Production Company Logo

Creating the Introduction

Our task was to create an introduction for a fictional production company that would be shown before our trailer, as well as a professional company title. As a group, we decided on the name Monkeyhouse Productions as the story of the deep web red room called "Welcome to the Monkeyhouse" was a big inspiration for a lot of our themes. I decided to use my previous typography practical as a basis for my logo as I thought this was effective and appropriate for genre as our film revolves around the Internet.

I started by following the same steps I used in this practical to create the text, but instead reading "Monkeyhouse Productions". I used the font 'Small Fonts' for 'Monkeyhouse' as I felt the pixelated look was relevant to the Internet, and the font 'Orator Std' for "productions" as I wanted to used a mix of display and regular fonts. 

Instead of using the feather layer mask, I created the glitch effect by selecting lines in the text, cutting them into a new layer and moving them slightly to the left or right. I felt this made more sharp, defined lines than the feather effect I previously used.

I felt the background was too plain, so I used the render lighting effects to create a red spotlight in the background, which represents the idea of red rooms in our trailer.

I then saved many different versions of the image - some with the glitch to the right, some with the glitch to the left and some with no glitch at all. I saved 5 copies of each, each with the noise layer slightly moved so when editing them together it would look like the static was moving in the background. This would've been easier to do had I had access to professional editing software at home, however as I only have Windows Movie Maker I had to save every frame of my introduction individually, which was very time consuming.

I then looked for appropriate sound effects to use: I decided on a range of glitching noises, and a low hum in the background.

I used Audacity to crop down the glitching sound effects to just have the ones I wanted to use. I then organised the frames in Windows Movie Maker and added the glitch noises over the top.

As Movie Maker only allows one sound layer, I had to export the video and import it again to add the low hum sound. This greatly reduced the quality, however, if not good enough I would be able to remake the intro another time using better software which would provide a higher quality.

I made two versions of the introduction, one with a fade out at the end and one without as I was not sure which was better. However, we will wait to see the finished trailer we make to decide which fits better, or we may use another transition altogether.

Overall, I am satisfied with the outcome of my trailer, as I think it's appropriate for genre, as the glitching is a common theme found in horror film titles while the font used and the static links to the Internet, which is what our film is based on. However, I would like to re-edit at a later date on better software as I feel the quality is not high enough as I had limited resources at home.