Group Treatment: Editing and Titles - Chloe Atkins

The initial ideas for the editing style of our film noir opening would be cutting shots to create a short, sharp and precise appearance. The effect of this would make the scenes seem more intense with lots of things going on in each one, and also to put the audience on the edge of their seats with anticipation. We also decided, as a group, that the speed in which the Man was travelling would affect the speed in which the shots would appear on the screen. For example, the part where the Man is running at a breathless pace, the shots would be fast also. And where the Man is dead in motion and lying on the floor, the shots would be left long to create a slow pace.

When the cuts occur between the Man running and when he is in the isolated room, we decided it would be best to use a sweeping transition to illustrate a change in location and a change in the Man’s emotional state. A sweeping transition may seem to calm and unsuited to the action on the audience will be viewing, but we wanted this transition to not be too noticeable as it may break the audience’s trust and belief that our film is real. Late after a piece of voice over from the Man, a series of location cuts begin. These will be between the Man running through the woods, and the same Man sitting in a darkened room alone. Each shot-after-shot will be fast and chaotic as to disorientate the audience and make them watch carefully, as the shots unveil more of the Man’s problems and secrets.

Whilst in the editing suite, we as a group decided that in the shot sequence between the woods and the room locations, the ones where the Man is running could be put into a black and white or tinted blue effect to show the grimness of the woods and also as a nice touch to show that this is directly from the Man’s memory. Also, it ties in with many of the traditional noir films, as they were all in black and white because of the time period they were filmed in.

For the titles, we have decided that the personnel titles would be shown before the action begins, and then the main title of the film would be displayed at the end. The personnel titles would feature our group names and roles, and would drip-fill with red one by one onto a black background. This would represent blood and murder, and is used on other film noir, crime or who-done-it mystery films. The main title would be best positioned at the end as we discovered that most opening film sequences come before the main title appears. This also ensures that the audience stay seated throughout until they uncover the name of the film they are watching. We decided that instead of following the same format as with the personnel titles, we would have this written on a piece of dirty, torn paper that drops onto the floor. It has yet been decided who drops this piece of paper on the floor, but it would probably be the main character Man as he is dying. The font of our ‘Shadows Present’ main title would be in a handwritten style, but bold and clear enough for the audience to read. The colour of the writing would either be black or deep red, to represent blood again.

!!UPDATE!!

Chloe Atkins has updated her blog, and because she has done, I have asked her permission to use her new blog post in this post. It is an update on the colour, shape and size of the typefaces and fonts of the titles:

In our film we have chosen to place the main title, 'Shadows Present', at the end of the sequence. We found this popular with many films and we thought it would create an enigma for the audience and keep them watching to find out what the film is called. However, as editor it is my responsibility to choose a suitable title font that will match with the noir style and be interesting for the audience. The same chosen font will then be applied to our name titles (which will be shown during our final fight scene and between the running through the forest) to show continuity throughout. We have also had a group idea that the actors' names should appear during the woods scenes, but are unsure if this idea will stay as it is not neccessary to have too many short unreadable titles disturbing the film, rather than a few good readable titles that break up the action nicely. For the background to our titles we had already decided upon black as it would make the text stand out and would match the noir style. Below are some of the font ideas and the reasons behind them: (the font examples shown below aren't the same as the ones we looked at in the editing suite, but they are very similar. You might have to click on each font example to see it more clearly as the quality isn't very good):

1. The first idea was to have the titles written on a piece of paper attached to the package, which would be in the hand of the person who dies at the end of our film. The shot we took panned out from the title to slowly reveal the hand holding it, however after following advice from Jon (our media teacher), we decided to abandon the idea on the thought that it looked unprofessional and too 'studenty'.

2. The second idea was to keep the handwritten appearance from the first idea, but use a professional font instead. For this our options were 'Copybook' (shown on the left), 'Brush Stroke 26', 'Bradley Hand ITC' or any other similar examples. After applying the title to our film, we realised it didn't look very noiry and gave connotations of a comedy or children's film instead of a dark crime/horror noir sequence.

3. The third idea was to choose something more gothic and detailed. For this we'd use 'Annual' (shown on the left), 'Copperplate Gothic', 'StoneSerif.1 Gothic' or any other similar font. I liked this font style as it suited the noir genre and introduced our film title nicely according to the previous action shown. However, there were still other ideas that could work just as well, so I looked at these first. 4. The fourth idea was to choose something simple but looked like a typewriter, to give the impression that someone is present and has just typed/written it onto the screen (like in the first and second ideas above). For this we used a font called 'Perpetual Elite' (which is similar to 'Courier New' - shown on the left). The font suited our film noir, and is similar to the titles in the opening sequence to the film 'Se7en' (as analysed previously). We decided to put the font into size 86.0 for the production company titles at the beginning, and size 70.0 for our names.

4. The fourth idea was to choose something simple but looked like a typewriter, to give the impression that someone is present and has just typed/written it onto the screen (like in the first and second ideas above). For this we used a font called 'Perpetual Elite' (which is similar to 'Courier New' - shown on the left). The font suited our film noir, and is similar to the titles in the opening sequence to the film 'Se7en' (as analysed previously). We decided to put the font into size 86.0 for the production company titles at the beginning, and size 70.0 for our names.

5. Once satisfied with the font choice, Josh and I tried to apply some sort of title effect that would create the appearance of a shadow walking across the font. After a long time of fiddling around, cutting bits of the title and inserting different effects, we decided that our ambitions were set too high and it wouldn't be worth it after all. So we then decided that the font could change colour to red. This would give connotations of blood and death, and would be a nice touch to the end of our sequence, but the beginning of the film. We kept the same font but changed the colour to red. We placed the titles next to each other in our film timeline, and applied a fade transition between the 2 titles. We then applied a 'blur' vidoe effect to the end of the red title to disorientate the audience and add a noirey touch. We showed the rest of our group and we all agreed that this effect worked well.

So above are the few ideas we had as a group, and ideas Chloe had herself. Each idea is good in certain ways, but had to match the noir genre for it to go well with our film.