My Final Ident and evaluation

This is my final ident. I don't think my final ident is as good as it could be. It's got too much on it and should be more simple. When making it I wanted to use lots of different elements I had learnt on After Effects and Photoshop. Making the frames took some time; the shapes were present and I added some photos I've taken on top and then used the overlay so that the frame was showing through a little bit. I put these into After effects and found a burnt film effect. I key framed this so that they appeared in a reversed burning way. I then added my production title text and went through a large amount of fonts until I found one that I was happy with. With these elements all on the composition I realised that the plain black background just didn't look right. I looked through loads of photos on the internet and ones I had taken, but nothing looked right. I finally found a photo on the internet of steps. I thought it looked interesting and would be a good background because it was black and white. Now I look at the final ident, I'm not completely happy with it. I think I tried to put too many ideas and elements together at once. I now think that if I was to do it again I would do the tracking idea I had with a photo of city street. It would have looked simpler and more professional. If I have time I may remake my ident from scratch and hopefully the new one will be up to a much better standard.

Script

INT. ALICE'S HOUSE. DAY.

Alice wakes up throwing the covers back. She gets up and get' dressed. She goes downstairs to have her breakfast. She goes back upstairs to brush her teeth and wash her face. She then does her make-up and goes back downstairs. With a newspaper open on the job section she places it down on the table.

EXT. COUNTRY PARK. DAY.

Alice leaves her house and begins to walk to the park. She walks underneath and past some trees and walks along a river. There's a giant keyhole on a hill, Alice's boot's walk into the foreground. She look's at the keyhole curious. She look's down the hole and then stumbles forward falling through the hole.

Title 'Thunderland' appears on the screen.

Alice falls through and onto the floor. She stands up looking around her, and then wanders off in all different directions. Alice approaches her house and puts her key in the door.

INT. ALICE'S HOUSE. DAY.

She walks into the room looking curious. Shadows begin to cover her face and she turns around looking stunned. The Cheshire cat is sitting on the table, it then pans left to the Mad Hatter.

CHESHIRE CAT

Feeling curious?

MAD HATTER

Off the table you silly cat. Care to join us? (talking to Alice)

Sitting around the table with tea.

ALICE

So if I may ask, why are you here?

MAD HATTER

I think the question is why are you here?

ALICE

Because this is where I live.

MAD HATTER

Are you sure?

ALICE

It looks a little different around here I'll admit.

RABBIT

Well at least it saved me the trip.

ALICE

What do you mean by that?

RABBIT

You found the entrance without my help, very handy indeed.

MAD HATTER

Have some tea m'dear, tell us about you.

ALICE

My life is boring and to be truthful I don't want to grow up, get a job. There are too many responsibilities.

CHESHIRE CAT

Not in this world.

Alice looks up interested.

CHERSIRE CAT

There is no sense of time here.

RABBIT

The time!

Alice looks at the rabbit concerned.

CHESHIRE CAT

Know one grows up.

MAD HATTER

Ooh, yes, yes!! Then you can stay here and have tea with us all the time.

The mad hatter moves forward closer to Alice's face.

MAD HATTER

And you could protect us too.

ALICE

Protect you from what?!

MAD HATTER

we're not the only creatures here you know.

CHESHIRE CAT

We may be made, but there are madder.

ALICE

If there are creatures madder than this, then I'd rather be home.

Alice stand up ready to leave

RABBIT

Where are you going?

ALICE

Home.

MAD HATTER

Come now. Won't you stay.

Mad Hatter gets closer.

ALICE

Id rather not.

Alice turns and runs. She closes the door behind her.

EXT. ALICE'S HOUSE. DAY.

Alice comes out of the house and shuts the door firmly behind her and then begins to run. As she's running the Mad Hatter rises.

EXT. COUNTRY PARK. DAY.

She continues to run round a park corner and past some trees. The Mad Hatter then rises in front of the camera. As she's still running the Rabbit and Cheshire cat pop up. The Mad Hatter then pop's up in the background as she's running forward. She runs along the river and the Rabbit rises. As she's running along the path the Cheshire Cat rises in her path. She runs past some trees which have signs on them, she then runs across the hill. The Rabbit and Cheshire Cat rise, followed by the Mad Hatter. She turns to look and then carry's on running down the hill. She runs through the trees and can see the door in the distance. She turns again to look, as she's running forward the Cheshire Cat rises in the background. She continues to run forward, the Rabbit, Cheshire Cat and Mad Hatter all rise together. She runs towards the door and grabs the handle turning it. She opens it and stumbles through the door closing it behind her. She looks at the door for a moment. It then falls down, showing the whole field empty. She turns and see's that the door has gone.

Soundtrack planning

Audio techniques:

List of sound recordings

• 3 Pieces of music. (Written and composed)

This will be written by me and my Dad. We will then compose the music using the equipment we have at home. We will write a track that has an 'everyday life' theme, one that is slow and 'curious' and the last will be tense, but fairly slow using piano and other light sounding instruments. Once recorded we will put them into the software 'Clean' and make sure they sound the best they can. 

• Character's voices.

We are going to dub the pop up character's voices. When recording them we will use pedal effects to make our voices sound distorted and creepy. We will each take on a character's voice; Mad Hatter, Cheshire Cat and White Rabbit. These recordings will also be transferred into 'Clean' and adapted to sound as good as it can. 

• Poem narration 

Our film will include a narration of the famous Jabberwocky poem. This is for during the chase scene and will have the tense music playing at the same time. The poem will be read in a deep voice using the same 'Clean' process.



Equipment that is needed

The equipment we will be using is all owned by us. We are not renting any equipment out because most of the production sessions are not planned very far ahead so we wouldn't know when to book things for. We are using the sound from the camera we are using because when we filmed our 48h challenge the sound was very clear. We are only using live sound for one scene; the only dialogue scene. When we record the music, pop up voices and poem we will be using a music studio set up that may be seen as dated. We have a wide range of instruments including synthesisers, keyboards, guitars and a lot of other strange ones that we may not even use. We will be recording on Tascam 4-track directly onto cassettes. We will create some Fx with guitar effect pedals and an analogue synthesiser. The recordings on tape will be transferred to Clean software and exported as a good sound file.


Sound editing

We will be editing the sound on 'Clean' because we do not have Soundtrack Pro at home, it is also easier to transfer the cassette recording to this particular program. We will change sound levels, effects etc. all on this software. When we put the sound clips into Final cut we may have to change the volume levels of the different sounds if some are too loud and overbear the other sounds.


Music
We will have a large amount of music in this film because I think that it is what will convey the right feelings. There are going to be 3 primary pieces of music.

Dialogue
There is only 1 scene with dialogue half is dubbed voices and half is live audio. The rest of the film is music-based.

Foley 
We started creating the sound of a door falling on the floor for the final scene of the film. But unfortunately it didn't sound quite right and didn't look right with the shot. It looked more dramatic silent.

SFX
There are some SFX that are just there from live audio like mugs being put down on a table and other ordinary sounds that occur. We are not adding any SFX in because they are not needed.

Jabberwocky poem narration

I am going to record my Dad reading the Jabberwocky poem from 'Alice through the looking glass'. This poem and all of the Alice in Wonderland content is in public domain. We are going to record it with my Dad's music equipment so the recording will be very clear and can be altered on 'Clean' if is doesn't quite sound right.
The Jabberwocky:
Twas brilling, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the burogroves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"
He took his vorpal sword in hand
Long time the maxome foe he sought --
So rested he by the tum tum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.
And as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!
One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and witg its head
He went galumphing back.
And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabious day! Callooh! Callay!
He chortled in his joy.
Twas brilling, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were thr burogroves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

Storyboard/shot planning

Instead of doing a full storyboard I drew some particular shots that I wanted to get perfectly. I chose the primary 6 shots that needed to be how I planned. Although 3 were scrapped. The rest of the shots were just described in the shot list and done as closely as possible while filming. All the shots I had in my head and putting them onto paper was sometimes difficult.
These are the shot plans/separate shots drawn with pencil and annotated:

Ident pre-production

I had a few different designs for my ident. I wanted to use an interesting, abstract or vintage style to match the sort of films I want to make.
I did spend some time designing and finding fonts but I decided to use a pre-set font I found on After effects. It was better than any of my designs.

I then did a mind map of some general ideas and then drew up the 3 best ideas as designs.  

When designing my ident I had 3 ideas that I liked and it was difficult to chose which one would be best. These were the general designs:

Firstly I wanted to create an ident that had a stained glass pattern being put together and then the name either on or underneath the pattern like this:

My second design was inspired by seeing the Channel 4 Japanese street ident. I have a passion for both Japan and cities so I thought this design would reflect on me. I though of having a panning photo of a Tokyo street and using the tracking process.

For my last design I thought about having some of my personal work in the ident. So I designed something with 4 frames each with a piece of my photography in them. I then thought about having a fairly simple font for my text.

Rationale - I chose the last design when it came to making the ident. I like this idea the most because I can use more motion graphics than my other ideas. I also think that it is the most personal idea because it shows my own photography in the frames displayed. This idea will use a lot of key framing, which is something I am confident with, so it should be a simple process. For this design I will not be using the z axis because it is not a 3D composition. I will use the x and y axis to align and scale 4 images and text. To create a burn effect I will key frame the 4 images at the beginning of the sequence. The effect will make the image appear to burn. At the first key frame the effect will be on full so that the image can't be seen. Then later in the sequence I will place another key frame and lower the effect so the effect will show the full image. The process from one extreme to the other is created by after effects because of the key frames made. It will appear that the image does a reverse burn and will appear with a burning effect. I will also be using key framing in the same way to make my text fade in. I will not be using any mattes or composite modes for this ident because they are not needed.
 I started with a storyboard so that the elements all built up to make the final design. 

Treatment

• The film starts with someone's everyday morning routines.
• It is all close ups - we don't know who it is. She gets up, dressed, makes tea, brushes teeth, does make-up etc.
• She then leaves the house to go for a walk, and we finally see her face.
• Alice walks through the park, past lots of trees, past the river. Alice then finds a key hole in the ground, she looks down the hole, curious, leans too far and falls down.
• TITLE - Thunderland
• Alice falls on the floor.
• She looks around at the sky which is now purple.
• She wanders home the same way she walked earlier
• She enters her house and walks through her house looking around
• A shadow covers Alice's face and she turns to see the Cheshire cat on the table looking down at her
• The Hatter appears and invites Alice to join them for tea.
• They're all sitting around the table with tea.
• Alice asks why they are there, but doesn't get a straight answer.
• Rabbit then points out that he now no longer needs to lead her to this world.
• The hatter asks Alice to tell them about herself and her life
• Cheshire cat tells her that all of her worries are non-existent in this world
• This interests Alice, she's tempted to stay
• The Hatter gets excited and says that she can protect them from the other creatures in this world.
• Alice realises that she doesn't want to stay here and goes to leave.
• The Hatter tries to persuade her to stay, so Alice runs.
• She leaves the house only to be followed by the Hatter
• She runs through the park, through the same places she had walked before
• As she runs the Hatter pops up behind her
• Both the Rabbit and Cheshire cat pop up and join the chase
• The hatter pops up behind Alice again
• The rabbit then rises side on as Alice runs past
• Alice runs and the Cheshire cat rises in her path
• Alice passes the trees she had earlier with signs
• Alice runs across a hill
• The rabbit pops up, the Cheshire cat pops up, the hatter pops up, Alice turns
• Alice runs down the hill
• Alice is running through trees
• She sees a door in the distance through the trees
• She starts running towards the door and the Cheshire cat pops up behind her
• She carries on running towards the door
• She reaches the door and stumbles through
• The door closes
• Alice looks to the right and the door falls
• We now see the whole field and the door is gone. Alice slowly backs away and FADE OUT end.