Creative Task 4 - Create Title Credit Sequence for a Coming of Age 80's Film

This is the original title credit sequence of Footloose.

This is our title credit sequence of Footloose.

What went well

Planning

          We planned to do the Footloose title credit sequence for this creative task - It looks cool and simple to do. 

• The shoes - As we need 23 pairs of shoes for the filming, we gathered our family collections of shoes that looks identical to the shoes that are shown in the original title credit; and we managed to gather most of the shoes. Although some of the shoes does not look identical, but we think it would not make much difference. We asked number of people as well that has got the shoes that we need.
• The location - We looked around the school for the location and we found a room, which was G1, and it has got the plain background that we needed. We also used a whiteboard for the floor as a stage - it matches with the white wall background.
• The dancers - We asked number of people to do some of the dance as well, since we have got different kinds of shoes with different sizes. ^Fun fact: We didn't practice for the dance.
• The lighting - We used natural lighting for the first shot, and the white fluorescent light in the room for the second shot.
• Other props - Such as the socks; we also gathered most of the socks that look identical to the ones shown in the original.

Make the title credit sequence
         We made the title sequence in After Effects, an neither of us had any experience of using After Effects. So it took a while for us to figure out how to use After Effects. We figured out how to use it, eventually, with the help of Youtube tutorials, Google search and try random clicks to see if it does anything. We found the font that looks identical to the original - download it and use it. It took about 4-5 lessons for us to finish the title credit sequence, since we have to make sure the timing and the placement of the texts is on point, and the result is great.

Filming
          When we did the filming, it took longer than we thought it would. The dances are not easy to do, but we managed to create similar moves. We got to do it in 2 different days, as we didn't have all the shoes that we need in the first day and the camera was low on battery, so we had do another one in different days.

Editing
          Made the title sequence (just the text) in After Effects, putting all the clips together and add the background music in iMovie. Move the text file from After Effects to iMovie and sync it; does take a lot of time, 8 lessons to be precise. We also struggled putting the text into the clip, because we didn't know how to import the After Effects file into iMovie. After a while, we instead use a green screen background and put it under the text, move it to iMovie and removed the green screen. Also, as we filmed the opening in different days and used different lighting between the two, we had to brightened the clips so when we put it all together; they have similar, bright lightning.

Problems
          Other than struggling with the program, we hardly found any problems during this task.


What I have learnt
From this task I have learnt a lot of stuff. From how to use After Effects, to how to sync 2 different files. We tried different things in After Effects and figured out how things work and what does what from scratch. That is a really good skill to learn as we will need to use the same program for our own opening sequence. I also have learnt that opening sequence can describe the type of a film, so it is very important. The font style is important as well, so when choose one for our opening sequence, we must choose the one that matches the narrative.