Digital Sketchbook

This project was difficult to make a sketchbook for. The post-process isn't really something to sketch and plan for. It is completing tasks to further and enhance the story and so there were no storyboards or anything to follow. All of that comes in the pre-production process and pertains to the production part of the process.

For that reason a sketchbook was difficult to create. I did manage to pull some bits together though. A few moodboards and some of the documents I used when recording foley sound. It is not very substantial but it is required by the brief so I included every document I had.

I thought because I didn't have very much content I'd put time into styling it and so I look to Illustrator and made a fully styled PDF document. So here is the full sketchbook:

I think it makes a nice companion piece to all of the other work I have produced for this project and it follows the branding guidelines I created so it looks the part.

Branding Guidelines

I realised I forgot to share my branding guidelines on the blog. It is quite a simple document as there wasn't really that much to cover. I thought I'd style the document in a style to capture the feelings the branding guidelines are there to evoke. Hopefully it is quite a straight forward document that would allow anyone to pick it up and understand how to style a document in the same way I have done.

So here it is:

Conclusion

So. All in all, how do I think the project went. I think it went well. I think that overall I have created a well rounded, focussed and impactful film with accurate and thoughtful promotion material. I feel like every aspect has strength and can stand up by it's own but all together they work really well to create a constant and full experience.

My main problem with this project is time. I think that I bit off a little more than I can chew. The sheer fact that I managed to complete everything I set out to complete in the time frame set by the uni is a miracle. It is a hugely substantial undertaking to have completed in eight weeks and I defy anyone to do the same in the same time period. I had full control over every aspect of post production on a 10 minute short film and only eight weeks to do it. Someone would usually take upwards of 6 months at least to carry something like this out. I took less than a third of that time.

As a result of this I think that some aspects of the project haven't got as much polish as I would like. With more time I know that I could have made every piece a little bit higher quality and make everything really strong but I think the fact everything got completed is too much of an achievement to let that put a downer on things.

I think the quality of everything created is really high. This was time consuming to ensure that everything had as much polish as it did and some creative management of everything to ensure things that required similar processes could be completed side by side.

I think that was something absolutely essential to the success of this project. The planning. The simple document I made at the beginning became invaluable:

It doesn't look like much but it helped me so much to visually associate everything that I needed to complete within this project with a time. The titles of everything I kept pretty broad so that I could really make sure that when I could say I had completed one that it was the whole section that went into it that I could say were completed. I could block out when all of the visual side of the project was done so I knew I just had to focus on say audio or marketing after that.

This really helped me keep on top of everything. As the deadline date was looming ever-closer I could refer back to this document and quickly gauge what was left. I could plan how much time it would take and slot it in. It wasn't the most sophisticated planning document but without it I doubt I would have finished everything.

I think that ultimately this project has made me grow as a designer. Simply just the undertaking itself has forced me to crack out work in half the time I would usually like to take to do so. I have really streamlined my processes and learnt to quickly make decisions and finalise things quickly.

Crucially though I have completed and gained an understanding for the main goal here which was to get an understanding of the industry and the practices that would go into the post-process of a film. I got to try my hand at every aspect, obviously not to industry standard in most cases but pretty close. I got a good idea of what to do where and how it is done and it has helped me to no end. I have an appreciation for each task and a pretty good idea of how to go about tackling it.

That was the main goal here and I think I achieved it and then some.

Breakdown of Conclusions

It is time. I have reached the end of the project, and what I project it has been! It has felt like a monumental task to tackle every element and has taken longer than any other creative endeavour I can think of but the end has finally come. Here I thought it would be a good idea to break down each component of the project and evaluate them one by one.

Editing:

The editing process went really well. It feels like an age ago now and it seems strange to think that I am still working on the same project. Having Jamie alongside me to edit was a great help. He was able to guide me through the clips to really speed up the process and quickly get a rhythm going.

I feel like the edit is objectively really strong. I don't notice any cuts and all the shots feel well rounded and as though they are given ample breathing room and time. I think that the whole piece flows really nicely. The pace is good and all of the story is given a meaty chunk of time. The time constraints on the project were quite a mountain to overcome. 

The 10 minute mark was quite a difficult thing to hit as there was so much more we could have included. In some instances the majority of a scene was cut to keep the runtime down. The montage scene in particular was heavily cut down. Despite this I feel as though the story comes across well and thoroughly. It is clear and flows well.

Visual Effects:

Within this bracket I am counting the title sequence, the credits and the colour grading along with all the conventional VFX shots. This part of the project was fairly painless. I am really familiar with After Effects and visual effects in general so these tasks made for quite nice distractions from the more challenging and new elements to this project.

All of the actual VFX shots were well planned and Jamie had a good idea for the direction he wanted them to take. This made it really easy to carry out his vision and make them look as he described. This again was really useful as it took a lot of the trial and error portion out of the process. There was obviously still a little and when I thought something wasn't working I had room to play but more or less everything came together quickly thanks to clear direction and simplicity.

The shots that required VFX were limited to avoid cliché more than anything else. Jamie wanted this film to feel grounded and based in reality as much as possible. Everything that happens is more shocking and believable because of the reality present within the film. VFX shots are distracting from this. Another factor is that obviously I don't have the expertise, time or budget of somewhere like ILM and so the VFX were never going to look 100% realistic and believable. We didn't want to try anything too ambitious as it just set us up to fail. And I had enough on my plate as it is.

The credits and title sequence came together really well as well. I was unsure of these pieces from the beginning as I wasn't sure where I was going to take them. I wanted to do something really simple. Possibly just like kinetic text over a nicely composed shot. However, I chose to be a bit more ambitious here. I tried a new effect in the title sequence with some new ideas. I think it paid off. As I mentioned in the previous posts it would have been nice to have more time and be able to get the actors back in or purpose shoot scenarios but I think given the constraints I had to work with they came out really well.

The colour is also something I am proud of. The film has a distinctive look and I didn't try to do anything crazy. The DOP is really talented and I just let his work shine. I didn't want to spoil it all by washing it all out with colours I thought looked cool. I just heightened the scenes a little by bringing out colours that were already there. And added dynamism by way of adding contrast which also focusses the image.

Audio:

Now this is where the real meat of the project was for me. I could write a novel about what I learnt and what I experienced here I'm sure. This was such a trail by fire. I had never really worked with audio for a project like this. It was the first time really using Audition to do something of this scale and it was the first time I had ever attempted foley to this standard.

It was a risk saying I would handle the audio side of this film but I'm glad I did. It is always something I have wanted to try and I even view it as a possible career to pursue. I love the hidden creativity and impact it allows for. With imagery, VFX and colour the impact is obvious and can only be pushed so far without looking surreal or ugly. With sound though you can control everything so much and yet it remains in the background, almost subconscious.

The foley side of proceedings went really well. As I said it was my first time really carrying out foley of this scale and it went alarmingly smoothly. I managed to capture everything I wanted in a day which was amazing. This was down to the full planning document I created. All the sounds came out really well also.

The mixing of these sounds was a great process. I was able to quickly find the files due to the labelling I added to the planning document. Then using Audition to mix was an absolute joy. I was quickly able to acclimatise to the program due to it's similarities to programs like Premiere Pro and After Effects. The sound was mixed pretty quickly too. I loved this part of the project and it is a new skill I look forward to practicing and furthering.

Music:

This was by far the most challenging part of the project for me. I have always been a perfectionist and this made writing and finalising music choices absurdly difficult. I kept overwriting and not being fully happy with my choices. It took me absolutely ages. As I mentioned before I was writing and tinkering around from day one and only really finished just under a week ago. 

The video I referenced a few posts ago really helped me get a game plan together and finish the music off. I was able to clearly and objectively see everything musical and make more informed decisions about everything.

The ironic thing is that all that time spent writing music often came up void. I spent about 3 days writing the song to go over the montage and another 2 days to record it. When I finally recorded the lead idea I had spent so long writing I stopped the recorder and sat there a minute to relax. I then just thought "right, now one for fun!" I proceeded to actually just improvise over the chords I wrote and record something spontaneous and that take is the one I actually ended up using in the final film.

Again this process was time consuming, stressful and disillusioning but it was also really fun. I grew a lot through doing this and I think it has made me more aware of music in films. This was the part of the project I thought would fly by and me knocked out in a week or two but when I hit the wall it really made me work to get over it.

Marketing:

This was some of the most fun I had on the project and ironically it was the part I was expecting to be the least enjoyable. I really used inspiration I gained from outside sources and channeled it into a complete array of ideas. I have never really done that as fully as I did here.

Usually I will look at something for inspiration and then I will take from it a theme, feeling or way of approaching something. I have quite a personal and unique style I think. I can turn my hand to a number of different creative tasks but everything I make always comes out looking or feeling like I made it. It is not something I consciously strive for, it just sort of happens.

With this project however, I wanted to try and look at something I really liked and then pull the core ideas out of it and apply them directly. I think that I managed to do so pretty fully. The posters particularly embody all of the characteristics of the content that inspired them. I still managed to inject some of my personal design ideas but I feel as though it really embodies the ideas of the aspects that inspired it a lot.

I think all of the promotion material came out really well and works really nicely to accurately promote the film. 

Foley Pass

I realised that I never posted an isolated version of the film with just what I created audio wise. So I thought that it would be a good idea to render that out to show here. Every sound in this version of the film is only the sounds captured and recorded by me. All the dialogue audio from set it completely muted.

I don't know how interesting it is to watch as a lot of the film was meant to be quite understated and clean. I didn't want to go crazy adding sounds and music to every single moment so I did both sparingly. Only sounds that came out flat on set were adjusted and the music is only used where necessary (predominantly the second half).

For this render I have quietened the music track quite a lot and boosted the foley track a lot. This means that the transitions sound notably sharper and the sounds really stick out but that is because there is no room tone that was present in the existing dialogue track.

Hopefully this makes my foley recordings more obvious and sheds some light on what exactly I have added in audio wise. It is also worth noting that I left out the drones I used over the later scenes because they proved quite obnoxious when trying to pick out specific foley touches. 

Maker of Men - Final Version

So here it is. The final version of the film. I made a few subtle tweaks that were suggested to me. Namely I slightly boosted the volume of the foley recordings present in the mix as they were getting lost a little bit in the noise of everything else. I also changed the credits at the end to the ones I produced. There were a few other subtle tweaks here and there but nothing especially of note.

Luckily the first render of the film went down well with no glaring issues and so it didn't need much more work. I am really happy with it as a project. I oversaw every area of post production and so it was interesting to see something of this magnitude come together. I can recognise every piece of it which makes it difficult to watch objectively but I think that it is really successful.

I was so careful to make sure that every detail and addition adhered to the desired emotion that the story required at that particular moment. I took my time over every detail and made sure that it all fit how and where it should. I think that it all melds together to make something really accomplished.

Like I've said I have watched it so many times now it isn't a film to me anymore. I know every beat off by heart and every included detail is mine and so it is more a weird subconscious stream more than anything else. I will need to distance myself from it for a while and come back to it later to see the full effect of my work but all in all I think I have done well.

Stock Footage

I realised I haven't really mentioned the stock footage I have used in the film and trailer. Stock footage was a bit of a new endeavour for me. I always like to personally shoot or record every element of my films/project work. I like to know everything in there is custom and unique. It has a more personal, imperfect feel that gets a human, caring tone across.

I always endeavour to make sure that I create every element of my projects. However, in filmmaking in particular, that sometimes isn't possible. Even in the professional industry at the highest level it isn't possible. Stock footage is widely used in the industry regularly. It is a huge time saver and can often yield better results that filming something yourself.

Stock footage is basically footage shot independently of your project by someone else and then put up for sale. It can be purchased and comes with licenses for use in personal or professional projects dependant on cost, quality and location purchased from. The terms of use are different on every stock footage marketplace.

Things like helicopter shots of environments or footage from underwater are typical things you'd expect to find and use on stock footage sites. These are shots that are very specialised and costly to capture. Your average film crew wouldn't have the budget to hire the equipment necessary to capture shots like that however, there would be room in the budget to buy someone else's shot of it.

Professional stock footage is really high quality nowadays and can be quite a lucrative business for the people capturing it. It's quality and polish are all key factors as they can make it easier for the director/editor to blend it seamlessly into their project.

For me I wasn't after anything too high quality as I only needed the one shot of waves for the credits and for the trailer. The actual crispness or quality of the image wasn't too important as I would be adding sharpening and grain. All I wanted was a correct environment, smooth motion and a clear composition. Luckily I found exactly that and the video actually had good quality as well.

I found it on http://www.videvo.net which is a free to use stock footage site. The quality isn't perhaps as good as can be found elsewhere but the quality was still, surprisingly high. After a quick search through their search area I found a perfect video for my requirements. (The video I used can be found here: http://www.videvo.net/video/puget-sound/3449).

It was great to have this footage as it was a shot I couldn't have feasibly captured myself. The stillness and calm of the shot was perfect for the chord I wanted it to strike as well. I couldn't be happier with it and it was the cherry on top of everything.

Trailer

This is the finished trailer for the film. I found this process harder than I initially thought I would. I anticipated using some of the music I had already created and simply grab some nice looking shots and the trailer would make itself.

I knew one thing for certain I wanted to stay between the 30 - 45 second mark. The reason for this is that the 30 - 45 second mark has sort of become the internet standard. YouTube pre-roll adds and feature film teasers tend to sit within that time frame and short film trailers do also. It is a nice time limit that forces quick storytelling and I think also really helps build interest and intensity.

It was a huge challenge for me. I wanted to express all the values contained in the film and also make it exciting. I didn't want to give away the plot and especially not the twist. I wanted it to look and feel like a romance film as I have mentioned in earlier posts.

However, again as I have mentioned in earlier posts, I didn't want to miss-represent the film. I wanted it to still have elements of intrigue and mystery. I wanted something the viewer would remember and take away from. That is why I included a sudden change in pace and feeling at the end. There is quite a smooth dream like tone to the trailer throughout the first half. Then the second injects a sudden dose of unsettlement.

I think it works well. I managed to use music I already had accumulated too which is good as that saved me a lot of precious time.

All in all I am really happy with the trailer. I think it does the film justice and creates a lot of interest for the viewer to want to watch the full film. All of this within 40 seconds too is an achievement in my books.

Credits

I accidentally left in the temp credits me and Jamie made when we finished editing a while ago in my final upload. To rectify this I added in the credits I created:

I chose to create a really clean, simple credit screen. It is a softly moving video of a lake in black and white with the credits in the font Akkurat Pro. I think it looks really nice and puts a really classy, nice end to the film.

Time Keeping Conclusion

Here once again is the document I made for time keeping:

This document was immensely helpful. When I was in the depths of working on a specific part of the project that was taking a while or I was finding difficult it was really good to have a reminder of everything that needed to be completed and when it should be done by.

Now i haven't stuck rigidly to this document but I think that's a good thing. For example the VFX and title sequence were completed much later than they should have been. But this wait to complete them actually allowed a bit more time for development alongside the music and the other marketing materials. This made those elements actually work a lot better as individual components.

Similarly the completion of the edit and other visual elements a week or so before I had them scheduled for completion allowed for more extensive work on the audio elements. This as a result allowed the audio to be much stronger than it otherwise would have been.

I think I was a touch over-zealous with the time I gave myself for the visual side of the edit and a bit conservative with the audio side of things. The audio and music overrun quite drastically but luckily they were quite easy to work on in the background and easy to keep tinkering away at whilst doing other things.

Again this document was handy to have when projects started overrunning as I could see what time they were eating into and re-distribute other components around to give them more time or slot them into a day or two inside of the time I gave myself to do something else.

There are still one or two things to complete but I feel as though I can evaluate my time management now as the remaining components are small and already mostly complete anyway. So, all in all, my time management I think could have been better however, it worked really well. I managed to keep on top of everything and nothing ran away from me. Perhaps most impressively I managed to fully complete everything I set out to complete in the time given. Which, believe me, was quite a feat.

Scoring Process

For ages I was struggling with the score for the film. It is by far the most time consuming part of this project for me. It took me the most amount of time as I was tinkering around with my guitar since the start of project trying to build up a sound and a style to run through all of the music. 

I found it really difficult to settle on ideas though. The second I stayed with an idea I liked I wrote something else the next day that I thought sounded better. It was difficult to call a song done because my mind was a whir continually coming up with new and different ideas. In the midsts of trying to record loads of ideas and picking a favourite though I found this video:

The question at 1:04 was a huge help to me. He mentions making sure not to overwrite for the film and making loads of music that can't be used. He also mentions making sure that the film has room to breath. That was an important thing to learn as I had music all over the place but once hearing this I went back to Audition and got really radical with what was where. I made sure the only music that I left in there was essential.

I didn't want to drown out the whole film and the messages the images were trying t get across with music that could push everything over into cliché and so I managed to find a balance I was happy with.

Maker of Men - First Export

I have just finished the edit and inclusion of all the elements and so it is time to export the film out in full. I want to be able to show it to a wider audience in a streamlined format. You can never really gauge a film until it's exported out. Watching it without a timeline showing your work somehow allows the film to present itself a little more clearly. So without further ado, here it is:

I am really happy with how everything has come out. I think that the sound of the film is working really well and I like how the soundtrack sits underneath everything. The soundtrack was the main bane of this project for me. Simply because it took me ages to find my inspiration and tone that I felt really fit the story.

I had overcomplicated the process massively. I tried to over engineer everything and pack in as much detail and intricacy as I could. I was trying to write songs and not backing music. The second I realised this it flew by and I am really proud of everything I've done for this film. I will show this cut to my peers and see what they say.

Maker of Men Title Sequence

Here's the final title sequence:

I am really happy with it. My only problem with it though is the time I had to do it in and the resources. I was limited to just the footage from the film and stock assets I already had due to time constraints. Given more time I would definitely get the actors in on a green screen to control their motions and also get a far cleaner isolation of their bodies. Along with this it would be nice to have the time and equipment to go out and purpose film some elements to use over the actors in the double exposure.

It would also give me more time with their performances. I was only able to keep the final cut as there was around 400GB of raw footage so I only had the actual cut together scenes to pull from. Again with more time I could have possibly got the raw shots together to get more breathing room.

However, all in all considering all the limitations I think that this is a really nicely done piece that embodies everything that the posters embody and also suits the film really well.

Title Sequence Development

The process for creating a moving double exposure effect took a little time for me to work out and perfect. This ate into quite a lot of my day but luckily I found something that works well for me and creates a good looking final image. Firstly I found a shot of the character closeup I wanted to use:

Once I had this I could then isolate the actor from the background. To do this I used tool called the RotoBrush. Ideally it would be good to have the actor on a green screen as you could just key out the green and be left with a clean isolation of just the actor. However, I only had the footage so I used the RotoBrush to cut out the actor throughout the whole shot and was left with this:

Now that I had the actor isolated I needed to find an interesting video element to go over the top of him and to be used for the double exposure. I went through some B-roll I shot a little while ago for my showreel and found this shot:

Once I had the shot I wanted I popped it into the composition and coloured it to fit with the idea I had in my head. I also re-possitioned it so that the main interesting part of the frame sat over the actors face:

Now I simply place this layer underneath the isolated actor layer and change the layer so that it uses the isolated layer as a track matte. This basically looks at the alpha of the layer above it and cuts the layer it is applied to to follow that alpha. The RotoBrush had cut out the background and left only the pixels of the actor so I was left with a filled in outline of his body:

So once the effect was applied the B-roll layer was only visible in the pixels where the actors body was in the frame, leaving me with this:

That's half way there but to really finish off the effect I wanted to add some displacement to the footage to add a little detail and interest. To do so I duplicated the original isolated layer and made it black and white. I then pushed the contrast using the Curves effect. This leaves me with a black and white layer that I gave a white background to. The displacement plugin works by looking at values within the spectrum of colours both light and dark and moving the pixels of the applied layer according to how bright or dark the referenced layer is in those positions:

Once the displacement layer was added to the footage layer, and the black and white reference layer was made the input source for the displacement, this is what I was left with:

To really finish off the effect and incorporate back in the style I established in the poster design I added a grey background layer, a border and wrote the typography in the font I chose previously (Akkurat Pro):

Then that was the effect complete. I think it looks really good and am really happy with how it all came out. I did the same for the female leads part of the titles using a shot of her I thought would work well and some stock footage of water then animated on the title font in an engaging way. Then I was finished.

Title Sequence Inspiration

After creating the posters I thought it best to move onto the title sequence for the film as I wanted it to follow a similar style to the posters. My main inspiration however, is the title sequence that I displayed earlier. The one for the first season of True Detective:

As I've already said I absolutely love these titles. I want to try and relocate them but in a new style and a theme fitting to the content of the film itself. I will use footage from the movie along with some assets I have captured myself to create something with the same style and feeling as these titles but with a different spin on everything.

Maker of Men Poster #2

I decided to create a second poster in a similar style to have a sense of brand identity. I like the pushed black filmic look in black and white. To continue with this theme I also chose to use the same composition on the same bordered frame and just change the image content. I kept to combining an interesting piece of scenery with a poignant scene from the film. This time I used this image I took a little while ago in Brighton:

It is a really vibrant and interesting image. I love the way the light stands look and the lights in the distance add a lot of charm. I again converted it to black and white and added grain. I then chose a frame from the film to add into the frame as a double exposure. I chose this frame:

It is a more revealing image with both of the main characters in the same shot. The hands touching tells the story of romance I wanted to get across and also makes the key point of interest be something that is shared with the first poster. When trying to combine the two I came up with quite a surreal idea. I placed the scene frame along the bottom of the frame and then actually rotated the background image 180 degrees. At first I thought this was quite a drastic look and wasn't sure if it worked however, after a few tweaks and a bit of thought I think it works really well.

I think it is a dream-like, mysterious, conceptual look that is pretty powerful. It also subtly and subconsciously I think reflects the protagonists arch during the film. His world is turned upside down by the disease that is transferred to him and that is connoted heavily in this poster but not to an obtuse degree.

Maker of Men Poster #1

I have just finished my final poster design for Maker of Men, and here it is:

I feel as though the double exposure effect really sets it off. It adds a little piece of interest to the frame and the all important context/story themes which were otherwise lacking. The text is a really strong point to the design along with the colour and filmic style. The border is also a subtle, but a nice touch.

I think it fully encompasses all the values of the film and also encompasses all of the values I wanted to incorporate from what I loved in film photography and ink on paper art. I think that it would be a really impactful design to see in advertisement slot and it is really intriguing to look at which would hopefully inspire someone to want to watch it.

The minimal information and design really does well to build mystery and intrigue along with a strong artistic, minimalistic style. I am really happy with how it has all come out and feel as though it pairs perfectly with the styles, feeling and emotions we have pushed for displaying in the actual film itself.

Poster Design

So one I had copied over all the elements from Illustrator to Photoshop it was time to start designing the content. I freed my mind and started using trial and error to try and design something just taking inspiration from the images I had found and the film itself.

This playing around with the design I feel lead me down some really interesting paths. I immediately decided upon this photograph I took a little while ago to be the backdrop for the poster:

The contrast and composition works perfectly for some double exposure jiggery-pokery and it will take film grain and the text input perfectly. So with that I did some adjustments to the colour, added grain and made it black and white. Eventually ending up with this:

This to me looks incredibly filmic and I am over the moon with the result. So then it was time to decide upon what to do in terms of double exposure. To do this I decided to go through the film and picked out key frames that I thought would work nicely. Most of them didn't work as intended as the film is quite dark overall. However, I did find one:

This image is perfect for the design of the poster also because it is mysterious and intriguing whilst putting forward ideas and themes of romance and connection. It is the perfect image for the task. With that decided I then painted out the unnecessary details, adjusted the colouring and changed the blending mode to be left with this:

This is just the details I thought relevant to the theme. And so with this finished I could place the background behind it and be left with a double exposure effect that looked like this:

I love how this came out. It has a very floaty, surreal look that is mysterious and dynamic yet at the same time the themes of love and romance come through strongly. The background image is a symbol of a journey they take together. I think it came out amazingly well. All that was left to do was to add in the typography back over the top.

When I added the text in it's original colours it was too dark and so instead of adjusting the colours and making do I decided to try a vintage touch of duplicating the layers, inverting the colours on the duplicated layer (so that the text was white) and then bumping them up along the Y axis a few pixels. This makes the text really pop and has a really vintage flare.

I'll reveal the poster in full and discuss it in the next blog post.

Typography and Style Choices

I knew that to create the effect fully I would need to use Photoshop. However, Illustrator has a much more refined and extensive typographic capability. For that reason I decided to do the typographic design and composition in Illustrator:

Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d8/Adobe_Illustrator_Icon_CS6.png

With that being decided it was then time to decide upon a font for the title of the film. This was a tricky decision. I knew exactly the style I wanted the font to be from the beginning. I wanted it to be calligraphic and hand-drawn to inked with the ink on paper feel. There are however, a lot of fonts within that style bracket. 

After a bit of trial and error and comparison I finally decided upon the font New Bernard:

I love this font. It looks chic and personal with enough bleed and roughness to be hand-drawn in ink. It looks amazing and so this was a no brainer for my title font. I then wanted another font to pair with this for a subtitle I wanted to include. This font was a lot quicker to decide upon. It was Akkurat Pro:

I have been using this font to no end recently. It is a gorgeous sans-serif font in a blocky, somewhat deco style. It looks amazing especially as a sub-title font. This was an instantaneous decision and the font pair perfectly together.

They tie together the idea of the more messy chaotic ink style and the more formatted and standard film style. This also subconsciously ties together the duality of the film itself. So with these fonts decided upon I then set to composing everything. This was pretty easy because again I had a clear idea in my head as to how I wanted everything to look. This is the composition test in Illustrator:

I really like the idea of a border being on the page. I think it adds a really lo-fi chic edge to the composition. It also evokes the indie feelings that go along with polaroids and film photography. And again it hints towards there being a canvas that would be present in ink on paper and border that goes hand in hand with art. 

So with the typography and composition ready to go I moved these elements over to Photoshop.

Film Double Exposure

Double exposure is an awesome technique that involves exposing the same bit of film twice to different images to create surreal cutout isolated, combined images. It is a really crazy technique that first brought to my attention by the True Detective title sequence:

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xyu_MdKBXic

This title sequence is absolutely beautiful and as I mentioned was the first time I actually saw this effect. The effect has been around for years though and was first possible by exposing film twice. here are some other examples:

Source: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/4f/c7/85/4fc785a2b56fc6e33f1bb15a7ad3b648.jpg

Source: http://www.photographyblogger.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/5.jpg

Source: http://editorial.designtaxi.com/news-taylorallendoubleexposure050314/1.jpg

As you can see it is an absolutely stunning technique and something I definitely want to utilise in my poster design. Not only is it beautiful it also ties all the themes I want to tie together in one idea. It is a technique made possible by film cameras. But perhaps more importantly it shares a lot of artistic qualities with ink on paper art. The bleeding of edges and fading intensities in the black to white contrast evokes the same feelings as the ink artwork.