United Film, Magazine Logo

This is the logo I have made for our magazine branding, the magazine is called United Film. The 'M' with the film reels makes up two people who are uniting - the film reels are their heads, also the top half  of their bodies is made to look like a clapperboard. These things all fit in with the title of United Film. I drew the logo on Adobe illustrator from a sketch that I did.

TB

Treetop Inc. Ident Plan

I have created the tree for our ident in Adobe Illustrator. The top of the tree is in two halves which are a reflection of each other, I did this because I really liked the symmetrical look that it gave and it allowed me to make the tree more intricate within the time that I had.

These 4 screenshots are font tests using the fonts:

Chalet Comprime Milan 1960

Moon Flower Bold

Caviar Dreams

CF Alone On The Earth

Harry and I collectively decided that we preferred the font CF Alone On The Earth. We thought that the two more modern fonts didn't fit the style of the tree, and out of the other two agreed that Moon Flower was slightly too light-hearted and friendly whereas CF Alone On The Earth was more jagged and harsh which fitted the style of the tree perfectly.

I will now move each of the letters in the text so that they look as if they are sitting on the top of the roots. There is no full stop for this font since it is a demo font so I will also have to draw a full stop that fits the font's style.

10 | So Far

The next few weeks are crucial in assuring the film, poster and magazine are completed. We have now finished a rough cut and are working on the close edit, we are also recording sound with Cameron this week who we briefed yesterday about potential ideas and influences, we gave him a list of examples from other films or songs we'd heard and liked that might be useful to him for inspiration.

As we get closer to the finish of the film on the 14th February it's become clear that the key element in getting the film to a standard it should be is audience reaction, showing it to people and asking what they think the narrative is and how they think it could be improved at all. We've been doing this once or twice a week since last week and will upload some results shortly, generally feedback seems to be that narrative is a little lost in the middle part (the breakdown) but that the motifs and continuity is pretty good, they also think that Amelie is captivating to watch! Which is exactly what we'd hoped for.

HH

9 | So Far

So far we've now completed a rough cut which will be uploaded shortly and are gathering clear ideas about where the poster and ident are going aswell as the magazine article. Over the christmas holiday we're both reading editions of Little White Lies, our chosen Arthouse film magazine and are compiling ideas from our experiences. We're getting much closer to deciding on our ident and finalising our logo and film name so that our company branding is clear and can then be incorporated into the poster and magazine article. We've chosen Little White Lies over a bigger company such as Empire because we believe our film with it's clear motifs and simple, social realism setting is better suited to a company like Little White Lies, which is still only getting off the ground itself at the moment.

In the next few weeks we are aiming to start completing our construction side now that research & planning is finished we feel we are ready to complete any re-takes needed with our actors and clarify with our teachers and audience research precisely what it is we need to do next. In the first week of January we will be recording with our pianist Cameron who we have now briefed and will be shown the film soon.

Arthouse Film Idents

Film Idents vary in style and length, very often to suit the film they're working with, several of the idents below for example, use a timeless effect either by using scale and themes such as the earth or the brain, others including a variety of characters and locations to show the proportion of the company. Other companies use a very simple technique and logo, often when they're starting off. 

The most important thing in a film ident is the logo, to have company success, you want your audience to recognise your logo, each of the ident's below has a very clear logo that always comes at the end of the clip. Length's vary from 5-17 seconds depending mostly on the wealth and popularity of the company. Often ident's change with wealth & popularity, effects such as 3D animation are used to do this. 

Unless and ident only deals with a certain genre such as Film Noir or Thriller, it's important that they can apply to any film, this most often comes through simplicity, which all of the ident's have, we may not know precisely where we are or what's happening but we get an excellent sense of the type of company.

CURZON FILM WORLD

This ident gives a feeling of knowledge and being central to events, the abstract computerized object looks rather like a brain or some kind of control centre, in it's background is a large spherical object, resembling earth. This makes us think of scale and innovation, the sparks of the maze suggest a hint of new things to come from this company.

BLUE HEAD FILMS

This ident is very short and simple, it goes from a very modern, technical looking pixel screen that transforms into a tribal design face and bold, simple lettering. Giving the effect of old and new combined to create one another.

SNASK FILM

This longer ident, gives a sense of money, it's very high definition and set-up very cleverly with smoke and lights timed precisely so we almost can't make out what the company is called. The black and white palette makes the film feel very timeless and gives a sinister edge when combined with the sound effects and background noise. 

ENTER FILM 

This ident immediately says comical from it's soundtrack, there is a business and liveliness to it, especially using the bright yellow and film noir silhouette look. The transition between so many locations and characters suggests a longevity and variety within the company that may be attractive to any viewer.

A1 FILMS

This ident is the shortest of the one's I've viewed, it very simply animates the company logo with a bright sun like light in centre. The fade of the light and very simplicity of the logo gives it an innovative feel, like the birth of a new era or company, there is something not yet formed in the simplicity. The colour palette is also quite egyptian, it feels like a hot sunrise and the lettering is timeless. 

SEVEER FILMS

The several version of the one ident shown in this video allow a look at how some more well established companies have changed their ident's over the years but stick with the same logo, often to suit the film it's used in, or to give a different impression to the audience. The last  ident for example, shown on the preview screen above is in full 3D with a red-hot iron stamp as the f, suggesting that the company is making its mark, or possibly already has. This version is far glossier and more hollywood than the 2D versions shown in the first edition which includes it's website at the end of the ident. This progression is a sign of wealth and popularity within the company, they no longer need to put anything other than the logo in their ident. Large conglomerates such as Universal and Disney are able to do the same with their idents. 

ENTRACTE FILMS

This very simple ident is replayed several times here using slightly different colour schemes, this company made films mainly in the initial use of colour cinema, it's a retro feel today and you can imagine it being used with an 'old film' effect on the computer. There is a sense of that 70's/80's new generation technology. The music especially is one of the first computer generated soundtracks used in film idents.

After having looked at several idents and analysed their success it's becoming clear that for a first film with our company the ident should be short and succinct, focusing most importantly on our logo and film company name.

HH

Little White Lies Article Research

TB

Updated Poster

I have updated the mock poster using the feedback that I gathered though Facebook, addressing as many of the problems as possible.

I also asked 2 graphic designers their opinions on how the poster could be improved purely for aesthetics as I felt there was something not quite right about it.

Most of the changes I made were quite subtle:

I am now much happier with the aesthetic of the poster since it is much more in the style of Saul Bass posters/title sequences or Pixar title sequences like Monsters Inc and The Incredibles. If we were to use this as our main poster I would want to update it once again to help improve how easy it is to understand. To do this it must reference the film more than it does, this can be done using stills from the film or a tagline.

TB

Audience Feedback on Possible Poster

I sent a picture of my mock poster to a range of people via Facebook to gather feedback. I asked them to roughly answer these questions:

These were some of the answers I received:

1. Most people noticed the red background first - this was good as the red background was intended to catch people's attention and make it stand out.

2 + 3. Mixed opinions some said they like the font and the harshness of the figures, others said that this was exactly what they disliked about the poster.

4. Everyone liked the style overall except for one person who said that though they did like the simplicity they did think it was maybe too harsh.

An issue that a few people mentioned was that the poster didn't really give any clues as to what it was about, in other words they didn't really understand it. I feel this is the main point that needs to change as it is extremely important that the poster draws people to see the film and to do this people must understand what it's about.

TB

Possible Poster

I created a mock poster based around one of my sketches on Adobe Illustrator. The poster is a rough version of what could be our final poster if we wanted to do a more linear style and design. This was based around Saul Bass' Anatomy Of A Murder poster in terms of both colour scheme and style. I was able to quickly put together this poster being already familiar with the program Adobe Illustrator, doing this has given me a better idea of what a poster in this style could look like.

The TYPEFACE was difficult to come by as most of the fonts available in Illustrator were too modern and clean-cut and therefore clashed completely with the style of the poster. I thought back to the Anatomy Of A Murder poster and other posters from around this time and realised that many had hand-cut typefaces. Being unable to find a downloadable font of this style I ended up drawing the font straight into Illustrator using similar ones to refer to. I decided that I liked the mixture of upper and lower case and so would incorporate this into it.

The COLOUR SCHEME was based around the Anatomy Of A Murder colour scheme with the neutral background contrasting with the bright red block and black type and figures. I thought it was important to have a border around the poster as it suits the style.

The FIGURES I tried to make look fairly abstract, whilst keeping the linear style. It was important that the figures kept a balance between looking disassembled but still obviously figures.

The RUBIK'S CUBE was aimed to be the centre of the poster where the eye is drawn to, I am not entirely happy with the distribution of the colours in the cube, but this could easily be altered if we decided to develop the poster.

I have left space for the BILLING BLOCK at the bottom of the poster.

These are the different layers I used to build up the poster that was made up of many different components. By using locks on the different features and layers it made the process of making the poster much more efficient.

TB

Paperweight

HH