January 6th

Here is a final copy of our film title:We had already decided on a name for our film title in the previous stages of our film planning so in this lesson, we focussed mainly on creating a logo for the film, which we would import it into Final cut Express. As stated previously we all agreed on the red font of the text - which reflects the killer's red high heels aswell as the blood and death, against a black background - which could again reflect the dark, sinister atmosphere of the narrative. We looked on the website, 1001 fonts which we hoped to include in our films title. We found a perfect font, which we print screened. We decided just to use the new font on the K and H ( the first letters of the two words in the title). This helped highlight the words and looked better as opposed to using the font for the whole title as it was in block capitals and looked like an amiture attempt. We chose this point as the sharp edges on the letters almost represent the heel and the dangerous nature of it as a weapon. The title was on a white background, which didnt look right. we considered leaving it in this state but felt it would look most effective with a black backdrop. To overcome this we had to edit the title in Microsoft Word and change the background to black to solve this complication. I'm glad we did as it looks so much better as a final cut compared to with a white backdrop.

The next step was to most importantly include the credits in our film opening, which are a key code/ convention for any film opening. A small percentage of film openings include a lot of people accociated with making that particular film in the opening credits, however, we have decided to only include the main actors, directors/producers and film institutions at the start of our film. If everyone accosiated with the film was listed in the opening credits, it would go on for too long and the audience may lose interest which is why most films include the most important people in the beginning credits and tend to list everyone in the end credits of a film. After viewing a selection of horror films, we noticed that alot of the credits introduce new, young actors breaking into the business, which gives a fresh, new edge to the film which may appeal to our younger audience, so we have included this in our opening. The colour of our credits are just a plain simple, white font. This white text stands out on the dark, contrasting backgrounds of the opening and doesnt take away from the narrative. We decided to place the credits in the bottom left of the frame, so it could still be clearly seen, yet not take the audiences attention away from the narrative too much. We also decided to have the a major production company, Warner Bro's appear at the start of our film opening as it shows class, quality and may appeal to fans of various films produced by Warner Bro's. We managed to find an edited Warner Bro's longo used in the Harry Potter saga of films. It is the same logo but edited to look dark, eroded, warn down, hard and cold with an air of mystery and darkness, which we felt was more suitable and reflects the genre and nature of our film.

After creating our film title and chosen film Production Company, we started to add transitions to our opening, linking clips and scenes together smoothly which made it run together slickly. After viewing all the possible options of transition from one cut to the next, we decided to use the option, ‘fade in and fade out’. We felt this was the most visually appealing transition, displaying the cut of one clip to another, whilst keeping the editing smooth and sleek. I feel that the simpler the better and that editing should not be noticeable unless intended to be.

Whilst experimenting with music, we decided to leave the bedroom scenes silent as this added to the tension, making the scenes for sinister and terrorfying. It also took a lot of time and patience to get the heels to syncronise with the actions on screen but we managed to get it very accurate after altering timings. We discovered almost by accident that the heels over playing as the screen fades in and out adds tension and is an interesting element which can be used to elicit fear and excitement from the audience.
We then started to add transitions to our opening to make it run along smoothly. We looked at all the available transitions in Final Cut Express and decided to use 'Fade In and Out'. We found this to be an effective transition because it clearly showed when the scenes were changing, while still enabling it to run along smoothly.

January 5th

We continued editing it in today's lesson as we were unable to in the christmas holidays. We only had a few more clips to cut and place onto the timeline. We had to make some of the clips lighter as they came out too dark when we put them into Final Cut Express, so we edited and adjusted the colour levels after we finished cutting our clips. The use of black and white for the night scenes we feel is powerful and works really well, sneakily giving the illusion of night time and adding a darker, sinister atmosphere to the scene.
Seeing as all of our clips were cut down, positioned correctly and linked together, we decided now it would be a good time to add music to our film opening. Our chosen music clips were not long enough to carry out for the whole of our film, so we looped some of the music together. some of the music we had repeated did not suit certain parts of our film so we searched for some other suitable previews on iTunes. The ambient sounds in some of the clips is too loud and diverts from the narrative, so next lesson our intention to solve this concern.
There are various things that we plan to continue in the upcoming lessons, including the film name (logo), production companies, credits and the transitions. only tasks that need completing now are the credits, film name, production companies and the transitions. As a group we decided on the font and colour- red on a black backdrop as we feel this fits perfectly in with the dark theme of the film, blood, death and also links into the idea of the red hig heels (the main element of our narrative) which we plan to import into Final cut Express from a memory stick.
Next lesson we plan on completing all of the elements of our final film i mentioned previously due to the fact that we are presenting and showing our final film opening in class on Monday 9th January. I look forward to this as it allows us to get feed back from fellow class mates and our teacher, which may help, hearing different peoples perspective of our piece, allowing us hopefully to improve elements which may have gone un noticed. We may also receive inspiration from other groups openings which we could use in our favour to improve our film.