Evaluation

At the beginning of this project, I have to admit I was a little bit worried, because I hadn't seen the film before, and when we watched it in our first class, I didn't really like it, and so wasn't as enthusiastic about creating a title sequence for it, as I thought I could produce something much better for a film that I like. Also, the fact that we had just four weeks to come up with an idea, research it and produce it seemed extremely daunting, as we've had 12 weeks for every other project we've done. I was worried I wouldn't be able to produce an idea in 4 weeks, let alone produce the final product.

However, after watching the film and considering it for a few hours, I picked up on the frequent use of a journal used by the main character Joel in the film, and thought this would be a good starting point. I quickly decided that I wanted the title sequence to look like it was being written and drawn into a journal or notebook, suggesting maybe Joel himself was producing the titles.

Once I had decided on this initial idea I began researching other title sequences to see what the similarities and difference were. I noticed that all sequences featured images of the main characters, either as stills of as live footage from the film, or shot specifically for the title sequence. As we obviously didn't have access to Jim Carrey or Kate Winslet, shooting new footage wasn't an option, and I thought that using footage from the film could make it seem more like a film trailer than the opening of the film. I was therefore left with still images from the film, and decided to incorporate that into the journal idea and develop it into a scrapbook idea. I thought I could make it look like Joel had collected these images and put them into a scrapbook, which he then doodled and wrote in.

When I had my idea I made a test video using images of the film from Google and creating a physical scrapbook. I then made a video by moving my camera around the page, trying to see if the effect I had in my head would work. Although the video was rough and rather unprofessional looking, I could see a glimpse of my idea coming to life and was confident that it would work.

I borrowed the DVD from a family member and went through it, taking screen shots of images I thought would work in the piece. I wanted to find my own images rather than ripping them from the internet for two reasons; because the quality from the internet would obviously be terrible, and because I wanted the collection of images to evoke a certain emotion and give the piece an overall personal feel as I was trying to portray Joel's personal journal.

Once I had all of my images I edited them, cropping out unnecessary parts and cutting away at the edges in Photoshop to give the impression that the photographs had been roughly cut or torn rather than being perfectly rectangular and neat. I then arranged them on my scrapbook 'page' in After Effects and used some filters and effects to add shadows and rough edges to avoid the images looking flat. At this point I was pleased with how the project was going and was confident I had chosen the right images.

Next came the text, the cast and crew information. I used the stroke tool in After Effects to create the effect that the text was being written onto the page as the camera was watching. This is a technique that is simple to do but is extremely effective, especially in this context. I was confident in using this technique and was able to finish this step relatively quickly. Once I had all of my text created in this way, I added them to my scrapbook project and placed them around the composition in the order that I wanted them to be revealed in the final video, starting with the key actors, the supporting actors and then the crew.

When all of the images and text were in place, I decided I wanted to make the 'scrapbook' idea more realistic by adding doodles to the page which would appear behind and in front of the stills. These were created in Photoshop and also used the stroke technique to make them seem drawn at the time.

Once I had all of the pieces of my project finished, I put them together and worked on the timeline, so that the text and doodles would be revealed at the right point in the video.

At this point, with all of the elements in place, I was really pleased with how my project was going. It looked like I had pictured it in my head and was I keeping good time, so I knew I would be able to finish in time and hoped that I would create something I was proud of.

However I suffered a massive set back as my hard drive broke, and took all of my work with it. I was devastated that my project had been going so well and then it just disappeared. I was angry at myself for having not backed my work up, but with such big working files, I didn't really have anywhere I could back it up to.

This meant I had to restart my project from the beginning and get back to the place I was, before I could continue and finish the piece. I spent the next (and last week) redoing my project and finishing it off. I did this by animating the position of the composition within a smaller composition so the camera would reveal different areas of the scrapbook page. I then added the title of the film at the end and exported it.

This project has shown me a number of things;
1. That I don't necessarily have to like the subject to be able to create something interesting.
2. 4 weeks is plenty of time to complete a project if you work hard and manage your time effectively.
3. Always back up your work because you can't rely on technology.

In conclusion I am really pleased with my final outcome and am pleased with how I have managed myself during this project. The key framing of the movement of the piece is not exactly how I would have liked and I plan to revisit this at the end of the module if I have time before the deadline. If I was to do this project again, the only thing I would do differently is make sure I have a copy of my work, and I have defiantly learned my lesson in that respect.