Title Sequence: 'Kiss the Girls' Experimentation

Quick montage of my Kiss the Girls experimentation

Authors own

Experimenting with the style and medium of the title sequences was a great way of figuring out how to represent the mood and themes of the film visually, as all successful title sequences do. I found what worked well here was the chance to diversify not only the style of each experiment, but also the way the different typography worked or did not work. Some ideas I found weaker than others, because the text was not legible enough or it came across a little too erratic. 

Screen shot, working in Flash

Authors own

A made most of the arms using paper cut out or drawing and scanning them into flash. I then added the typography in on flash, either drawing it digitally or modifying existing fonts. If I were to redo this process I would have tried out more software, like After Effects, to see the advantages or extra effects it could have brought to the style of the title sequence. 

Title Sequence: Kiss the Girls Storyboard

Final storyboard for the Kiss the Girls title sequence (left) and Style/media experimentation (right)

Photo is authors own

Creating the final storyboard for Kiss the Girls was great as a starting point for how I would like the sequence to look and what medium I could use to effectively produce the ideas seen within it. I really like the potential for a strong sense of style and atmosphere for the sequence. However, I'm not sure how well the first box, which would be live action, will fit in with the rest of the sequence. I was surprised how hard it was to find purpose in the flow of the sequence as it did not have a narrative and was relying solely on visual representations.

Experimenting with the style/medium a of the title sequence was the most creatively rewarding part of the process. I was able to explore ideas and identify what would work best in representing the themes of the film. I initially started working with newspaper print in relation to a scene in the movie where one of the killers has a safe full of newspaper clippings. Once I had tried out a few different ideas, I took them into flash and made a series of short animations. This gave me a clear indication of what would work best on the whole. It was a shock to find how engrossed you can become in exploring ideas and metaphors. In future I will definitely give myself a stricter amount of time in which I'm allowed to do this. 

New: A Deceptive Concept

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxLwxUTELvY

This is a link to a video my group and I made using the word NEW as a trigger for a concept.

My role in this film was to put all the film components together on iMovie from the research other members of my group done. I think the film was effective in conveying the message we were trying to communicate, which was that the line that separates old from new is so blurred that the idea of new is now distorted/deceptive if essentially we are just recycling the old. I do feel, however, that that the constant changing on music, although it had a purpose, was a bit distracting and uncomfortable. If I were to change something about the final film I would perhaps include fashion trends within music that illustrate the idea of recycling the old and stick to perhaps just two songs that communicate the idea through sound to avoid the constant track changing.

As a group, we brainstormed some ideas that connected with the word NEW, such as, new life, contemporary, technology, definitions etc. However, when looking at things like new trends we discovered that the term new is actual quite deceptive as they usually recycle/reuse old ideas. For example, in fashion you get vintage wear or in music you get genre replication etc. From this discovery we decided to work with deception as a concept and concentrated on music as we found it to be a topic that a lot of people could relate to. The process of working as a team to generate ideas was very helpful as it allowed me to widen my channel of thought by bouncing off other peoples ideas. It also help to refine ideas at an earlier stage as there were more of us to find holes or weaknesses in the concept and aright them.

This is a print screen of the work I did on iMovie to help knit each component of the film together, including images that other members of the group had provided, together with kinetic typography, music and a panning effect. Through using iMovie I was able to effectively, easily and quickly producing the film, which was helpful seen as we only had a week to plan and make it. I didn't experience any difficulty.

This image, used near the end of the film before the credits, was made by me on a word document. I simply used wordart and filled the inside of it with an image of the word old repeated, which I made.