Graphics: Placement of Opening Titles

Adam and I had to consider where the all-important title would be placed within our opening, and decided that the pivotal scene when the two girls first cross paths would probably be the most effective shot to introduce our movie in. The titles for our actors and other helpers will naturally be incorporated into the initial scenes where the girls are getting ready, but the timing of the title itself posed some problems for us until we finally worked it out. Although we haven't yet begun our storyboard, Adam created some rough computer graphics in order to illustrate or various ideas on how to position the name within the shot. It runs when the two girls walk towards each other from either end of "Lover's Walk", after which they pass each other and girl A stops, turns around, and follows girl B. Whichever font we use, the letters will disappear one by one as the two characters pass them.

This is an approximation of the shot. In the real thing, trees and bushes may get in the way of the shot being structured exactly as we want (as might passers by), but we'll simply have to work around that when we get there. 

The most basic idea would be just putting the title between the two characters with no extra animation. And, as before, the extended "I" would serve as a marker for how the title has a dual meaning. 

Another idea was that the title could appear and then the "I" would extend past the parallel framing until it reached the ground. This would imply the fact that the two girls are from parallel universes, and also create a pleasing aesthetic split in the image. It would also follow our idea of using mirrors as much as possible in our filming in order to highlight the otherworldly origins of girl A. However, not only would this be difficult to do, but the line would also be skewed to the left, and would therefore not look particularly good due to the lack of symmetry.

 In terms of the other font, it is possible to slide the two halves of the word towards each other, hiding the 'i' as the girls walk towards the centre of the screen. This could more clearly illustrate the double meaning of the title. This is an especially effective idea due to the fact that the two halves sliding together will smoothly copy the movement of the two girls.

This idea would be graphically challenging but remains arguably be the most effective one in our arsenal. In this, the letters fade out as they walk past them just as in previous renderings of our title.

However, in this case, the '(I)' remains and, as the two come closer together, the brackets circle each other and turn into an eye. The eye fades out as they cross each others paths and carry on.

Granted, the eye looks almost like the Eye of Sauron from the "Lord of the Rings" films, not to mention that we'd have to use the font from "Alien" for this idea to work. The danger of frustrating our viewer aside, however, this idea fits perfectly with the feeling of paranoia and being watched that we want to create in our film.  

There, of course, cannot be a final decision until we actually complete this shot and can play around with it in editing. Not to mention, it would be nice to ask a couple people their opinions of these ideas anyway, in order to see if they think the fonts fully convey the double meaning of the title, as well as seeing whether people recognise the "Alien" font. 

AF