Title Sequence

First year University of South Wales student. Studying Visual effects and Motion graphics. The brief for this project is to create a title sequence for an already existing movie, tv show or game and that any horror video game fanatic would, I went for a horror game. lol. I'm creating a first person title sequence completely based around the game Outlast. Hopefully you'll like it! Take a look!

[aftereffectsaly]

So...

Think I actually forgot to mention but everyone should be proud of me because I finished outlast. And I did it in like 2 days. So yeah. Take that horror. I have more research and experience now... i think?

[aftereffectsaly]

Me channeling my inner Miles trying to be that there main character in outlast for first person shooting

[aftereffectsaly]

Storyboarding planning because i really needed a visual t go off for filming more shots tomorrow. I have filmed some recently both today and yesterday. following on with the filming tomorrow, ready to start editing.

[aftereffectsaly]

Game plan for tomorrow.

So my plan for filming tomorrow is going to be as follows ; I’m going to plan out my title sequence and choose suitable locations.

Sequence order :

Working at a desk in a office/library environment reading the video game email that invites miles to the game essentially. Moves paper to collect camera where have a screen graphic there. *Fade*

arriving by car to a large set of gates, while picking up camera off of the seat, screen graphic under the camera then shut the door and tries the gates and they’re locked. *fade*

enters secondary gates that lead into church and grave yard, screen graphic on a tomb stone. *fade*

walking along church path when someone steps in front of them - running into woods cut to wood.

sees house/building in the woods and makes a run towards it - screen graphic on a tree as he runs past checking over his shoulder every now and then. *fade* 

breaks in and runs up the stairs to find the door upstairs is broken and then gets hit.

Locations : 

Desk scene - Uni library

Car and gate scene - chepstow racecourse

secondary gates leading to church - St melons parish church

woods - Tintern woods

stairs - staff entrance to The Glee club.

[aftereffectsaly]

Cloverfield

Cloverfield is very similar to the style of Outlast both being first person, hand held camera filming, the use of night vision, monsters. After watching Cloverfield I did in-fact pick up on a few things I definitely need to use within my own work.

The main feature being the camera isn’t steady because of course it’s not a professional camera man and it’s hand held. Also the use of the camera zoom is also very shaky and gives the film that real first person vibe.

The best part of the film in terms of research for me was how the camera moves while the main character, in this case Hud, was running from things as it’s not focused on filming the incident he’s more focused on running from it in order to preserve his life.

Theres a lot of other smaller things I picked up on while watching the film. However it’s impossible for me to explain in terms of writing out. Smaller things such as switch noises between the normal camera and the night vision, the breathing and sound distances from the cam-corder, the general colour of the film is dark/grey/green, etc.

[aftereffectsaly]

Back to work

Christmas is over and now it’s time to crack on. In the next 24 hours I want to have seen all of the movie Cloverfield as it’s a perfect live action example of what i’m looking to achieve within my own project. It even has a similar colour scheme. Once i’ve done some research into Cloverfield and picked up tips on the style in which to film my own work, I’m going to make a production plan for filming etc. which I’ll proceed to film this weekend to move onto editing next week.

[aftereffectsaly]

Getting excited for the project even more now that it’s starting to come to life properly in my head!

[aftereffectsaly]

Title Sequence Research

I’ve been taking a little look at different title sequences and the kind of music used within. A few horror sequences in particular and listening to the kind of audio playing and how they create a creepy and disturbing feel. I’m trying to gather some inspiration for creating my own title sequence. They typically include the main cast names along with the people responsible for sound, design etc.

[aftereffectsaly]

So this is the footage I saved from loading up Outlast and having a play around with the mechanics. The actual testing was around 10 minutes of footage but I just cut it down to the 40 odd seconds of useful info. In this clip i’ve recording the sprinting with the glancing over the shoulder, along with the battery reload. This footage also gives me a fully HD look at the camera display layout and content. Something I tested without planning to was actually the resolution and colour change between how the setting, in this case the building, looks without the use of the camera, with the use of the camera and with the use of the camera’s night vision mode. Using the camera the building’s quality is slightly less and the resolution changes to make the quality a little bit lower to show that it is being recorded. When using the night vision mode I found that looking towards things that had slight like made the picture quality very poor and blurry the light becoming white through the night vision. But while looking into total darkness the picture quality was still a bit blurry and out of focus with the obvious green colouring however it was a lot clearer in the pitch black than in a slight lit area. This is definitely something I need to keep in mind while filming my own title sequence footage.

[aftereffectsaly]

Well here it goes :')

My last words ^

[aftereffectsaly]

Think my best source of research is going to be playing the game first hand. Guess it’s play time today.

[aftereffectsaly]

Next I’m going to take a look at character movement elements using the camera

Specifically I want to look at the animation within the game for looking behind yourself while running to see how fast and in what way the character turns back. The other thing I specifically want to take a look at is how the screen changes while reloading the camera with batteries. As i think it would be clever to go from the camera first person to actually seeing the camera in frame and reloading it with batteries while another camera records this element. If that makes any sense?? essentially to show that they’re watching the title sequence from the perspective of the main character and not his recording of the events. This section would obviously have no screen display with the recording times etc on as it would be the characters eyes seeing this not through the camera. I think that would be a clever idea :) 

[aftereffectsaly]

Researching in-game camera

i’ve been watching some gameplay clips to really focus on how the camera works within the game. For example how much of a room it lights up, as you can see above it has a very round area of effect like a torch. I was also watching how the display of the camera works, how to time counts and how quickly the batteries run low and as the battery life depletes how the battery icon changes. All small things but things I really need to know before actually beginning the production of the project.

[aftereffectsaly]

Colour scheme

The colour scheme for this title sequence is the very grungy green shown above. The reason the game’s main colour scheme is like this is because most of the game is played in the dark and the use of a night vision camera is how the player is able to see throughout the game. Therefore it is essential that my title sequence follows this colour scheme as otherwise it wouldn’t be outlast. 

After Effects

In terms of after effects the camera settings/display will be created by myself in photoshop and animated in after effects exactly as the one above for authenticity. including the use of batteries in the game and the time count in the top left will also be included. The other thing i’ll have to create in after effects is the colour balances and distortion to create the correct night vision effects.

[aftereffectsaly]

Excited to be doing an Outlast based project!

[aftereffectsaly]

After Tutor discussion

After taking my very quickly thought up idea of creating some sort of title sequence based around the game Outlast up with my tutor, i’ve firmly decided to create a first person title sequence similar to that of the game based around Outlast. We discussed the colour scheme and first person camera techniques and I understand how to the camera recording screen so as to the audience it looks like a camera being held in first person recording the events they’re watching. So that’s the plan! create a title sequence that is essentially a live action sequence based on the game Outlast and since the game itself doesn’t actually have a title sequence this is the perfect project! 

[aftereffectsaly]

So far in terms of ideas my mind is running pretty blank. But hopefully after doing some research i’ll be A-ok.