading but it became too blue quote "It's sour patch kids blue" -Sagara (one of our team member)
Improved version by Panji, it's more consistent with the color grading
It's less bright to more align with the bathroom scene, and it's a better blue
The final iteration of the video is within the FINAL VIDEO blogpost
Self Reflection: I didn't contribute much to the editing if at all aside from making a few comments here and there, I have to give massive thanks to our editors who managed to put all of this together in a span of 3-4 days, and making a viewabale film opening that took our previous editor 2 months just to show a 30 second clip of it, I think the editing went well and I am happy with how the final video came out, all credits and thanks should go to our editors as I believe they truly carried the team on their backs.
I used File explorer to organized footage send my my team mates and myself
Self Reflection:
I didn't play a role in editing or organising footage aside from making comments here and there, though I am aware that organising our footages to seperate and easy to use files was difficult as the scenes were sent out of order, and without an initial file or folder to contain it all meaning our editor(s) had to do it on their own.
Here Is The Blog For Production: Behind The Scenes
Everything here was done by Panji, kudos to him. (I took the pictures)
In this movie we had me as the actor (panji) and kenneth, maha, alex, sagara, as the side characters of this movie opening, we had some problems with choosing our locations and we wanted it to fit with the crime scene and so we picked taman bali festival and we figured that it added no value to our film opening naratives and our second location that we recorded was actually at school, we chose the kindergarten parking lot, and it turns our better and we had the vision of some scenes. we had some problems with continuation because in the parking lot there are some
in this picture we are trying to make an over the shoulder angle and make it following from panjis back, kenneth is positioned close to the stair so that he can run to the stair and it looks realistic.
in this picture we are planning the choreography of the whole scene and where i should walk and what expression, i should give out. arnold was the one who gave us all the instructions of how the scene is going to go.
In this picture was a test scene or a practice scene, we do this to make sure the real scene looks perfect. we took around 3 tries and it didnt take that long because everyone understood the concept of this scene.
Self Reflection:
I find it to be very unfortunate that we have a small behind the scenes blog, though I was in charge with capturing most of the BTS photos, I would constantly forget to do so and would only remember by the time we finished shooting, I take full blame for this.
Last week we learnt about dominant reading, here is a blog where me and my groups discuss our dominant reading. We did this as a group.
This is just a quick catch up session that we did as a group. We thought it would be a good idea to check what our intended dominant readings are for the different things being represented in our film opening. We have recently learned about Stuart Hall’s Reception Theory with Dominant, Oppositional, and Negotiated readings. For our media text to be successful, we want to make sure the message is clear and able to reach the correct audience. Below we will discuss our intended readings, and compare them to the intended readings we made in our Statement of Intent earlier on in the project. It will be interesting to see if our ideas have evolved.
List
Our intended
Dominant Reading
How we will achieve this with technical elements
Individuals
Panji:
Sagara: Alex: Bamz:
Lamiya:
Panji: A young delinquent with a troubled upbringing, leader of his own gang.
Others: Followers of Panji, also young people.
Panji: We displayed this through mise-en-scene, the character was wearing a puffer jacket, white t-shirt, baggy jeans, and hip shoes. The clothing displays the characters youth, still willing to keep up with today's clothing trends, the choice of it though symbolizes his carelessness and unwillingness to conform to clothing etiquette as they aren’t formal or proper. His performance also conveys a message to the audience that he is lazy, unserious.
Others: Symbolized as followers as they were often displayed behind the main character, follows similar clothing styles to the main character, symbolizing Panji as the leading figure.
Social group
Male, Young teens, rebellious.
People who enjoy crime movies. Teenagers who see themselves as rebellious and anti-establishment, viewing this movie would enforce their self proclaimed identity.
Our film opening consists entirely of young teenage actors, thus allowing them to relate and place themselves in the shoes of the characters within the opening. Only including male characters would also make our film opening resonate better or maybe even exclusively with male teenage audiences.
The setting they’re in may also reflect this, the delinquents are hanging out in an abandoned area, showing their desire to be disconnected from the rest of society.
Places
Abandoned theme park. (Taman Bali Festival)
Restaurant. (Cosmic Diner)
People who likes unique and chaotic sceneries
We will include unique sceneries in our background.
Events
Vandalism (not a serious crime), teenage gang
People who are into art and loves to spray paint on walls
We displayed this by showing a lot of graffiti on walls, and taman bali festival is an abandoned place, so every corner there's graffiti, In one of our scenes it shows some of the characters
Overall Message
Gangs are bad.. But maybe they’re cool??
How are these similar or different from your Statement of Intent?
The similarities are that our film opening still is entirely made up male teenage actors, this also means that our intended demographic and psychographic stills stays the same as our statement of intent. The characters in the movie are still portrayed as rebellious delinquents, who act in a gang though it pretty much is entirely a social group gang, they still act and are portrayed as delinquents and somewhat negatively, though things like their faces, hair and outfit probably don’t reflect it all too well. The film opening will also still contain an inner monologue as we stated previously, and will pretty much serve as the main source of characters speaking. We also still used the same location (taman bali festival and cosmic diner) as it still fits best with our desired genre and vibe.
Aside from that, the film's opening is almost entirely different. The activity that the gang and the members are doing is different, in the statement of intent we stated that they’d rob adults and unsuspecting people and hang around in alleyways, in our actual shooting the actors are pretty much just hanging around as a group, vandalizing an abandoned place which may not be considered a crime, and carrying a singular knife. The general synopsis of our film opening has also changed, originally it was meant to be placed in a civilized town with action and actual serious crimes being committed, but the film opening we shot does not include any of that, the opening also doesn’t really show any sorts of reflection or regret, rather that the character is embracing it, and seeing it simply as a social friend group. We did not include an adult. The dominant reading we originally had which originally was supposed to deter kids from join gangs, if anything the film opening we had might encourage them as they look cool and chill, though the setting they’re in might still make them have second guesses.
Self Reflection:
Our film opening went through quite a lot of revisions, so much so that a good amount of our dominant reading is outdated or just isn't applied to our opening anymore. Despite this I think doing this dominant reading in the first place sort of allowed the whole group to confirm things like our genre, characters, and overall vibe of the film opening, it acted as a sort of reassurance for the group, writing down our plans also helped us remember our goals.
This is the schedule that my group plans to follow for our shooting.
Self Reflection: I think this schedule wouldn't really be needed by our group since we've already agreed in advance on what we need, when and where we'll shoot too, and the schedule may be subject to change. However it's nice to have it and could possibly serve as a reminder for us.
This blog post contains the work I did with Alex in my lesson on how to succesfully edit. My teacher filmed the footage but We edited it together. My teacher also provided the template for the blog post.
Why Is Continuity Editing Important?
- Continuity editing includes making sure that items like props or costumes stay consistent from scene to scene. But the more important work lies in editing shots together in a way that leaves viewers thoroughly grounded in both time and space
Different types of continuity edit
Straight cut (cut)
Eyeline match
Shot /reverse shot
Cutaway / Insert
*Match cut
Footage
Here is the footage that my teacher shot which utilises a variety of camera angles and movements. The scene is very simple, it involves a student standing up and leaving the classroom. A single shot here might be quite boring for the audience, by editing and combining the shots together we can make the scene feel more dynamic.
Here is the raw footage:
My Editing Process
- We edited the video by first choosing which clip we'd like to have at the start and which ones would follow, we'd choose certain parts of the clip in which we'd cut and place another clip in replacement, we had to align it and time the clips well to esnure that we could maintain a sense of continuity and it won't look awkward. Thankfully me and my friend didn't face any errors during or after editing.
- Me and my friend made 2 versions of the edit. The first one being a normal attempt at editing the clip, and the second one was where we practiced further by using different filters and effects to give a different mood to the video.
Here Is Our Video:
Self Reflection:
I think this practice and overall lesson we had when doing it was very helpful. It definitely helped us get reintroduced to editing, its terminology and in general put us back in the zone and flow of editing, which was beneficial as it meant that we won't get shocked when it's actually time for us to edit the film opening. The lesson and practice also informed us about continuity and how important it is for our film opening to ensure that everything flows well and nothing breaks the viewers immersion when watching our text, I think this is very important and we will try to implement it in our opening.