Production Company Logo- Practical Task

Initial Designs & Ideas

For this task, we were asked to create our own production company logo. As a group, we were asked to make one each and then decide which one we like the best so that it can be used on our final piece of coursework. 

To start with, I came up with different company name ideas that correlated to our chosen genre of 'Slasher Horror'. Here are some of my initial ideas:

• Slash Productions
• Axed
• Serial Productions
• Possessed Productions

Overall, I preferred the name 'Axed' because it is not too long and the word relates to the genre. I also believe that I can be creative with how I make the logo, for example, I can make an axe sound or I could use the splattering of blood or the sound of slicing flesh. The logo inspiration has been left quite broad so I am not restricted to only displaying and creating the logo in one way. 

For the logo itself, I have come up with some initial designs for how I could display it:

• Blood splattering
• The sound of meat falling to indicate flesh
• The 'swooping' sound of an axe/knife
• The sound of glass shattering or wood being cut

I have created some initial drawings for what it could look like for each idea (each drawing is in order of the ideas above):

Overall, I believe that the best design is the 'blood splatter' design. This is because I believe that it would be easy to create yet it looks effective and creative. The logo also reflects my genre and ties in with my company name as it looks like someone has just been cut with an axe and their blood has splattered everywhere.

Production

To produce my blood splatter effect, I first of all put a camera on a tripod and faced it downwards. This was to ensure that the shot would look smooth and professional and so that there was no 'shakiness' to the camera.

Next, I put a sheet of white paper underneath the camera so that I could 'splatter' my blood onto a clean surface.

I then got a paint brush and dipped it into my 'blood' which was red food colouring. It took a coupe of takes to get the look that I wanted.

Here are some of the original takes:

Here is the final look of my blood splatter:

My next task was to create the text for my logo. To do this I typed out my text and altered the font, size and colour of the text.

I then selected the paint brush tool and then selected the right colour, size and style for the 'paint'. I used the same colour as the text to make it look more realistic. 

Next, I pressed 'Shift' whilst drawing the blood lines to make them go straight and look as if they were dripping. I also added a few dots to make the text look splattered to go along with my logo.

Here is the final result:

Post Production

My final step was to merge my video and text together. To do this I used Final Cut Pro X. First of all, I imported my video into the program and trimmed it down to a suitable length.

I then detached the audio from the video because it had background noise that would make it appear unprofessional. To do this I pressed: Clip- Detach Audio and then selected the sound and deleted it. 

The next stage was to import my text from Photoshop. To do this I clicked on: File- Import- Media and then found the file that I needed.

Next, I 'blended' the two videos together. This took some time to figure out and at first, I was clicking on icons to figure out how to blend the two pieces together. After trial and error, I managed to blend them together.

I then cropped the text down as it had a white background, so by cropping the excess and unwanted image, it meant that the blood showed up more.

This is what my screen looked like once I had finished editing the video.

Self Assessment

Overall, I am pleased with the final outcome of my logo. I am pleased with the appearance of the text and the video. If I were to improve this, I would try and remove the box around the text to make it blend in more with the video and I would also fade the text into the video instead of having it appear straight away.

Here is the final video: