To ensure that our film was similar to actual film openings, we made sure that we incorporated the typical conventions of a film opening, such as the film companies/producers, opening titles and the actual title of the film.
Unlike the design of our original title, 'Red', the one that features in our Final Cut is far more impressionistic and stylish; I cut the shot into two sections by locating when Red walks past the tree. On the first half I added a blur effect to confuse and interest the audience; I did not put an effect on the second half, which meant that, when played, as Red walks past, the shot of the title, 'Red', that has been carved into the, tree become clear.
As our film falls under the Indie genre, we used the colour of Red to represent the multiple personalities of the protagonist, who we later named, rather appropriately, as 'Red'. We use the colour Red for numerous reasons:
Due to the fact that Red has many different, and numerous contradicting connotations, it seemed like a perfect colour to embed in our film opening, as we wanted to represent a young girl with schizophrenia.
The use of framing was also used to further accentuate the feeling of entrapment for Red's character; we filmed Red becoming enraged behind a row of bars to reflect how she was imprisoned between her two conflicting personalties:
During our final production, our sound man, Tom Hurst, made some final adjustments to the audio for the film opening, as there were faults with how it sounded during its last screening, as we had originally edited it for a stereo system in order to have Red's voice coming through one ear, and the Wolf's voice coming through the other ear. Yet, during the screening, this effect was completely ruined, as one of the speakers had broken, causing the audience to only be able to hear one voice.
In order to maintain the stereo effect, which was an integral element for our film opening, Tom set about making some changes to
enable the audience to be able to experience the stereo element, whilst also making sure that the effect was not ruined with just one speaker. In order to do this, he changed the
left/right balance on the track containing the Wolf's dialogue, (recorded by me), from -100 to -75 and
the track containing Red's dialogue, (recorded by Amber), from 100 to 75.
Changing the audio in this way meant that both
tracks could be heard if one speaker is broken, by allowing them some crossover,
but there was not too much of a crossover that would have otheriwse have ruined the stereo effect.
Since Tom's last edit of the audio, I recorded another short piece of dialogue from the wolf, to add in at the very end of the two minute opening. Yet, due to it being poistioned at the end, Tom had not spotted that it had not been given edited suitably to match the other pieces of dialogue; in order to make the audio in the Final Cut consistent, Tom added a reverb effect to the recording, like he had done previously to the othe recordings.
Yet, as this recording stood on its own at the end, without a contrasting recording of Amber, Tom decided to keep it neutral in terms of left/right balance, as having it play through one ear would have no effect.
After another showing of our film opening to the class, we told that our two minutes was more similar to the visual style of a trailer, than a film opening, as it was entirely composed with disjointed footage that had no real body or storyline; though the various shots of Paige, (the actor playing Red), were a good way of representing her schizophrenic mind state, it did not present the audience with any real flavour of what the film opening was going to lead in to for the main film.
As a way of fixing this, Amber decided to go out with Paige in Thundridge to film some shots that would cause our two minutes to appear more like a film opening that was sure to lead into a main plot.
Below is our Final Cut film opening:
In order to further reflect Red's unstable mind set whilst simultaenously giving the audience an idea of what the film will entail, we used the effect of blurring the camera, as well as the editing transition, fade to white in order to visually represent Red's flash backs of when she was not possessed by Red.
The use of the voiceover has been used again at the end of the film opening; as Red falls over into the red cloak, the wolf, (Red's other personality) speaks to her; 'now get up; we've got work to do'; this leaves the audience with a feeling of unease and anticipation for what this 'work' will involve, and whether it is something that Red will end regretting. This simple rounding off of the film opening enables the audience to feel enticed to watch the rest of the film.
We used framing to further accentuated the Wolf's power over Red, as we have positioned the red cloak to the right of the screen, with Red looking up at the part of it that is out of shot; Red is sitting down, and therefore is instantly more vulnerable; the end of the film opening unites the multiple ideas of Red having multiple personalities as the last shot is of Red, and the Wolf with the red cloak, where Red is looking up at the powerful Wolf.
The effects we are planning to use are:
- An overlay of Red's voice with the voice of Wolf to show the two different personalities.(For this we will record mine and Amber's voices) The voices will then be edited using the audio effects in Premiere in order to make them sound disjointed and eerie.
- A static effect to show the change in personalities between Red and Wolf.
- The use of fade to black during the title sequence in order to build up suspense.
