Opening Titles

For our final project in Media Studies we are making opening titles of a film.We have chosen work on the theme of triller/slasher. We have decided the location for the video. It will be Saad's house. I am working on the story of the video i.e. how to make an opening title out of the story that we have made. I am also working on the casting. Since it will only be an approximately 2 minute film, we will have to make the opening titles of a kind that will be easily understandable for the audience and also make the story clear.


I saw a few opening titles of films relating to our genre i.e. the horror/slasher/thriller genre. I have posted them bellow:

 (Glass House II: The Good Mother)

Saw II Opening Title 

(I could not embed this video to the blog because the embeding code was not available but I posted the link because it is a proper opening title, with company logo's appearing in the beginning)  

(I Still Know What You Did Last Summer)

(Scream)

(Amusement)

House Of Wax Opening Title

(I could not embed this video to the blog because the embeding code was not available but I posted the link because it is a proper opening title, with company logo's appearing in the beginning)  

(Wrong Turn)

Final Institution for Final Project

Our group has decided on our institution for our final project. We found out that Dimension Films have made the most famous Slasher films so far and since our final media project will be made on the theme of thriller/slasher films, we will be using Dimension Films as our institution. It is unfortunate that I have been unable to attend the internship arranged by our teachers due to some reasons, however I will definitely catch up with Afia and Saad with what they have been doing at the internship. I have also searched on some of the thriller/horror/slasher films that Dimension Films have made and have posted their links below:


Released as part of Miramax Films:

• Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest (1995)
• Children of the Corn IV: The Gathering (1996)
• Children of the Corn V: Fields of Terror (1998)
• Children of the Corn 666: Isaac's Return (1999)
• Children of the Corn: Revelation (2001)
•  Cursed (2005) 
• Darkness (2002)
• Dracula 2000 (2000)
• Dracula II: Ascension (2003)
• Dracula III: Legacy (2005)
• From Dusk till Dawn (with Miramax Films) (1996)
• From Dusk till Dawn 2: Texas Blood Money (1999)
• From Dusk till Dawn 3: The Hangman's Daughter (2000)
• Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995)
• Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998)
• Halloween: Resurrection (2002)
• Hellraiser III: Hell On Earth (1992)
• Hellraiser: Bloodline (1996)
• Hellraiser: Inferno (2000)
• Hellraiser: Hellseeker (2002)
• Hellraiser: Deader (2005)
• Hellraiser: Hellworld (2005)
• Mimic (1997)
• Mimic 2 (2001)
• Mimic 3: Sentinel (2003)
• Mother's Boys (1994)
• Phantoms, a film adaptation of Dean Koontz novel (1998)
• Wes Craven Presents: They (2002) (with Focus Features)
• The Amityville Horror (2005) (with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer)
• The Faculty (1998)
• The i Inside (2003)
• The Crow: Salvation (2000)
• The Prophecy (1995)
• The Prophecy II (1998)
• The Prophecy 3: The Ascent (2000)
• The Prophecy: Uprising (2005)
• Scream (1996)
• Scream 2 (1997)
• Scream 3 (2000)
• Sin City (2005)
• Venom (2005)

Released as part of Weinstein Company:

• 1408 (2007) (co-distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer)
• Automaton Transfusion (2006)
• Black Christmas (2006) (co-distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer)
• Buried Alive (2007)
• Feast (2006)
• Feast 2: Sloppy Seconds (2008)
• Feast 3: The Happy Finish (2009)
• Grindhouse (2007)
  • Planet Terror (2007)
  • Death Proof (2007)
• Halloween (2007) (co-distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer)
• Halloween II (2009)
• The Mist (co-distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer)
• Piranha 3-D (2010)
• Pulse (2006)
• Scream 4 (2011)

Mind Maps

This is an image of the Mind Maps that we made for our final Media project. It consists of three parts. Narrative, Institutions and Audience. All of us i.e. the group members, Afia, Saad and I contributed in making it. Hope it is visible enough. 

Final Project Preparation

We have begun making mind maps for our final movie, Sweet Vengeance. Since we will be doing Opening Titles, we have decided that we want to make a thriller/slasher film. We have mapped out the following considerations: audience, narrative and institutions to help us approach our filmmaking in a more considered way. These mind maps will help us to improve our movie and to make it more interesting for the people who will be watching it. We have also been researching the kind of institutions that produce the kind of film we are making. This genre would be Hollywood (although you know Hollywood has copied the grudge from some other country- so you should write about that- and how other countries also produce slasher films but Hollywood dominates because they have money and because English is so commonly understood), and we hope it will be successful at the box office. We also plan to use a questionnaire so we can find out more from a potential audience and to try and get an idea of what the statistics say about people watching thriller or slasher films. We also plan to conduct a Focus Group as a way to get additional information about what an audience thinks of our film once we have completed it and our media teacher has suggested that we change one thing in our films e.g. our ending or introduction so we can find out what works better, and I believe this is a good way to have a backup just in case our audience does not like one of the things in our movie. The institutions that I think is most relevant to the film we are making are either Universal Pictures or Columbia Pictures, as these institutions have produced some of the most famous slasher movies. We are making progress and what is left now for us to work on is the costumes or props, the place where we will shoot and the final cast. We also have completed the script. Once these tasks are completed, we will begin all the technical work of our movie i.e. the shooting and editing and the rest.

Media Final Project and Poster

We have begun working on our final Media Studies Video project and have nearly finished the script. The Group that I will be working with includes Afia, Saad and myself. We have decided to do a slasher/thriller film for our opening titles. We came up with the story in class and so far have come up with the location, the props and the setting of the story. The story is about a man taking revenge from another man for something that the second man had done. The story will not really matter too much as the opening titles will just require a few shots and the name of the film. We still need to figure out what kind of lighting effect we want to go for and how we will achieve it and our script still needs to be finalized and as soon as that is done we will begin shooting our film. In the meantime, we were given a task to make a poster for our preliminary film. Unfortunately our prelim was not that good and there were no photographs taken during the shoot. Therefore my group decided to make a poster of our upcoming film which for now has the working title "Sweet Vengeance". I have attached the poster to this post.
I had viewed posters of some of Hollywood's Thriller/slasher films, like "I Know what You Did Last Summer", and the posters of such films had pictures from certain scenes merged and positioned in an attractive way. The posters had dark colors (mostly black) and they depicted the thriller effect of the film in the poster. The textures that I used in my poster were given to me by our Media Practical teacher. The teacher had sent us the background textures via email to help us use them in an exercise in class using Photoshop. I had used the textures in the class and the teacher taught us how to blend the textures together to make them merge and make an attractive background. At first when I was making my poster, I decided to use really dark colors, but then the idea did not seem to work out as I was unable to figure out how to blend the text with the color black, therefore I tried blending old paper texture with another texture that I had, and so the color seemed fine. Then I added the text. I thought of writing the word "Sweet" in italics because I wanted to have the effect of a love story or a relationship, and just to make the word seem like it is i.e. "Sweet". I added a rose at the end of the word "Sweet" to enhance the effect. I took the image from the site, "clicker.com" as the images there were not right protected.
The word "Vengeance" is written in a crooked font and this is because I wanted to depict the feeling of killing and torture, which is also the reason why I chose red as the color for the font of "Vengeance". To give it a more creepy look, I added a line under it, depicting that it has been made by someone's blood. 
I darkened all four sides of the poster with dark brown to highlight the center of the poster i.e. where the title is. I also added the same red color at the inside if the poster where the dark brown color ends, with a slashing effect to make it look creepy. 
I added a few sentences before the title to give a little information about the poster and to make the title sensible and understandable for the person who sees it. 
One thing that I forgot was to add the label or logo of the institution that I had made the film for. I have also not used any photographs as it is a poster of a film that is yet to be made. There may be some changes in the future regarding the script, however, we tend to stick to the same theme and idea for our final project.

Media Prelim

On the 1st of November we decided to use the very first media video project that we made at the start of last month for our prelim because there was not much time to waste on a prelim that would eventually not even be marked while the main project has a lot more weightage so we hope to score well with it. The first video project was a simple task. Our story was about a bully in a school who has been called into the principal's office. The video was made keeping in mind the main task that the OCR demanded i.e. showing a person walk up to a door, open it, go inside and have a conversation with another person. Therefore, the story of the bully and the principal was fine for our first video. In the shooting we made big mistakes with the Mise-en-scene which made the video unrealistic and interfered with suspension of disbelief especially as the actor playing the role of principal was not of the appropriate age, the film failed to be realistic or believable. There were also mistakes with the camera angles as all the shots were shot from the same side of the imaginary 180 degree line- this was because we were working in the media lab which is a very small room and so we couldn’t place the camera as it should’ve been placed- but we realized that we should’ve shot in some other room where there was more space.  Also the camera angles are something that we will need to improve in the future. The last mistake that we made was with sound. We will be using a mic in the next video that we make as the prelim lacked a good sound quality. The mic will enhance the sound quality and will help us produce a better quality film. I will be discussing the script of the next video project, which will be the final project. I hope that the final will not miss the important points that we missed out in the first project.

Media Preliminary Exercise

On 17th October, our group had begun the Preliminary Exercise for our Media Studies Practical coursework and now we have nearly completed the video. The video is about a murderer who has  been tortured and tormented by people in his childhood and he decides to take revenge for this treatment. One of the tormenters is main character’s father, who killed the murderer’s mother as well as his only friend. We shot a scene in an interrogation room and the murderer was shown being dragged in. The interrogator was shown talking to him in the scene that took place. The clip that is shot takes place in the interrogation room and the interrogator asks the murderer some questions about the murders that he has committed. The shooting is incomplete, although a large portion has been done. We have learned a lot from our mistakes with camera movements and angles and are working on our current project keeping these experiences in mind.

Saad, Afia and I have begun the storyboard for our final project- the opening titles. Hopefully this project will be even better than the first two. Since this year we will be working on the brief of opening titles, our group has decided to work in the genre of Thriller Films. This is what has been decided so far and we seem to be committed to this genre.

Media Studies First Exercise

We have now completed the exercise project that we were supposed to do to get some idea about how to shoot and to get some practice for the final project. This exercise helped us develop our movie making skills. Most of the shots were quite successful we thought, however some shots were unsuccessful. Some shots should either have been shot closer-up or again the nose room for the character had been cut too tight during shooting. Some important details of our characters, as mentioned before, were also missing, that was the attire and the set (or the room) for shooting the film. In short in the next exercise we will have to improve the mise en scene as well as the camera angles and camera movement. The link of the clip is posted here on my blog so that the mistakes can clearly be seen. The second project is now under way which will be our preliminary exercise and we hope to improve our movie making skills, especially the mise en scene and the camera angles and the camera movement, and hope this will prove to be much better than the previous one.

Media Project

11th October.

We have completed shooting and were ready to begin the editing phase but unfortunately due to some technical problems we were unable to begin the editing. I was handling the shooting phase of the assignment whereas Kamran and Afia had come up with the story and dialogues, and Saad opted to act for the film, but we all chipped in and helped each other wherever needed. In short, all of us played a part in shooting and making the storyboard and shooting the film. Most of the shots had no mistakes, however some did for example, some shots would have worked better if they had been shot closer while with other shots the nose room for the character had been cut too tight during shooting. Also, we felt that some important details of our characters were also missing i.e the attire and the set (or the room) for shooting the film should have been more planned and meaningful. We will keep these mistakes in mind for the next assignment and hopefully this awareness will help make the film better. Also, the group felt that some of the camera angles were not too professional for a few shots so this is another area we will focus on with our next assignment. Now what’s left is the editing phase and after that we will be able to begin our next exercise. We are now working on a new script and hope that it goes better this time.

First Day with the Media Project

Today we began our media preliminary exercise. It was quite a good experience as for the first time we got to know how hard it was to get the right shots. Kamran was the person in our group to come up with the idea of shooting a conversation between a school principal and a naughty student. The whole idea of such a script was basically to analyse the proper camera angles and control the shot with stable camera movements. We also thought of shooting the exchange of dialogues in a professional manner and try getting some good shots out of it. However, shooting has not yet been completed.

My First Blog

This is my first blog. I have never made one before. This will hopefully turn out to be a good experience.