Typeface Development: Title + Credits

This blog post contains research on a bunch of typefaces and title ideas for our movie opening scene project. This blog post was done by my team member, Kristine, however I changed her words into my own.

Examples I liked₊˚ʚ ᗢ₊˚✧ ﾟ

1. [⏺REC]

I liked this idea because the font and style of the text looks slightly different from other found footage titles, making it unique and special. The red dot and bracket basically gives the reader an impression that the movie is like a recording, so the audience knows it is a found footage film. In the second version, the blood splatters gives the audience an idea that the movie is going to involve sensitive topics such as murder, death, or gore. However, this title card was shown at the end because the filmmaker wanted to keep it realistic while still adding the title.

2. The Blair Witch Project

The opening scene was very short because the title card appeared before the movie started. In found footage films, an opening scene is not always necessary in order to keep it realistic. I like how the title was really simple (like a normal text) but it had strong reasons behind it. Using a small title makes the audience feel like they are watching raw, unedited footage, which helps keep the film immersive.

3. Grave Encounters

In my opinion, this was a clever way to add a title card because it didn’t really feel like one. What's particularly good about it is its font, because it stands out from other found footage movies. This is due to its distorted look, which gives off an uneasy feeling, such as paranoia or hallucination.

4. Cloverfield

This title card is really interesting because they purposely made it look like it came straight out of a camera (the timestamp and font). We could use this as an inspiration to help make our film feel more realistic. I like how the editor used different tech-style fonts to give the reader an impression that they're watching a video recording from a camera. 

5. Spree

This is actually similar to Grave Encounters, where the title card was hidden in the scene to keep it realistic. I think this opening scene is really cool and smooth because of how the transition was done (the app's name that was featured in the movie is also the movie's title). This serves as an inspiration to us because we could use the book’s title as our title card. I also like the simple, clean font with a red title, which gives off an eerie feeling, as the color red symbolizes danger.

Credit/names˖ . ݁✶⋆.˚

Starring:

1. Drew: Panji Wiradharma

2. Carrie: Kellie Collins

3. Lyla: Lamiya Zara

Editor:

1. Maisie Halomoan

Director:

1. Kristine Lambert

Why we might NOT add credits:

In a lot of cases, found footage films don't usually have opening credits in order to keep them realistic. Since we wanted the same style, we decided not to include any credits at the start. Adding them would break the immersive feeling towards the audience and make it feel less realistic.

10 typeface choices˚ ❀˚ ༘♡

Discussing connotations✿⋆𓆉︎⚘°

1. VCR

The picture above is an example of how it'll look like if put in our project. I like this font because it's basically the font that a lot of found footage movies use, hence it is very commonly seen. It keeps the found footage style authentic. However, what I don't like about this font is how the font looks too old for a modern found footage film, so it doesn’t match the 2019 setting that we decided on. On its own, the font looks weird and might need vintage filters to make it feel more realistic. Without them, it could break the film’s uniqueness as a found footage. 

2. Punktype

 

Screen Test: Audience Feedback

This post explains how we showed a rough draft of our film opening to some members of our target audience in order to receive helpful feedback. This blog was made by me (Mai).

The purpose of a screen test is to gain audience feedback about our work and see if there are any improvements that can be made. We decided to use Google Forms to create a survey to share with our audience because it is very quick and easy to use for both me and the respondents. 

Questions✿˖˚ ༘𐙚

1. What do you like about the video?

2. What improvements can be made?

3. What do you think of the effects so far? (sound, lighting, coloring, etc.)

4. If you rate it low, how do you think we can improve?

5. Mention 3 words to describe the cursed book.

6. Mention 3 words to describe Drew (the boy).

7. Would you watch the rest of the movie?

8. Which title is better?

Evaluation❀༄

We specifically chose these questions because we want to make sure that all of the elements and techniques we chose to implement into our opening scene successfully reaches and affects the audience correctly. At the same time, we are also making room for improvements by directly giving the respondents the freedom to express their opinions and thoughts. Furthermore, we chose these questions to further understand the extent of how immersed our respondents feel while watching the video, as it is one of our main goals (to make the audience feel like they're a part of the events).

We showed the clip to three members of our target audience to ensure that the feedback we receive is appropriate. Finding people for the screen test was easy, because we used social media (Instagram story) to spread the word and ask for volunteers. Thankfully, due to how quick social media connects us with other people, we got three different volunteers to help us out in no time. 

Draft₊˚ʚ ᗢ

Results𖡼𖤣𖥧𖡼

Conclusion❀ஐ〰

From the feedback, we learned that our opening scene needs to have more prolonged suspense to make the events more intense and unpredictable. However, we also learned that we have successfully conveyed some of our messages to our audience. For instance, we've succeeded in making the cursed book seem creepy and unsettling. We can tell from the words our respondents selected when asked to describe them. 

Since this is only a draft, there are many things missing in this opening scene. We are going to change some of the edits, because a respondent suggested to add more quick cuts involving black/blank screens. We will also change the coloring of the whole video, as it has been our plan from the start to make the opening scene seem more eerie. Lastly, as suggested by one of our respondents, we will also add more background music to help increase the thrill and suspense. 

This screen test was a useful part of our process because it helps open our minds towards broader aspects that can help us improve our project. Opinions from different people are really important because it helps us think of things that we couldn't think of ourselves. By being open to feedback, we are exposed to constructive criticism and advices that will help us better our project.

Reflection✿⊰𖡼𖥧𖤣

As the editor of the group, this screen test made editing so much easier for me because all the extra steps are already laid out on this blog. All I have to do is just treat it like a to do list and complete all of the added tasks that our respondents advised us to do. This screen test also expanded our knowledge on which media codes (like hermaneutic codes) that can be further implemented in our project to improve the elements of horror. This is because we had a senior who also takes media studies as one of our respondents. As someone who is more experienced, she was able to provide us with feedbacks using media terms/language.

Production: Organizing our footage

This blog contains details regarding the platforms that aided us in the process of making our film opening. Kristine was in charge of this blog.  

Post-production: Editing

This blog contains details of my editing process on CapCut. I was in charge of editing most of it, and Kristine helped me with the audio and effects. I (Mai) made this blog by myself.

Software❀ᮬᰰུ

To begin with, I chose CapCut for this project because it is easy to use and has all the tools I need. It lets me add transitions, text, sound effects, and filters. Our opening scene needs a variety of effects and good audio, and CapCut makes that simple. It also lets me save my video in high quality without needing expensive software. 

Introduction text• *₊°。

This is our first draft of our introduction text to our opening scene. We wanted to inform our audience about the occurrences before the footage was found. To do this, we included the date the teenagers were reported missing, how, and what happens next after a certain amount of time. 

Production: Behind-the-Scenes

This blog contains information and clips of our behind the scenes, outlining our process of filming. Lamiya was in charge of this blog, me and my other teammates copied and pasted into ours. I also added a couple things to elaborate more. 

Dominant Reading

Last week, we learned about dominant reading in class. For this blog, me and my team members discussed about what we want our dominant reading to be. 

Overview⋅⋆⁺𐚁♡

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. 

Table.𖥧.𖤣 ˊˎ˗

	List	Our intended  Dominant Reading	How we will achieve this with technical elements
Individuals	Drew Lyla Carrie	Drew: Drew is a jerk. He’s unserious, mean and stupid. He’s the main reason why everyone ended up meeting their demise Lyla: The innocent, wise character who is a slight coward. Carrie and Drew think she is “boring” because she’s too careful and wary. Carrie: Compared to Lyla, she is basically on the same page as Drew. Reckless, but also rational. She likes to have fun, but knows when to back down when things get bad.	Drew: We made Drew wear casual clothes that resembled a bold, wild male teenager (white t-shirt & short pants).  We also made our actor, Panji, perform as natural as possible because we figured it’d be better if he acted like himself while improvising his lines. Drew and Panji have similarities in terms of personality, which is one of the reasons why we chose Panji to act as Drew.  Lyla: We made Lyla wear dark blue clothes along with short pants to resemble innocence and sadness. In addition to that, we asked our actor, Lamiya, to tie her hair back because it emphasizes the boring character Lyla is (she’s very tense and serious). Lastly, just like how we asked Panji, we also asked Lamiya to go crazy with her lines and encouraged her to improvise. This way, her screams and shouts sound much more real, making it seem like the supernatural things are happening for real.  Carrie: We made Carrie use a pink t-shirt, followed by long denim jeans. We chose the color pink because pink is a mixture of red and white. Red resembles boldness and white resembles innocence. When combined together into the color pink, Carrie can be seen as a character who is bold, but also pure at the same time. Just like the other two actors, we also asked Kellie (our actor) to improvise her lines to fit her character better. This way, she’ll feel more comfortable as Carrie. Lastly, we asked her to let her hair fall loose. This is to represent her as someone bold and confident, unlike Lyla.
Social group	Teenagers  (1 boy and 2 girls)	Teenagers are often very curious about things. They are at the age where they explore and take risks and most of the time, they are doing things they shouldn’t be doing. Around this age, teens get exposed to peer pressure, where some get involved in things they do not want to be a part in so we showcased that with drew dismissing lyla’s plead to stop everything and go back down and somewhat forcing her into staying upstairs where afterwards everything goes wrong and lylas should’ve went downstairs. We wanted to also showcase teenagers getting curious and meddling with things they have no knowledge about that could potentially endanger them through how they started exploring the spooky attic-getting curious about the mysterious book with witchcraft writings that they should've left alone.	MeS:  Costume: The characters are all wearing very casual clothes since they are at home anyway, for example Lyla (just a blue sweater and a pair of shorts) symbolising innocence and fear. She has her hair up in a low ponytail as well basically implying that she does not try much for her appearance, Drew (beige pants and a plain white shirt) symbolising that he’s dense and has no creativity and is shallow. Carrie (pink shirt and blue jeans) symbolising that she's feminine and confident.  Performance: the acting for the characters are very immature, especially Drew since he’s basically a trouble maker and peer pressuring his friend Lyla. We tried to incorporate both types of teenagers, immature vs mature and troublemaker vs goody two shoes and such with Drew & Lyla. Lyla’s character is very anxious when she feels that she’s getting into some trouble.  Other: instead of using actual flashlights like normal people when going into a dark space or an attic, we made the characters use their iphones to be able to see for flashlight. I think this plays a big role in showcasing that our characters are teenagers because you rarely see a teenager without their phones in their hands.
Places	Haunted Attic	The attic was used to build the frightening suspense and to help create	MeS: To make the attic look more old and dirty, we used cardboard boxes to make the place look messier and isolated which we could imply to audiences that there is so much escapism.  We used only furniture and items we found lying around from the attic to help create the illusion of an old / unused attic. Items that standed out in our set included some old VHS tapes. Since our big sub-genre is found footage, incorporating the tapes helps create a connection to the the producers and to the audiences. We also decided to use the teddy bear in the shot as a doll prop. Dolls are very well known in the world of horror because they create a very uncanny effect which can send a message to the audience that the place is very unsettling.  We decided to turn off the lights to help create an eerie vibe to the audience to create a more mysterious situation. The use of flashlights creates attention to the audience to focus on where the flashlight points at. This can lead to glimpses of what might be lurking which heightens the sense of fear. There were windows in the attic which revealed too much light. This destroys the realism of a dark attic since there's still daylight passing through the set. Hence, we slightly struggled to maintain the dark atmosphere and had to depend on editing to create a darker surrounding.
Events	Disturbing supernatural occurrences can lead to karma	The message that we wanted to convey is to always be respectful when interacting with supernatural beings. The teenagers in this project found an old book with rituals written in it, and instead of doing the right thing by leaving it alone, they decided to mock it. This led to consequences that they had to face.	To help the audience feel the severity of the situation, the camera was filming through Carrie’s point of view 90% of the time and we used close up, shaky camera shots that felt more immersive to the audience.
Overall Message	Don’t meddle in with things you don’t understand. Trust your gut, and sometimes it’s better not to be curious.

Changes and similarities: Statement of Intent˚∘⊰⋆˙⟡

How are these similar or different from our Statement of Intent?

Differences: 

• We initially wanted to incorporate a scene including another group of teenagers (2 crew members) who eventually discovered the footage, but later due to the time limit, we decided to cut that out. 

• Our initial supernatural item was a cursed board game but then we eventually changed it to a cursed book found in the abandoned attic.

Similarities: 

• We decided to keep the demographic and psychographic target audience.

• We still incorporated teenagers as our main characters.

• We still kept the original traits and characters of the teenagers the same.

• We kept our overall dominant reading: The supernatural world is not something to mess with and sometimes it's better not to be curious

Classwork: Editing Practice

This blog post contains the work I did in my lesson on how to successfully edit. Mr. Nick filmed the footage but I edited them together on using my laptop on Capcut. Mr. Nick also made it easier for us by providing a template for this blog.

The importance of continuity editing𓇢𓆸𓏲𓇬𑁍

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.

Types of continuity editing❋

• Straight cut (cut)
• Eye line match
• Shot/reverse shot
• Cutaway/insert
• Match cut

Footage❀˖ °❀

Here is the footage that my teacher shot which utilizes 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.

Editing process⁺☀︎₊⁺⋆.˚

Software

I chose CapCut because it is the easiest editing software to work with in my opinion. It is simple, yet provides countless of features that helps beginners like me. 

Steps

I started by importing all of the clips from Mr. Nick's google drive into CapCut.

I had to figure out how to connect these two scenes, so I decided to cut the first scene as soon as he put both of his hands in his pockets. This is because I realized that he eventually does it in the second clip as well, so I thought it'd be a good way to connect the two clips. 

To connect these two clips, I decided to cut the second clip right before his hand lands on the door knob (when he reaches for it). The next clip then continues with his hand landing on the door knob, opening it. Mr. Nick suggested us to cut clips right before an action happens so that the next clip can continue smoothly. 

I chose to cut the third clip when the door is widely opened and a lot of light reaches in, followed by him taking a step out. The next clip then continues showing the same situation from a different point of view (door wide opened, him stepping out). This way, clips 3 and 4 are connected smoothly. 

For these last two clips, connecting it was slightly difficult because of a filming error. However, it couldn't be helped as it is out of my control. I tried my best to cut the 4th clip right as he takes a step forward to approach the railing. In the 5th clip, it shows him appearing from the corner, walking forward and then leaning on the railing. 

Final results‧₊˚ ⋅.☘︎ ݁˖

Reflection.𖥔 ݁ ˖⌗﹒

I quite like how this turned out to be honest. There are a couple things that I dislike about it, such as the transition from the first to the second clip. However, I wasn't the only one who had an issue with that, my friend Kristine also. We were sure that it looked very chunky because of the drastic change in camera angle. Aside from that, I think I did a good job editing the 5 clips and making it look as smooth as possible.