Film 4

The idents at the moment seem to be lacking a connection to 'film 4', the channel that is hosting the mystery movie season. So i have developed these animations which can be played at some point in all 5 idents to link them all together. They need a bit more work with timing, ect but i'm pleased with them so far.
Also at the moment I am finding it difficult to make the idents fit into 10 seconds. Adding this 'film 4 animation' to the end or start is going to make it even more difficult. So I am going to produce simpler one lasting 2 seconds. Or have the logo appear in the bottom right hand corner of the screen through out the whole ident.

Type ideas

Crit

Had a crit this morning, although i was gutted that no-one got to see my research and blog posts. However I was still able to get feedback on some of the story boards.
I gave quick presentation explaining the development from the hand drawn storyboards to the idea of vector graphics. As well as an ink background.
I am pleased that everyone thought the 'psycho' storyboard was well draw and communicated my ideas clearly, yet still gave an in put onto how to develop them further. (cutting down the scene/ zooming in and out of specific key frames. etc). I was surprised though that all agreed i should keep the hand drawn 'drawings' and not turn them into vector graphics. I will attempted to do this for at lest one of the idents, but i think it will be difficult to do and make them move in an "organic" way.
Technique suggestions from group
Live trace. (but keep the corner angles and minimum pixels right down) I don't really knw how to do this but i'll give it a go in illustrator/photoshop.
Zoom in and out of plug whole and eye pupil
do more ink experiments
DON'T Vector
look at poirot miss marple midsummer murders etc for design inspiration
Agatha Christie book designs for type ideas.

Story Board

In the presentation at the start of this project i mentioned I would look into Alfred Hitchcock's movies. To see how he creates suspense, atmosphere and tone, similar to my 'mystery' movie indents. So i have created this story board, based on the famous scene of psycho. From this i've opened the story board into after effects, added a sound track from the movie and produced a couple animatics. I think the second ident is working the best. The first ident doesn't work as well because i have tried to cram in to many images into 10 seconds.

These are other storyboard ideas for ident based on mystery films, 'the unusual suspect', sherlock holmes, pink panther.

Concept art

A collection of my photographs, drawings, vector graphics which i maybe using in idnet or dvd.

DVD layout so far

Image is really small, click on it for better view

Rationale MOVIE SEASON

Brief title

A set of 5 TV idents, lasting 10 seconds each, to promote a season of Mystery Movies on Film 4.

Subject and rationale

Developed from Mystery novels, these movies used to be very popular through out the 1930's-1980's. Since then they are much less frequent in cinemas and also less popular.
In timing with the new Sherlock Holmes movie, out this winter I am going to promote a series of classic mystery movies. These movie titles will be generated from a questionnaire asking for peoples favorites.
There is a large variety of mystery movies out there, so i will categorize the ones from the questionnaire. Into audience (i.e childern, teen, adult) crossed genera, (ie, comedy- pink panther, Thriller- Psycho, action- Sherlock Holmes.) also times of day each ident would be suitable to broadcast.
The idents, will be keeping in tone with Mystery movies. (suspense, suspicious, moody, sound effects etc.)

Design Direction

I have not restricted myself to a colour pallet just yet as one will develop later. The idents will be mainly image based with the only type indicating film4 and mystery movie season title. To keep in tone, the fonts will be generated from visuals of mystery movies.
For time and quality reasons i think the designs will be vector based developed from hand drawings.

After Effects 'applying sound'

Over last week i have been thinking of ways to add a 'mysterious' quality, to the idents. Such as imagery, type, colours... etc. However i over looked sound, come to think of it, sound effects and music play a key role in mysterious films to set the tone and add atmosphere. So i paid particular attention during this lecture as i knew i would be using sound in my idents.

Notes from session
Audio file formats that can be imported into After Effects WAV, MP3, AIFF
properties to work with are, volume (key frame to fade in/fade out), waveform, audio level (to control sound in background and dialog on top)
For dvd remember to add finish composition to render queue then check setting i.e make sure audio output is checked. Then render to export as quicktime player.

Towards the end of the session i learnt how to control the speeds of movement on an object. This change of constant speed makes the object appear to move in a more organic/natural way.
The example below is of a pendulum, i've added a few sound effects too. May not appear realistic yet, just need a bit more practice.

Presentation

You can find all my finished animations on youtube.couk
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