Arts Process Journal 2: OTS, Entry #1

This term, we have begun creating our own Opening Title Sequence (OTS). A heavy and challenging, but fun and interesting task in my opinion.

To begin, it is important to create a story, or in this case the outline of a story that we will use for the OTS. Obviously we are not planning to make a whole TV series, so the outline can be as imaginative as you want (as long as you can realize it in the OTS). This outline is referred to as a "treatment", this is my treatment for the OTS I am doing: 

Title: Reps on Reps

The story follows Rico, a 15-year old, as he tries to regain his dignity and pride as a basketball player. Following his team’s huge upset in the Provincial Tournament finals back in 2016, Rico goes into an existential crisis and starts to doubt his decision to pursue a basketball career. The surge that rekindles Rico’s spirit, and opens a path to his potential return, is none other than his own teammate Nash. Journeying hand-in-hand as they mutually push each other to reach their maximum potential.

It is a very rough outline and I gave the characters names just for the sake of my imagination, I feel that it helps me give them character and envision them. Obviously the treatment is a treatment of the "series" that the OTS comes from, so not all of the characters will be revealed in the OTS. The title of the OTS' "series" is also still in consideration as I have partnered up with Enrico, so we are still considering what title we are actually going to use. The title is important because we will display the title in the OTS, so we wants something that is able to efficient summarize the story.

Using this treatment, we began creating a storyboard. At the start I was kind of stuck, I didn't know what I wanted it to look like. But the sports and basketball theme was very clear, so I just began watching basketball videos and mixes in YouTube (something I personally enjoy as well). Then, after browsing for a while, I found a video I quite enjoyed.

After watching the video, I really liked the part where the video flashes back and forth between game footage and training footage. I thought that it would make a really good OTS.

With enough inspiration, I began working on the storyboard. For me, the whole process was actually quite simple. I generally followed the video with a few additional shots, I added a ticking clock shot and a "game-winning basket" shot into the storyboard. All was well and I though everything was going smoothly, but then I realized how am I going to acquire game footage? Obviously "stealing" footage from real NBA games look to professional and thus does not fit the OTS.

My Storyboard

...And so I went back into brainstorming, trying to figure out ways. At first I discussed with Enrico and though whether or not we should just shoot us playing during break time. It was a normal basketball game so it should suffice, but then I remembered that I was involved in a tournament last year and I had asked my brother to take videos. So we decided to use those footage instead.

Real game footage from last year

With the video aspect ready, we had to move on to the audio aspect. We had to pair up with one of the music students from Ibu Megan's class, me and Enrico paired up with Mukund. Going in, we already had a music inspiration that we thought we could edit or mix (change of some sort)...

So we discussed with Mukund what we wanted from the song, some of the main points were:

• We wanted the tense and serious vibe
• The loud "bang" (sort of) noise that came occasionally was also nice, we thought that it could be synced up with the video
• Try to minimize happy and energetic vibes in the song

Obviously copying the whole song and just removing the vocals is out of the question, so the next step is to see what Mukund comes up with while we start creating the OTS on our side.

Sources Used
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaVA6sgOpws - The song inspiration
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_Wa_YS93Rs - Basketball video inspiration