Skills Audit: Creation of titles

Originally, we were going to use 'LiveType' to create our titles like everyone else. On our first attempt, we changed the font and colour of each letter and placed them slightly above/below the previous letter (so that it wasn't on a straighter line). This was meant to give the effect of a poison pen letter - the newspaper cuttings stuck roughly on a page. The background we used was grey and vibrated slightly - this plain background was used as our lettering were quite vibrant and a matching background would have been visually too much to look at.

However, after feedback from our teacher who thought it might be more effective to handmake all our titles we decided not to use 'LiveType'. Her idea was to create the titles from newspaper lettering and then take camera pictures of them slowly being scrunched up on the paper. We would then link all the pictures together and slow it down to give the effect that the paper is opening and revealing the titles. However. we thought that this idea would be very time-consuming and difficult to create. So with further research, from other media teachers, we decided of a very creative and effective was of using the theme of 'poison pen letters' for our titles.

Our new idea involved the camera again. We stuck white paper on a table and used newpapers and magazines to cut our letters for our titles. We then created the titles on the white paper and filmed them being blown off by a fan. In editting, we then slowed down the shot and reversed it - so that it gave the effect of the letters being blown 'on' to the page rather than being blown off. This was easier to do and took less time than our original idea.

We only used to newpaper cuttings idea on the actual names of the people, for their job we used the text tool on final cut which was plain and simple to use. We were able to put it anywhere on the shot and arrange it so that it didn't interfere with the names being blown on. We chose to use simple text and no effect on the text (such as typewriter) as the letters being blown on were already effective and the moving text would of made the titles seem too busy.

On our final title, which was the name of the film, we put an effect on the shot which made it vibrate slightly. We also turnt the shot negative which was to show that things weren't right and it wasn't going to be a 'happy' film. The change of negative on the last title showed the importance of the final title as it was the name of the film and so that it would be the thing the audience remembered.

I feel that our idea for our titles were very original and creative, as most of the other groups used livetype. It was effective as we incorperated the theme of the newspaper cuttings in our titles and it showed a constant pattern of the poison pen letters. We received positive feedback from our audience about our titles and it seemed to be the 'best' aspect of our film.