Final Title sequence

Title sequence evaluation

The genre of our media product is romance/sci-fi/drama it was inspired by films such as “The time travellers wife” as it is based largely around romance and sci-fi genre just like ours, also films such as “back to the future” and “The note book” as they also involve either romance and sci-fi genres. These were the main films we developed ideas from for our media product.

We were inspired by characters from “the time travellers wife” and “the note book” as the two main characters are male and female that fall in love and have difficultly being together just like in our film. We developed these characters by making them come from  different time periods with different ways of living (only being able to be together due to time travel) and not being able to be together due to laws and rules from the different time periods, where as in “the note book” it is due to the couples families that they cannot be together. We also developed the idea of time travel from “back to the future” as in that film they are able to travel to any year they want where as in our media product there are restrictions as to what year people are able to time travel to and from. This challenged the time travelling aspects from the films we looked at as we added drama and complications of being able to time travel making it seem more dramatic and romantic because they cannot be together. This made our film seem some what more realistic because time travel was limited and it was not possible to go wherever you wanted whenever you wanted with no issues, this made it more realistic because in reality there will always be complications and nothing is perfect. We also developed the idea of time travel from “the time travellers wife” by adding a lot more science fiction to it making  one of our film characters from the far future where things such as technology has developed hugely instead of from the past where it is not developed at all. We also developed our ideas from “the time travellers wife” by making it the women in the situation being able to time travel instead of the man, which we made clear in our title sequence by showing the women writing the letter of having to leave the man and showing him reading it.

The codes and conventions of our media product show mainly a romance and drama genre which was inspired by “the note book” which we portrayed by mis-en-scene such as the soft dim lighting which connotates drama and love, also the red walls which also connotate love. The main part of our film is set in modern day 2012 which was inspired by “the time travellers wife” being set in modern day, when it was released, which we portrayed by setting our title sequence in a modern day home in a room where there are props such as tables, chairs and lamps which you would almost always find in a house. This again makes it more realistic as it is set in a typical modern day house that you could find anywhere.

In our opening sequence it shows a woman writing a letter in a house crossing over to a man reading the same letter in the same place as the women wrote it. Close up shots and long shots are shown of the two characters allowing you to see some form of emotion and the environment they are in. This allows the audience to get a hint of the story line but not revealing too much information. We used a soft flowing typography to emphasise a love and a romance genre done in a hand written style to make it seem more personal and realistic. This also connected well with the women in the sequence writing the letter.

 We were able to portray the genre of time travel in our title sequence by the layering of the clock that played over the top of other clips. The clock turned clockwise and anticlockwise at a fast speed continuously which portrayed the sense of reversing and skipping time. We decided only to include this aspect of time travel in our media product so we didn’t give too much of the actual film plot away to the audience as this still leaves them questioning what the clock really reflects and why it is turning different ways at different points through out the sequence.

Our media product represents social groups such as couples in love. This is due to the only two characters being shown in our title sequence being male and female, that you know are a couple due to the letter that is shown being written by the women and read by the man opening with “to my love” and ending with “love you forever.” Love is represented hugely throughout our title sequence through things such as the soft slow music which we decided upon because it was soft to reflect love but also because of this sounded quite sad due to it being so soft and slow which brought out the drama side to our media product and emphasised the sorrow of the couple being separated. Also mis-en-scene such as the props used emphasised the romance side to our title sequence through the candles that were lit on the table, also the slow movement of the smoke crossing over occasionally made it seem quite mysterious and sad.  

Edits such as fade in and fade out reflected our title sequence as a romance genre and emphasising the social groups as couples because the shots crossed over to each other very softly and delicately connotating love and care being very gentle. The fact that the two characters are sitting in the exact same place in the same house with the same letter shows also that they possibly live together and are together. We wanted the characters in our media project to come across as really sad and as if a tragedy had just occurred, this is why the room is not lit up bright to emphasise the sorrow they are feeling and the light is just focusing around them to show that it just involved them two and nothing else. Our title sequence reflects the troubles couples go through of being apart etc as the characters are never shows together in the same shot showing they possibly cannot be together. They are shown stressed and upset through mis-en-scene such as body language by holding their heads down and rubbing their eyes and hands through their hair. The fact that you can barely see their faces throughout makes it more dramatic and mysterious because you are not certain on what they look like.

The audience we decided for our title sequence was young couples along with adult women aging from 16-25 due to it being mainly a romance genre that often only interest women and very rarely males. We believed it would only interest males if their partner wanted to go watch our film and they would go along side them. We also believed certain males might go due to the sci-fi side (time travelling) of our film as it has some sort of action in a way and drama. But all over the main audience we aimed our film at are females because it is a romance based around the drama and loss of love which is represented in our title sequence. We chose the age group roughly around 16-25 because the characters in the film are young and are based around young love so not many elderly people would take interest in young love. Also this would interest people from the ages 16-25 because the characters are closer to their age range and could possibly relate to them more. The primary audience we chose are women between 16-25 who would be white, British, possibly a student at school or university. And the secondary audience would be older women between the ages of 25-40 that would typically be housewife’s, white British and be of a middle class.  

We attracted and addressed our audience by the many feminine features of our title sequence. The titles are done in a handwritten style of writing that looks as if it is done by a girl due to the curls and flicks in the letters and the joining up of the letters also. This was the intention as it was meant to look as if the girl in the title sequence had some relation to the titles as she is writing a letter in the title sequence herself. We also attracted our aimed audience by the film name “A time to love” as it has the word “love” in it immediately comes across as a feminine film because love films are usually aimed at women because they are soft and romantic. And the connotations of love are very feminine things such as love hearts. Men tend to go for manly and tough films such as genres like action or crime.

I think over all our title sequence addressed and suits well to our target audience because of the age of the characters used in our sequence (they are of a similar age) also because love is represented in several ways through music, font of the titles, lighting and mood of the characters it is clear that it is a romance film and therefore mainly aimed at women other than men.

We looked at Paramount vantage for producing our film as we believed they suited best and would distribute our film. This is because they have a past of producing films of a drama genre which is one of our films main genres; they also largely aim their films at females and teenagers. We believe they would produce our film because it has a huge drama based story line such as the time travelling also because our audience it at an older audience from teens up and Paramount vantage do not aim their films at a younger audience. They have produced films such as “case 39” which is drama based like ours and “American teen” which is aimed at teenagers which is one of our audiences.

From the construction of our title sequence I have learned the importance of various technologies and the order of things. We decided as a group before filming our title sequence what jobs each person will have. This allowed us to stay organised by knowing exactly what we were going to do. It was decided that i would do the filming of the sequence, Daisy would do the producing and Sean would edit it all together along with mine and Daisy’s help. We used a flip cam to record our title sequence which came with positives and negatives. The positives were that we were able to film the sequence in different sections and then be able to edit them all together once we had done. We were able to attach the flip camera to a tripod allowing the shots to be steady and stable. Also because the flip camera is really light and easy to move around i was able to get a range of different shot angles such as over the shoulder, close-ups, longs shots and medium long shots.  But the problems we faced when using a flip cam were we was not able to focus on some objects meaning they were out of focus and unclear. Also you had to film the shots in order because you are not able to rearrange them once they are shot.

We used final cut pro to edit all of our clips together to make one long sequence. It also allowed us to use effects such as fade in and out, cross over and layering of images. We also added in the titles and the music. The internet was our source for finding music and font for our titles. We looked on the websites “audionetwork” for music and “dafont” for font. These websites are where we selected a variety of choices and then decided as a group what suited best.

From my preliminary task i have learnt in the progression of making our title sequence a lot about the importance of certain things when it comes to portraying a genre of a film and what a certain genre needs. When planning our title sequence we didn’t think deeply into things such as lighting, focus and speed. But after experimenting with different types of lighting and effects on final cut I have learnt how different these things can make a title sequence look. The lighting in our title sequence is one of the best things about it because it fits the genre perfectly and emphasises the mood we are trying to get across to an audience (sad, tragic, love.)  Other things such things such as the speed of the clips i have learnt are important because it also has an effect on the mood, we decided in the end to slow our title sequence down to slow motion so it creates a sadder emotion of the love slowly fading away and being lost, it also fits with the music much better because the music is also slow and soft.

To avoid continuity when filming our title sequence we filmed all the shots at once in the same day making sure nothing was moved out of place, the lighting would be the same and the camera angles would stay the same throughout .This also meant that the people shot for the title sequence would look exactly the same as they would be wearing the same clothing, the same hairstyles etc. We decided to film at night so the lighting would not get any darker or lighter effecting the lighting in the room of the shots.

To manage the group dynamics we got everyone together that we needed for our media production and planned a day that we were all free and were able to come together and shoot. As a group we decided on things such as costume and props that we thought were necessary, also the place were we was going to shoot. We decided on Daisy’s house because it already had all the props needed such as lamps, tables and chairs ready for us to use. On the table in the shot we decided to have homely objects such as ornaments, lamps, candles and an ashtray. We believe this added to the sense of love because it seemed realistic and genuinely like a real home were a couple would live together.

When it came to things such as costume we thought plain relaxed style clothing would suit well because both of our characters had jobs that weren’t business related and were quite relaxed such an artist that is why the male in our title sequence is wearing a scruffy shirt with rolled up sleeves to show he is casual. And the female in our film didn’t have a job that is why she is presented in very relaxed clothing. We also believe this type of costume fitted well with the target audience because it is aimed at teenagers and young adults that would typically dress fairly similar.

We came across a few mistakes with our title sequences outcome, these were the bad points that mainly came up when we got feedback from the class such as steadiness of the camera. We weren’t able to re shoot to make the shots steady as we couldn’t get everyone in the same place again at the same time. To overcome this we layered multiple shots over one another to try and reduce the look of the camera shaking which worked quite successfully as you’re not able to notice it as much.

Also while editing the clock over another shot you are able to see the outline of the original video we got off the clock from YouTube. We only noticed this once we had no time left to re edit it.

Overall I think our title sequence was successful because we were able to reflect our target audience well through their interests (love) and portray our films genres well (romance, sci-fi and drama)  through mis-en-scene, sound, camera angles etc.