OUAN505 - Post Production

After the sequencing and colour grading was done the last task in the post-production stage was to add and titles, credits and other pieces of text that we had planned to include. During the planning stage we decided we wanted to reinforce any statistics or facts we mentioned with a visual accompaniment, so when the narration says that '31% of the worlds land surface is covered in forest' there would be a representation on screen of the '31%' emphasising the statement. We planned to do this again made from paper at the beginning but in one of our conversations with Martin he suggested using this more frequently where we could so that it isn't so random and more of another element within the documentary. We decided it would be good to do this in the post-production stage as it would be simpler and it meant we would have more control over the type of font we used and how we integrate it into the documentary. I decided to use a font called, 'Adam' as it is relatively simplistic but also has quite a distinct style to it that I thought would contrast to the detail in some of the scenes, as well as this it is formal in appearance and communicated the correct tone that we needed.

There is around ten instances of text appearing on screen throughout the documentary and I think I used it in the correct places to reinforce the visuals and the narration without having text on the screen all the time. My thinking was that when text appears on screen the audience is driven to read it and their attention is pulled away from the on screen visuals. So it was essentially used less frequently for a higher impact in the areas that it mattered most. In terms of transitions I've consistently used a fade for the text to appear and leave the screen. This is so that it is more subtle and fits in with the other smooth transitions throughout the documentary. Depending on the scene and the colours that were used the text was either black or white. Fortunately, there were no instances where the text wasn't visible and the black or white worked well in the cases it was used.

When it came to the titles and credits I decided to simply use white text on a black background. This worked well at both the beginning and the end of the animation because at the beginning the first scene is relatively dark, so the fade from a black title screen to the first scene isn't too jarring and appears to be quite a natural feed from one scene to another. At the end it also worked quite well because it's a fade to black that ends on a black credit screen so again there isn't much of a contrast. I thought it would be best to keep the credits relatively short and in terms of allocating specific credits at the end, since we all took on so many roles within the documentary I simply stated that it was 'created by' followed by our three names, and then gave credit to the music, as this was the only thing we sourced from elsewhere other than ourselves. We spoke a little about that we could call the animation, and threw various names about. I came up with 'Timber' and 'Axed' because I thought they were to the point and the single word had quite a high impact. Eventually we went with 'Axed' and so I placed this at the beginning of the documentary to introduce the animation.