Title Sequence Evaluation (The House)

Title Sequence Evaluation (The House) By Jordan-River Searle by jordanriver8

Final Horror Thriller Opening Sequence

Media Coursework Progress - Individual & Group Evaluation

Looking back on myself as a media student as well as our group at the start of our project, I would say that my group and I were blind as to what we were up against. However, this was a long time ago and I feel my group and I have made dramatic steps in the right direction to create good progress. As an individual I feel I have grown in my skills, understanding, leadership and teamwork within my project. At the beginning of my project I thought I could just get along by just posting to my blog every now and again and just steadily keep up with the work. I thought just because I knew how to use Adobe (Premier Pro & After Effects) well and had knowledge of camera and filming I would easily be able to complete my project. However I then realised that it was much harder than it all seemed. This realisation came when we started our continuity task. We set out as a group going to film with not a lot of research to begin thinking it would be easy and we would have completed it within a day. Nonetheless the group and I then realised we had to completely up our games if we wanted to get a good grade and do well in a project. This was because we had nowhere near enough footage. Everything was wrong with the filming, the story was terrible, the shots weren't good enough, we didn't have enough research, planning or blogs and overall we weren't putting enough in. I then started to take much more time to learn all the different shots and what we needed to do as a group so I could improve and also help my group improve with our research and planning; this is because my teachers helped me to understand what my group and I were missing. At this stage, in my head I knew this is where I had to take lead of my group and start to get things done. This is where my group and I made huge leaps in progress due to this change. I then started to post all the research, planning and other blog posts. As well as personally create brainstorms, intros, music, storyboards and shot lists to show the steps and additionally what I wanted to do. This is where I felt the rest of my group still hadn't realised what was needed etc. Therefore needing me to do most research, planning and blogging as I was afraid if I didn't do so and start doing this work we needed to do, it would never get done. We then started to film, I had created a good story line with a very detailed storyboard for us to follow as a group so we could get as much done as quickly as possible. On our first shoot literally everything was unusable and not good enough. I then realised my group and I both needed to become more knowledgeable of our camera skills and just my group on their editing skills. We then all overstepped this with some of us learning more and progressing more than others in the group. We filmed more with only certain group members making the effort and then me perosnally editing whilst trying to teach my group how to use Premier Pro so they could edit also if they wanted to. When filming and editing it was clear who wanted to do well in our project and made efforts to try and film, edit, blog, by trying to meet up and taking part in editing, research, blogging and filming itself. This was only done by myself and certain other group members really, which I felt was a shame as our group had great potential and were doing very well, whilst looking towards a good grade, but this was hard to lice up to with some of my groups low efforts. However, this was not because of the entire group and as I said, some of us progressed more than others at this stage. On the other hand, we then went on to film and edit even more and we have now come to a very strong position in our project as we near the final stages of it. I feel individually I have progressed considerably in my understanding of what to do in research, planning, camera skills, editing skills, leadership and teamwork etc. I feel much better about myself in my media work now and feel I can take on next year well with my knowledge. Although as a group we haven't all progressed together at the same speeds and some of us have been putting a lot more in to the project than others which shows in the final piece and our blogs; however I feel overall our actual groups work has completely shifted and come to much higher level that is able of a good grade. I feel as a group everyone has made progression, just some more than others. I also think as a group and individually everything is going well now and we're where we should be.

Our Productions Intro

For our productions intro we decided we wanted something simple but keeping to our theme but not to extravagant. Therefore we wanted to keep it black and white with not a lot of animation like this with just a light going over some text saying the production name with black background. I thought this sticks to the theme of our genre as when I have looked at previous production intros they tend to be very simple and stick to a similar theme, especially in horrors and thrillers.

Music In Our Opening

For our background music we wanted to have something on going throughout the opening that wasn't too obvious and just created a ominous tone for the opening. Furthermore we wanted a ongoing piece of background music that reflecting on our genre as a horror-thriller. After searching through many non-copyright free music sites I eventually found this piece of music that lasts just over 3 minutes. I thought this was perfect for our opening as it was exactly what we were looking for in terms of audio and genre. It had an ambiguos tone to it as well as giving the opening character rather than the silence we currently had. This music was perfect to have in the background quietly due to the monotone level and the synths to portray our horror-thriller genre. 

Our Final Intro

 The video above is our initial intro. We thought this was good but could be improved as we thought the wiggle was very fake and ruined the tone of the film. However we wanted some kind of static or jumpy effect to make the text stand out more rather than just coming down and staying on screen.



Therefore we got rid of the wiggle in our second intro and instead used a blur as the text came down. Furthermore we then carried this blur on as if the text was jumping and then the text zoomed out in to the background and faded away as if it were going in to the distance. However as this was going to be at the start and the establishing shot would be after we then thought it would be better for the text to zoom back out through the 'O' again and then showing the scene. Furthermore we thought the moving blue looked unnatural.



Finally we came to the following into and we were all happy with it as it was exactly what we wanted the text zoomed down with a blur and then the text stays on screen for a while to establish the title and create tension. This then zooms back out with a blur again and fades into the next scene. This was exactly what we wanted and when placed on our timeline we knew it was the perfect intro for our opening due to the tension, tone and look it gives to our opening.

Our Characters

We decided to pick Emma Thomas for our main character as she was a good example of a stereotypical protagonist in a horror-thriller and horror genre'd movie. This was because she had brown long hair and a slim figure as well as being a white British teenager of 17 years old. We wanted our protagonist to look like this because we wanted it to be relatable and similar to our target audience who are of a similar age to our actor. This is like direct address as it is creating similarities between the protagonist and the audience as if they are in this same posit when they are watching this film and to make it relatable as if it could happen to them and they are in danger and give them tension as it is a horror-thriller. Furthermore by making our protagonist a female we thought this was traditional as they are innocent and vulnerable unlike a man as they are stereotypically meant to be strong and dominant and be able to protect themselves and others around them, like family. Therefore we wanted to create a stereotypical role of a female slim protagonist that doesn't really know what is happening and just thinks everything i normal as this will make sympathy for her as she is innocent and vulnerable due to appearance, gender and class.