VIDEO RESOLUTION

I have decided to render my video in 1080p. The problem with this is that the file size is very large for a 1 and a half minute video (almost 8gb!). Although the video took a long time to upload to YouTube, it was worth the wait. By producing the opening in 1080p, I feel like I am creating a video more similar to what would be shown on the big screens at the cinema. On a large screen, at 720p, there is a lot of graininess which looks unprofessional is not part of the cinema going experience.

FINAL OPENING SEQUENCE LOGO ADDED

I forgot to add the production company logo, whoops!

This time I have added the production company logo to the start of the opening.

 

I am happy with the way the logo looks and I am also pleased that I had previously added the white border. Without the white border I believe that it would be hard to see the details of the logo. I have also added a sound effect and blurring to the image to give it a legitimate cinema appearance.

EDITING PROGRESS

Since my initial attempt at editing my opening sequence, I have made many changes to improve the quality of my piece. I have found it difficult to lengthen my final piece, however I have put a lot of thought into the story of the film in an attempt to do this.

   

For example, here are two screenshots from points in my opening sequence. In both of which, I edited royalty free photographs to suit my storyline. 

These are the photographs that I used to make the two edited clips in my opening sequence. I then applied further effects in After Effects which included colour corrections and also a ken burns effect to the images in attempt to make them look like shots filmed on a video camera.

EDITING PROCESS

After filming there were several post production steps I needed to take in order to complete my final opening sequence. This included cutting and compiling clips in an order which suits the narrative of my film. I also needed to add finishing touches such as a letterbox effect and colour corrections.

Firstly, I imported all of the clips I had filmed into the editing software. Next I sorted the clips into ones I wanted to use and ones which I could use as fillers or alternatives. After this I put the clips into a rough order, then each clip needed to be trimmed to remove unwanted shakiness and to fit the tempo of the song I had chosen to accompany the introduction. This took a long time as I wanted the composition to flow smoothly without any continuity errors.

The next step was to apply effects to the composition. Firstly I applied a letterbox effect. This was easy to do, I created to black bars at the top and bottom of a canvas in Photoshop. This I then saved as a .png file which allows transparency. Then I could simply import the image into my editing software and overlay it on top of my clips.


Next, I needed to add titles. This was relatively simple and done in After Effects. I used the text tool to create the text in a bold font, and then set the blending mode to overlay to give a sense of transparency.


Some of my clips required special effects such as flares and particle footage overlays. I sourced these effects online on a royalty free site. I could overlay the effects onto my work my changing the blending mode in the editing software.

FILMING PROCESS

I filmed my opening sequence in an old abandoned care centre at an undisclosed location. A fire had broken out recently in the building leaving a large hole in the ceiling. This creates emotive lighting, perfect for portayjng the emotions of my protagonist. 

A shot from the location:

I filmed the sequence with a DSLR camera, the Nikon D3300 with the stock lens. The stock lens has a relatively low f stop value which means I was able to create a shallow depth of field essential to replicate the cinema look and feel.

Whilst filming my opening sequence, I found it difficult to hold the camera steady. To improve the final piece I should have used a tripod, however some of the shakiness was softened post production. After evaluating one of the shots of my protagonist on set, I decided that this particular shot was not steady enough. I re-filmed this particular shot using a wet floor sign as a temporary tripod. 

FINAL OPENING SEQUENCE

This is the final edit of my opening sequence.

RENDERING ISSUES AND SOLUTION

After finishing editing my opening sequence in After Effects I noticed that the file size was quite large and that my computer was going to struggle to render the video. After adding the sequence to the render queue, I waited and prayed that it would render ok and in a reasonable time frame. 30 minutes into the rendering process, the program crashed leaving me with no finished product and a long error code which despite numerous Google searches lead to no resolution! After almost accepting defeat, I thought that perhaps the computer needed restarting. So I restarted my computer and closed every possible program that was taking up my RAM usage. After doing this, the video rendered in only 15 minutes and I was a very happy with the quality of the render.