Week 12 - (23/04/10) - Using Flash to make montage

Title sequence

Before we exported the photographs onto Flash, we thought it would be easier to create the title sequence first. The ideas we had was that it should be kept simple but effective (like the rest of the film is meant to be.) I felt it would be good to use one of the photos we had taken for the background of the title, and more specifically the final image of the sky. Using an image of the sky relates to how the girlfriend is in heaven above, and the concept of how the sky seperates them. Though the title Hand in Hand overshadows this idea, relating to how their love overshadows death.

For this title sequence we made a decision to start with the word 'in' in the center of the frame then have the word 'Hand' slide in from the left then the other 'Hand' slide in from the right, to be together and form the title. This illustrates the idea that they are still together, as in hand in hand. We made this sequence by starting with just the word 'in' then over a series of frames move the word 'Hand from the left towrds the center, and the same for the other side. Then after modifying the amount of frames per second the images appear as a motion of about 3 seconds. Finally we chose to have it writen in white as its simple and combines well with the grey sky and the following black and white images. - Title shown below -

Photo Montage Sequence

From here we then uploaded all the photographs onto the stage and also added another layer to add the music (Lemon) onto the sequence. we then modified the timing to 7 frames per second to fit to the beat of the music. We had in mind that the song should fade out after the first chorus, as the lyrics near this time say "the flowers in the graveyard are all gone" when in the juxtaposed images are of the boyfriend at the graveyard. We felt that it was effective to finish the sequence at this point in the song, at 1 minute 40, and fortunatly the sequence was only about 20 seconds short of falling at that point. Conveniently we needed to make some parts of the sequence longer to be more effective, such as holding for a few seconds on the heart made out of ripped up paper as well as many other parts, which we added frames to make them appear longer.

Additionally for parts of the motion sequences within the short film we used a fade transition to emphasise the idea of memories and death. Then for the end after the camera tilted up to the sky, the quote (previously mentioned) was shown on top of the final image long enough for the audience to read, before fading out as the music also fades out.

Problems

We did come accross a few problems such as we couldn't complete a fade transition less than 30 frames, so it limited the amount of times we originally wanted to. Also at the end we found it difficult to have the quote up for longer than it did, before it would fade out, because of the fading options. Furthermore during parts of the montage the images jump and do not flow as well as the rest.

Changes

If we had more time we would make a few changes to make the montage more proffesional looking with efficient transitions and make the timing of the song fit the image slightly better than it does now. Also ideally we would have captured more photographs in the begining to alow the sequence as a whole flow easier and more effectivly, although we are really pleased with the results as a whole.