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.

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.

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.

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.

(Tayler)

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

We also found an old television and while playing with the dials we came across a fussy channel. As we were influenced by the ring which storyline is focused around the idea of a television, we saw this television as a good opportunity to take some quick shots that could be placed in our trailer, even if they were 2 second shots, as everyone associates televisions as being bad signs or of a haunted presence of some sort. At the end of our teaser trailer we planned to show 2 girls watching a scary film and then one having the realisation that the film was of her 'Childhood' but instead we are going to still end with a television now discovering this prop, but just not Incorporated the 2 girls and the realisation, as the realisation will be shown through the photo album instead as it has fitted better in this order.

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

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.

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;

 Opening Titles To Splice. 

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.