Practical: Typography

Typography: Faceless

An important part of an opening scene is the title, it's name, along with the typography as this can show what genre the film is and what the narrative is going to be. For my practical I decided to experiment on Photoshop to see what I could come up with.

Our title is Faceless, as our genre is Slasher/psychological with a narrative about a killer who wears a mask to hide their identity, therefore we thought the name faceless fitted this theme as it continues the suspense and mystery of who the killer is.

I started off putting my text in the center of the canvas, making it the focus point for an audience.

For the typography, I wanted something simple. I didn't want to use serif as our storyline doesn't follow a religious theme but I also wanted to put a few effects onto the text to show what genre it is part of as well. Before deciding, however, on a text, I colored the background layer, black to show it is a dark horror film.

I used century gothic text and bolded it as this is still quite simple and is thick enough to leave space to add effects (ie. a blood effect into it). I also decided on a deep red colour, symbolizing blood, linking with the slasher genre.

Afterwards, I used a erase 'grass' brush and erased over the text, swiping the eraser over the words to make it look like it had been scratched off, going over certain areas of the text more than others. Originally I was going to leave the text like this as I felt like it showed an overall creepy look and portrayed the genre of the opening, however, i decided to experiment more.

I looked at the different filters available and thought the wind option could create a good effect (filter--> stylized--> wind). It didn't make much of a difference after using it, however it did make the black erased areas more blurry, making it look more distorted.

I duplicated the text layer twice, coloring one black the other the same red as before and put it under the erased layer. The black used to keep the black erased effect in place whilst the under red layer, I blurred to make the outline of the text a more defined edge.

Following from this, I flattened all the layers together before duplicating it. Then, the top layer I colored black and white. This gave it a rough effect as if it was metal. I carried on by using the eraser tool and erasing the top layer on certain areas so that the red from the bottom layer could come through. This made the text look like metal with red blood stains splatted over it, giving it a mechanical horror feel, fitting in with the genre of slasher.

Finished product:

Overall the typography effect I used I think was effective in portraying the genre of slasher. however it doesn't show any correlation to our planned narrative story line or link in with the title 'faceless', perhaps I could add the image of a mask somewhere on the text to show it is a psychological as it will follow the story of the killer who wears a mask.