Director's Voice Over (Akshay)

This is the voice over explaining exactly what each scene is about and what is used in the scene. The voice over was recorded by the directors of the opening sequence, who are obviously me (Akshay), Antonio, Ricardo and David all together creating the "AARD" in our production name.

Titles (Akshay)

When i was creating Titles i implemented two sold rectangle shapes. I then added the text and "parented it with the solid", the means what ever the solid rectangle shape did, the text would copy. After i did this I key framed the movement of the of the solid, making it swish into the picture in a fast motion, then i key framed the shape to slow down for two seconds and finally i then added the fast swish effect again to position fade the title out.

This shows how the titles looked:

"Glass Shatter" Effect (Akshay)

This effect was an amazing and extremely unique effect which i created to make our opening sequence have a bit of an edge and "WOW Factor" ending to it. I used an actually effect called "Shatter" to create this overall effect, while also making it look like the pieces that were shattering looked were actually glass.

This shows have the final shatter effect looked like on the footage:

"CCTV Look" Effect (Akshay)

This effect was the most complicated and difficult to make out of all the effects. For this effect i firstly added a "noise" effect over the clip and set the nose to maximum  this made the pix-elated look over the footage, I then added a complicated "Time Particular" effect which produced the time counter on the top left side of the clip making it look almost identical to a real CCTV Camera.  

This shows how the final effect looked on the footage:

"Slide Transition" Effect (Akshay)

This effect is seen at the end of the first scene (School Scene) in the opening sequence. The way i created the effect was by using the masking tool, to create 3 rectangles over the clips. I then key-framed each one and made them come in, via a different direction to give it a unique movement. Finally I added a "Motion Blur" to make the clips look blurred when moving but then transforming into a still quality after the movement.

This screenshot shows the motion blur and keyframes i created for the effect:

"Blue Tinted Flare" Effect Creation Steps (Akshay)

This is the first effect you see when watching the opening sequence. To create this effect I used various plugins/effects on After Effects. The first one i used was the "Levels" effect which allowed me to create the blue tinted look with almost the flare look. I then implemented the fast blur effect which allowed me to make the outside border of the clip blurry , to make it look more like a professional point of view shot. All these effects finally allowed the scene to look like it was in the past.

The Editing Process Of Our Opening Sequence (Akshay)

In the following blog posts i will be explain and analyzing the various effects i created and how i created them to produce a good quality unique opening sequence consisting of special of effects and professional editing.

Firstly the program I edited with was Adobe After Effects CS6, due to me already being extremely experiecend in using the program.

This is how the work project first looked when i started editing on After Effects: 

This shows a completely blank project to start with, with only the clips of filming imported into the program.

AARD Productions Opening Sequence (Akshay)

This Link will re-direct you to our FINAL OPENING SEQUENCE.

Evaluation Presentation (Ricardo)

In today's lesson I was continuing with our A.A.R.D evalutation which is a presentation that shows our understanding of our thriller opening as a group, today I was answering the question of 'Looking back at your Preliminary Task what do you feel that you have learnt in the progression from it to full product?'. This is meant to make us think how have we improved in our way of thinking as well as the way in which we can apporach a task from the very first timed we picked up a camera in this subject. How I responded to this was that we have made alot of progress in the fields of editing, acting, planning before-hand, selceting camera shots and how important the 180 degree rule is. The reason why it is importnat is becuase it establishes the environment in which the story is set as well as introducing characters or narrative.

 

Lesson on 27/02/2013 (Antonio)

27/02/2013

In todays lesson we recieved feedback for our first draft of the opening thriller scene that we created. We recieved points for areas of which we did well and our work was a success, we also recieved some improvement points, which we should include in order to put our overall grade my severals marks.

Success's:

- Excellent film production titles that look very professional.

- An original idea and i like the nod to the gangster genre - this gives your opening another dimension.

- Some excellent shots and composition, which show a real craft and eye for camera.

Improvements:

- Titles- director shouldn't come first. Also, make sure that you have the full names.

- Your work will need to re-scripting and development.

- The shot in the car is great; however, the camera was handheld and wobbly. This needs to be re-shot so that it is still.

- Far too long, going well over allotted time of two minutes.

- Sound and music - some of the music ended quite abruptly and needs to fade in. Needs to be more layers to your music to build tension. 

- Lighting in David's house changes - becomes darker. Do you film this on different days and times? Does not maintain continuity.

- The ending scenes - you need to be more subtle, leave more to the imagination.

We then as a group started to discuss and mind map ways in which we can improve our work, we tried to come up with new points as well as the improvements given by our teacher.

As a group we decided that it was important to improve our thriller opening in an attempt to make our work more understanding and clearer to the audience. For example, there is no real reason as to why the Boss, wants Frank to kill his best friend, and the ending of our work seems amateur and rushed. To correct this it was felt that we should go back into the past of Frank's life as stated by him before, in order to give the audience a complete idea of his past, and then whilst we do this we can also incorporate and establish a relationship between Frank and The Boss.        

Opening Sequence Powerpoint Presentation (Akshay)

This link goes to the Powerpoint of my opening sequence of my Amazing Spiderman Presentation.