Practical Task - Production Company Ident

When looking for inspiration for my production company ident, I looked at other production companies that specialised in horror. A common theme that each company followed was the strong conformation of the common conventions of horror films. Using this, I decided to use blood as a main feature of my ident, as slasher horror films often contain blood and gore.

From this idea, I experimented with different ways I could use the blood to create a ident that would present the common conventions of the horror genre. Originally, I decided on spreading a layer of blood over the surface and writing the name of the production company in it, also leaving a hand print in the blood. However, when I did this, the blood appeared to be more orange than red, so I thought I would have the writing and hand prints in blood and then alter the colouring in the editing process. In the end, this is what I opted for in the final version. 

When composing a name for the production company, I wanted a title that would relate to the horror genre. I though of Red Handed, as this incorporates the idea of being caught red handed, as often happens in slasher horror films, where typically the villain is caught and stopped. The imagery of blood stained hands is also created by this title, and so I thought this was the best choice. 

In the editing process, I firstly colourised the clip and enhanced the red tones. This gave a red overtone that made the clip darker and conformed more to the horror genre. I then added a distortion effect, blurring the outer oval of the image. This draws focus to the text and distorts the hand prints, making them more subtle. 

I then added blur transitions to the beginning and the end of clip, and imported a dramatic, echoing sound that created tension and sounds creepy. I then put the sound of liquid dropping over the top of the music in time with the blood dropping on the text. I then imported a climatic, dramatic sound as the clip blurs out to give the ending of the ident more of a finality. 

This is the full ident for my production company, Red Handed: