Thursday, 15 December 2011
For our final magazine cover we came to the conclusion that using a screen grab from our trailer would not be good enough quality to be enlarged as it would become pixalated and fuzzy. So we decided to use a camera to take a series of images of Katie in character with make up, hair and costume done. We used a high resolution camera to create shots that would be enlarged and still of a good quality.
We wanted her to still be in character rather than have her as her self shown as an actor on the cover as many magazines do. We felt this would link the magazine cover to to the poster and trailer keeping the main character and sense of genre clear.
Taking a range of images gave up the ability to experiment with what images would fit into our magazine layout best. This is why we took a variety of angles, front on and side images. Also ones from different angles.
Wednesday, 14 December 2011
DETAILS
While researching other teaser trailers we were interested in the idea of creating a small credit bar that are show at the end of many trailers. This we felt would make our trailer feel more realistic and less amiture. Although we didn't feel we had enough time to create this title we put the idea to one side. Towards the end of the construction of our trailer we felt this aspect was a vital piece missing. So we made an end credit to be shown for a few seconds at the end of our teaser trailer.
Above on the left is our design and on the right is the design from the end of the film 'Insidious' teaser trailer' which we took inspiration from. Taking the idea of making the names larger than the text such as 'In Association With'. This is what the style of most teaser trailers credits are like.
The Insidious credits are very long which isn't like all films credits, but as ours is a small scale production we made ours shorter and straight to the point. We overlapped our text in our design as we had seen it on another films credits which we felt is unique and different to the run of the mill layouts we have seen, also making our credits look more professional over all.
FINALISING IDEAS
After playing about with screen shots taken from our teaser trailer we decided the quality wasn't good enough for use on our magazine cover. We decided to focus on the creation of the titles, backgrounds, and other ordinary features of a typical Virus magazine. We felt this would be best to focus on until we had taken our better quality photographs. We started to draw ideas from different elements of various magazines.
On the Virus cover on the below and left the detail titles and snip its to what is enclosed inside for example what movies, reports, games, music etc. are located at the bottom of the poster in a very simple listed structure. This we found present on almost all the posters. Although we don't dislike this lay out we felt it was a bit dated but experimented in creating it anyway. After creating this section of text we felt it wasn't going to give our magazine cover the look we were hoping for but at the same time we wanted our cover to look like a real Virus mag.
Doing some further research into virus magazine we came across a more current issue for Final Destination 5. We were intrigued by the new layout on the cover. We felt it looked alot more modern to the Hatchet cover and was what we had aspired ours to look like. We quickly started to experiment with the new layout of filling the text in a strip format. Finding a similar font and varying our text in size. On our poster i believe we have created a similar effect with great precision.
On our design above we have incorporated both text ideas by having the strips down the side and also two lines along to bottom. This is not our final design so when our image is in place we will decided whether both are need or if only the strips down the left column are need to make the layout a success.
We then began to look into the smaller detailing such as the slat of blood shown on the Final Destination cover. WE again like this idea and wanted to create something similar. We came up with the idea of instead of having the splat displaying text like the one above saying 'JAMES WAN INTERVIEW' we would incorporate our previous task of creating a poster for our film and display this on our magazine cover. This using the cover as a promotion tool for 'Childhood'.
Finally we have used one of the barcodes from another poster with a blue them like our design. On all Virus magazines there is one set colour theme and we have chosen blue. This also ties in with the blue theme on our poster. Linking the two products together and helping make the connection between the poster and the cover more visable as different imagery is being used this helps tie them together.
If we have enough time we will recreate our own barcode to fit more with our own design.
Friday, 9 December 2011
Inital Magazine Cover
Below is our first throw together of ideas we have had for our magazine cover. We knew we wanted our man character to be enouperated in it some where. but also maybe another element from the film. This is where the television idea emerged from. We started by coping the title from an already existing magazine to give us a base to work from. We the encouperated the television image, merging the still from our trailer into the screen.
We began to realise that the title needed to be worked on as, when we copied it we also coped a black outline with it meaning the title wasn't able to be manipulated. We wanted the title to be cut out so our imagery could be seen through the gaps in the title like any other magazine. This is where we started to work on cutting out the letters on Photoshop using the wand tool, to get the letters outlined perfectly so the background below was now visable. (this is shown on the next post above). This has also now been done on our film title 'Childhood' as we had the same problem with outlining on this also.
The last problem we came across on this teaster poster was the quality of the image. As this image was only a screan grab from our teaser trailer the quality was very low. This was fine for our poster we created as we wanted to effect of the facial image used on the poster to have a low oppacity, making the quality of the image unvisable. But we wish to have a larger image un edited on our cover inspired by the Virus covers we have researched.
We will take new photographs of our man character to use on our final cover idea for the best quality we can possibly get.
Thursday, 8 December 2011
Chosen Idea
TITLE:
We all found that when researching different horror film magazines, that they all come across very tacky especially with their titles. But in this case we like the name of the magazine being "VIRUS" just not the font, so we decided to manipulate it into something that fits with our trailer, because we found our title "CHILDHOOD" has a similar font.
COLOUR:
All the aspects of the cover such as the bar code and titles are in keeping with the colour scheme of the photos used from the film. This gives off a simple but effective aspect that we are interested when designing our magazine cover!
LAYOUT:
We really like the layout of the cover because it is simple and to the point. It has the the Title of the film at the top and the content of what is included inside at the bottom of the cover. This is good because it is minimal and prevents distraction from the main image.
WHY APPROPRIATE?
We feel that this film magazine is appropriate for our trailer because, most of the films advertised are horror/ thriller so it fits in with our genre. Some of the films featured on the cover are ones which we have used as influences for our trailer. Our poster which we created is very minimal also and we want to stick with the same theme, keeping the imagery the main focus.
WHY NOT APPROPRIATE?
Although we like the idea of keeping it very minimal, this may prevent us from getting the highest grade, therefore we have decided to use aspects from other posters, to ensure it is a original design.
We all found that when researching different horror film magazines, that they all come across very tacky especially with their titles. But in this case we like the name of the magazine being "VIRUS" just not the font, so we decided to manipulate it into something that fits with our trailer, because we found our title "CHILDHOOD" has a similar font.
COLOUR:
All the aspects of the cover such as the bar code and titles are in keeping with the colour scheme of the photos used from the film. This gives off a simple but effective aspect that we are interested when designing our magazine cover!
LAYOUT:
We really like the layout of the cover because it is simple and to the point. It has the the Title of the film at the top and the content of what is included inside at the bottom of the cover. This is good because it is minimal and prevents distraction from the main image.
WHY APPROPRIATE?
We feel that this film magazine is appropriate for our trailer because, most of the films advertised are horror/ thriller so it fits in with our genre. Some of the films featured on the cover are ones which we have used as influences for our trailer. Our poster which we created is very minimal also and we want to stick with the same theme, keeping the imagery the main focus.
WHY NOT APPROPRIATE?
Although we like the idea of keeping it very minimal, this may prevent us from getting the highest grade, therefore we have decided to use aspects from other posters, to ensure it is a original design.
FINAL CHILDHOOD POSTER DESIGN
We are really pleased with our final poster design. The layout is quite simplistic but spooky- too many images would distract the audience from noticing the main image and the secret that lies within making her face as, if you look close enough you can notice, Katie's face, our chosen actoress to play the main character, is made up or coloured in if you like, with screen grabs of the props we used in our teaser trailer. We believed this would be interesting therefore the audience may be intinsed by the film because of how intriguing only the poster is and if they are found of our poster then they may go on to watch the film thinking the film must be much better. You will notice that practicing this poster design before hand, without doubt, extremely benefitted us to adapt a poster we felt best suited our fluent genre and teaser trailer design including all filming details for example, props, layout and colour schemes. For another example, Katie's eyes were very dark and a faded blue in our practice; we aimed to find the option on photoshop to change her eye colour to be more brighter and bluer, however at first we struggled and could not identify this option. Come next lesson we sussed out the colour option and changed her eyes to exactly how we wanted. We feel they really grab the attention of any individual viewing this poster- an audience member would almost be drawn in to the colour we have chosen for her eyes hopefully increasing the number of audience viewers interests. I thought that the title we used for 'Childhood' in our teaser trailer was slightly bland to copy this onto our final design poster, so I contributed and suggested to add effect, almost edit the title and came up with the idea to continue the theme and incorporate the effect of screen grabs from our teaser trailer of props that we created to form the visual of Katie's face for our main image, into our title. We took a lot of time and effort to fit the screen grabs into each and every individual letter. It was tricky at times, cropping the images avoiding not to step over the lines of the letters but worth the time and effort we put in. On some letters we even decided that not all the letters needed to be filled with individual screen grab images I felt it would look 'too perfect' and neat and if we did so, then that would be ignoring our genre and physcologial characteristics of our main character. Most importantly, the opacity was decreased on each individual screen grab, to the same figure of opacity as we chose for the formation of Katie's face (our main image) as I keep repeating that I believe for a chosen genre, there has to be a fluent link between images, information, layout design, colours, fonts etc. Not everything has to be the same, but tweeked in it's individual way which does not even have to be obvious.
Tuesday, 6 December 2011
Choosing a suitable magazine
Here I shall be discussing the design and suitability of each magazine design to our eery horror film 'Childhood'. I am the only one out of my group to write my part, but whilst doing so I am thinking on behalf of what I believe the rest of my members of the group would think. We share similar taste and thoughts.
Empire
I believe the magazine Empire will be the least appropriate and less suited to fit our film. If our film was perhaps a sequence/sequal then Empire may be ideal however our film is not. 'Childhood' is an original early arty film which is new in the market so I believe it will need to be featured in a magazine which is less familiar than Empire; not so the magazine is known to no one, just not on one of the most popular magazines covers. Empire cover films such as
'Pirates of the Caribbean'
'Harry Potter'
'The Dark Knight Rises'
'X-MEN'
'The Hobbit', and many more fantastic familiar films!
My thoughts
Having taken in to consideration all examples of magazines these are my thoughts in as much detail to really feel an idea of mine I think we could perceive for our own magazine cover:
Total film
Considerable!
Little White Lies
Very considerable. Each and every example of Little White Lies' magazine covers I have researched, are slightly different in the own particular ways so we could easily adapt the design, perhaps keep to the layout as if we changed it completely the magazine brand will not be recognisable, to suit the genre of 'Childhood'. Below is the best example I found that I believe is the closest magazine cover design to suit a horror cinema advertisement:
Studio
The least best suited magazine for our film!The layout, colour scheme nor the design fits our genre of film. Plus on most examples of their magazine covers, the feature the main character and our film we wish to leave a mystery, we do not want to print the obvious as we want our film to stay eery and almost frightening.
Primary research
PARACINEMA- After viewing and comparing these examples to find the best suited magazine to feature our film 'Childhood' on the front cover, I continued further and conducted my own research but did not come across many more fantastic film magazines. Although I found one I was found of. The more I look at it the more I can see it working with our film. Positive: Para Cinema is a particular magazine for films with an obvious genre and most of the films featured on the cover are horror and our film has exactly this genre. Negative: the magazine can come across quite comical. The images aren't feautured as clear or concisely and our film is about detail.
Examples of Para Cinema magazine covers:
Overall thoughts: I have come to a conclusion that Para Cinema magazine is almost tacky (it is a shame because most horror movie magazines come across as this and struggle to portray the true meaning of the film without it looking comical and childish). Para Cinema magazine's suggest they target the audience of young boys who are childishly quite boisterous and into gore.
VIRUS magazine- The suitability of this magazine to our genre of film is compatible. I simply found this magazine through the popular search engine 'Google'.. Below I have uploaded a couple of examples of Virus' magazine covers:
Hearing my groups feedback towards this post will be needed to make a final decision towards the actual magazine cover we wish to feature our film on the front cover.
Empire
I believe the magazine Empire will be the least appropriate and less suited to fit our film. If our film was perhaps a sequence/sequal then Empire may be ideal however our film is not. 'Childhood' is an original early arty film which is new in the market so I believe it will need to be featured in a magazine which is less familiar than Empire; not so the magazine is known to no one, just not on one of the most popular magazines covers. Empire cover films such as
'Pirates of the Caribbean'
'Harry Potter'
'The Dark Knight Rises'
'X-MEN'
'The Hobbit', and many more fantastic familiar films!
My thoughts
Having taken in to consideration all examples of magazines these are my thoughts in as much detail to really feel an idea of mine I think we could perceive for our own magazine cover:
Total film
Considerable!
Little White Lies
Very considerable. Each and every example of Little White Lies' magazine covers I have researched, are slightly different in the own particular ways so we could easily adapt the design, perhaps keep to the layout as if we changed it completely the magazine brand will not be recognisable, to suit the genre of 'Childhood'. Below is the best example I found that I believe is the closest magazine cover design to suit a horror cinema advertisement:
My idea, I suggest, we could have the same use of colours; blinding white on a black background, and the image in the centre of the cover can be a white outline of Katie, our Oscar Award Winning actress starring as the main character in 'Childhood', sitting on a chair with her head down, hair all straggly and hanging down by either side of her face, in all white costume almost exactly the same to what we dressed her in our teaser trailer, most obviously in a lonely room with 24/7 surveillance.
This magazine cover can distract some audience members and subtract the tackiness horror cinema can portray when published on paper.
Studio
The least best suited magazine for our film!The layout, colour scheme nor the design fits our genre of film. Plus on most examples of their magazine covers, the feature the main character and our film we wish to leave a mystery, we do not want to print the obvious as we want our film to stay eery and almost frightening.
Primary research
PARACINEMA- After viewing and comparing these examples to find the best suited magazine to feature our film 'Childhood' on the front cover, I continued further and conducted my own research but did not come across many more fantastic film magazines. Although I found one I was found of. The more I look at it the more I can see it working with our film. Positive: Para Cinema is a particular magazine for films with an obvious genre and most of the films featured on the cover are horror and our film has exactly this genre. Negative: the magazine can come across quite comical. The images aren't feautured as clear or concisely and our film is about detail.
Examples of Para Cinema magazine covers:
Overall thoughts: I have come to a conclusion that Para Cinema magazine is almost tacky (it is a shame because most horror movie magazines come across as this and struggle to portray the true meaning of the film without it looking comical and childish). Para Cinema magazine's suggest they target the audience of young boys who are childishly quite boisterous and into gore.
VIRUS magazine- The suitability of this magazine to our genre of film is compatible. I simply found this magazine through the popular search engine 'Google'.. Below I have uploaded a couple of examples of Virus' magazine covers:
Above the large size text of the title of film 'Hostel' you shall notice that is where the tag line is inserted. This shall be taken into consideration.
Note to self: Underneath the title you notice the tag line printed in smaller text in comparison to the title size. This is important to notice and is most obvious as the title would most definitely be larger than the tag line.. but the quesiton is do we want to be similiar or daringly different we shall decide.
Positive: simple and vague layout, therefore easily adaptable to make do and change slightly in a format that'll best suit a horror cinema film. The font text of the magazine title 'Virus' suits a horror genre so if we featured in this magazine the connection will work as the link is similar.
Negative: the font of the magazine title'Virus' is possibly too similar to the font we used for our title for 'Childhood'.
Thursday, 1 December 2011
Experimenting
Above is another poster idea that we had, though it is unfinished we wanted to see what the picture effect would look like behind the teddy bear and if we were able to make the image fit the outline of the bear perfectly. We really liked the idea of using a teddy bear as the background as will felt it fit with the title "CHILDHOOD" as most children have teddy bears when they are younger. We were unsure whether this poster was a good idea or a bad idea, because at first glance you wouldnt be able to tell the genre of the film.
Saturday, 26 November 2011
Deadline
Yesterday was our final deadline for our trailer. We all stayed after school to work on our trailer making sure it was tightly edited and was done to our best ability. Whilst Georgia used her skills on Live Type to create a Production logo, me and Tayler cracked on with the voice overs. We found that it was probably best if we split up into groups so we were able to get more work done quicker.
Creating the voice overs
Me and Tayler had decided that adding voice overs to our titles would make them come across more spooky and give off and sense of fear. In order to make them we used Garage Band. We chose the effect that we thought best suited our trailer which was "Hellium Breathe" it made the voice overs sounds like a young child which fitted in perfectly.
Though when editing them we did have some problems with sound for example, for some reason they all changed into a male voice when added on to movie maker, we managed to over come it all and it the end the turn out fine.
When it came to adding the voic eovers to our trailer we did find it slightly difficult because not only did we want them all tightly edited so it fitted in with the rest of the footage, we also wanted them to be loud enough so you cold hear them. In order for this to happen we had to slowly lower the backing track so it gradually became quieter and quieter however not completely cut out, and then turn up the volume of the voice over so we were able to hear it, and then gradually increase the volume of the backing track so it became back up to the normal volume.
Overall i think we are all very pleased with the outcome of our trailer, i think we have all put in a huge amount of effort and it shows when watching back our trailer.
Creating the voice overs
Me and Tayler had decided that adding voice overs to our titles would make them come across more spooky and give off and sense of fear. In order to make them we used Garage Band. We chose the effect that we thought best suited our trailer which was "Hellium Breathe" it made the voice overs sounds like a young child which fitted in perfectly.
Though when editing them we did have some problems with sound for example, for some reason they all changed into a male voice when added on to movie maker, we managed to over come it all and it the end the turn out fine.
When it came to adding the voic eovers to our trailer we did find it slightly difficult because not only did we want them all tightly edited so it fitted in with the rest of the footage, we also wanted them to be loud enough so you cold hear them. In order for this to happen we had to slowly lower the backing track so it gradually became quieter and quieter however not completely cut out, and then turn up the volume of the voice over so we were able to hear it, and then gradually increase the volume of the backing track so it became back up to the normal volume.
Overall i think we are all very pleased with the outcome of our trailer, i think we have all put in a huge amount of effort and it shows when watching back our trailer.
Thursday, 24 November 2011
Soundtrack
When we started to think about our soundtrack we decided that we wanted to use a heartbeat on each title when it appears to create a sudden, intense and dramatic effect which will shock the audience when viewing. Most heart beat sound tracks are known to become faster and faster and increase in pace, however we shall not do the expected and create the unexpected by keeping it the same pace and speed on each title throughout our trailer keeping the high intensity.
Secondary Research - we put all our efforts in to two lessons in class and I even researched out of school time at home, to find the perfect heart beat without it sounding too tacky or unrealistic. (Tayler)
A heart beat was decided to use in our trailer, as it is intense which suits our film story and horror genre, and works especially well over the original soundtrack song (that we grabbed and inserted from our itunes music playlist) we have inserted to play throughout.
Whilst still having the heartbeat affect we also decided we still liked the idea of a voice over. Here are some screen grabs of me and Tayler making the voice over. (Becky)
When editing our voice overs me and Tayler had initially decided that we wanted to use a male voice because we thought it would be most effective and practical for our horror genre to have deep vocals narrating; it would sound creepy and spooky, so we did attempt practicing using "Deeper vocals" as shown below, however when trying it on our voice overs we came to the conclusion that it wasn't really the sound we were looking for and also didn't really fit to the story of our film so we rejected this idea. The male voice vocal effective did not sound as realistic as we wanted it to sound. The voice we wish to use is a voice that would communicate well with audience viewers to intice them. We want a voice over that'd almost send shivers down spines. We then came across a vocal effect we felt fit perfectly named "Hellium breath" also shown below. This was perfect and exactly what we were looking for; Hellium breath had a higher pitch of voice and the laugh we recorded to place at the very end of our teaser trailer sounded exactly like a child voice so it was easily mistaken to believe we used an actual child to record with us. This fortunately saved us a lot of time, and bringing a child into school wouldn't have been most appropraite and could have been difficult dealing with time schedules.
Secondary Research - we put all our efforts in to two lessons in class and I even researched out of school time at home, to find the perfect heart beat without it sounding too tacky or unrealistic. (Tayler)
A heart beat was decided to use in our trailer, as it is intense which suits our film story and horror genre, and works especially well over the original soundtrack song (that we grabbed and inserted from our itunes music playlist) we have inserted to play throughout.
Whilst still having the heartbeat affect we also decided we still liked the idea of a voice over. Here are some screen grabs of me and Tayler making the voice over. (Becky)
When editing our voice overs me and Tayler had initially decided that we wanted to use a male voice because we thought it would be most effective and practical for our horror genre to have deep vocals narrating; it would sound creepy and spooky, so we did attempt practicing using "Deeper vocals" as shown below, however when trying it on our voice overs we came to the conclusion that it wasn't really the sound we were looking for and also didn't really fit to the story of our film so we rejected this idea. The male voice vocal effective did not sound as realistic as we wanted it to sound. The voice we wish to use is a voice that would communicate well with audience viewers to intice them. We want a voice over that'd almost send shivers down spines. We then came across a vocal effect we felt fit perfectly named "Hellium breath" also shown below. This was perfect and exactly what we were looking for; Hellium breath had a higher pitch of voice and the laugh we recorded to place at the very end of our teaser trailer sounded exactly like a child voice so it was easily mistaken to believe we used an actual child to record with us. This fortunately saved us a lot of time, and bringing a child into school wouldn't have been most appropraite and could have been difficult dealing with time schedules.
Wednesday, 23 November 2011
Inspiration and ideas
Hide and Seek Trailer
Above I have inserted, from Youtube, the trailer for Hide and Seek which I showed the rest of my group a while back before even beginning making our trailer, to present ideas we could begin with that I was initially iterested in, of course knowing that we could adapt these influential edits and/or change slightly to suit our film to fit our story. The film clearly is a popular, proven be the number of views, which makes sense to view and grab ideas especially seeing as it is similiar to our genre.Skip and watch inwards from 1.14 to 1.16 and in this very short period of time, It still amazes me that 2 seconds is all that is needed to create a magnificent effect and thrill to the audience viewers. I think it's a fantastic edit. We took this note on board, and when we overlapped in our trailer we remembered that not alot of time is needed for the process and/or for the edit to work. It is effective most in the shortest amount of time.This particular edit in the film has inspired our film and poster editing. We take great interest into the way the various still shots overlap which are clear yet so so fast. This influential edit has benefited our performance to create our own great edit in our trailer for Childhood.
Tuesday, 22 November 2011
Draft posters
As a whole group we took a full couple of lessons to complete our practice for designs of posters to promote out film Childhood. Here is what our efforts and ideas created:
The potioning and layout of the poster design we created was very much influenced by our research from The Last House on The Left. As I explained in our influential poster design post, we really liked everything about the poster however the layout is a bit simple and expected. We are looking for a different, unexpected design for our poster, a design we would put more effort into producing. That is why we had another attempt but this time changing the position and layout. Here is what we came up with and believe our design improved: (Tayler)
We prefer the second poster we created. Although the picture is larger, we managed to not loose the great lighting of the wooden back drop. We prefer the positioning and layout of the second poster practice design. The faint sentence as the top on the poster is screen grabbed from our teaser trailer as it one of the titles we used. Same goes for the first poster we designed. The film title font and text size is also a screen grab from our teaser trailer aswell as the background we insearted behind the text which is of a dusty aged wooden floorboards which relates to the wooden back drop of the still image.
(Tayler)
We got the design idea of this poster from "Shutter"'s film poster, as it really inspired us and also influenced greatly, we like the fact that it was original and different. We loved the idea of having a person as the main image, however wasn't so obvious therefore creating a spooky effect. The images we put together used as the background of the poster are still images screen grabbed from some of the footage used in our teaser trailer.
When we first put all the images together like a collage, we found the edges of the to be to sharp and also the images to be to bright and in your face, which we felt didn't really give us the aged affect we were looking for. In order to overcome this, we used Photoshops various tools to smudge the edges as well as blurring them slightly to create a dark dingy effect. We placed Katie's (the actress for our main character in Childhood) face in front of the collage, then after changing the Opacity level lower we were able to dissolve her face in the background. It made it look as though Katie's face was put behind the images, which was exactly what we wanted.
Overall, having practiced three individual poster design, we feel this attempt is our best yet and we are extremely pleased.
(Tayler Becky)
influential film posters
One Missed Call poster
In yesterdays lesson I set for our group a homework task to think of a similiar idea which was most clevely put together in the above for the fil One Missed Call. At a first glance you are most obviously presented a large face smiling who is on a cell phone however that is not all you can see. If you look closer as the eyes of the large face, they are in fact two of the same person's mouth and nose. This other person almost looks in agony. I believe it is a fantastic touch to the editing of the poster and very well put together. I feel our poster has potential to be just as could and brightly put together if we take the time out and put forward our efforts to have a good long think of a creation of our own which links brilliantly with our story and film Childhood.
I very much like how the title is not situated at the very top of the poster- this would be most predictable. If you review our practice posters for Childhood, the layour is similiar as I almost prefer it. As a group, the sentence placed at the very top of our poster, we decided to link it to our film the best we could so it gave us no choice but to think of no better other than to use a title from our very own trailer. This way, an audience member is most likely to notice this when viewing our film trailer and will automatically link back to when they say our promotion poster.
I very much like how the title is not situated at the very top of the poster- this would be most predictable. If you review our practice posters for Childhood, the layour is similiar as I almost prefer it. As a group, the sentence placed at the very top of our poster, we decided to link it to our film the best we could so it gave us no choice but to think of no better other than to use a title from our very own trailer. This way, an audience member is most likely to notice this when viewing our film trailer and will automatically link back to when they say our promotion poster.
(Tayler)
Shutter poster
Shutter poster
With no disagreements nor altercations, our initial reaction was to realise we have many photographs of our own that we have filmed as props from a photo album in our trailer. And with these photos we could produce a poster similiar using the idea that the back ground is a photo collage. This would be sensible to create for great reasons; it will take less time as we have the essentials needed to perform this edit.
(Tayler)
Mirrors poster
We could easily produce something similiar to this proffesional poster as we have a brilliant close up, rule of thirds picture of Katie's eyes (the actress of the main character in our film) which could look as creepy as this yet not as terrofying so I would suggest we should take another improved picture of her eyes if we wish to take forward this idea in pratice.
(Tayler)
Rec poster
The Last House on the Left poster
We have decided, having looked closely and in detail at each poster we research individually, to take this design to practice. The layout is simple yet intriguing. I contributed to change it slightly to place the title underneath the image instead of the way this poster presents it as the very top, and my team mates agreed. Reason being just to simply mix it up a little and experiment.
(Tayler)
Identity poster
I, aswell as Georgia and Becky, am most interested in this poster as it pays close attention to detail. If you look close enough you identify a face gasping in the palm of the hand, and the fingers are in actual fact what looks to be people. These tight edits that are purposely made not to be extremely clear, make the poster that little bit better. Editing and attention to detail is crucial. Put all our efforts into perspective, I believe we can produce a good presentable promotion peice.
(Tayler)
Bam poster
The obvious reason why we liked the promotion peice is simply because we have the props that we filmed in our teaser trailer that are included in this poster for the film Bam. If we put this poster design idea to practice the photos that are lit in the spotlights reflected and directed downwards from the film title are easy for us to do just that as we would use our photos from the album we used as a prop in our teaser.
initial poster ideas
Tayler's sketchings of ideas for our teaser trailer promotion poster design
Georgia's sketchings of ideas for our teaser trailer promotion poster design
As you can see, me and Georgia took the time in lesson to discuss and put our ideas on to paper of a few potential ideas of a poster design for our teaser trailer for our film Childhood. This helped us incredibly, as it was a good starter to point before creating the real thing. We decided to draw our first two sketches before sat at a computer to conduct some research on existing posters for great films so we could compare our own knowledge before reviewing experts ideas and we were very pleased with the outcome. The sketches we drew were in fact very similiar to posters we came across in research i.e. the imagery, positioning of titles and images, and effects (for example a dissolve) these were seen to be quite common and popular so we suprised ourselves. Most of the poster designs we sketched included images, when coming to actually editing on Photoshop, taken from the props we used in our actual trailer. We believe it would show a lovely contrast and relationship between our promotion and teaser trailer; easily most relatable. Once we had conducted furthur research we then worked from there.
Thursday, 17 November 2011
Clips featuring in our trailer
Above is one of many 'surveillance' clips we took after decided to incorporate them. The mise-en-scene we used was very minimalistic to make sure the scene looked as realistic as possible. Using white flooring, walls and a white chair helped portray the idea of an isolated, enclosed area. We Incorporated the idea of a time lapse on to this clip. The time lapse doesn't only speed up the clip but enthused the fact she is being watched and studied for a long duration of time in an institution.
Above is a clip of the photo album. This is a key feature of our trailer. It helps to tell the story while at the same time linking clips together. We haven't used any effects on this clip as we felt the strong lighting on the piece worked well how it was and also that the speed at which the pictures move its perfect. We used a hair drier to get the images to move how they did. We feel it worked well and looked very eery.
The shot above was a fluke shot. We came across this child's spinning toy, which gives the illusion of a serious of pictures are moving if you spin and watch through the slits on the side. we decided to place a candle in the centre and film in a dark room hoping that the light wood flicker through the slits. You can see in the clip above it had work out well, along with a birds eye view of the spinning toy, very abstract and un shore of what it is. We have spead up the spinning motion to add pace to our trailer.
Above is one of a series of shots taken of the prop we found, an old fashioned television. We tunded the television to a un-tuned channel so it would fuzz. This much like the fuzzy television in the ring. Everyone associated fuzzy teles with horror so we thought they would be good short clips to put in where necessary to make our trailer more scary and emphasis the theme. Also we use a television being switched off at the end to finish our trailer.
Above is one of a series of shots taken of the prop we found, an old fashioned television. We tunded the television to a un-tuned channel so it would fuzz. This much like the fuzzy television in the ring. Everyone associated fuzzy teles with horror so we thought they would be good short clips to put in where necessary to make our trailer more scary and emphasis the theme. Also we use a television being switched off at the end to finish our trailer.
Influential sound effects
When editing our footage, we have been thinking about what kind of music to use and also what kind of sound effects we want to use to order to emphasise certain parts of the film. Whilst watching the film trailer above in the cinema i came across some interesting sound effects and sound track similar to the basics we already have.
The film also has a very similar story line to ours. It opens the trailer with a voice over, which is something we have thought about doing in our trailer. It begins explaining the film from the first moment.
Also i notice throughout the film there was a lot of sound effects used which made the trailer more eery and jumpy, which is what we desire to achieve in our trailer.
Wednesday, 16 November 2011
Sound Track
As previously written about on our blog in initial sound ideas we talked about the website http://www.jamendo.com/en/search/all/horror. We found a great variety of horror sounds on her as shown in the image below.
From here we downloaded the base to our sound track, A sound track called 'The Outsider'. This will just give us a starting point from which we can base our other sound effects other the top and around. there are no sound effects that stick out from this track so will give us the ability to manipulated it and completely transform it to a new track of what we intended.
The image below is also of a downloaded sound track of a creepy child's toy box which is in keeping with the theme 'Childhood', the title. Also the content in the clips we have filmed. but this time is a piece that will be layered over but not necessarily playing through the whole trailer. We will manipulate this sound track to certain clips. Also manipulating it levels and length throughout.
Second Filming Session
After filming all the elements in our first filming session and playing through all the clips we had we came to the realisation that although all the shots were great and came out how we wanted them to, there was still something missing. We needed a serious of longer clips that brought all the shorter insert clips together, something that would link the clips but at the same time getting across the storyline.
We went back to our initial ideas to see if any ruled out ideas would fill well for what was desired. We came across our initial ideas of a surveillance scene, where our main girl character would be in a mental hospital being isolated or being helped with her problems. This fitted perfectly as all the shots from our first screening session could show her before she was in the 'hospital' or 'secure area'. Showing why she is under surveillance, due to her erratic and mental behaviour in the other shorter clips from the first filming session.
As our group members were not expecting another filming session and were busy on the day planned for filming, filming took longer than anticipated when filming the 'servelence scene'. It was much appreciate that our actress Katie helped to generate ideas for the scene.
A wide variation of angles on set was hard due to limited space to work in if we wanted it to look as realistic as possible. In our first film session we ran out of time to film a few more still images of the probs we anticipated to use in our trailer as the camera had unfortunately and annoyingly ran out of battery so as I was the one to have the camera it seemed wise and was asked my the rest the group to simply capture a variety of different shots that we could choose from in the next lesson we were together for again. It was easy as we had already decided as a group before leaving our first film session, a what exact images we wanted to be captured on the camera.
The screen grab below is taken from our initial ideas where the idea of surveillance was been mentioned as a huge desired possibility which then turnt out to be essential for our film story.
As we were initially going to film a time lapse in the underground as the base of our initial trailer. Which we then found wasn't going to be possible due to commitments our actor had and the lack of time to travel to the underground. Also the risks with the members of pubic having a problem with being filmed we ruled this idea out. But as we now have a base for our trailer the section of surveillance footage would fit in well to the same 'time lapse theme' so as I was holding the camera for this point, i made sure Katie the actress made subtle and erratic movements so the time lapse would work well. Also making sure the clips were long enough so when we speed it up on imovie there would be enough footage to create a long enough time lapse.
We went back to our initial ideas to see if any ruled out ideas would fill well for what was desired. We came across our initial ideas of a surveillance scene, where our main girl character would be in a mental hospital being isolated or being helped with her problems. This fitted perfectly as all the shots from our first screening session could show her before she was in the 'hospital' or 'secure area'. Showing why she is under surveillance, due to her erratic and mental behaviour in the other shorter clips from the first filming session.
As our group members were not expecting another filming session and were busy on the day planned for filming, filming took longer than anticipated when filming the 'servelence scene'. It was much appreciate that our actress Katie helped to generate ideas for the scene.
A wide variation of angles on set was hard due to limited space to work in if we wanted it to look as realistic as possible. In our first film session we ran out of time to film a few more still images of the probs we anticipated to use in our trailer as the camera had unfortunately and annoyingly ran out of battery so as I was the one to have the camera it seemed wise and was asked my the rest the group to simply capture a variety of different shots that we could choose from in the next lesson we were together for again. It was easy as we had already decided as a group before leaving our first film session, a what exact images we wanted to be captured on the camera.
The screen grab below is taken from our initial ideas where the idea of surveillance was been mentioned as a huge desired possibility which then turnt out to be essential for our film story.
As we were initially going to film a time lapse in the underground as the base of our initial trailer. Which we then found wasn't going to be possible due to commitments our actor had and the lack of time to travel to the underground. Also the risks with the members of pubic having a problem with being filmed we ruled this idea out. But as we now have a base for our trailer the section of surveillance footage would fit in well to the same 'time lapse theme' so as I was holding the camera for this point, i made sure Katie the actress made subtle and erratic movements so the time lapse would work well. Also making sure the clips were long enough so when we speed it up on imovie there would be enough footage to create a long enough time lapse.
Tuesday, 15 November 2011
First Filming Session
When beginning to upload our clips it took a while due to the mass amount of clips to be uploaded. As we were filming on set new ideas formed, and generated new, interesting and more in keeping shots. We found many props that wood fit well with the theme of our trailer and these helped to construct the layout of our trailer. For example the shout believe is of a family album, which we decided to include as a last minute key feature. We used a hair dryer to make the images flutter. This is similar to an original idea in out story board where pictures were pinned on the wall, which also with a hair dryer fluttered. But after finding the prob of a photo album we found the principle would work on it while giving a better overall effect and style to the trailer.
Another eery prop we came across while on set is a spinning wheel. We thought although any aspects of this prop were not Incorporated in our storyboard, it would be worth experimenting with the prop and see if any interesting or abstract shots could be generated from it. It was Tayler's idea to pay attention to lighting who then decided to attach a candle to the centre of the prop which we then film in mid rotation. We filmed plently of this at different angles and speed in which Tayler was spinning it, so we had plenty to edit remembering if we were not happy with the speed or shot we had the opputunity to cut and/or speed up or make slower the speed. The candle placed in the centre of the wheel was fantastic for lighting effects. Because the wheel had slit holes all around the circle wall, she had cleverly noticed that once every other light was turnt off i.e. torches, in the dark the candle shone threw to the wooden back drop creating a lovely, if not spooky, but mysterious atmosphere. It was great benefit to the detail of our lighting performance. We were pleasantly surprised with the shots created and after downloading the clips and speeding up the spinning motion, we found this was a great abstract shot while still in keeping with the theme. As we wanted to Incorporated some shots that weren't clear of what they are the confuse the audience these shots would be great. Also the spinning motion and sounds helping to keep up the fast pace of the trailer as the trailer intended.
Tuesday, 8 November 2011
Production Company Development
The production company plays a big part at the start of any good film, for example, if it was a horror film, you wouldn't want a production name such as "Pretty Flowers" because it automatically looses the dramatic, spooky appeal you want the film to have. Because we are doing a horror we decided we wanted our production logo/animation to be really effective.
Here are some tester ideas i have managed to come up with
Here are some tester ideas i have managed to come up with
Prep For Filming
Getting the mise-en-scene right was key to creating a scary character, from costume to make up. Above shows the preperation in creating the desired scary character.
These two images are to shows just a few of the props found on set that we used while filming to make our film more realistic and scary. From fuzzy televisions, old clocks, polaroid camera, to very old teddy bears.
Thursday, 3 November 2011
Filming Process
Here are a few pictures we took during the process of filming to give you an idea of some of the stages we went through, in order to get our finial outcome.
Inspiration for costume ideas, taken from the main character in The Ring:
Costume: Costume was very important for us because it told a you about the intentions of the character. We rumagged through each others wardrobes to find what we believed to be the perfect costume for our character. Unfortunately we were un-able to find a white nightdress, so we had to improvise and use what we could find. You will see Katie in our teaser trailer, dressed in a long silk white skirt (length to her ankles) and a similar silk with a lace trim top. Though it wasn't what we originally planned, it still created the same look we were going for.
Make-up: As well as being used for a prop later on in our teaser trailer to come across as a smokey effect, Talcum powder was essential in Katie's face and body make-up. We wanted her to look creepy, and tramatised and we felt that giving her a pale face and dark eyes created this effect.
Black eyeliner and mascara was used to make her eyes appear darker by smudging the eyeliner to add effect.
Pale concelear was used on the lips for a cold, cracked, pale lipped tone.
Pink blusher was dabbed a tiny bit on both cheeks to add effect the age of her character (a younger girl).
Katie's hair was back combed to add edge to her scruffy appearance as though the character in our film was not looked after - almost the idea that she 'came back from the dead' or was found after having been lost for a long period of time.
Location: When filming we used a very similar location to the one used in Paranormal Activity 3. A small cupboard in the attic. The daunting lighting was brilliant for what we wanted. We feel it will create great suspense for our audience when watching the trailer.
Lighting: Torches and the camera light were put to fantastic use when filming, they helped create an eery setting. However at some points in filming the camera light became a great annoyance, for when we didn't want any light as we were un-able to turn it off, so instead we used our imagination and placed a small plaster over it which seemed to block any light from coming through.
Once we added one of our props, a large antique mirror, the reflection of light from the torches we used, most definitely gave us the dark mysterious appeal we were going for.. Although at some points the reflection of light transferred through the mirror, was a nuisance, we had to somehow find a way to over come this as we did not wish to loose that desired for a dark mysterious appeal.
Influential Titles
Unfortunately we were unable to insert the video link we wanted as it failed to embed, however we were able to find another video which shows the making of the titles instead, which thankfully includes the parts we were looking at.
To view the original video we have created a link for you to click on;
Below are various screen grabs of the titles we were looking at and took great interest in;
As I (Becky) was watching this film the other day i couldn't help but notice how effective the opening titles were. I showed Tayler in the lesson and she also shared interested. We both then decided that we want our titles to look similar as we feel it adds effect to the film positively.
From watching the titles from an audiences point of view, we feel that by having titles like this it gives of a eery spooky vibe. We notice these titles are very different from what we have seen before.
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