Font Research and Analysis

I used a collection of software programmes to produce the following video. I used Final Cut Pro to construct the videos, images and clips together, Photoshop to produce the block images of the titles, SmartConverter and Adobe Premier Pro. N.B The first 10 seconds of the below video NOT my own, I got the animation from elsewhere but the rest was all produce by myself. 

 

Storyboard shot 9

Storyboard shot 10

 ^Where our title will appear in our film. ^

Using a tablet Application called "A Beautiful Mess" I decided to experiment with different fonts on my iPad using our film noir title 'Identity'. This enabled me to produce some first ideas, not necessarily final ideas, however it has given me inspiration for design ideas for the ancillary tasks. I kept to minimalist colours of black, white, grey and red to conform to the classic simple noir [and neo noir] colour ideologies. We can integrate these fonts in the opening titles as mentioned in the video.

This is simple yet effective. This sans serif font is eye catching due to its capital letters and bold, diagonal positioning. I deliberately stretched the text so that the 'I' and the 'Y' both bled into the corners of the image, almost to act as a visual metaphor that identity can be concealed. The colours are minimal and not too overwhelming; further aiding focus on the title.

For this font, I particularly like the broken lines which could connote the broken relationship between the husband and Blake. Or it could symbolise her broken identity into two different people. It has a robotic and futuristic feel to it which is really modern so would be a good font to use to represent our modernised film noir/neo-noir.

I like the artist approach to this font. The brush strokes give the font a grunge look similar to the "Se7en" titles. It could also symbolise blood and finger printing which both compliment the Identity theme. Perhaps this would work better in a red font against a black background rather than the colours used here, to make it bolder and more meaningful with semiotics of danger and love.

I like these two fonts as they too express the theme of identity and have a 'grunge' feel. However I don't feel either of them are bold enough to be eye catching to an audience. It's also not very modern and looks too positive to convey a detective-drama type film.

These two are closest to be my favourite. The fonts look grungy, mysterious and spooky. Although it has traits of delivering a horror genre, I feel this would look good for our film as it follows a detective-drama storyline with twists and a manipulative femme fatale. This font would look equally effective in a red-on-black background too.

I decided to try something a little different but still using the same application. Here I used a photograph of my eye taken on a Canon DSLR. I uploaded a white font and reduced the transparency. This is just to get a feel of some design ideas either for our institution logo or for my personal ancillary tasks. I used an eye as iris recognition is a form of identity and thus complies with our title. 

As aforementioned in my video, I said I was going to experiment with decadent fancy fonts. I'm undecided on how I feel about this font as its very different to the typical bold fonts I've been using. I still think it's effective but I'm not sure as of yet if its strong enough to convey our genre of film noir and identity.

I really like this typewriter replica font. It's a cross between traditional and neo-noir and definitely works well with our theme. The red font has semiotics of danger, death and love which could in effect be relatable to our narrative. This is another key favourite as it's extremely bold and eye catching for the viewers.

This font was chosen from inspiration from the film 'Zodiac'. I like the modernised square design of each letter and again, this is a really bold, memorable font. If we were to use red as our colour theme I would make sure we use a much more vivid, blood like red ans this has orangey tones which aren't as bold.