Apartment 6 Final Title Sequence

This our title sequence Apartment 6, We've finally decided this film is not a horror film. This is a supernatural thriller. We have got some feedback from our teachers on our title sequence and over the half term we need make some a few changes. Some of the credits are too jittery and also cut it down a bit, it's a bit too long for a title sequence.

Apartment 6 Title Sequence Evaluation

Evaluation of Apartment 6 Title Sequence 

I am evaluating our title sequence ‘Apartment 6’ and these are the areas I am focusing on:

• Codes and Convention
• Audience
• What Film Industry Would Distribute Apartment 6
• How Does Apartment 6 represent particular social groups
• How Did We Attracct/Address Our Audience
• What I Learnt About Technologies In The Process In Making This Title Sequence

Introduction

We originally decided that the film was going to be called 'Apartment 16'. The apartment we used to shoot our title sequence in had the number 6 on it. We realized  the number 6 could be related with the devil association of '666' and so we changed the title to ‘Apartment 6’ I conducted a survey in which I asked people what genre does the title sound like, the majority thought that it best fit the genre of a horror/scary film.

Brief synopsis of our title sequence

Our title sequence is based on a character who discovers he was adopted and that both his birth parents and twin brother died quite a few a years back. The character in the title sequence attempts to find out what happened to them whilst also trying to discover his own identity. At this point he is not aware that the apartment is haunted.

Codes and Conventions

Orders of the credits

Traditionally, most title sequences have details of the cast and crew and so we decided that the order of the credits would be:

Title

Lead Cast

Supporting Cast

Casting Director

Music Composer

Costume Designer

Associate Producers

Editors

Producer

Writers

Directo0r

If our title sequence was a bit longer we would have put in production designer and director of photography. This is the common way  for the title sequence to be ordered this way. We thought ultimately this order was the best for our title sequence. The only problems we encountered with the order of the credits was whether it looked better for the title to be at the end and the director be first but we decided the title looked the best at the beginning.

Genre of the film

It’s important for all title sequences to have fonts that resemble the genre of the film.  We used a font that gives off a deranged, supernatural, thriller look and they are all key aspects of the film. It was a long process trying to find the correct font, eventually we cut down to 6 fonts and surveyed random people on what font looks the best for our storyline. We ended up

The font was moved about because if it were still throughout the title sequence the font would have been plain. We wanted to give a jittery feel so we moved it around a bit with some screeching sound effects. This helped build tension and gave the audience some ideas of what the genre the film is.

If I was to make an analysis on our title sequence I would say it has psychopathic  or disturbed theme to it. In the introduction of the title sequence we used the main title to jitter about and we used a different colour at points (red) which connotes ; anger,danger and blood. Which may is a fair representation of some events that take place in the film.

Apartment 6's Codes and Conventions

We gave an introduction to our main character what not all title sequences use but many do. We kept the main character anonymous we did not give away what he looked like. So we can keep the audience guessing. We the haunted apartment is in the title sequence, which is the most important scenery in the film; many other title sequences give an indication of where the film is set, this gives the audience an understanding of the surroundings.  The way in which we presented the character gives the audience a rough idea of what genre the film is about, the character is lurking around and hunting down for something but what the character is doing doesn’t give a full representation of the film. All the supernatural events are happening without him being aware and is going on around him. The apartment it’s self is giving off the supernatural side, i.e; the door closing by itself and diary turning the pages by itself. The two elements of the character hunting for something and the apartment having paranormal effects, juxtaposing gives the idea of the genre of the film could be supernatural thriller.

The mise-en-scene and the cinematography shown in the title sequence will be echoed again in the film for example; you would see the diary,  the apartment, letters and photos. The music is eerie and we also had a heartbeat in the background, which gave a key indication that the film was going to be tense. We used all of this so the audience know what .

Some title sequences contain music in, we decided to use no dialogue for our title sequence and we began to hunt for soundtracks for our title sequence which was a lot harder than it seems. It was a long process trying to find the right type of music for the title sequence.  I had the task of finding the music for the title sequence and I used free audio sites to find the right tracks. I got one with a heartbeat and one with a creepy piano.  Originally we just had the heartbeat with a soft beat in the background but as group we wasn't sure on it so we added the creepy piano to the title sequence. We done this build a bit more tension and also give the audience a idea of what atmosphere the film is going to be. 

Who Would Distribute Our Film?

We had to decide as group who would distribute our film apartment 6 so we took research on what films produce supernatural or horror films. We concluded that the film industry which would distribute this film would be Paramount. The reason why we choose paramount they have produced the paranormal activity sequel has been a large success and I think that that supernatural films are becoming more popular and it is something that paramount would consider in distributing, I believe paranormal activity also have the same target audience as us and a similar genre to us. They proved you can make a paranormal film with a small budget and take in a huge income. Also paranormal activity inspired us to make a supernatural film. Overall we think that this would be a film that paramount would definitely be interested in distributing.

Audience

The type of people that we are aiming to watch this would be, Males lower middle class and also young adults/students. Our main target will be males between 15-30 and our secondary target would be females the same age.

We believe this will attract white/black males because the font is much more masculine so if advertised it may catch the males attention more, Also this type of films gets the male attention more because stereotypically men enjoy scary films more than women and tend to bring women to scary films. The type of people that would go watch this will be people who have girlfriends and they would go watch this together or in groups.  Anyone else who is interested in paranormal thrillers they would go to watch this. I think teenagers would watch this film more than older people because they enjoy going to the cinema more than a majority of adults also teenagers tend to have adrenaline rush and enjoyed to be scared by movies more than adults.

How Did We Attract Our Audience?

I think within our title sequence we have reached our target audience. Once we completed this clip we showed many people around our age what they thought of it and a majority said they really enjoyed it. We planned to make to our title sequence tense and edgey, because many students/ teenagers like being scared or getting the aderinaline from watching a Supernatural film. So we added the heartbeat and just added some slight paranormal effects. On our feedback sheets a group commented on how our title sequence built tension which is a good sign of us reaching our target audience considering our title sequence was only half way complete. at the time. For me the most successful part of our  feedback was from a group that rated it the highest rating and complimented us on our camera shots, music, Enigma, Mise-En Scene and the lighting. Our least successful feedback was from Ms.Whittaker and she basically said that the title sequence confused the audience on what genre the film was, orignally it was a horror and Miss basically told us that it looked more like a thriller than a horror, which was a fair comment to make. We knew we had a problem with deciding what genre the film was. We found trying to make a horror title sequence is quite difficult because you don't want to give away to much of the film but also you don't want it looking like a trailer so we decided the best genre for our film was a supernatural thriller. What we could of done to improve our title sequence, make the title sequence shorter, jumpier and scarier but ultimatley we are happy .

What Have I Learnt About Technologies?

I made key decisions on making the font moving around, when editing we was going to use the font on it's on but I revised on other title sequence and I suggested we should copy the font and have to overlap so the font jumps and jitters about. Also to have our titles fade to black. I think this was key decisions to make our title sequence better. This decisions were made to improve the title sequence. How the technologies we used to make our title sequence was a flip camera, tripod and final cut pro. We recorded all of our title sequence on a flip camera and done all the editing on final cut pro. We filmed all of the clips at the apartment about from one occasion we filmed at dans house. I learnt how to use final cut pro also learnt how to use camera angles correctly, I also learnt is always to use a tripod it makes the title sequence better to view. I learnt how to use a blog and how to to do journal posts about our progress on the website.

What I Learnt From The Preliminary Task

what was successful about our title sequence and the post production? What went well in the creation of our title sequence; all the editing for the font was probably was the most successful for us. It was long process and it paid off in the end. Also all the camera angling and cinematography. Research was a huge help as I learnt the importance of typography, music and also the importance of a title sequence in it's self. The planning went successful

Title Sequence Progress

The loft opening shot is probably not going to be used for the title sequence we don't know where we are actually going to place it in our title sequence. Although I think it looks good and has potential to work if we just altered this about a bit but as group we came to the conclusion we are not going to use it. The door closing by itself is going to be used it fits perfectly with the title sequence this is will be the last shot in our title sequence. All the titles are in place so we are progressing but we having troubles trying to finishing up the title sequence. We are short on ideas, we got some shots the close up of words that in the diary its a 5 word or 6 word sentence. We wanted clips between each word to build tension but the loft opening didn't work so we scraped this idea.

Deadline Day is coming up and we only had this opportunity to film the final shots. We went to Dans house in our free lesson. We took some shots, but it wasn't working at all. Then me and Dan found out what we wanted a do and how to do it. We took 2 POV shots  one of opening the door, then one looking towards his feet walking into the room. We took a high angle of the diary flipping shut then had a over the shoulder shot of Dan finding the diary. After we left me and Dan was really unsure of the shots we took. We probably took 30 just to make sure that it looked okay. When we got back I had a lesson and Dan done the editing he done a really good job on building tension for the final piece of our title sequence.

To conclude Today was a real struggle but we think we done a really good job in completing our title sequence.

Supernatural Shots For Title sequence (How We Done It)

On this post I will be explaining what I done over the half term to push the title sequence to it's completion. I went to the apartment with the owner and we took some shots of the loft opening by itself and also the door closing by itself so we can chuck this in the title sequence to give the audience a gist of what the genre is. As I explained on the previous post many people thought that the title sequence looked more like thriller than a horror. If people continue to think it's a thriller even after some of these shots have been included than we may have categorized our title sequence wrong and therefore we will have to change the genre for it to make sense.Perhaps a better genre would be a psychological thriller or supernatural thriller.

First of all we went for a basic shot of the door closing by itself. Dan (main character) Walks into the apartment and left the door open so basically all I am doing here is going behind the door and slamming it shut. Once with the light on and once with the light off because the shots might look on screen. Sometimes it looks 5x darker on screen. A video on showing how we done is below.

Secondly we went for a shot where the loft door is opening by itself which the audience will presume is a supernatural being of some sort. We had luck with the loft door only being shut by a lock so when you unlock it, it drops automatically. So Steven (owner of the apartment) went up in the loft and held it and then let it drop.

 The video on the above will show you how we done it. Below the text is a few more shots of the loft opening. We only are going to use one of the shots  but I wanted to take quite a few shots to cover some angles. We will be doing editing with the loft video so we can alter the brightness so it looks a lot more darker and creates more of a tense atmosphere.

So hopefully these shots will work with the title sequence. I am still coming up with more ideas for the title sequence such as draws opening by themselves but we will see how it goes. My next aim is to get some foley sounds of the door slamming and the loft opening.

Shooting Plans For Title Sequence (adding paranormal effects)

We got some feedback on our title sequence and many came across the conclusion that the genre of the film was thriller. The assumption if fair and accurate assumption and our goal is to get audience to drift away from the film being a investagtion and focus mainly on the paranormal events. We had a diary turning pages by itself and it looks good but it doesn't give a spooky atmosphere we our aiming for.

So we have encountered some problems with the title sequence. We got together as a group and discussed the matter and came to the conclusion that I'll go back to the apartment we shot shot in and take some shots of the apartment which will add paranormal effects to the title sequence so we underline what genre apartment 6 is.

Introduction For Our Title Sequence (titles)

This is the introduction of our titles. We decided to use as the we done audience research survey in people in common and which we recorded and will be uploaded soon. This video gives you a idea of what the titles will look like during the the video. We chose a white writing as it  represents a kind of spooky and ghostly atmosphere. The title has a tint of red through out the title sequence that connotates danger and blood. All of the rest of the credits will have the same and is something which we think is a disturbed and jittery feel which we think we have accomplished.  Once the rest of credits are finished I will upload them to this post

Editing

We done some really good work on editing this font, it has a really good jittery scary effect  and makes what makes the title sequence a lot more scarier and gives a clear vision of what genre the film is.

We opened a new final cut pro and started messing about with the text seeing what we could do with it. So we went on youtube and looked at some horror title sequences and then we used some of the ideas we came across on youtube. The idea we decided to use has the writing appearing in one place and cuts quickly to another place and gives it scary a feel. We took some tutorials on how to do editing and than we started to create the titles for the title sequence and is coming together really well together.

The text here is overlapping so it appears in different parts of the screen.

At first we was doing it all on the one slide and it looked terrible and because we are not really familiar with final cut but I suggested to dan if he could overlap the text and he did that, then copy and pasted the text and posted it above the original slide and it than give it a really good jumpy effect .

After the paramount intro we faded it to black and the font appears and is jumping around the screen which gives a jittery, disturbed and creepy feel to it and which is one of our targets. Half way through the very the short clip of the apartment 6 font  appearing, we changed the colour of the font to experiment what it looks like. The font is white through out the title sequence and the font changes colour once and quickly. We chose the colour red as it connotates evil , danger , blood and many other frightful things along the the same lines. When the title is heading towards the end we altered the size of the font and held it still just to emphasize the title and to prepare them for the rest of the title sequence. 

We got the idea of the moving text from a video on youtube called 'Horror Title Sequence'

We kept the same music 'Awareness 2' but on the at the font we took some sound effects from youtube which makes a noises as the writing moving. The foley sound of this is really good but we have encountered some problems firstly there is a track is playing in the background. We need to find another song to play after so it doesn't sound so weird when it stops.  Also we don't know what the noise is so we can't remake it if we can discover what the noise is, we will make the foley sound ourself.

Overall we are making good progress on the title sequence and getting the font nearly completed is making the project less stressful because I believe right now we are on the right track.

Apartment 6 Font Decision

I was in charge of looking for the font for our title sequence, I went through quite a few websites trying to find some fonts but I strongly recommend DaFont and all the websites the hyperlinks they have on there.  After I found a few me and dan would come to a decision on what one goes best with the title sequence as doing the editing we chucked a few fonts in see how they went along and it went pretty well and we come to a conclusion which I'll Show below along with the other fonts that was found.

This is the first font we found but we concluded that we actually don't like this one much at all, at first we wasn't show what we was actually looking out for but we concluded we wanted the font to look handwritten so it can match the diary.

Yet again this is another font we wasn't really fond of but it looked like it had potential to begin with but when we played it along with the title sequence it just didn't go also it didn't have the 6 which wasn't the main problem because we can find another similar font with 6 on put it next to it but it just wasn't worth it.

This looks handwritten and it has a scary effect but it doesn't look the nicest on screen. It may sound fussy but it looks far too messy and it doesn't at all go along with the video

We thought this was a good font but it isn't what we was aiming for it looks frantic and disturbed but the diary is written by a mother and this looks a lot like child writing which is something we do not want

These two was the tie breakers. The one above was good but the letters had too much scribbling on it and reminded us of the font 'The Low Down' but the one below was a lot smoother and it fitted really well the with the title sequence so we choose the bottom one. Also the other one didn't have 6 which was rather annoying but the one below is definitely the best choice for our title sequence. It looks frantic and looks in the horror genre and the editing that we done with it looks really scary and jittery.

 

                                                 

Feedback for our title sequence

These our  feedback sheets for our title sequence.  I agreed with some of the feedback and some I didn't I think some comments was that it was too repetitive but I would of liked to see them highlight what point was too repetitive so we can look at it from a different perspective but for me the title sequence didn't repeat for me. 

I agreed mainly with how this title sequence looks like a thriller but we still have not finished putting all our shots in and haven't put in any titles which I think will be key to our title sequence.

Overall I thought the title sequence went pretty well considering it was unfinished

Rough Cut

This what we have got up to on editing our video, it cuts out about half way through our title sequence. We still need some credits, a few more clips and an extra song

Music For Apartment 6

During our lesson me and james looked for a soundtrack while dan was putting the video together, this process has took  a long time and we have listened to many but finding the right one is difficult. Towards the end of the lesson we decided as group what soundtracks sounded the best we choose the track 'awareness 2' by Dvorkin. We are still currently on a hunt for  another track to play over this track, possibly some music that consists of drones and atmospheric feel that will build tension for our title sequence.

Awareness 2 is a track that doesn't have much noise to it but it's still good it has heartbeat which gives such a tense atmosphere and that's exactly what we want but we still need another track over it. The heartbeat by itself in my opinion give the slightest spookiest atmosphere and can be mislead for a thriller so we  definitely something that can go over it. What is good about the heartbeat is shows that it is leading up to something scary.

The photos in the title sequence flash with in sync with the heartbeat which was a really good effect we decided to use and we are going to try to do that with all of the photos.

(TRYING TO FIGURE HOW TO UPLOAD THE SOUNDTRACK)

Font

This is an example of the type of fonts we are looking for, we're not entirely sure on this exact font but we're expecting something along these lines.  The problem with this font is it don't look hand written and we want it to be hand written so it can be relevant to our title sequence with the diary. This font also represents a mysterious look and I'm not sure if it will look too good with the title sequence but we'll test it anyway and I will update this post if we come across any better fonts for our title sequence.

Fifth Time Shooting

We have finished shooting in the apartment completely, all we are really doing now is doing some touch ups in dans house. We shot the diary flipping pages by itself, we done this by using and massive fan and turned it on over the book to make it look like the pages turned by themselves . We will be cutting these shots in through out  the title sequence. These shots will help add to the spooky/mysterious effect we are trying to give out. 

Dan wrote out the diary and it the hand written looks messy so it can represent her emotions as depressed, disturbed and deranged. The diary is strongly possessed by the main character's mother and that is why the pages turn by themselves in the title sequence. Thats all we rounded up on fifth time shooting and now we are moving towards editing.

Audience Research -Typography

I found 6 fonts from a few free font websites, we decided that font number 5 looked the best for our film but we chose to a run survey to see what some of our target audiences' thought.  We asked people around our age because they're our target audience and we aslo asked the cafe workers because we wanted a slightly older perspective on our survey.

We got a camera out and start recording us asking people what font they prefered for our film, each participant recieved a slide show of 'Apartment 6' and they then decided what font they prefered. These are the results below,

• Font Number One -    1 Vote
• Font Number Two -   6 Votes
• Font Number Three - 5Votes
• Font Number Four -   4 Votes
• Font Number Five -   10 Votes
• Font Number Six-      1 Vote

Ultimately, font 5 was the font we thought looked the best with our film, the results from a survey agreed with us. I found this font that is called 'True Lies' on www.dafont.com this was a good website to find some good fonts and they have links for other useful font websites. 

Fourth Time Shooting

We have finally finished shooting at the apartment which is a relief.As you can see these shots are so much more visible than the previous shots that we done before. Mainly all we need to do now is do a bit of editing.

 Even though we done alot of the shooting wrong at first, but that was good because that is the progress of learning and we have learnt a lot from the errors we have made at the beginning.



Explanations The Shots;

The first shot is the main character (dan) finding his mothers diary. Through the the title sequence you will dan going through his parents apartment trying to discover hes family's history and his own identity .  The diary holds key points of his family.

The second shot is a picture of Dan and his father. Dan finds the picture whilst he was rumaging through some draws. The picture links back to family history and his own identity.

The third shot is a letter that Dan found whilst searching his parents apartment. The letter doesn't really mean anything to important in the film. The letter in the title sequence shows his going through privacy and is trying to discover something.

Order Of Opening Credits

Opening Credits

For our title sequence we have decided to use the same order of credits that we learned in lesson.  The title sequence will cut to black quite a few times and thats when we are going to put our credits in each time. The discussion of if we enough roles to put in for the duration of the title sequence has cropped up, but overall there should enough.

These are the notes we took down in lesson on opening credits:

Title

Lead Cast

Supporting Cast

Casting Director

Music Composer

Costume Designer

Associate Producers

Editors

Production Designer

Director of Photography

Producer

Writers

Director

Biggest influence we have is the se7en title sequence, our title sequence will have some references of se7en. We are going use the same kind of thing of where it cuts to black then shows the credits. Overall the title sequence looks like it's coming well together.

Props

                                             Title Sequence Apartment 6
These are some of the props we have used to create our title sequence.

Letters

<<< On our Left are the letters

These are the letters that Dan (The Main Character) is going through in the title sequence. Dan is looking for some form of identity trying to understand who he is and to understand what happened to his family.

Main character: Dan

On our right is Dan >>>
This is a picture of our main character Dan, but he is obviously not the prop, The prop here is Dan's outfit. The darkness of his clothes connotates death and mystery and that's what we are aiming for in our title sequence.

Passports

<<< On our left is the passports
These our the passports that yet again Dan goes through, this is the part  where he finds his family's passports and which links back to identity. Finding the passports helps him gain some form of identity.

Finally here is our diary, which is one of the key aspects of the film. In the film this diary belongs the mother of Dan. The diary helps Dan understand what happened to his family and helps understand why he got put up for adoption.  Through out the title sequence Dan is eagerly looking for something to help him find his family's history. The title sequence features the diary flipping pages by itself whilst Dan is hunting the Apartment.

Third Time Shooting

 Third Time shooting



We took some really good shots today and made some really good progress. We rounded up most of our shots and I am happy with some of shots we took. Unlucky we didn't actually learn from our mistake first time round in some of the shots it was just way too dark. We thought it looked really light in room from all the natural lights coming through. After we shot it we checked if it visible and it looked much more visible than our first shots. These shots clearly are not visible once uploaded onto the Macs which is a shame because apart from this error we made, it would of been the final day of shooting in the apartment but now we have to go again and have some finishing touches to our title sequence and than our shooting in the apartment is completely finished.

Technical Error (Second Time Shooting)

Second time shooting before there was technical difficulty and it was complete failure.

We was going to shoot at the apartment but there was a situation that every time we began to record with the camera it died so we decided it's best we should use our back up batteries. Two minutes of the batteries being in the camera and then yet again the camera died. This resulted in, me going to the shop to buy some new batteries. I returned from the shop with a new pack of batteries which we put in the camera but unexpectedly the camera didn't turn on at all. So we were in the apartment with four different pairs of batteries and only achieved one basic shot. We then presumed there was something wrong the camera. So the entire day was a complete and utter failure but taking a positive from the day it was good to rally up all the props and left them in the apartment for next time.