Making the Title

To make the titles, we first had to start in Illustrator to create the actual look of the letters. First we created a black background and locked the layer, giving us a secure foundation for the actual text. Next we typed in the title in the font I'd chosen. I went with 'Paradox' as I believed it fit with the tone of the film the best, I really liked the way it reflected the themes and plot line yet still fit with the genre conventions. Next I had to pick a colour. To help me decide we tried the text in several different ones to see which was most effective; I looked at the titles of other crime thrillers to see the colours used in those - they are generally quite muted, a lot of black, white and grey. However, for mine I wanted to create a really deep set unease and follow on the feelings of threat, tragedy and pain from my opening, especially as the titles come directly after the scream. I have done this in my opening, especially in flashback two, by playing on the connotations of the colour red. I really liked the effect of this in the footage and thought it gave the film a sightly darker, more sinister edge and also emphasised the danger the people in the town are in. Therefore I though it would be beneficial for my opening to break the genre conventions here and use a red text, however, I chose one more dark and muted to help fit slightly more to what is seen in crime thriller titles. It's not totally breaking rank though because I went with a colour similar to that seen in the title of 'Hostage'. 

I went for the third colour down. 

Once this was decided we looked at effects we could put on the text to give it more depth and make it more eerie. I really liked the look of the 'Inner Glow' effect on Illustrator as it gave it a bit of life. I also liked how it was all self contained, lit from within rather than glowing on the outside, as it reflects how all the danger appears to be contained within Dreamtown. 

Next we aligned it to ensure the text was exactly in the middle of the black background. 

After the text was finished we outlined each individual shape and ungrouped them, allowing us to manipulate them individually. Next we put each shape on a different layer to give us individual control over animating them all separately. 

Then we saved the title and moved onto After Effects to animate it. Once we'd imported the text from Illustrator we created a new composition using all the layers we'd already created. This was 10 seconds long. We decided to start it at the end because this is where the letters are all in place together. We opened the 'transform' section on each different letter and put a keyframe in for each letter at 5 seconds as this was when each letter would be in place by. Then we just had to decide where each letter was going to move in from.
We arranged them to come from slightly different directions and distances to get a wide variation of movement which created the best effect. We got the letters on the end of the word ( the 'D' and 'N') to move in from the left and right and had most of the other letters move from above or below to avoid overlaps. However, we wanted the 'O' to rotate in as this is more visually exciting. To do this we put a keyframe in where the rotation started from (below the 'T') and got it to 'roll up' into the line which allowed us to get a bigger range of movement. The movement of the 'O' meant there was extra room for the 'W' to move over from the left which nicely emphasised the movement of the 'N' from the right. Overall the effect was really good and looked like a jigsaw with all the different parts of the letters meeting to form the title. 

When we watched it back we thought it was just slightly too fast and that more could be made from the movement of the letters, therefore we extended the time they had to move creating a more gradual effect which I really liked. We also used easy ease on each letter to make their movement less robotic and more natural. Once this was done we randomised when each shape began its movement, again to reduce the uniformity and rigidness of the whole sequence.
The last thing we did with the letters was changing their opacity so they appeared as they moved onscreen. We put a keyframe in to make sure the colour was solid at the time when they are in line and then started each their opacities at 0 so they'd fade into view. We also randomised when this happens to make it more eerie and human.

Finally we added a camera layer, using one with a 50ml lens so it was blurred when zoomed in. We made each object 3D by changing the setting on their layers to make sure they were vectors so the camera could move right up to and around them.
We first positioned the camera very zoomed in and blurred and put in a keyframe and had it zoom out as the letters moved into their positions. This was very effective however, we thought it would look even better if we started the camera zoomed in and on a 90 degree angle and put a keyframe in at the end so the letters are level in the final image of the titles.

This looked amazing and really captured the mood and atmosphere I'd wanted. It's surreal and eerie whilst still conforming to some of the genre conventions such as the font I used. I am very happy with my title sequence and I think it will add to my film opening, the slow movement of the letters and rotation of the camera will help hold the tension created by the final scream and drums, as well as showing the pieces of the plot coming together as symbolised by the letters, just as I had imagined. 

I am exceptionally happy with this title sequence and think it's perfect for my film.