Cassie - RegentsMedia

The purpose of a screen test is to gain audience feedback about our work and see if there are any improvements that can be made. We decided to use google forms to create a survey to share with our audience because using google forms would be an easier way for us to filter out the response. Here are our questions:

1. Would you want to watch the rest of the movie? Yes or no, if so explain.

2. Which part of the movie opening did you really like? Explain

3. Which part from the movie opening that looked goofy / out of place?

4. What do you think we should add and improve for our movie opening?

5. What plot points do we need to make this opening less cliché/unique?

We chose these questions because it gives us a more in-depth explanation on what our opening lacks and excels in, allowing us to make improvements to satisfy our audience. Since this is our project, there may be bias when we ourselves answer the questions above, meaning we need a new perspective. We showed our rough draft of the opening to 3 members of our target audience to ensure that the feedback we receive will reflect the probable feedback of our whole target audience/other members of our target audience. Finding people for the screen test was relatively easy because we had several friends who are editors or enjoy watching movies similar to ours, making them good candidates for our screen test. Here is the draft that we showed our respondents:

https://youtu.be/O3vvr_vzE5U

Here are the results from the audience feedback:

From the feedback, we learned that our opening was too fast as it jumps straight into the action and it doesn’t hook the audience due to that lack of suspense. Our opening was too predictable, making it boring and not effective as a movie opening.

From the responses, ⅔ respondents prefered the name “Missed Call: text me when you get home”, however we disagree as it is too long of a title in our opinion, and it doesn’t really fit the vibe we were envisioning. We prefered something shorter to bring more focus to the title and increase its impact and importance. The title “Text Me When You Get Home” no longer fit our opening, because we scrapped the idea that the mother would send the main lead the text “text me when you get home” and replaced it with a missed call instead to emphasise the lead's absence. So, we decided as a team that the title “Missed Call” would be the best choice.

Since the opening was too fast paced, we decided to add more scenes to build up the story and context, while trying to build suspense. Audience’s will likely get more curious and invested as they follow the story and witness the drugging and kidnapping, hooking them and likely to continue watching.

This screen test was a useful part of our process because it allowed us to see different perspectives and to know what the audience wants. We chose these 3 people to answer our form as getting the opinions from our target audience (teens) will be beneficial to identify the strengths and weaknesses of our opening, which is essential to make improvements to it. With this feedback, we are able to make changes to our opening e.g. drugging scene to add what our opening was lacking e.g suspense. This makes our overall opening more interesting for them. It’s important to see from the audience’s perspective as movie openings are made for them, meaning we need to meet their expectations and make sure they enjoy it.

Reflection:
This audience feedback gives us a new perspective on our opening and this allows us to identify mistakes and improve our opening. However, I’m scared the answers are not representative as we only asked 3 people, and they are all our friends. This worries me as the answers may be biased and not entirely honest. Next time if I do this, I’d ask more people and not exclusively my friends.

Typeface Development: Title & Credits

Here is my blog containing our typeface development for our movie opening project. This blog and work is done by Cassie.

A typeface is the design of letters, numbers, and symbols that create a specific visual style for text. It helps shape the way words look, making them feel formal, casual, modern, or even eerie. For our project, choosing the right typeface is important because it helps set the tone of the story. By carefully selecting a typeface, we can make sure our project matches the emotions we want to create. But first, we must know what our title is before we can create the typeface.

Picking the right title for our project wasn’t easy. We wanted something that matched the story and stuck in people’s minds. After a lot of thinking, we narrowed it down to four choices:

Missed Call
Text Me When You Get Home
Invite Only
Afterparty

Each one had a good reason to be picked. Text Me When You Get Home felt familiar, something people actually say. Invite Only made the story feel exclusive and secret. Afterparty hinted at something happening after an event, maybe something unexpected or dark.

But in the end, Missed Call was what we went with. The title is simple but powerful. In our story, that one missed call is the turning point. In our story, a mother calls her kidnapped daughter, but the daughter doesn’t answer. That missed call is more than just a phone notification, but rather a symbol that shows the loss of communication. It creates suspense and makes people wonder: How will the mother contact her daughter again?

Our group members decided this title by holding a poll in our group chat, where we discussed each title and came to the final conclusion of Missed Call.

Before choosing a font for our title, I looked at other thriller movies to see what kinds of typefaces they use. Above are some movie posters of a few thriller films that have typefaces I like and I’d like to experiment with. Thriller movies have their own unique typefaces, and I have classified these into these categories:

Distorted or Glitched – Text looks glitchy or broken, which can make the audience feel like something is wrong or out of place. It also implies corrupted signals or lost communication.

Sharp and Jagged Edges – Suggests violence and creates a sense of unease. This has a horror-like texture and messy look that suggests something dangerous is happening, and adds mystery.

Bold, Heavy Lettering – The thick and strong letters make the title stand out and feel intense. This makes the title more impactful when shown, and adds a sense of tension, grabbing attention right away.

Minimalist, Sans-serif Fonts – Creates a sleek and clinical aesthetic, often used in psychological thrillers.

Handwritten or Scratchy Styles – Feels unsettling and personal, like something written in fear, or written by a criminal. Usually used in horror-thrillers.

Red Accents or Fading Effects – Implies blood, danger, or an ominous presence.

My two favorite fonts are the glitched font and bold heavy lettering.

I also thought about what names and credits to include. The text needs to be clear but still match the thriller style. It’s important that the audience can read the names of the people involved in the film while still feeling the suspense and mystery.

Here are the fonts we’ve considered:

And since we plan to show the title in a dark background, I made this:

After careful consideration and group polls, we narrowed it down to the 2nd and 8th font, which falls under the glitched text and bold heavy lettering fonts.

This font has a glitch effect, which gives it a digital feel and shows that something is interfering. This might work well for our thriller as we do have a technology aspect in our opening (the missed call) which may be a recurring theme/symbol in the rest of the movie.

Usually a distorted and glitchy text connotes a distortion of the truth, loss of control or communication, or something being “hacked” or manipulated. While our thriller doesn’t fit two themes, it fits the “loss of control or communication” connotation well as it ties with our kidnapping scene which shows that the mother cannot contact her daughter. This font may imply that the rest of our movie is her mom trying to find and contact her daughter, rather than her daughter escaping her kidnapper.

However, personally I think our movie lacks more technological elements to use this font. While the font itself is great, it looks more “sci-fi” in my opinion rather than thriller.

This font is bold, with a subtle texture of “duct tape” almost. This makes the danger feel more direct and terrifying. The duct tape texture alludes to the fact that duct tape is a common tool for tying victims up, which could be the daughter in the thriller, even if duct tape wasn’t explicitly shown. The edges are also not clean and sharp, having some jagged edges, though not obvious. This suggests that some violence is involved, or that something happened that caused damage. This suits our thriller as our protagonist was kidnapped, and pulled away with force while she's unconscious just before we plan to show the title.

This font suggests a more physical thriller movie, perhaps implying that the rest of our film is about the daughter facing and escaping her kidnapping, rather than the mom trying to find her. This type of font works well with thrillers with dark secrets and mysteries, and the main mystery that arises in our opening is: why did they kidnap her? What's the motive? how will the mother find her or how will she escape?

However, I’ve found one problem with this font. With a white background and black test, the duct tape effect seems clear and cool, however we plan to show the title when the screen is black, meaning the text must be white.

As you can see, the duct tape effect is not as obvious here, however I think the texture still adds some mystery to our title, and adds a special touch. Without the texture, I think the font would be too generic. So for me, it’s not a huge deal.

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Finally, we decided to use this second font with the bold lettering because it aligns more with our film.

I (Cassie) experimented with the font, size, color and texture. I noticed that most thriller films used red accents or entirely red typefaces, So I tried it out for our title.

While the red implies violence/blood and connotes danger, the combination of black and red makes this look like a horror film rather than a thriller. Using a darker red suits our opening more, as dark red connotes rage or wrath, while a brighter red could represent love. However, the dark red text is hard to read against the black background.

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If we kept it white like this, we fear it would be too generic and bland. Plus, it does not really have a lot of meaning relating to our film opening.

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Adding red accents in the textured areas made our title look “bloody”, which fits well with our kidnapping theme in the movie opening. This also may be a hermeneutic code: How is blood involved in the next scenes? Did the kidnapper hurt the protagonist? Additionally, the texture on every letter looks repetitive, as we have double letters with identical textures next to each other.

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If we add the texture on only a few letters and spread it out, it looks less busy and more cohesive. However, this brings focus to the letters with the texture. In this title, the letters M, S, C and L have no significance.

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Here, the letters I, D, A and L are highlighted. When rearranged, this spells out “DIAL” as in dialling a number, which is related to the title itself. It also shows its significance in the story. The texture is also spread out between letters, making the typeface

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This is similar to the previous one, however, the letters I, E, D are highlighted instead. When rearranged, this spells out “DIE”, which gives this title a spooky double meaning or perhaps foreshadowing, meaning it isn’t supposed to be deciphered at first glance. However, there's an imbalance as the left side of the design is busier than the right.

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For our final choice, we held a poll in our group chat for the last 3 options. Finally, we decided on this one.

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But wait! The title isn’t the only thing we need to make for our typeface. The credits also matter. We’re going to include the actual name of our actors in the credits, such as: Cassandra D Merkus, Kimora C Hartawan, Eileen Milano, Charlyn K Wijaya and Tara C Hartana.

In thriller films, even the credits help build tension. The fonts used can make the audience feel uneasy, excited, or curious. So, I watched the opening credits for a few thriller films and noticed a pattern.

Here, I looked at movies like Get Out, The Silence of The Lambs, and Zodiac. They all had very simple fonts which showed it was cold, serious and mysterious. So, I picked similar fonts and put them all together again to compare.

After another poll, we narrowed it down to the first and the last one.

This font has a rough and vintage feel, often associated with mystery, secrecy, and unease. It is similar with typewritten text from old documents, crime reports or classified files, making it a great choice for thriller films, especially ones involving investigations or detective work. This means this might work well with our thriller as our protagonist gets kidnapped, making her a victim of a terrible crime.

This font is clean and neutral, often linked to technology as it looks typed out. Its simplicity gives off a calculated vibe, which could work well for a thriller with a "mastermind". Since it feels controlled, it can be unsettling. It also looks like a text message, which could show the mothers efforts at contacting her daughter.

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In the end, we decided to go for the 1st font, as the typewriter gives off a mysterious feel and the rough edges suggest something bad is happening, making the audience curious.

Colour wise, we are going to keep it simple by keeping the text white to draw focus to the getting ready scene as it builds the protagonists character, rather than to the actual text.

And with that, we are done with the typeface development :)

Reflection:

Doing the typeface development was fun yet tiring, as I had to experiment a lot with the fonts and actually try them out, instead of typing everything out. I had to compare many fonts with each other then discuss their connotations and likes. Then I had to see which one would fit the themes of our media project. Overall, it was more work than i expected but I was happy with the outcome of the typeface

Post-Production: Editing

In this blog it consists of a journey throughout our editing process in which Tisha did most of the editing work but she asked the other group members opinion on what could be improved in the scene. The Blog itself and pictures was done by Tisha

Editing

Throughout this editing process, there were many changes that were done which were changed based on the overall look of how the video looked and some were changed based on audience feedback that we got including our teachers suggestions.

https://youtu.be/O3vvr_vzE5U (First draft)

This is the first draft that we did before getting feedback from the audience and our teacher. After showing this video to them, there was a lot of feedback that opened our eyes to new perspectives. The feedback that we got was:

extend the introduction, to make it more interesting and doesn’t jump straight to the main event / problem
add more music to create suspense; such as during the drug scene, fight scene with mom, and ending
Make some scene look more intense and to create a feeling that can increase the sense of personal to the audience
Adding music in the introduction in order to make create the scene as well before starting the scene
Add more scene in the party to make the movie more interesting and creates curiosity for the audience

After all of this feedback, I started to get on editing and see if I was able to reach audience expectations.

Problem 1: Drug Scene

In one of the scenes, we can see the drugging takes place. However, we noticed that the lighting of the drugging shot is the same as the rest of the party. This might make the drugging shot too similar with the rest, making it blend in.

With this new change it brings emphasis to this shot and shows its significance and danger. We made the lighting more low-key by adjusting the color settings such as the exposure. The low-key lighting differs this shot from the rest and adds some suspense.

Problem 2: Opening Scene

For the opening scene, I created two different example of scene. Where the difference is the timing when the first opening credits should pop up.

https://youtu.be/y-KRmsXuG38
(Scene 1 example 1)
We can see in the first example, the opening credits of the character starring comes straight into the movie. This may seem too fast and the duration was a bit too fast as well, which it hard for the audience to read the names.

https://youtu.be/amn1nxEYfRs

(Scene 1 example 2)
In the 2nd example we can see that the opening credits come a bit after, which they have a much longer duration but still was a bit too fast.

After all these examples and several feedbacks later, I change the opening credits scene to show the first character name a scene later after the movie credits. This allows to create curiosity for the audience who will be appearing in the movie from the opening credits scene.

Problem 3: Room to party

https://youtu.be/T3MZJ0KpPSA

In this scene we can see that the main character comes out of the room then jumps straight to the party, overtime this looks like the character’s house and the party are located at the same place. I did not want it to be like that, so In between the scene where she rushes out of the room to the party. I added a car that was trying to park to indicate to people that the main character left the house to actually go to the party as this was shot outside of the school.

Problem 4: Make up continuity

https://youtube.com/shorts/yoC4-yERInA

This is the make up continuity error, at first it was too long which is why I cut it to make it short and it feels the scene became fast. With this fast paced it helps in leading to the climax and it builds suspense to the audience.

Opening Sound

https://youtu.be/FhBS5UQcnd4

From the first draft of the video, the opening of the movie had no sound which felt empty with the sudden jump into the scene. Which is why I edited to add the song to be the intro, but with a twist of adding a distortion to the music. This allows the audience to feel the feeling before going into the scene. As the music was party music, this creates the atmosphere of the party.

Tension build up to fight scene

https://youtu.be/DopwMUZKbyg

Before adding this tension music, when the music cuts off then the character turns around it wasn’t giving the feeling of the jump that every thriller would have. I think that by having that tension music builds up and overlays with the music being played it makes the scene feel more intense with the amount of sounds that can be heard all at once.

Problem 5 drug scene

https://youtu.be/OIciUSQPrAg Drug Scene

The drug scene that can be seen here is that I added a tension sound in order to emphasize and make the audience focus on the cup. With this tension itself, not just by emphasising but it can also make the audience start guessing on what's gonna happen next. This becomes a hermeneutic code to make the story more interesting.

Final product test:

https://youtu.be/RjckTFb3BB8 (#1)

This was the final product test, where we showed it to our teacher in which there were several other things needed to be added and changed in order to create a more appealing result.

https://youtu.be/fL6aE-N6g5w (#2)

After all of the changes that we did, this was the result of the changes that were given from the first final product test. Even though the changes weren’t really noticeable, it helps in creating the scene to be more lively and the audience can feel the feeling that we are trying to give to them.

This is the first draft of the audio for the opening, where the markers can be seen as blue represent when the beat drops. This helps in cutting each part based on the beat drops in order to make it more lively and builds up tension to every beat drop.

Problem 6

From the two images, we can see the different type of fonts that were use as the opening credits, as well as the size of each font are different. At the end we decided to use the one on the left that uses the type writer font. This font was much simpler and it wasn’t similar to the title that we had.

Overall from this whole editing process, there were many changes that were done and it creates this better result from the very first result before feedback was given. From this, it is better to hear from other people's opinions which could help in seeing things in a different way in order to create a better product.

Reflection:
Keeping a blog like this helps tracks the changes made to the video, so we can easily foresee how it develops. We additionally keep track of the problems we faced during editing e.g. continuity error. While I was not an editor, I recognized the hard work for my group from my editor who always delivers her cakes, no matter what. However, while I didn’t have the time for it yet, I’d also like to learn how to edit, so I can assist my editor further and take some weight off her back.

Cassie - RegentsMedia

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Tuesday, March 11, 2025

Final Product

Creative Critical Reflection 4

Creative Critical Reflection 3

Creative Critical Reflection 2

Creative Critical Reflection 1

Media Language

Additional Feedback and Changes

Screen Test: Audience Feedback

Typeface Development: Title & Credits

Post-Production: Editing

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