The Final Video - 'If Only'

Final Touches

For the opening of my video I aimed to create a silhouette landscape as inspired by the style used in the Catch Me If You Can opening. This was meant to be an establishing shot of the skyline in Miami Dade, where Trayvon was from.

I added my own style by using a more realistic colour scheme, and round lines in the clouds in the water. 

I had a lot of layers to work with, more than I usually have. This made it quite hard to edit as After Effects ran a lot slower than usual. 

I wanted to create the effect of a time lapse by showing the changing colour of the sky.

I expiremented with different fonts for my title. My research showed that most films use sans serif fonts. I decided to use Kailasa for subheadings and Gujarati for headings.  

I recorded a voice over for the opening in order to give the audience some context to what the story would be able. I used audition to edit the clip to sound deeper like in Trayvon's voice. I also edited out long pauses to fit with the motions on screen.

Using this present in audition helped to make the vocals sound a lot clearer and without background noise.

Black Lives Matter Quotes

I think it would be useful to end my animation with a quote to summarise the issue at hand. These are some quotes that I found inspiring:

"But the thing is, we treat racism in this country like it’s a style that America went through. Like flared legs and lava lamps. Oh, that crazy thing we did. We were hanging black people. We treat it like a fad instead of a disease that eradicates millions of people. You’ve got to get it at a lab, and study it, and see its origins, and see what it’s immune to and what breaks it down."

Chris Rock speaks about the isolating experience of being a successful black American with Frank Rich for New York Magazine. Rock points to the lack of other black patrons at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel overlooking Central Park the day of the interview to illustrate lingering inequality. [Link]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/12/black-lives-matter-quotes_n_6277412.html

“Millions of tears have fallen for black sons, brothers, lovers, and friends whose assailants took or maimed their lives and then simply went on their way.”
― Aberjhani, Illuminated Corners: Collected Essays and Articles Volume I.

"You can stand your ground if you're white, and you can use a gun to do it. But if you stand your ground with your fists and you're black, you're dead."
- David Simon, The Wire: Truth Be Told

“In this day and age where humanity is lost by so many, can a young, black child of God be put on trial for his very own murder."
~Elissa Gabrielle” 

http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/trayvon-martin

"I think moving forward we need to educate ourselves as a community on the gun laws, on the laws, on the statutes. We need to come together more as a whole, not individual people, not individual races, and religions. We need to come together as God's people. We need to start learning each other, understanding each other. You can't just judge a book by its cover. Something is wrong in so many ways to say that someone is suspicious just because you don't know them." -- Tracy Martin

Coming up with a name...?

I've been struggling to come up with a title for my animation. Therefore I sought some tips from the internet.

http://www.chrisjonesblog.com/2011/07/top-ten-tips-for-titling-your-movie.html

1. The shorter the better.
2. The title should hint at the genre of the film. Do this well and the second question people usually ask (what’s the genre?) is answered implicitly.
3. The title is a sales tool designed to get people to read the script, rent the film or ask for more information. It is NOT an artistic statement (think more craft than art).
4. More often than not, your title will be accompanied by a short pitch or key artwork. This should all work in harmony and feel like a component part of a whole and well rounded concept.
5. You will NEVER be 100% happy with the title. It always feels like a bit of a compromise. And why shouldn’t it? You are reducing 100 pages of story to a single word of phrase.
6. Once you decide on a title, if a better one comes along, use it. You are NEVER wedded to the title until the film is complete (of course this raises social media and online marketing problems). Ideally get it right up front, but DON’T hold on to a poor title if a new and better one comes along.
7. Check the titles ‘Goolgeability’ with the Google keyword tool. How many people actively search for that word of phrase each month? These metrics are important.
8. Don’t be clever. Titles are not something to be figured out. As film makers, we might like the idea of a title being a mystery or ephemeral, but audiences will just move right on by if they don’t ‘get it’ immediately.
9. The title should infer the central conflict of the film… ‘Jaws’ (the shark is going to eat people), ‘The Exorcist’ (there’s going to be an exorcism), or more recently my pal Mike Mindel, who renamed serial killer horror movie ‘The Hollow’ to ‘Don’t Let Him In’.
10. Above all, ‘do what it says on the tin’. The title should honestly and succinctly reflect the story.

I also thought it would be useful to go back to my initial ideas with research into the Trayvon Martin case to see if there were any points that stood out and could be used as a title.

Title Sequence Research

I needed some inspiration for my title sequence as I have approximately 10 seconds to fill.

This is one of my favourite title sequences. I love the range of close up shots which are quite ambiguous but still relate to the theme of the film. I like how the title 'Seven' flashes up much larger than the casts' names. The dark opening fits very well with the twisted thriller genre.

"The typography itself — which would likely break several guild legibility rules in modern times — was hand-etched into black-surface scratchboard and manipulated during the film transfer process to further smear and jitter it. This transfer was then cut up and reassembled during post production to add a final layer of temporal distress."

I could experiment with hand writing my titles to give it a personal touch.

http://www.artofthetitle.com/title/se7en/

This is another really iconic title sequence which was inspired by Saul Bass, who we studied briefly in Digital Media last year. I'm inspired by the use of silhouettes. I like that the title itself connects with the rest of the animation. I would like to use kinetic typography for my title.

http://www.artofthetitle.com/title/catch-me-if-you-can/

I like how the drawing style has a mixture of techniques - gradient colours, black and white and silhouettes. I think it would be cool to introduce some settings in my title sequence in a similar way to this.

Week 13 Development

I edited the original picture to make it look like Trayvon was carrying his wife. However the background was too small and did not look in proportion. Therefore I had to go back and change it, adding a few more details

I would like to add a voiceover to the beginning of my animation, whilst the titles are shown.This meant that I had to increase the duration  of the song that I already had placed on the timeline.

I edited the sound again so that it fit the piece. I had to edit out a bit in the song when someone swears rather abruptly (I don't think this would go with the tone of the video at that point).

I added the FTT filter in order to create a muffled effect. This helped to transition betweeen where I had made cuts. It also helped the audio sound quieter so that it wouldn't be overbearing when I add a voiceover.

Finally here is the second draft of my animation. I'd say it's about 90% done right now. I still have to create the visuals for the title within the first 10 seconds and add a voiceover. From the last draft I've worked hard to make more things animated, especially making sure the characters blink. I might change the way the title '2012' appears as it looks a bit amateur. Also I think I should increase the speed that Trayvon walks. I also need to add some more sound effects to the second half of the scene so that it's not just the soundtrack.

Week 12 Development 2

I worked on creating the new scenes for the beginning. I drew out Trayvon sat on a bus.

I created the background on a separate document to make it look like the bus was moving forward. I also tried a new technique when making the characters blink.