I’m getting really close to finishing up my title sequence! All that’s left now is a few finishing touches. This whole process has been a huge learning experience and since I’m currently wrapping up the post production process, it would be nice to reflect upon what I’ve learned thus far.
Technology is a huge part of the post production process. Before this project, I had minimal experience using editing software; the most I had done was make funny videos for my friends. I also wasn’t aware of the impact the editor has on the final media product. Through this, I’ve gained a better understanding of the editor’s role in the creation of a film.
To edit this project, I used iMovie. At first I was overwhelmed and frustrated. There are so many buttons on the screen at a time and it looks confusing to a first time user. I consulted many Youtube tutorials in order to learn more about iMovie (see in the Sources section). Over time it became easier to crop, arrange, and rearrange clips. I discovered techniques that worked for me, such as splitting a clip and deleting the portion that I didn’t like rather than manually cropping them. Looking back, I can confidently say that putting clips in order and cropping them was the least difficult part. There is so much more that goes into editing than I thought at the beginning.
One of the things I overlooked when starting post production was color correction. The only reason I knew to do it was because my teacher said that I should. Once again, I know nothing about this; I don’t even put filters on my Instagram posts. I used Youtube tutorials as a resource once again and learned how to color correct using iMovie from that. The main thing I learned is not to go overboard with the color correction. It should be subtle and enhance the image rather than distracting from it. I recognize that this isn’t true for all genres, but for an indie coming-of-age comedy like mine it is. Honestly, once I learned how to use the color correcting tools on iMovie it was pretty easy to do. Full details of how I color corrected can be found here.
After color correcting I moved on to adding titles. This took me the longest because I had to outsmart iMovie. If you’ve ever used iMovie, you may have noticed their dreadful selection of titles and fonts. I gave them a chance when creating my bloopers, but they’re just unusable for a serious media project. In order to combat this, I used Power Point and the green screen effect on iMovie. Full details on how I did this and how I chose my font can be found here, but the short version is that I made a Power Point with my titles and title transitions on a green background and superimposed it onto my movie. I redid my titles around 4 times and it took me a really long time to get them the way I wanted. It was difficult for me to pick the correct font, font color, and text placement because it’s not something I typically think about, but all I had to do was look at other films in my genre and see what they did. I’m really proud of the way my titles turned out and I think they are visually appealing.
Once work on the visuals was done, I began the process of editing sound. This was the part of post production I was most concerned about because I have no prior experience doing it. However, after I watched a few youtube tutorials (linked below) on how to use iMovie’s sound editing features, it was smooth sailing. A feature that I found very helpful was the fade in/fade out bar. There are two little dots at the beginning and the end of an audio track when it is placed in the iMovie timeline. These dots can be dragged to great the arc that you see in the screenshot. This effect allowed me to make my sound seem more natural; there is a scene in my title sequence where my character is waking up to her alarm and this feature helped me mimic the way our ears adjust to sound when waking up in the morning.
The whole point of continuity editing (which is the type of editing I’m using) is to create coherent meaning. On the surface this sounds easy. When I first started this project, I didn’t think it would be difficult to do this. However, when I looked at all these different shots, the effect I was trying to create became fuzzy at some points. I didn’t struggle with this nearly as much as my peers did, but there were moments in my project that I second guessed myself and what my film was conveying. It’s especially difficult to see when you are doing it by yourself; I came up with the story, so I know it inside and out, which makes it hard for me to tell whether or not something makes sense. This is why having a peer review of my title sequence was extremely helpful. My peer review revealed that I did a great job with maintaining continuity and creating meaning. They weren’t confused, which was great news!
After I finished editing my visuals, the next most important thing in regards to meaning-making was choosing my soundtrack. Music tells the audience so much about the settings and characters in such a short amount of time; it is especially important that I take advantage of this in my two minute title sequence. I chose the song “Bad Reputation” by Joan Jett. As I discussed in my earlier blog post, “Bad Reputation” conveys a fast-paced, lively tone. It hints at a future theme that my film will cover later on, which is the idea of a reputation and caring about what others think of you. I love the juxtaposition between the intense lyrics and rock and roll sound against a simple high school girl who is costumed fairly normally. It implies she is constantly facing an internal turmoil.
I love the way my film looks now that it is almost done and I can’t wait to share it!
Now for the final step…adding in music! As I discussed in an earlier blog post, I chose the song “Bad Reputation” by Joan Jett. The audio I downloaded of the song was super loud, so I lowered it to around 10% volume when I placed it in the iMovie timeline. The song is 2 minutes and 47 seconds long, which is an obvious problem because my title sequence can only be 2 minutes long. I ended up having to splice up the audio and rearrange it to keep within the two minutes. This was very difficult; it required me to listen to the song religiously and try to match up certain sections to make it cohesive. Thankfully, “Bad Reputation” is repetitive in its lyrics and overall sound; this made it much easier to match up different sections. I made two separate arrangements of the song. For Audio #1, I rearranged a lot of the song by changed the order of the verses. For Audio #2, I left the song the same as it is in its original version until the end where I cut out a whole verse and just played the end. It’s difficult to explain in words; to hear what I mean, check out the arrangements I made below. I haven’t decided which one I want to use as my audio for my final sequence, but I plan to have some of my family members/friends listen to them and decide which one they think sounds the best. It is also important to note that I slightly adjusted the volume level of my ambient sounds so they would blend with the music.
Now the fun part… actually adding in sound! I have zero experience editing sound and don’t know the difference between “good enough” and “really good”. In fact, I’ve been avoiding doing sound this whole time because I don’t have enough confidence in my skills. However, this project is all about learning and I can’t exactly submit a silent title sequence. I decided to tackle editing the ambient sound before adding in my music to get a feel for the world of the film. Chances are the progress I make on ambient sound now will change when I add music.
In order to edit ambient sound, I need to have ambient sound. My camera did a decent job of recording sound but there were some sounds I wanted to be crisper. To make sure I had all my bases covered, I went back and recorded some foley sounds. Foley can be defined as “the reproduction of everyday sound effects that are added to film, video, and other media in post-production to enhance audio quality.” I only redid the crucial sounds, such as:
I determined that these were the sounds I needed to rerecord by going through my rough cut and turning up the volume on the clips. Then I listened to it all the way through and made a list of what sounded bad. I decided to use voice memos on my iPhone 8 in order to record these sounds. A few of the sources I consulted said that the iPhone is surprisingly good at recording sound so I’m not nervous about the quality of it. Besides, I have previous experience recording voice memos on iPhone and editing them in iMovie. Examples of my experience are this analysis of Get Out (2017) that I did earlier in the school year and my film pitch (blog post found here).
I consulted a few sources in order to learn more about sound editing in iMovie. I learned that the first step to sound mixing is to set your volume to a comfortable level. My sources suggested listening to a song or the first few minutes of a movie first in order to do this. After this step, it was mostly just adjusting the volumes of my clips. I kept each clip at around 30% and 100% volume; some clips were loader than others and had to be turned down, while some were softer than others and had to be turned up. Like I mentioned earlier, I listened to my film with audio and determined what sounds needed to be redone. Then I added them in later and synced them up with the visuals. I’m really pleased with how the sound turned out; see my title sequence with ambient sound below.
When selecting the music for my title sequence, I knew I wanted to go with an 80’s sounding rock track. This choice was inspired by several films, including The Breakfast Club (1985) and The Edge of Seventeen (2017).
The Breakfast Club used the song “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” by Simple Minds. This is the perfect example of a coming-of-age film that knows how to pick a soundtrack. It contains the perfect amount of angst and indecisiveness that the rest of the film conveys and ties everything together. I want to accomplish something like this with my film, which is difficult to do considering I don’t have the talent to write my own song. As for The Edge of Seventeen, I fell in love with the opening song “Who I Thought You Were” by Santigold. It’s so lively and fun and fits the constant motion of the opening perfectly. My opening is also fast paced so I needed to pick a track that could keep up.
After much deliberation, I decided to go with “Bad Reputation” by Joan Jett. It hits all of my requirements: Rock? Check. From the ’80’s? Check. Fast paced? Check. Fits my story? Check. The song is about not caring about your reputation and doing whatever you want. It’s very care-free and sort of ironic for the scene because the character is clearly distressed. It has a very adolescent-edgy vibe that I consider perfect for the story I’m trying to tell. It also foreshadows a future challenge in my character will face, which is overcoming the idea of a reputation and what people think of you. Now that I’ve selected my music I will begin the process of sound editing and mixing! This is the part of my project I’m most anxious for, so I’m going to have to do a lot of research on how rtf actually do it.
After doing research on the general uses of music in film (blog post found here), I wanted to examine examples of different ways sound is used in comedy films specifically. This will give me a better idea of what to do in my film opening in order to conform to/break comedy genre conventions.
Wayne’s World (1992) was directed by Penelope Spheeris and follows the story of two friends who are trying to promote their radio show. Towards the beginning of the movie, there is a scene where Wayne and his friends are driving through the streets of Aurora, Illinois singing along to Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen. In this scene, the sound switches between diagetic and nondiagetic which adds a cohesive element to the entirety of the scene. As for ambient sound, Garth’s car is making really loud noises to show that it isn’t in the best condiotin, which adds to the humor of the scene. There is a part where Wayne and Garth pull over to see their friend Phil, who is clearly drunk, and the music stops playing. After a humorous exchange of dialogue, they all get in the car and the music starts again. As they continue driving, the characters head bang, play fake drums, and make funny faces in sync to the song. This in itself is comedic because it comes across as silly.
When Wayne gets out of the car to look at the guitar, he says,”It will be mine. Oh yes, it will be mine.” Behind this dialogue there is angelic, hopeful music. Wayne looks right in the camera and makes a very serious yet comedic face, which makes the combination of visuals and sound so humorous.
Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989) was directed by Stephen Herek and tells the story of two teenage boys who time travel in order to get an A on their history report. Throughout the film, whenever Bill and Ted think of something clever or do something spectacular, they do an air guitar solo with their hands. Whenever they do this, a guitar solo sound motif plays. It happens every time and each time it gets funnier, mostly because the occasions they choose to do the air guitar are just plain stupid. My film opening won’t be able to include a sound motif because it would seem awkward; I am only making the first two minutes and there typically aren’t sound motifs in the first two minutes of a film.
This article by NPR talks about how the original Ghostbusters (1984) (composed by Elmer Bernstein) and the Ghostbusters reboot (2016) (composed by Theodore Shapiro) used music to convey comedy to the audience. Shapiro chose to score Ghostbusters (2016) like a gothic horror film. His style of composing for comedy films is to compose a serious soundtrack that contrasts with the humorous actions going on onscreen. The director of Ghostbusters (2016), Paul Feig, said,”I find the only way to make things funny is to put funny people in real situations. Because of that, it’s very hard to then kind of put a funny score onto it.” This offers an explanation for why Shapiro chooses to compose this way; he believes comedy is made funny by the people, not the music. Rather than using music to highlight the comedy, which is more difficult and may be seen as cheesy, he uses music to create irony and deepen the humor to a new level. This is something that I don’t think I will be able to achieve in my title sequence since it is such a short amount of time. However, this strategy is really interesting and good to know about for future reference.
So far my title sequence has existed without sound. I wish I could leave it this way because I have a sinking feeling that once I add sound, the quality of my video will go down. The main thing that is concerning me is choosing a soundtrack; I have no idea where to start. From my previous research, I gathered that a lot of comedies centered around teens use primarily rock soundtracks. However, I want to learn more about music in film and decided to do some research.
Music in film is a powerful tool, one that is often overlooked by typical audiences. Most audiences aren’t thinking about the nondiagetic musical score that accompanies an action sequence; they are focused on the action itself. However if sound was taken away, audiences would notice. The overall pacing and feel of the the scene would be totally different; the audience wouldn’t be as invested in the film as they previously were. One of my sources put this effect into words perfectly by saying,”You can impact your audience visually in what you show, and you can impact them audibly in what you let them hear. But when you can harmonize the visuals with sound in a meaningful way, that’s the moment your audience goes from simply seeing and hearing, to actually feeling.”
When choosing the music for a scene, several things must be considered. The first is if the scene would have a richer effect if it was silent or just contained ambient sound. It’s important to realize that not all scenes need music; sometimes silence is more effective. The second is the purpose of the music; what are you trying to accomplish? The final thing to consider is the way the music effects the action and dialogue it is paired with. Is the soundtrack overpowering? Is there too little of the soundtrack?
I started to play around with some fonts that would look good in my title sequence. I want to use a sans serif font (meaning it has no tails on the letters) because most films in my genre use this style of font. I downloaded a few fonts from 1001 fonts and tried different capitalization and bolding patterns. After choosing one, I added titles to my title sequence.
This is the first font I tried, called Agoestoesan. Of the four I looked at, this was my least favorite. It’s just too cheesy and that’s not the look I’m going for. Also, the source I referenced in my last post advised against using cheesy fonts because they make your work look unprofessional. Additionally, the bold text doesn’t really show up the way I want it to. Overall this one wasn’t a win.
The second font I tried is Microsoft Yi Baiti. I like this one a little bit better, but I still feel like it isn’t the best fit. I don’t like how my title looks in this font, but I like the credits part. However, this isn’t going to be the one I choose because it is too formal; I need something more fun.
The third font I tested is Kohinoor Bangla. This is much improved over the previous two. It has a more interesting look than the others. However, just like the last font, I don’t like how the title of the film looks in this font as well as how this font looks when bolded. Because of these reasons, I will not be using this one.
The final font I tried is Libel Suit. This is the one I like the most. It reminds me of the font used in The Edge of Seventeen, but slightly thicker. It has an interesting look to it without being too formal and I really like how the title of my film looks in this font, which is something I haven’t experienced with the other fonts. It fits really well within the font conventions of comedy films too. This is the font I’ve decided to use for my titles.
After picking my font, I needed to decide what color my titles would be and how I wanted them to appear on the screen. For the color, I chose yellow. I know it’s sort of loud but it seemed appropriate for my genre. As I’ve mentioned before, comedies often use bright colored text (pink, yellow, orange, etc.) so using a bright color would conform to comedy genre conventions. The Edge of Seventeen used yellow text and since my movie is so similar to that one, I figured yellow was a safe choice for a font color. For text transitions, I went with a simple fade in/fade out for all of my superimposed text. Most of the title sequences I’ve watched from the comedy coming-of-age genre use this (ex. The Breakfast Club and The Edge of Seventeen). The fade in/fade out is barely noticeable, but I feel like it makes the overall look of my video smoother.
When it came to adding titles to my project, I struggled. I have redone my titles four times so far, and who knows if I will end up redoing them again. The titles on iMovie are awful and don’t have the capability to let me put my own font in, so I had to find a a different way. One of my friends showed me how to do it using Power Point and the green screen feature in iMovie. Basically, I made a powerpoint with my titles in my desired font (Libel Suit) and color (yellow). I also added the fade in/fade out transition. You can download this powerpoint below for reference. Then I changed the background color of the ones I wanted superimposed to green. After that, I screen recorded my powerpoint in order to capture the transitions.
Then I imported the screen recording into iMovie, placed the titles where I wanted them and cropped the titles to be on the screen for around 3.5 seconds each. I went to the toolbar in iMovie and clicked on the two overlayed boxes that can be found to the right of the magic wand. In the dropdown menu that appeared, I clicked “Green/Blue Screen” which superimposed the text on the screen perfectly.
I also added the logo for my production company at the beginning of my title sequence because most movies include this. I did this by downloading it from Youtube and then adding it to my iMovie timeline. I’m not sure if this is a necessary feature and I might remove it later.
Below is my title sequence with titles. It still doesn’t have sound.
After color correction, I decided the next step is to add titles to my opening. But when I went to do this, I realized I didn’t know how to do it effectively. So I started to research the best ways to integrate text into a title sequence as well as look back at my past blog post on titles and fonts.
Through my research, I found that the text part of a title sequence is called typography. The more formal definition of typography is “the art and technique of arranging type to make written language legible, readable, and appealing when displayed.” Typography is information conveyed in an appealing way that makes the viewer want to read it. When making text appealing, it is important to consider font, color, placement on the screen, and integration into the scene. The source I looked at references the Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol title sequence and how it uses certain camera angles to sort of “set up” the text; these camera angles subconsciously indicate to the viewer that text will be appearing on the screen and that they should look for it. It’s important to note that Mission Impossible isn’t in my genre so the strategies they use may not necessarily apply to my project. However, it is important that I’m exposed to different techniques in case I decide they are applicable to me. The source I read warned against using cheese fonts, which is something I have to be especially cautious of because of my chosen genre (comedy). The source also mentions it’s important to use fonts within the same family, but different thicknesses. For example, bolding some words and leaving others alone. This is something I noticed back when I first began researching titles in title sequences. Below are some examples of what this looks like.
I have a whole blog post on this already (see Titles, Fonts, and Representation) but I will recap the main points here since I am starting to add titles into my title sequence. For their titles, comedies typically use simple fonts colored in white or another bright color. Like I mentioned above, titles often include a mix of bolded and unbolded letters.
A Lot To Learn 