AICE Media Studies

 This is the CCR for the final task.

Hey everyone! After many hard days of planning, filming, and editing, this is the final product! I'm proud to present "The Game" opening sequence. I look forward to doing similar projects in the future. I've learned a lot from this experience and hope to apply it later on. 

 Hey everyone, welcome back to another blog! I am now almost done with the entire editing process, so that's very exciting. Last time, I finished up the titles and music. Theoretically, this should've been the final touches. But, after looking at it once more, I  realized I had a couple more things to fix. For one, the music that was being used in the first 15 seconds of the opening sequence had to be replaced. I was unable to get in contact with the artist in the past and had to find an alternative. I began by removing the audio I placed in the first 15 seconds with our new sound. This one was found on Royalty free music. Once I had done this, I reviewed all the scenes once more. This is when I noticed that in the final scene, the title placement was not working well. It looked messy and was barely visible. While I loved the idea of having the title placed on the weapon to be better incorporated, it was not working. So, I decided to place it in the background on the fence and...

Another day, another editing blog. Welcome back everyone! Today, I'll be wrapping up the editing process by working on sound a title placements. To finish all the visuals, I decided to leave any auditory editing for last. I began by pulling up the storyboard I made prior to filming and consulted it for the placement of of the titles. After reviewing this, I had to play around with the options for editing I had on Capcut. The font, size, and color of the titles were all things I also had to double check. One by one, I placed the titles in their respective places. However, I also had to see in what order they had to be written in. Once I was able to grow confident in my editing, the rest went smoothly. Sound editing was next. The songs and sounds had been picked out prior to editing, but it was still one of the most nerve wracking parts. Especially with the way they I wanted to switch between non diegetic and diegetic sound. I had to play around with the sound as well as I just had a...

Hey everyone, its me again. Today is gonna be all about some of my process while editing. As mentioned in the last blog, I started editing by combining all the clips together. The next step, was to review everything and add transitions where they were needed. Most of the scenes did not need much editing in terms of a transition as they were filmed in a manner to transition smoothly. In addition to this, many of the cuts were jumpcuts. This was done to keep in line with the horror genre. Once all the basics of editing was finished for the base video, I exported it and sent it to a friend for a peer review. Yasmin and I sent it to two different people to see what should have been fixed. In my case, the person who reviewed the video thought that the shift between the second to last clip and the last clip was too quick. The transition is smooth and the cut isn't that noticeable. However, the pacing is off compared to the rest of the video. At first, I thought this was a simple fix. Jus...

 Welcome back everyone to another blog! After many days of filming, I will finally be able to start the editing now. I've been anticipating this as all this filming can  make me a little weary. However, editing is arguably my favorite part, so I'm glad I can do something I am good at.  To begin, I figured I'd primarily use a program I am familiar with - Capcut. I'll probably end up mixing several different programs as I continue down the editing process, but for now this program will do. For the beginning process, all I did was put the clips together. This is one of the easiest steps, but obviously crucial to the rest of the editing. If the base of the video is not properly combined, then I won't have a strong foundation to build upon. I spent about 2 or 3 hours reviewing the clips, putting them together, going back, shortening, and so on. I had already swiped through which clips might work best, but now that I was actually editing, I reviewed them again to see if s...

 Welcome back everyone! Today, I'll be talking about our final filming blogs for the process. For the last few scenes, I decided to film on a separate day because I thought a change in location might be needed. Up until this point, everything had been recorded all throughout my own house. However, in the storyboard, the last scenes are shown to be taken outside on the street and onto the road. My neighborhood can tend to be pretty busy, so I didn't think it'd be a good idea to film these scenes near my house. Instead, the last few scenes were recorded in Yasmin's neighborhood. I knew the streets by her house were used much less as we had filmed previous videos at her house. This gave me some prior knowledge to how it might work out so I could make predictions and act accordingly. For extra safety precautions, we recorded these scenes at a time of day in which not a lot of cars would be passing. I avoided rush hour or just times I knew more cars would be frequently passi...

 Hey everyone! Welcome back to another production blog. Today, I'll be covering how the rest of the filming process and a couple hiccups I crossed into along the way. For one of the scenes we had to shoot, the camera was to record the characters running outside the door. However, I had forgotten the proper costume for one of the characters. They should have been dressed in all black, including black shoes. Unfortunately, the person playing this character had come in the wrong type of shoes and I had to improvise to come up with a makeshift costume. Luckily, the scene only needed about the bottom half of the legs to be filmed. I managed to find a pair of black shoes that, while were a few sizes to large, would work perfectly for the scene. Once the camera was set up on the tripod, we now began filming. We thought we had the shot down perfect, but upon watching it back, I realized that the sound of cars passing in the back was prominent in the recording. This was quite an annoying in...

 Welcome back everyone! Today, I'll be telling you guys about my fourth day of production for this project. In my last blog, I talked about the final details of preparation that was taken prior to filming and  mentioned the first scene. For this production blog, however, I'll be talking about all the scenes we were able to film inside, which would be about half the scenes. As previously mentioned, scene 1 is stationed in the kitchen. I knew I had to be cutting some type of food on the cutting board, but I had to ensure it was easy to slice through and would not result in being a waste of food. I decided to use some fruit as I could hold the plum in my hand while cutting. This motion of simply cutting the fruit took a few tries to make it seem more natural, but once I got the hang of it, it became easy. The fruit even ended up being a snack for later! While I was cutting the fruit on the cutting board, I also had to maintain my face hidden behind a cabinet door. This proved mor...

 Hey everyone! Welcome back to another production blog. Today, my teammate and I picked out the setting and costume for the characters. I also got to filming some of the video, which I'll also cover later. So first, I decided to play the main character of the sequence and I wore a simple green t-shirt and baggy shorts with my hair a bit of a mess. This was done to give the feeling of a relaxed or unassuming character. This would make sense since the character was alone in their own home and was not expecting company. I didn't give much thought to the color of the shirt, but ensured to keep the clothing's colors neutral so they would give further appearance of blending in. The t-shirt was a darker, desaturated olive green and the shorts were black. In contrast, the killer - though only have been seen from the calves down - wore all black. This allowed the killer to stand out to the audience, but blend into the dark when in character. Additionally, dressing in all black typic...

 Hey guys! Welcome back to another production blog. In my last blog, I explained how I went through some of the settings in the storyboard to see where we might be able to film. Shortly after that, I decided to turn my focus onto some smaller details. This included the costumes and clothes that would be worn for filming. Due to the fact that I have yet to decide who will act out the characters in the opening sequence, this process of clothing is more difficult. I drew the storyboard with the assumption that I would play the main character as previous projects have usually been like that. However, this might change for this project. Not only, but there is the villain, who is an extra character. This means we will have to have an extra person outside of my group come play one of the characters. And because there is an extra person in the mix, I am not sure what clothes will be worn - nor what significance we might wants the costume to hold or represent. So, in this blog, I'll reviewi...

 Hey everyone, welcome back to another blog! Today we'll be starting our first production day. This project is much bigger than the last few I did so I'll be sure to take the production process much slower. The first thing I wanted to ensure was that the setting of our opening sequence was decided upon and able to be used. I was thinking of filming most of the sequence at my house since my kitchen fits the description and plan from our storyboard much better than my teammate's. So, the first thing I did was ensure that I had a cutting board and knife and that the space between the counter and sink was easy to film. I also checked to see if the side profile scenes of the open cupboard door would work without the background being too distracting. Next, I checked to see if my doorbell was functioning. It hadn't been used in a while, so I decided to ask for help in inspecting it and possibly fixing it. It sounded and worked fine, the only problem was it would get a little s...

Hey guys, so we just finished the storyboard for our opening sequence. Below is the explanation of each page of our storyboard, and all the way at the bottom is our storyboard pages for you guys to look at. Page 1- The first scene opens showing a phone playing music while resting on a kitchen counter. It is playing "Somebody's Watching Me," by Rockwell. This is shot from a high angle and is a close-up of the phone. With the same angle and shot, a hand appears hovering above the phone. The hand swipes the phone to the side and out of frame, and the first title appears on the empty counter which is going to be the "*name of studio* presents." The hand then swipes a cutting board into frame, same shot and angle. The second title will appear on the cutting board which will show the production company name. The next scene shows the person standing behind a cupboard door. It will show the body from the side in a medium long shot with another title appearing on the cup...

Hey guys! So the next thing that we discussed as a group was the design for our titles. Here's what we decided on.       For the majority of the titles, we want them to appear on the screen from anywhere between 2-4 seconds. The length of time we allocate for each title will depend on how long the title is and the importance of the title. For example, the title of our film will showed for about 2 seconds longer than the written by title.  This helps to create that sense of anticipation that we want to carry throughout our opening sequence. All of our titles will also be incorporated into aspects of the setting. For example, we will place titles on top of doors, on a road, or on cabinets to make them seem flush with the environment. This makes it seem like the titles are a part of the film, and help with the cohesiveness of the embedding.      The font that we chose to use for out title would look like this. We felt that our chosen font seemed demandin...

 Hey everyone, welcome back to another blog! Today we'll be telling you a little bit about our plan prior to filming. Location The main location we will be using is Giulia's house. For the first few scenes, we will shoot in the kitchen, the main living area, and the doorway of the house. The only other location we will be using is the area right outside of Giulia's house, specifically the road and sidewalk. This location will be used when we shoot the actor running down the street in fear, and when we show the killer standing on the sidewalk. Participants Our first participant is Giulia as an actor. She will play the victim in our opening sequence, and she will be found in almost all of the scenes. The second person participating is myself. Yasmin will be acting as the filmer for all intents and purposes. Lastly, we will have one extra person, our close friend Camila, acting as the killer in our opening sequence. Health and Safety     Throughout this filming process, we w...

  Hey guys, so we just finished planning our entire script for our opening sequences. It's all typed out for you guys down below! Scene 1- A high angle showcases a phone on the kitchen counter. A hand appears, pressing play on the phone screen for the song "Somebody's Watching Me" by Rockwell. Then, the hand will turn up the volume of the music. That hand then swipes the phone to the left, and the bare kitchen counter is shown. A few second pass, and then the same hand swipes a wooden cutting board to the left and into view of the camera. The camera angle then shifts to a medium long shot, and the camera is placed to capture a girl, Ava's, side profile.  The actor is standing at the kitchen counter, her face hidden behind an open kitchen cabinet, cutting up vegetables with a knife on the cutting board. Suddenly, a blaring ring of the phone startles the actor, and she jumps, cutting her hand in the process. Frazzled, Ava picks up the phone and holds it between her ...

  Hey guys! Another opening sequence we analyzed was from the movie Blood Quantum made in 2019. We found this opening sequence from the website "Art of the Title," and our observations are down below. 1. What titles are displayed during the opening sequence? During the opening sequence, the first title card shown is the title of the movie "Blood Quantum." Then, 8 different titles pop up on the screen, each is of the actor's names. Next, the casting by, costumes by, 1st assistant director, music composed by, sound design by, production designers, director of photography, executive producers, producer, written by, directed by, and edited by are all shown. 2. What images are prioritized during the opening sequence? In the opening sequences, many images of the open sea are incorporated. In the beginning, we also see an abandoned structure near the ocean with one man standing. Throughout, a town by the sea and a bridge are also shown. A cemetery is featured as well. ...

  Welcome back everyone! For our final opening sequence, we decided to go back and analyze the "Terrifier 2," as we thought it was an excellent fit for the horror genre. 1. What titles are displayed during the opening sequences? During the opening sequences, the main title card with name of the movie - which is, "Terrifier 2," is displayed. Along with the title card, the opening credits which includes the name of the writer and director, who are listed under the same name and the names of actors starring in the movie are included. Finally, the list of those involved in costume, production, music, makeup and hair are placed, with the names of the director of photography, executive producers and co-producers listed shortly after. One of the final credits displayed in the opening sequence is the name under the title, "Produced by." 2. What images are prioritized in the opening sequence? Some images prioritized in the opening sequence would include the costume...

  Hey guys, so after watching the last opening sequence, we decided that we wanted to watch a few more to get a better idea of what a title sequence should look like. The next opening we chose to watch was from the movie "Muse."  1. What titles are displayed during the opening sequence? During the opening sequence the titles displayed were the production companies, the director, actors names, music composed by, editor, art director, director of photography, executive producers, producers, and written by. 2. What images are prioritized in the opening sequence? In the opening sequence, we see the image of cracked glass whenever the titles appear. In between titles, we also see the dark figure of a man walking past, but you only ever see the outline or the extension of his hand. We also see what seems to be a staircase going downwards, possibly to a basement level. 3. What connotations do these images carry? The connotation of the cracked glass is a bad omen, or usually some sig...

  Hey guys, so the next step we took in researching our title was to watch an example of an opening sequence from a horror movie. We used the website Art of the Title and watched the opening sequence from the movie "Nanny." 1. What titles are displayed during the opening sequence? The titles displayed during the opening sequence were "Amazon Studios Presents," production companies, and "a film by" (producer). 2. What images are prioritized in the opening sequence? The images prioritized are of a woman laying down with a spider crawling on her face. The woman has her eyes closed for the majority of the time, until the very end when they fly open and she gasps. 3. What connotations do these images carry? The women lying down seems at first to be peaceful, however, the presence of the spider carries a negative connotation. Spider's are typically thought of as terrifying creatures and symbolize fear. The presence of the spider on the one's face can sho...