Typography, Practial, Louise

After looking at typography and the common conventions of typography within horror films I used photoshop to make one suitable for our genre and to work with our film poster/website.

As this was before we decided what we were going to have within our final product I just created a typography that was suitable for the genre however it was very basic. Below are the steps that I went through to reach my final product.

Deconstruction - Typogrpaphy - Louise

For a deconstruction task I looked at typography that is included on film posters/wesbites/and on the film trailers.
I looked for the common conventions that were usually found when I looked at typography for horror films and these were;

• Typography usually represents the genre well
• Usually broken in some way - could link to what the film is about
• If there is gore seen within the film there is usually blood shown dripping from the title, and the colour red is usually used
• The colour used is usually interesting as it makes the title stand out and helps to represent the genre
• Colours are however usually dark setting the genre of the film
• The typography usually has a shadowing / glowing effect which helps to represent the mystery sense there is within the film.
• Typography is usually fairly simple to read and in bold capitals
• Doesn't draw attention away from any other aspects shown

Here are some examples that I looked at:

Animating the Typography

Keyframe Animation

For use on our website, I wanted to animate our typography so that the letter D swung back and forth and the broken section of the letter M flashed on and off. I did this using transform and opacity keyframe animation in Photoshop CS6. 

First, I copied the layer with the D on it and made it into a new document. In keyframe animation, rotation animates always using the centre point of the layer as the centre of rotation, so I needed to double the size of the image canvas so that the top of the D would become the centre of the image. 

I then transferred this back into the original document where I set a transform keyframe for it in this position. 

To access transform keyframes, the layer needed to be converted into a smart object. I then rotated it to the right, set a new keyframe and then back again so that it would rotate back to the original position. 

Then, I wanted to make the M light up. To do this, I zoomed in on the timeline to allow me to place more precise keyframes and placed a few next to each other in a random order while changing the opacity of the broken colouring on and off. I needed to duplicate all the glow layers so there would be a version for each where the M is lit up and where it is not. 

I used keyframes at the same places as the one on the M layer to make sure they were all lit up at the right time. 

The finished image is below. I have decreased the size to 50% as the file was very large as a GIF, so some quality may be lost. 

I would say overall I'm happy with the outcome as it is suitable for our genre and ties in with the theme of our film, and I feel like I have leant valuable technical skills from experimenting with animation. 

Typography

Creating Our Typography 

One of the most important parts of a film is a recognisable type face used across the promotional package. For horror films, this needs to be able to set the tone of the whole film. Often in supernatural horror films, serif type fonts are used to convey a religious attribute, however as ours has nothing to do with religion I thought a sans-serif font would be more fitting. I also wanted it to look modern to tie in with our internet theme, and definitely to incorporate the colour red as this is a key element within our trailer. We decided to make typography to look like a neon sign as we would be able to make this light up red. I got inspiration from this sign for the film 'Hostel Part 3'. 

 

I started by deciding on a font. I chose to go with Beon-Medium as it was retro looking and looking like a style that would be used on actual neon lights. I used a grey stone wall as a background and darkened it so I could later on increase the lighting around the sign. 

Then, on a new layer i renamed 'clouds', I went to filter > render > clouds. 

Putting this layer into the blend mode divide then gives the background more three dimensional lighting. 

Following on, I duplicated the text layer and rasterized it before applying a gaussian blur to this layer of 30 pixels to create a glow around the edge of the text. 

I then went back to the original text layer and applied all of the following layer styles. These are to make the text look like a neon light rather than just flat text. 

The result looks like this: 

Then, I went back to the clouds layer and took a soft-edged brush of 500 pixels and erased around the edges of the text to make it lighter in the middle to seem as though the sign is lighting up the background. 

I further increased this vignette effect by using a black fill layer and a layer mask. 

To increase the realism of the sign, I wanted to add a cord running behind the letters. I did this by using the pen tool to create a wavy line and then the stroke path feature to colour this in black. I then used the following layer style and darkened the image to make it subtle and have the correct lighting. 

I then wanted to drastically increase the glow around the sign, so using the 500 pixel brush again I drew all around the sign. 

I then changed the blend mode to soft light and decreased the opacity slightly until I was happy with it. 

While I felt this looked good, I wanted to make the genre clearer by including more elements of horror. First, I applied two overlays to make the overall image look grittier; one that applied to the whole image and one that applied to just the text. 

To make the sign appear broken, I used the marquee tool to select just the letter 'D' and made it into its own layer. I rotated this slightly to make it look as though the letter had fallen. 

I then used a fill layer applying only to this letter in the blend mode 'darken' and decreased the opacity to make it look like the light had also stopped functioning. I also erased some of the glow around it. I did the same thing to one of the segments on the letter 'M'. 

Finally, I downloaded some blood splatter brushes and created a layer above the background to darken patches on the wall. 

Here is the finished typography:

Overall, I am satisfied with the outcome but I think the glitches on the letters look slightly off so I would want to improve them later on. Also, for our website and trailer, I would like to animate the letter D so it swings on its hinge and make the lights flicker slightly, but this will have to be done later on at school where I have access to the rotation keyframe feature in Photoshop CS6 because I only have CS5 at home. 

Photoshop Experiment

Experimenting with Photoshop

I decided to try creating a title screen for our film as well as typography in Photoshop CS6. As some of our trailer is set in a shed, I started off with this plain wooden background.

I then edited the exposure, brightness and contrast to make it darker.

Then, I duplicated the layer, desaturated it, used the blend mode Linear Light and decreased the opacity to give it a more gloomy look. I also created a layer mask to create a vignette effect and finally added a plain red overlay in Soft Light.

Using a small, jittery brush I wrote the current working title of our film - 'Red Room' - onto the wood, in an attempt to make it seem scratched into the surface. In layer styles, I fiddled with the inner shadow and satin settings until I was satisfied with it.

In blend mode Soft Light, I then painted over the words in the surrounding colours so that it looked more natural.

Finally, to fit with horror genre conventions, I added blood smears from Google into the background. I removed the white background, and used blend mode Darken as well as decreasing the opacity and using the burn tool to make sure they fit with the background.

While I'm not too satisfied with the outcome, I think this was good practice and I would like to use what I have learnt in our final typography as I like the idea of scratching the title into wood, and it took a lot of attempts to do it decently. Experimenting with blend modes was also interesting. Next time, I'd like to use my drawing tablet to scratch the words in to make it more realistic, because this time I just used a mouse which made it quite difficult.

Typography Practical:

Typography-Practical:

I have done a practical task  making of a 50's vintage style horror movie typography, using the programme 'adobe Photoshop'. Practice such as this allows for me to improve my editing skills for my final product.

Although our final product is not going to include 50's style Horror typography, I thought it would be an interesting contrast, and used this practical as a method of gathering ideas and finding out how to use this programme correctly and efficiently. Although it did not end up how I originally intended it too, the greater amount of practice that occurs, the greater the final product. Therefore making it a useful task.

Here are some examples of 50s's vintage horror movie typography that I used for inspiration:

What I did:





Firstly I inserted a picture of a location I deemed fit for this genre, and changed the colour scheme, making is darker/a deeper blue.

I then added a black and white filter, to ensure it matched the genre I was going for. 

I then proceeded to download a font on dafont.com, one that I believed matched the style I was going for. Afterwards I removed the background and adjusted the size and width to ensure it filled the page to my desired way.

I then adjusted the colour and opacity of the text ensuring it fitted and faded well against the background. I also added in two layers of old movie film scratches to ensure it looked aged and further fitted the look I was going for.



Conclusion:

• Overall the attempt did not go fully to plan, looking very unprofessional and ineffective.
• I plan to use Photoshop more often to help improve my skills on making it as a piece fit well together and look effective. The use of font looks very childlike and does not fit into the background well, the positioning is also uneven.
• Next time I plan to spend more time beforehand researching so I can produce a more interesting looking typography.