Today I spent the day in media trying to finalise our opening sequence as last lessons Sonny and I still needed to add in an extra 30 seconds to be as close to the 2 minute mark as possible, So I went through the footage again to see what I could add in without changing the story line too much.
For the extension of the clips I started with the montage at the beginning of the sequence where Sarah is in the bathroom. I didn't want to jump cut it anymore than it already was otherwise it would be too flashy and the audience wouldn't be able to focus properly on what was happening, so I added the clips into the actual storyline instead of the jump cuts of Sarah crying. It was more relevant to extend the clips where Sarah was washing the sink out and extracting soap from the dispenser instead of re writing the whole opening to the sequence. I also put some of the clips from the sinister scenes where James is walking toward Sarah in the point of view shots, by doing this it added to the psychological hybrid of the genre more as it seemed like she was thinking more about what he did to her rather than suddenly adding it into a darker flashback at the end of the opening sequence, As well as making it continuous throughout, I also added the clips of James walking toward Sarah and him hitting her in between the credits during the happy scenes, to make it more effective and make the audience remember what's actually happening between both of the characters throughout rather than them thinking about what's happening in separate flashbacks.
Through the extension of the clips, this meant that I also had to extend the music on garage band, and re-think what was actually happening in the music and if it synchronised with the clips well. When I went back over the music I realised that there wasn't really any climax, even though they were synchronous and changed where the clips and flashbacks did, So I kept the beginning drum track and the piano but added in more layers, For example I changed the mood of the piano three times throughout the happy scenes, so they were more upbeat but still in a minor key to relate to the sadness and create a more tense atmosphere to the clips.
To climax the music and make it more interesting so that the audience don't get bored, I added in a range of guitar chords and riffs, changing where the clips changed and coming in where Sarah is shown to be laughing in slow motion, helping to create her character to show a more edgy and dark side to her mirroring the music. Then the same guitar riff that we had previous is used during the Sinister flashbacks where the audience finally see James walk up and hit Sarah from the Point of view shot as one continuous clip is used, and when that died down, and the voice over says " IMPOSTER" a non-diegetic sound of a rumble is played, and buzzes out just as 'IMPOSTER' flashes off, again adding to the atmosphere and tension of the opening sequence.
Not only was changing the music in Garage Band essential to be synchronous to the extended clips, the credit in Live Type also needed to be changed, and a few more needed to be added in as the positions of the credits were set to go with the lighting during the happy flashbacks, whereas now they come in in between the flashbacks on a black background, as shown in the screen grab below. This meant that the position of the credits needed to be changed. From research I know that typically people read text in a 'Z' formation following the grid of 3, So that's the way I positioned the credits, to appear in a 'Z' formation so that the audience know where to look when reading, as well as it hooking them and keeping them interested in the opening sequence.
The credits throughout our opening sequence also needed to be made bigger as they were too small for the viewer to read, especially in the original places that they were in at the bottom of the screen. As shown in the screen grab below the titles are now more visible and the white font stands out clearly from the black background. The black background also made more sense rather than just having titles appear during the clip as the colours mirror the characters quite nicely. The white connoting the innocence of Sarah during the beginning of her and James' relationship in contrast to the black of the background connoting the darkness of the character James and the crime that he commits as well as the character of Sarah as she has supposedly killed James in reference to the enigma codes. I also made the credits during the happy flashbacks last longer as they were rather quick for the viewer to see as well. After doing research on the credits by watching some opening sequences in class I could see that most of the higher level opening sequences had titles that lasted roughly 3-5 seconds, so I made the titles last longer than they actually were and now last around 3-4 seconds before transitioning into the next happy flashback clip.
Colour manipulation was also added to the extra footage in the opening sequence to make the blood in the scenes more effective and realistic. Changing the blood was quite hard as it could either look too red or too orange. I found that the best solution was to just change the lighting by turning up the whiteness and brightness of the clips, as well as the saturation and colour slightly as shown below. By making the clip brighter the sink in the scene outlined the shape of Sarah's hands more and made the paint (fake blood) look darker and therefore more realistic. The same technique was applied to all of the bathroom scenes containing blood to keep it continues, making sure there were no continuity errors.
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