Top Ten - Blink 182 60 Second Sequence - ATST Initial Storyboards

Following on from getting the initial ideas sketched down for each of the song sections in my 60 second title sequence, although for the idents this is where I drew out reasonably neat storyboards, I found this to be quite time consuming and took me a while so I will also do this next bit differently. I have decided that because I have concentrated and come up with ideas for the sections as I got to them rather than doing a number of different full sequences, I will now put the ideas that I have on to storyboards to experiment with and see which I think will work the most effectively. I will just do this roughly again so they won't be of the actual typeface, but it will still give me a clear enough idea as to what will and wont work at this stage, and will also help me make decisions as to what I want to include in the sequence and what I don't and what will possibly need tweaking (and try out the tweaks too).

I printed out a number of storyboards already done so that I don't have to spend time drawing loads of them out and I can just get started. Where ever there is a frame that looks like this:

This means that it's just a blank frame that is separating the idea experiments. It's easier to work out the ideas without having to work out when it start and ends. A couple may not have to red lines on because I forgot, but unless it says otherwise on the storyboard then that's what it is.

I found producing these storyboard to be a lot more beneficial than what I did with the ones that I produced at this stage for the idents as they are just really quick and simple, so how neat it is isn't really a requirement so it allowed me to work through the ideas and tweaks faster, which is what was needed to develop what I was doing. I included the annotations straight away as well so that they are easier to look back on and immediately get.

I really like how some of the ideas for the sections have developed through the process of doing this. It has been very beneficial to do definitely. I think the ideas which incorporate what the actual lyrics are on about will work really effectively, like with the last line where it says 'my little windmill' and then the word windmill rotates like an actual windmill. It may be a little cheesy but not too over the top in my opinion as it is just a simple effect, which is what kinetic type usually consists of so I think these will work quite nicely. I'll do these for the other sections and then reflect back over what I have and then start to make some decisions for the actual content I will produce.

Top Ten - Blink 182 60 Second Sequence - The Rock Show Initial Ideas

The last song section that I need initial ideas for now is for The Rock Show. I got these ideas done pretty quick as by this point I was in the right mind set to imagine how things could work quite well.

scan and upload theseeeeeeeeee

Again concentrating on sections, I think some of the stuff I have come up with will work quite nice once I get on to after effects.

Top Ten - Blink 182 60 Second Sequence - WMAA Initial Ideas

So because the time for the What's My Age Again?'s section in the sequence has been increased so that it takes up around 16 seconds, I wrote out the new lyrics that I will be working with before I started sketching ideas. There is a lot more lyrics in this section than any of the others that I have done and the song is fast paces so I kept this in mind whilst sketching as I don't need anything too over the top because there will probably only be a few frames between some sections to be able to achieve stuff.

Again, like I did with the previous one, I concentrated on the sections of the songs while I was sketching and got down the ideas I had for it as I went through the song. I find it a lot easier and more beneficial to do it this way.

Top Ten - Blink 182 60 Second Sequence - Adam's Song Initial Ideas

Doing the same as I did previous for the All The Small Things section of the title sequence, I did it for the Adam's Song section as well. I prefer this method of sketching out initial ideas to what I did previous because it's just a quick and simple way to get what I'm visioning out of my mind - which is something that's not always easy to do.

I concentrated a lot more on the sections of this song and sketched ideas for each as the song goes on. I think it's good to have the different ideas near to each other rather than all be separate for each section as it's a lot easier to flick your eyes between and vision which could potentially work the best.

Top Ten - Blink 182 60 Second Sequence - ATST Initial Ideas

To produce my title sequence, I have decided to have a slightly different approach as to what I have done previously. Before I sketched down an initial idea quickly, then storyboarded up the idea. Instead, I am going to sketch down initial ideas, but not keep them separate, like if I can think of a few ideas for the same section I will just draw them out rather than wait for another idea to do them.

Here's the initial ideas sketched I produced for the song All The Small Things that will be used in the sequence.

I found that doing the initial ideas this was was a lot more productive, and it felt a lot more beneficial as I weren't just thinking of stuff for the sake of it, and I got ideas down straight away before forgetting them. At this stage they may not necessarily make sense, but I will do this for the other songs first.

Top Ten - Blink 182 60 Second Sequence - New Idea Decisions

My initial thought as to how the title sequence could work is to have the countdown timer to take 10 seconds, and then choose 5 of the 10 second clips I have of the songs for the top ten list. This would work hunky dory, but as I discovered with the I Miss You TV Ident, my timings could be fractions of seconds out, so I have decided to choose 4 different songs instead, and select 1 or 2 that could work longer than 10 seconds to include in the sequence - this way it will seem less structured then too.

After listening to each of the clips countless times, keeping in mind the thought that I don't really want to repeat the use of songs that I have already used, I have decided that the 4 songs I will use within this sequence are All The Small Things (13 second clip), Adam's Song (10 second clip), What's My Age Again (16 second clip) and The Rock Show (10 second clip).

Top Ten - Blink 182 60 Second Sequence - New Idea

Now that I have scrapped the last idea that I came up with for my title sequence, I need a new one to produce instead. I am glad that I realised that I needed to change it at this stage rather than when it would be too late to change it. The other initial thought I'd had originally was to include more than one song within the sequence and do the kinetic type for each one, but the thing that was putting me off was actually getting the sound right. Even so, since this we have had the talk with Lorraine about sound and she explained about how you can fade in and out different tracks, which is actually quite simple to do once it's been explained. So using more than one song is now an actual option to choose from.

I don't just want to have one song fade out and a new one fade in as I don't think this will really work in terms of being effective and a good transition between them. Thinking back to my target audience, with it being the fans of Blink that have followed them for years I suddenly got the idea of having something quite 'worn' and 'old'. This then lead to me thinking about the countdown clocks that are used on older films and what not like this one:

I now have the idea to use some sort of times to countdown from 10 to 1 throughout the sequence that could appear between each song to separate them up. Before I make any definite decisions as to the style of the countdown clock, I did a bit of research into the different styles I could consider using.

Using these images for ideas, I sketched down different ideas that I could think of to use for it.

Although it might be effective to use something less obvious for it, I have decided to stick with the circle idea that used to be used in the past on old films. I just like the sort of vintage feel to them and think it will tie in better my my choice of typefaces and colours. I went on to Illustrator and developed this idea trying altering different elements and what not until I found something I thought would work the best.

I had drawn in the initial sketches a couple of ideas which incorporated sections of the Blink smiley, which I quickly moved on to experiment with on illustrator. I really like this idea and think it is another subtle element which will help to tie it together better with the Blink theme. I think including the arrows is a bit too much, but I like having the middle section being the middle section to the smiley, so this is the idea I have chosen to use.

I experimented a bit further with this idea, and introduced the number aspect to it, and also decided that I may include the crossed lines like in the examples I found. I will use the other typeface for the numbers instead of the main typeface as I think it works better and sits nicer within the circle. Once I was happy with my decisions, I took the circle over into photoshop, where I developed it further and prepped it up ready to be imported into aftereffects.

I quickly decided the lines would be included with it as I think it just adds that little extra something, as shown above.

I have decided to reverse the colours around so that the background is black and the other elements are grey. It works a lot stronger as a whole being this way around.

I have made the lines look worn in the design, and tried out having the circle look worn too but it didn't really work so I will keep this solid. I am happy with how this now looks and am ready to start getting ideas down now for what will go in the title sequence.