Evaluation - Company ident

After a discussion with Tia, Amy and Charley, a decision was made to edit the company ident ever so slightly. The small change that I need to make, is that the letter "p" in "Elementary Productions" should be a large P and not a small p as it is a title for a company. As small as the detail is, the change I need to make is slightly larger than may seem as I will need to not only change the letter, but the animation may need to be tweaked at each key frame to allow for the change in letter size, as well as being re-rendered to accommodate for the change in footage throughout the whole clip.

In addition to that, a change I may also make, is to the run time of the animation. As opposed to keeping what i had edited in Final Cut Pro where i just clipped a few seconds off of the start of the ident, I might instead speed up the animation in Cinema 4D to ensure that the whole animation is included in the final piece so it doesn't seem cropped (which it is). This will provide a slight implication as I would end up having to edit the sound more carefully as and speed changes will affect the sound of the metal crashes but I am sure that I can succeed at this.

Practical Task - Props

For my practical task, i decided to make a body bag prop. These can be used in our sequence where there are multiple bags hanging from a wall with blood dripping from them. They're incredibly easy to make and not only are they cheap, they also create a really creepy affect.

After a handful of failed attempts at making limbs and trying to get them shaped properly, I managed to create what resembles a small child wrapped up in bin liners and hung upside down. This creates a really creepy and almost sadistic feeling to any location. The process for making a body bag is really quite simple and this is how I made a "parent" for the child.

So I started with a pair of old trousers, an old t-shirt, a vast amount of newspaper, a roll of duct tape and then some bin liners and a knife to trim excess parts off.

The first step in actually making the body bag was sealing up any holes that would allow newspaper to fall out by its own accord (I also did this to the sleeves of the t-shirt).

I stuffed the trousers with balled up pieces of newspaper which worked really well to fill out the trouser legs to a "human" shape.

After using an entire newspaper to fill the trousers properly, they start to look really good and have taken up a nice shape.

I then had to tape the t-shirt to the trousers so the "body" keeps a fairly rigid shape and won't end up spilling any newspaper balls in the bin bag when it's all sealed up.

The dummy now has a very human-like shape and is now almost ready to be wrapped up.

The head was really difficult to shape correctly because newspaper really likes to do its own thing no matter how much tape you cover it in so I decided that the best way around this, was to tape up the neck really really tightly which gave the head more of a rounded shape and a better neck outline.

The body is now finally ready to be bagged up and hung to see if it will look good or not.

All it needed, was two bags, (one at each end) and to be tightly taped up.

I honestly feel that the taping could have been better done, however when I tried to adjust the tape, it tore the bin liner and I had used the last one to make the body bag so in the future I should have a better body shape to finish with, but the end product looks really good in my opinion and the use of string to hold the body tighter together and to hang it upside down makes it seem even more like a butchered piece of meat hanging to bleed.

Deconstruction and inspiration from Se7en opening credits

The first thing to appear in the opening credits to Se7en is the production companies name. This is pretty much always the case with every film as it identifies by whom the film was produced by.

The opening credits quickly move on to include creepily detailed drawings/photographs of human body parts that have been manipulated/mauled to immediately give the audience the idea that this certainly won't be a product aimed at young children looking for a funny film to watch.

The use of close up shots is already becoming apparent in the first 20 seconds of the opening credits. this is to indicate that the film takes place in a close and personal setting such as a house. This close up in particular shows the "killer" as we can only assume is featuring in this clip, is removing their finger prints by using a razor blade to slice them off which not only suggests that they want to hide evidence of them killing someone, but also indicates that there might not be something right with a person that would rather slice their own fingerprints off instead of just wearing gloves. This is a key point to take note of for our production to decide whether our killer will wear gloves or if they'll just remove their fingerprints altogether and how we'll show this.

The killer/protagonist we focus on in the opening credits seems to be keeping a diary of their killings/sick and twisted surgeries they carry out on their victims. We can see this very easily as the protagonist is writing pages of words and then sticks newspaper clippings or photos from medical journals on brain surgery which indicates that they know what they're doing which adds to the fear factor, that the killer knows that what they're doing is done in hospital yet they're wanting to do it for themselves at home and make diary entries about it.

Something else we can take away from the opening credits, is that the soundtrack is very parallel to the sequence as it is slow paced and has a dark eery feel to it which is very common amongst psychological horror films as they want to have the audience constantly on edge so the effects of certain scenes is amplified.

practical task - Location scouting

So I chose to look at outside locations during my scout and came across a few excellent locations for use in a potential chase scene or to be used in establishing shots followed by a cut to the protagonist(s) in their current location(s).

My favourite, and first, of the locations, was in part of a woodland near to where I live in Yalding.

I really like this as a woodland location as you can see in the distance that it has plenty of ground space, but the trees still obscure direct view in most directions and so can be used as an effective chase location.

I can explain the use of the smoke. It was purely as a way of seeing the potential usage of smoke to create "fog" when it becomes dark enough to appear as night. The fact it was red is just as a way of seeing the effect as a more exaggeration since at night, we'd have lighting set up to shine through the white smoke which would be time consuming to replicate, however if this location is chosen alongside the mise-en-scene of the artificial smoke, we may revisit smoke grenades and their use.

With the help of some wind, I was able to get the effect I was after. As you see towards the left, the smoke is still thick, however, if a figure were to be stood within the smoke cloud with lighting behind them at night, we would be able to have an amazing effect of this ominous figure appearing from the mist which will be effective at building tension and gaining audience anticipation. Again, the smoke will be white if it were to be used in the actual sequence. However to make it easier to detect the effect created by the smoke, I have used red smoke during the daytime.

In my opinion, this is another great location for both an establishing shot of the area, and as a location where the killer can make a creepy first appearance where the protagonist walks across the entire frame and as they walk past, the killer is then perhaps stood beside one of the trees or a body is suddenly hanging from a tree, foreshadowing the protagonists inevitable outcome.

I really like this location for the sheer purpose that it is exceedingly creepy in the correct lighting. You're unable to see far in the distance and the space is claustrophobic as the trees line the path on both sides and also arch overhead to give the feeling that you're almost trapped which is a genuine feeling I get every time I walk along this path.

I don't know what it is about this part of the woodland location that I find eery, but I get the feeling that it's due to the hard foreground lighting and soft background lighting that make the space feel enclosed when actually it is the same clearing that the person is stood in holding the smoke grenades (photo 2). Again, to have a sudden jump cut to this exact location with the same lighting with a figure either stood here or dead here would increase the intensity of the sequence, especially if the protagonist(s) passes this location before they come across the killer.

Practical Task - company ident

For my production company ident, I came up with the name "Elementary Productions" and linked the company logo to the typical idea of an Elementary school age child s drawing of a house which in my opinion works well with the ident.

The software I used to create the ident is called Cinema 4D and is a package you can use to create 3D models and either render them as still images, or go as far as to animate them and then render as a moving animation which is what I did.

To create the house which is on a podium, I had to insert cubes into the 3D "world" and then manipulate them to change their shape and size like so.

This is the interface that I had to interact with to reshape the cubes into the company logo I wanted.

After a large amount of changing the shapes of cubes, I eventually got the logo I was going for

The next thing I had to do was to add in the company name "Elementary Productions" which was as simple as adding in word art to a word document and so took next to no time.

Selecting the option to add in 3D text genuinely is easier than choosing word art.

This is my final, rendered company logo.

The Final and hardest stage of the whole production of the ident, was the actual animation. Because all the objects are just mesh and splines (shapes), I have to move them around myself which is no easy task to make it look smooth. Moreover, I had light fades as well as a moving camera to take into account as opposed to just moving some shapes around which all had to be done at the same time otherwise the whole thing would've looked too judder-y to look professional in any way at all.

Setting up the camera so it can film the product in action.

The following is a video of how the "camera" orbits around the logo and then tracks forward along with the light source changing its intensity constantly throughout the piece.

                           

The final thing I added, was the diegetic soundtrack. The sound track is all from a royalty free account on sound cloud and involved the opening and slamming shut of a metal door which is what I used when the word falls down. The use of metal being grated together creates that eerie feel you get as the company ident for a horror film comes up. A fine example would be the twisted pictures ident.

Here is the final ident: