Questionnaire Feedback Video

QUESTION 2- How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

We are planning to create a Prezi to answer this question. Using all different types of media to explain how effective the combination of our main products and ancillary texts.

Some points we will cover:
-How you can clearly tell all 3 of our outcomes, the poster, magazine cover and teaser trailer all are promoting the same film 'Chilhood'.
-Our main link between the 3 is our main character which appears in all 3 outcomes. With simiar themes such a the poster incorporating props and themes from the trailer for example, a clock, television etc.
-Our genre is also consistently clear, for example some magazines when promoting the film display the actor them selves instead of the character they played on the cover. Where as on our magazine cover we displayed our actor in character still portraying the genre of horror.
-We will also comment on the manipulation of the title 'Childhood' on our 3 different outcomes. We did change it on all 3 to fit with the median we were working with at that particular time. For example using the title in our trailer and developing this for the poster by adding images into the text. Then for the magazine to get it the fit with the theme we completely recreated the title, we used a simliar theme for the phone using similar colours and layout. But still was easily linked to the trailer and poster.

QUESTION 1- In what ways does your media products use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

To answer the question above, we have planned to create a montage of the videos and themes that have influenced our teaser trailer. Including such films as 'The Ring', 'The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo' and many more. We will construct a voice over explaining how these trailers and themes have influenced the making of our trailer. Also how our trailer differs from them and in what ways.

The Ring was one of our main influences. We used there concept of the main character being a young and disturbed child. We knew that having a young main character in a horror film would be a classic way of scaring the viewers as many horrors include young children and are associated with them.
When watching The Ring we decided to brain storm some of the themes involved in the film and see if we could some how incorporate these aspects in our trailer. Some themes we were particularly interested in using were the surveillance's scenes and the use of the television as a visual prop through the film.

Insidious and Hide and Seek were too films we used as influences for the sound aspects of our trailer. We liked the sound effects Incorporated in Insidious because it was so sudden and unexpected and we wanted this in our trailer between some of the different clips. We got the idea of using a voice over from Hide and Seek. We believed having a voice over some of the clips added a creepy effect which was what we were looking for.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo inspired us with it quick, sharp short takes. There were enough for you to get a slight idea of what was going on but also at the same time not giving away to much of the storyline. It left you as a viewer slightly confused but also intrigued to know what was happening.

FINAL MAGAZINE COVER

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.

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.

CONSTRUCTION OF COILED PICTURES PRODUCTION LOGO

Constricting The Production Logo on Prezi

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.

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.

FINAL TEASER TRAILER

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.

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.

Influential AS trailers

The main reason why this trailer has had such an influence on us and how we have learnt from it to help sculpt our own filming is the professionalism of every aspect. From the steady shots and variety of shots used and how each shot is lit is perfect for a horror themed trailer. The titles are very advanced and we didn't believe it was possible to create titles like this until now. We would like to look more into how they created such titles and what software they used and most of all if us as a great will be able to use it and create a similar effect. 

Something we are defiantly going to make sure we included inspired by this trailer is the use of insert cuts. We previously looked at the trailer for "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" which was upbeat and fast moving, jumpy and this trailer has a very similar pace. The use of insert shots are what creates this. Although it may take a little more time, these insert shots will make our trailer more interesting and experimental, less amiture which is what we are aiming for.  A step up and progression from our AS outcome.

Casting Our Main Characters

To play the part of Amy, the disturbed child. We decided to hold auditions, because we believe that in order for our trailer to be effective, it needs good acting. Here are pictures of the people who auditioned. After several discussions in our group we decided that the best 2 audition's out of the 5 auditioned below were Katie Beaumont and Leanne Shillingford, their two auditions shown in the video below. In the end we decided that Katie was bested suited for the part, as she fitted the needed criteria, being original, able to contribute ideas to make our production the best it can be. She is also willing to take part in any hours she will be needed for filming and pre-filming preparations. Her overall look is what we envisaged for our character. Although she is not as young as we would have liked we believe having a more mature actor will in able us to get the shots and the effects desired. A maturity is need while acting horror, and a younger, less experienced actor would not be suitable.

Filming Practice

During our lesson last week, we went out with the new cameras to practice various shots we hope to use. We also had a look around for different locations to see if we could find a plain white room where we could shoot the little girl going crazy. Here is some of the footage that we took.

The shot below is of a fade of the same person, in the same position, but just located some where different, this is something we are interested in using in our teaser trailer to link the main character of the teaser trailer to different aspects of their life. This effect would also make our trailer look more creative instead of a plain cut back and forth better clips. The camera we were using to film this has a option where you can get the screen to split into a grid. This was helpful as we used this to position Taylor, shown in the video, in the correct place to get a smooth cut. As this was only a practice it isn't as accurate as we may have liked, but after a few more we will have this effect down to a tee.

This second video above is a time lapse. We wanted to practice this was an idea we liked from the start of the project no matter what the genre we wanted to incorporated this into our piece. Above we waiting  for the busiest time a school to film which was after the bell. This then gave us lots of filming time to the have enough footage to speed up in editing and also have enough movement of people to create a flow to create a good practice time lapse.

Animated Storyboard

Our story board starts off with the main shot of our trailer, the time lapse in the underground, we the introduce disturbing drawings and pictures in shots 2 and 3, these will be flashes, quick takes then shot 4 showing a master shot of all the drawings in a intreging room. Shot 5 will be a first title. Then shot  6 goes back to the scene of the underground. Planned to be filming going down the esculator then revealing our main character the girl at the bottom.

in shot 7 we return to the time lapse where the girl will have moved forward closer to the camera but not too close. We will then flash back in shot 8 to the room skattered with drawings but this time the girl will be scribbling away. Following this will be 2 more titles. The transformation from shot 8 to 9 will be a fade or blur from the girls face in the underground time lapse blended perfectly using the grid effect on the camera to get this accurate into the same girl in her room.

shot 13 shows some of the disturbing images and drawings on the wall fluttering, dramatically lighted. This is then followed by the film title. After the screen will turn fuzzy like shown in the ring. It will the cut to an obver the sholder shot of 2 girls switching the trailer off. This is the twist of the trailer as you have read in the synopsis one of the girls realises that she is that girl. Then a quick flash will be shown "coming soon".

Target Audience

- Teenagers
- Young Adults
-  15-25

There are a number of reason why we believe that this is the best suited age group for our film, one being that the characters are of similar ages so we feel that the audience will be able to interact with the characters more and understand how they are feeling. The film also contains quite disturbing footage, though violence is kept to the bare minimum we believe that 15 year old are mature enough to watch this film. Through doing research we have also found that films with similar story lines and also films with much stronger graphical images than our film have the same ages restriction, so we feel that this is a suitable age range.
We also believe that the horror genre we have chosen will capture the attention of young teenagers, more than it will for adults, due to the fact that the main actor/characters are starring in a "teenage" film.


Looking on the IMDb website, we found the results for one of our influences PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 2. We found that it rated highest on the age range 18 and under both female and male. This is how we want our film to correlate. We want both males and females to be drawn in to our film. Although it was highest rated by under 18's, 18-29's also seemed to like it so although we are ages 17 and 18 and the ideas are coming from a similar age we hope to appeal to the higher age group also, for a larger audience range.

Outline

The film focuses around a young girl who appears to have mental health issues. its starts off with two friends who think they are watching a horror movie, but in actual fact they are watching uncut and never seen before surveillance of one of their childhood, but the question lies..... which one?