Creating The Main Title

Clare: To create the main title I used the programme 'LiveType'. I have had previous experience with this programme when creating my opening credits for my AS opening sequence. We chose the font from our previous selection, displayed on the 'Title Ideas' page. The font we chose was relevant as it stuck well to our 'school life' theme and was in a handwritten style, whilst also a unisex style. We wanted to display our main title a letter at a time, in sync with a type writing sound effect, again because it fitted in with the age generation and appealed to our target audience, similar to the title for the film 'Trust'. 

Overall, the process in creating our main title was quite tedious as it took many attempts to get right. Below are some screen shots from my editing process.

After editing each letter individually on Photoshop, I went onto LiveType and chose File, Place, to import each individual letter as a seperate layer. I then adjusted the layers so that each letter appeared one after the other as we wanted. Once I had put on each letter, I realised that the layout of our main title looked too bare and empty, so I considered ways of making it more interesting. I reconsidered our theme and thought of an idea to add a moving picture, in the style of a small doodle that teenagers sometimes do in class when they're bored. In our original storyboard, the first clip was going to be of Anna's eyes opening, but since we changed our idea and didn't use it, I thought it would be useful to draw some eyes shut and then open so that I could edit them and make them appear to open in a similar way. 

I took this idea on board and drew out a pair of eyes shut and then another pair open using a thick sharpie pen. I then continued to scan this drawing onto the Mac computer and open them in Photoshop. However, the first set of open eyes, I wasn't particularly happy with because of the way the light in the eye turned out. So I redrew this later on. On the other hand, I was moderately happy with the closed eye drawings so I kept them and rubbed away at excess parts of the image using the eraser tool.

Above is the new and improved open eyes that I drew, which I think were a lot better than my first attempt because they are without the huge circle in the pupil which looked a bit strange and hard to work out. 

After removing the white areas from where I had scanned the paper, I had the full outline of each drawing on a transparent background. This then allowed me to fill the outlined image in the colour white and transfer it to another canvas with a black background. This was necessary since the canvas on LiveType is also black and the font is white, so we wanted to keep to a strict, continuous theme throughout. I know had one set of closed eyes and another set of open eyes which I could place onto the LiveType programme and move to where I desired.

I placed in the closed set of eyes first in a new layer and set them next to each other. I then placed the open eyes in the same area of the canvas and adjusted it so it appeared immediately afterwards to create a flickering motion. 

The motion appeared as shown in the above screen shots. I think this motion image was a huge success and I am extremely pleased with the overall look of it. The next step in creating our title is to add the sound effects of the typing with each letter. This could be quite a long process as we have to find the sounds and adjust them to fit with the letter transitions. I may carry this action out using Final Cut Pro.

The final step I took in creating our main title was adding the sound effects. I downloaded a computer keyboard typing sound effect from Youtube, then imported it into Final Cut Pro alongside the title I had previously made on LiveType. I dragged in the sound effects and then zoomed in on the storyline element so that I could see it more closely and edit in greater detail. I then cropped, bladed and adjusted each typing sound alongside the transition of each letter in our title so that it all fitted together. 

Below is the final title that I created for our trailer.