My Film - Company Ident

The idea for my company ident came from my company's name, 'SilverSalt'. The plan was to create a template of the words "SilverSalt Studios"and fill it in with salt to create the words; I planned to lay this template on a piece of black card under a spotlight in a dark room (to help create the black background.) I then used a Nikon D3200 to film, because it filmed at a rate of 50 frames per second, and when I would blew the salt away I would be able to slow the footage down in editing. However, as with the rest of my project, I had a few issues. 

Surprisingly, the problem came not with acquiring the template (which I was able to create using a laser cutter with the assistance of the DT lab technicians,) but with getting my hands on enough salt. As I was filming this during the school day I was unable to go out and simply purchase the salt, so I had beg for salt from the kitchen staff, and they were lovely enough to give me all they had. Unfortunately, 'all they had' was barely enough to fill the bottom 5mm of a coffee cup - but it worked! Somehow it managed to fill in the template enough to make it look solid, so I headed up to the photography rooms with my classmate Tash Whitham (a young photography student, familiar with how to work the lights and willing to help me,) and got down to business. 

I set up the camera, Tash adjusted the lights, and we filled in the template, ready for me to hit record and blow the salt away. With anticipation I sucked in a deep breath, and blew as hard as I could...

But the salt wouldn't move!

I'm not proud to say that there's footage of me huffing and puffing angrily at unmoving salt. The issue was that while I could blow some of the salt away in one breath, half of the words remained. But, not to be deterred I came up with the solution that I would blow it away from one side, and Tash would do the same from the other. But now there was also another problem, because during the first attempt, my salt had scattered irretrievably about the room and my limited stash was now depleted. The only solution at hand was a kindly teacher who gave us rock salt, but this also was a challenge as the large chunks of rock salt weren't as fine as the other salt. making my template look chunky and ridiculous. 

It was Tash who saved the day. She had the ingenious idea to crush the rock salt by rolling over it with a paint brush, until it was as fine as we needed. 

After a great deal of salt crushing, we were finally ready to film again. This time I'm proud to say the plan was a success.

With the assistance of my teacher, I used Premiere Pro to edit the footage. I re-centered the image so that the words were balanced in the middle of the screen, and adjusted the contrast so that the black looked solid. I also reversed the footage to make it look as if the salt was blowing into place to form the words. I also slowed the footage down so that it looked more dramatic.

Finally, I exported it to Final Cut Pro, where I chose a copyright free sound effect and slowed it down to 50% before putting it over the clip.