Title Sequence
Reserch
As part of the topic, I did a bit of research into old and new title sequences in film and tv. Ours, as well as other groups, decided to go with tv because you could say some of the title sequences are even more iconic in TV than Film and it’s something everyone knows, this is not to say the ones in film are not iconic or good.
I have to say I very much dislike it when in films and TV but mostly films they put a big block of the credits at the start of the film and you have to wait 20 mins for the film to start. I can understand the reasoning behind this however don’t agree that it’s a good practice.
In Class, we looked at one of the original James bond title sequences which is known to be iconic at the time it was seen as almost futuristic and a complex sequence you can see watching this back how sequences have evolved and got more advanced with animation and filming.
Pink Panther was a show I grew up with and it was amazing, the titles changed over time however they always had the iconic theme tune that everyone knows. At the time this animation might have been quite ahead of its time as looking at the years on this and the James Bond one they are only a year apart.
Pre Production
Our idea for this is to work as a group to recreate the Top Gear original intro but make a parody for our brand 90% Bloopers but changing all the branding to our name and creating the video sequences but with bloopers from our projects. We still want to keep it close to the original as to fit the brief however personalize it and have some fun with it.
Roles:
- Gareth – Video Finder
- Adam – Silhouettes, Graphics
- Charlie – Voice Over
- Harley – Editor
- Ellie – Camera?, Script
- Jack – Production Assistant
We plan to film the Silhouettes in the green screen room and then edit them to become actual silhouettes later on. I will be directing this as I have some experience in doing it for a previous project. I will also be in charge of replicating the top gear graphics and animations to make it look realistic for it later to be used by Harley in the edit.
(Edit) Due to covid our technician Chris was not in the week we wanted to do the silhouettes which meant access to the green screen room and TV studio were not available. We reached out to our Year 1 TV and Film tutor Tom who is also head of photography and he granted us use of the photography studio which we used and turned out better than if we had used the green screen actually.
Production
silhouettes
Everyone was asked to get into a pose to use for the silhouettes, some with props and some just creating actions or in this case jack being jack. We tried multiple poses and positions so we could get the best outcome when it came to editing them so what looked good in the photo might not have looked good in the end edit.
The lighting was set up to make sure the person was separate to the background while avoiding shadows near the person to make a clean cut later on, as you can see in the screenshot of the original image the lighting of the people themselves was not very good/bright but it did not need to be as you don’t see the light or the details just the shape afterward which made it easier when we were doing it.
To edit the images I used the magic wand tool in adobe photoshop 2020 to cut out the subject from the image. Once I had done that I used the rubber tool and the box selection tool to remove any leftover pixels and areas to make sure it was clean, I then generated a solid color and then masked it over the person creating the silhouette.
I made 2 of everyone so that Harley could pick which one fits better in the edit. It was a bit harder to do Harleys since he had not been into college we had to take his from greenscreen images we had around which lead to a lower quality image but still did the job.
These are some of the best work I have produced in my opinion I like them a lot but it was definitely made easier with the use of the photography studio.
Outro to The Intro
Recreate the Top Gear Outro to the intro? This took me a while to do, I started playing around with it in the lesson a while back but getting the blade/cog for the sequence seemed impossible, I looked all around the internet for a solo image of it and even tried to cut up and piece one back together in photoshop which worked to an extent but not very well and it was quite low resolution.
I had a chat with Harley via a message that day to discuss it and he found this old after effects video of someone making a similar thing it was in several parts and outdated but it helped me through the main parts and gave me ideas and techniques I needed.
They did something really clever and made the ring with a png image of a saw blade which I was able to pull off and looked really effective.
The intro they were working off was also outdated/ wrong the ring came in from the side where as I animated the 3 rings to merge into the center one.
In the final edit, it was decided that the rings came in too slowly so Harley merged the clip of the real into my version. I could have just adjusted it to make it come in a bit faster with keyframes but what he did worked so I went with it. There was a slight color difference but it worked.
I am also very proud of how this turned out its one of my best after effects projects.
Graphics
The last part of the production stage I did was the in-between graphics which split and move in multiple sections during the intro. I recreated these the best I could base on the top image in adobe photoshop 2020 once again I started by adding text and choosing a similar font. I then went onto adding a texture to the text to try and match the texture shown in the example text, after that, I added a custom gradient and adjusted the colors and rotation to best fit, this took me a couple of tries.
I was in communication with the rest of the group to get their opinions on the stages as I went along which you can see in the top left. The outlines were created with a double stroke around the text.
I think I successfully matched it the best that I could and everyone else liked it, It could have maybe done with some more orange but other than that.
Final Product
The final product! It’s amazing Harley had done a brilliant job at putting this together after hours of keyframing boxes. The scene layouts were directly copied to ensure we whereas close to the real thing as possible. It all slides so smoothly together including all the animations, text, and silhouettes accompanied by a voice-over done by charlie. The footage was collected by everyone over the past year during our time at the college.
The scenes are also perfectly timed to the original soundtrack, the intro is really quick at switching scenes so that’s something we had to follow and keep in mind, some sections are only on screen for a matter of seconds.
The voice-over quality could have been a bit better in my opinion but that was due to being online and limitations with equipment. When I say quality I mean the recording rather than the voice and speech himself.
In conclusion, it was another great project and it was something we could use to bring together what we have done as a team through the last year on this course so it was also a great recap for us.