Final Movie Intro

 

Google drive link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/13D1TSLGwpUAkpbfZM-d9h7N-rZinXO4P/view?usp=sharing

CCR 4: Critical Creative Reflection

This is the 4th and final CCR. Here I'll be talking about all the tools we used.

CCR 3: Creative Critical Reflection

This is my CCR 3, where our skills are compared before and after our project during pre production, production and post production. The comparison is from 1 to 10.

CCR 2: Creative Critical Reflection

This is my CCR 2, about how our product engages with the audience and how it is distributed as a media text.

Note: The audio player above may lag a bit sometimes, so here's a direct link.

Script for the audio:

I'm Kenneth and this is my CCR2.
How our project engages with the audience & how it is distributed as a media text.

First of all, how the product engages with our audience.
So, our media text mainly targets teenagers and mature audiences who enjoy thrills with exploration, mysteries, and lots of suspense. All of these are built up in the media intro so the audience can have an idea of what the movie will be about.

As for how our media is distributed, our movie intro has a rating of PG-13, so distribution should be available on most streaming platforms, ike Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, Paramount+, and many more.

We chose the production company to be Blumhouse Productions, so we should have the capability to distribute our movie in cinemas as well, getting the usual treatment of having it in cinemas during the first week or more after its release date.

Thank you for listening!

CCR 1: Creative, Critical Reflection

Below is my first CCR presentation.

Screen Test: Audience Feedback

The Audience Feedback form is created by Shannon using Google Form. The explanation below is partly my own.

This feedback form is to gain audience feedback about our movie intro and see if their are any area where improvements can be made. Our decision to opt for Google Forms for our feedback survey is mainly for simplicity's sake. Web link to the form can be shared easily, and the feedbacks from the audience are stored in the cloud, with no need of face-to-face interview and jotting down key points of their feedback. Here is the feedback form link:

https://forms.gle/yF85gndJy9ovn6bZA

We chose the specific questions for our survey in order to gain deeper insight on our audience's dominant reading on our characters and how we could further improve this movie intro and get our target audience to be invested enough to watch the whole movie. We carefully picked 3 persons of our chosen target audience.

Here are the results from our Audience Feedback form.

Do you like this horror movie introduction?

What are your thoughts on the characters showcased in this movie intro?

How can we improve?

Which of the 4 titles would fit best for this horror movie?

If all of these feedbacks were implemented in this movie opening, would you watch the rest of the movie?

If "no" was your answer, please explain why.

From the feedback we learned that our target audience want more depth to the story. The dominant reading of the character were also surrounded in mystery as no context had been added, though that might actually work to our favor. Another feedback mentions that the movie intro somehow feels more like a mystery movie than horror, which I have to agree with. It's great constructive criticism that we can take into account and improve.

To add more of the horror feel, we plan on switching to a "scratchier" look for the credit fonts and add more blood splatter animations alongside the text. We might also switch to a darker music found in many horror movies.

This screen test was very useful for us, since we now has a deeper knowledge of our target audience's preference and things we could add to improve our movie intro, so audience can be more interested in watching the whole movie. Despite not having the movie intro fully edited yet at this point, we could take notes from the existing feedbacks and make wiser choices to further improve our movie intro.

Typeface Development; Title + Credits

This is the title and credit ideas as well as the typeface decisions for this project.

Title ideas:

• Silent whisper 
• Silent stalker
• Dark secrets
• The haunting shadow
• Whispers in the dark
• In the shadows
• Sinister Lurker
• The night's prey
• Dark pursuits
• Veil of fear
• Silent terror
• Lurking shadows
• Behind the shadows

Typeface ideas:

Thinker (capcut)

Thinker-RG (capcut)

Relax (capcut)

Ravenly (capcut)

Merchande-Rgh (capcut)

Sticky (capcut)

IM FELL (capcut)

Production: Organizing Footage

This blog post shows all the device and apps we used to help our production process.

Raw footages we took for our movie intro project: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/19pOWhiKdYLImOo2_XllnvymHZcKMLMGH?usp=sharing

WhatsApp to communicate with the group members

Google Drive to download & store footage

After Effects 2025 to perform more advanced visual effects on the raw footages

Premiere Pro 2025 to compile all the edited clips together and add final touches

How Does it Help?

These tools simplify our tasks and make them easier to access and edit. Cloud apps, like Whatsapp and Google Drive present us with tools that allow us to discuss and collaborate with each other through the internet. Professional-grade editing tools, like Adobe After Effects and Premiere Pro, provide me as the editor more diverse features compared to other less advanced ones, like CapCut. These two Adobe products allow me to create, tweak, and customize the raw footage even more to our liking.

Post-Production: Editing

I'm doing the editing for this movie intro project. All text on this post is written by me.

I use Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects 2025 for the editing of this project.

I began editing as soon as we finished shooting. Initially, I started off in After Effects, where I color graded the raw footages to look like nighttime.

Before

After

I found this Youtube video explaining the process, and it really helped a lot. Though, I ended up tweaking the little details of the color grading settings to achieve a result of my liking.

I also experimented with light leaks, which I had planned to apply on some shots.

I again made use of a Youtube video explaining the process of achieving this.

But shortly after, I found out that putting it against a black background makes for a really unique shot, much better than putting it straight above the shots. So, I decided to use this for the first few seconds into the opening credits of the movie intro. I chose a simple fade animation for the credit texts.

Moving on to Premiere Pro, I placed all the dark version shots that I wanted to use for this movie intro, and aligned them in order on the timeline.

Then, I added vignettes to all the shots and made some more changes to the color grading, which in the end improved the look of the shots and make them feel more cinematic.

At first, I had the idea of having voiceover throughout the movie intro, as if a mind-reading machine is being used to enter the mind of the killer, in hopes of finding the truth behind the murder. And we as the audience watches through the POV of the machine entering the mind. I even went on to create a wormhole on After Effects, which I had planned to use at the very beginning of the intro, when the device enters the killer's mind for the first time.

This is thanks to a Youtube video tutorial I found at the time.

But after discussing with my team members, we decided to drop this idea, since the mind reading device plot doesn't suit horror that well, and leans more into sci-fi.

Meanwhile, choosing the right audio was also quite a challenge. I initially had footstep sounds play at the first few seconds of the intro, then followed by a swoosh sound as the wormhole plays. But, dropping the mind-reading device plot meant choosing a different set of audio as well.

Picking and rearranging shots on the timeline was also a back-and-forth task, with new ideas cancelling the previous arrangement. But in the end, I found the arrangement of shots that I loved and sticked with that.

Finally, I opted for a creepy-sounding music to play throughout the whole intro, and I found the perfect one to do just that. I used this music as a base for the timing of the transitions between shots.

So far I've used several moon stock videos at some points of the intro, which I really loved. But halfway through the editing process, my media teacher reviewed the edit and told me to not use stock footages, so I removed the moon shots and opted for our own shots of lighter instead.

The rest of the editing process went smooth from then on, and most of the clips were arranged based on the beat of the audio I chose for this intro.

There's one particular clip that I put extra work on, which is this shot below.

The silhouette of the killer behind the main character is actually fake. It's an image that I tracked into the shot using the "3D Camera Tracker" feature available in After Effects. I wouldn't say the addition of the silhouette is perfect, since it is static, but it definitely helped intensifies this last scene of the movie intro.

Meanwhile, for the main title animation, I initially considered going for a bluish theme.

But at this point, my teammates suggested me to change the font to a scratchier hand-written style to further enhance the horror feel. And with a different font in use, I ended up changing the main title animation as well, to this blood-dripping style from the Youtube video below.

End result, with new font and animation.

Reflection:

This process of editing a movie intro has been a driving force for me to learn new things that are possible to create within the two Adobe apps I have. As the sole editor, this is also a good exercise for me to be punctual and not procrastinate as to not let my group down. Also, I encountered various errors throughout the editing process, but many videos on Youtube explained the possible solutions, hence making the platform one of the most crucial parts of the editing process. All in all, I'm pretty satisfied with how the end result turned out, and hopefully so will others.

Production: Behind-the-Scenes

The behind the Scenes was originally my task, but due to other more demanding tasks that needed to be done, this section got delayed. Now Max will complete it.

Screen Test: Audience Feedback

This post explains how we showed a rough draft of our film opening to some members of our target audience in order to receive helpful feedback. Shannon did the form

The purpose of a screen test is to gain audience feedback about our work and see if their are any improvements that can be made. We decided to use google forms to create a survey to share with our audience because it is convenient to use.

Form link: https://forms.gle/yF85gndJy9ovn6bZA

Here are our questions: 

1. What do you like about this horror movie introduction 

2. What are your thoughts on the characters of the movie ?

3. What can we improve on ?

4. Which movie title for this horror movie ?

5. if all of these feedbacks were implemented in this movie opening would you watch the rest of the movie?

6. If in the previous question you answer no then why?

We chose these questions because… We showed the clip to (number) members of our target audience to ensure that the feedback we receive is appropriate. Finding people for the screen test was easy because we asked people online to fill out the survey, which is very simple and easy to do. Here is the draft that we showed audiences for the screen test: 

Here are the results from the audience feedback:

Screenshots/copy and paste etc (just make sure that it is clear) 

From the feedback we learned…..

We are going to change….

This screen test was a useful part of our process because….

Reflection: How did this screen test help your overall project? How will you improve this next time?

Dominant Reading

This is the dominant reading for our project. This was made by Shannon.

	List	Our intended  Dominant Reading	How we will achieve this with technical elements
Individuals	Greg, Kenneth, Max	Kenneth = a paranoid  teenager  Greg = Kenneth's good friend, mindful of his surroundings  Max = careless, ignorant teenager	Kenneth  Mise en scene: The actor constantly looks at his surroundings and whatever's around him.  Camera: There is a close up of his concerned expression. There are also medium shots of his concerned body language. The camera pans from Kenneth to what he is looking at.  Editing: Multiple cuts of different camera angles. There is also an eyeline match of kenneth looking to his surroundings  Sound: Diegetic sounds of rustling leaves and footsteps of the stalker.  Greg  Mise en scene: The actor performance contained looking for his friend (kenneth) when he disappeared  Camera: There is a tracking shot of him trying to follow Kenneth's tracks. Medium shots of his body language turning around to find Kenneth.  Editing: Multiple cuts of different camera angles. There is also a reaction shot  of his worried face and Kenneth's “blood”.  Sound: Diegetic sounds of the actor’s dialogue contained words that worried about Kenneth after he disappeared.  Max Mise en scene: The actress carries headphones and has her emotionless expression when the camera focuses on her.  Camera: There are close up shots of her expressions that show that she doesn’t really care.
Social group	Teenagers	Teenagers should not be left alone without adult supervision.	There are multiple camera angles / close up shots of the paranoia of the teenagers. There is a tracking shot scene where Kenneth gets killed. The body language of both Greg and Kenneth are shaky and scared.
Places	Forest	Forests are a bad place to hangout.	There will be low key lighting that’s used to present the place. Many bushes and leaves will be used that hides hidden cameras that makes the scene unsafe for the characters and the audience.  Discordant non diegetic sounds will be used.
Events	Murder	Murder is bad / traumatic.	There is a medium shot of Greg worried for kenneth. There is blood in some scenes and the color red on blood is a semantic code for death, anger, etc.
Overall Message	Teenagers shouldn’t be left alone in the forest because tragedies may happen as a result of murder.

Classwork: Editing Practice

This blog post contains the work I did in my lesson on how to successfully edit. My teacher filmed the footage but I edited it together. My teacher also provided the template for the blog post. 

Why is continuity editing important?

Continuity editing includes making sure that items like props or costumes stay consistent from scene to scene. But the more important work lies in editing shots together in a way that leaves viewers thoroughly grounded in both time and space.

Different types of continuity edit 

• Straight cut (cut)
• Eyeline match 
• Shot /reverse shot
• Cutaway / Insert
• Match cut

Footage

Here is the footage that my teacher shot which utilises a variety of camera angles and movements. The scene is very simple, it involves a student standing up and leaving the classroom. A single shot here might be quite boring for the audience, by editing and combining the shots together we can make the scene feel more dynamic.

Raw footages:

My editing process

I used After Effects 2025 to make this edit. While I'm aware that Premiere Pro is much better at compiling and cutting videos, I'm more experienced with using AE, hence why I chose to do the project using it.

Here is my final scene. Editing multiple clips together made the scene better because it keeps things interesting for the audience, even if the scene doesn't have much happening in it.

Reflection

This practice gave me a hands-on experience on editing videos, which is crucial since I'm going to be the editor in our team. It also seems that I need to learn Premiere Pro soon, since After Effects is more optimized for effects than cuts.