In the last couple of drafts of our main task, the order of the titles has just been random, and there is actually no reason as to why they are in the order that they are in, so we decided to do a bit of research into what the order of these titles should be.

As an independent, non-union movies we are not bound by any sort of union rules for opening credits, so really the order of our titles do not matter at all. However, over the past two decades an order of listing cast and crew has become widely accepted by Hollywood studio and independent productions, so with this being said, we will follow this order.

1. The first title is usually the Studio or Distribution Company. As a small, independent group making a title sequence, we do not have either of these so we will not include this title in our sequence.
2. The Production Company is traditional second, but for the same reason above we do not have a production company so again we will not include this title.
3. In Association With… Production Company obviously again this is a title that we will not include as we do not even have our own production company, let alone being in association with another production company.
4. The Directors Name is what follows the companies involved, however this is only if they are an established or well known director who is famous for his/her unique style of films. As we are just amateurs we will not use this title, but instead just use the Directed By title at the end the evidence our director.
5. Following the Directors name is the Movie Stars Name. Now we do not really have ‘movie stars’ per say as they are just amateur actors, however the following titles are The Top Cast and The Supporting Cast so we will have our actors in this order anyway.
6. The next title is the Name Of The Film.
7. The With Actor and the And Actor then follow. The With Actor is usually a small part in the film but is an actor with a recognisable name, whereas the And Actor is a slight step up, as they are a bigger role (but not a star) and are a very popular and current actor, whereas the With Actor is usually a bit more of a ‘has-been’.
8. Casting Director follows, which we will not include as we did not have one.
9. Music Composer – also we do not have
10. Art Director – Don’t have
11. Set Design – Don’t have
12. Costume Designer – Don’t have
13. Hair/Make-up Artist will be included in our sequence, as we has the help from a Kate Ilsley, a classmate who is interested in a career in make-up
14. Sound Recording– Don’t have
15. Visual Effects Supervisor– Don’t have
16. We will obviously include the Editor title as this was my role in the production of our product
17. The Director of Photography title will also be included in my sequence as Erin Horsfield was this
18. Executive Producer and Producer follows, yet we will only include producer as we only had one, Simran Purewall
19. Based on The Book- Don’t have
20. Story By and Written By was primarly done by our director, Gabby Jones, however this was not her job title so we will probably not include these titles.
21. And Directed By is traditionally the last title.

Credit to http://newenglandfilm.com/magazine/2012/08/credits for the order of the titles.

Now having gone over all the titles, here is what the order of the titles should look like in our title sequence if we are to follow the listing above.

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However, like what we have done in our drafts, I believe it is more effective to have the title at the end of the sequence as opposed to the start, as the audience does not know until the end of the sequence where all of the murders are taking place, creating an enigma in the audience. I will bring this point up with my group that we may have to break conventions a little in terms of the listing of titles to make our sequence that bit more dramatic.

Finally, the long awaited voice over has finally been completed. However, we have changed it slightly as we did not use the original voice over actress- Rebecca Bates. This was due to the fact we were having trouble finding a time to record that worked for her and the group.

So we had to find a replacement for the voice over. I got a hold of two boys from our year group at school (Adam Day-left, Aasif Davidson- right) and they said they were happy to act in our title sequence.

Now, obviously, we have slight drifted from our initial idea of the voice over, as 1. it was originally going to be a girl, 2. there was only supposed to be one actor and 3. it was only going to be a recording.

However, our new idea is to have visuals to the recording, so that we can show a little more variety in the shot types. And also, in having two reporters it shows that these murders taking place are serious, as multiple media institutes are reporting on it. Adam is also from originally from the North East of England, so him reading the report with his accent and then Aasif reading the report with his London accent denotes that this event is being reported on in different regions of the country.

So with the voice over complete, the final draft of the opening title sequence for ‘Pemphix Woods’ should be complete by next week!!

And here is the 4th draft!

What I worked on in this edit was really speeding up the shots of the newspapers, to make the sequence that little bit faster, making it more engage-able and enigmatic for the audience.

I also responded to our feedback from the last draft and changed the style of our font to make a better match to our genre of thriller. The font is now more bold and strong, as opposed to the curly text we had in the previous draft. This is a much better text as it is better associated with the thriller genre. I did not get this text off a website like the previous text, instead I chose one from the vast amount of preset texts on Premiere.

The main improvement we have is to get the voice over done. we are planning to get this filmed very shortly and should be included in the next draft.

We quickly got up a 3rd draft to tidy up what was the 2nd draft.

Improvements

The improvements in this draft was that we made the newspaper cut outs into a chronological order. This was because in the previous edit all the newspaper shots were at random. This was partly my fault as I did not realise that when Gabby was filming these shots, she had made separate piles of newspaper stories and the shots from the same pile had to go one after the other in the sequence. This was easily fixed though just by moving the clips around.

we also changed the font of the titles to the font we had originally chosen. We also faded out the non-diegtic score and then inserted the sound of birds chirping in the final scene. This gives and eerie feel to the sequence as birds chirping denote peacefulness, yet this is a stark contradiction to the continuity of the sequence, creating enigma in the audience- a common convention of thriller films.

However, this draft did not go with out any further improvements, the voice over is still to be done (we are having some technical difficulties) along with a few extra clips of the reporter speaking, this will allow us to portray a slightly wider range of camera skills that are currently on display. Also, we received feedback that the titles of the cast are in a font that does not really suit our genre of a crime/psychological thriller. Instead they said it resembled more of a fantasy film. This is not the first time we have had feedback comparing our sequence to a fantasy film, as we were told the title ‘The Secret of Pemphix Woods’ was also fantasy genre sounding. We have now changed the title to just ‘Pemphix Woods’.

Below is the second draft of our main task. There is still a couple of things missing, such as the voice over and some of the shots of the newspapers need to be put in a more chronological order, despite that this is a great improvement to our first edit.

Improvements

As you can see from in the screenshot below, the timeline of our sequence is now filled. this was the main issue in our last edit as we had a lot of gaps with no footage. However, Gabby got the footage of the newspapers and erin got the footage of the pictures of the girls on the wall, so I was therefore able to fill the timeline with footage.

However, although all the clips are now in place, there is still work to be done. For example, we need to change the order of the shots of the newspapers, and we still have missing footage of the voice over.

Feedback

For feedback this time round, we decided to again utilize google classroom and our classmates, but instead of asking for general feedback, (as we already received this) we asked specific questions:

1. What did you like about the title sequence?
2. What would you highlight as the main improvement?
3. Please comment on the mise-en-scene (good/bad)
4. What genre would this belong to?

Here are some of the comments we got from our classmates…

What we noticed from the feedback is that we have done a good job of presenting the sub genre we were going for, as most people labelled it a crime thriller.

The main improvement overall was to add more shots, and this will be done once we add the voice over.