26/11/13 – Wrapping Up Ancillaries

During the last lessons, and some previous lessons before that, I have been working on finishing up the ancillaries for our project. Both the website and the poster are at the stages where they can be finished soon. There are still somethings that I have to work on though, and these are:

• Checking alignments and layout on the poster
• Ensuring that there is no pixelation on either the poster of the website
• Export the poster as a separate .png file so it can be embedded onto the website

Each of these things can be completed within a day and will not take too much time.

Also, I will have to also make some improvements/adjustments based upon the feedback that was received.

However, because the feedback that we received was for the old version of the poster, not all of it will be helpful when tweaking the poster. But we I will be able to use the feedback that was received about the colours used and the dominant image of the poster.

We Got Feedback!

20/11/2013 – Poster Creation

In the coming days, I will be creating the poster, using the initial drafts that have been made.

For this, I will be using Adobe InDesign as it is the easiest to use and the easiest to edit. Also, for things like this, InDesign is the most powerful pieces of software.

15/11/2013 – Trailer Changes

Both Michael and myself have agreed that we should cut out a part of the trailer, specifically the bit when Callum is speaking to the interviewer at the end. We both feel that this would almost be, if it were a real film, giving away the ending. This is something that should never be done in a trailer. I understand that this change will reduce the length of the final trailer, but I do also feel that we have more than enough footage to make our trailer the typical length as others.

As this is an ongoing production, there is always the possibility for more changes to be made to any of the products that we are construction, not just the trailer. If more changers are going to happen, I will post them in the Lesson Blog category so they can be documented as they occur.

Poster Creation | Part 2 | Drafting

I have now hit the next stage of development for the poster and I am now up to the stage of combining all of my ideas for the poster and coming up with quick drats for the poster/ancilliary work.

The first idea was the picture that I was going to use and this has been decided by me and Sam and we chose a picture of our actor, Callum Henn, looking behind him and looking as if he has just seen the horrific creature which may have taken the life of his best friend. The lighting of the picture is very important because it means that you can really see the expression of the victim and you can establish the level of fear that running through his veins.

The pink lines are colums that are there as placeholders for text/images

I think that the location is a very good and secluded place as well. This is the perfect location for this because the secludedness of the area is ideal for a horror film because it means that help is going to be very miniscule and as a result something terrible is bound to happen to the victims of the forest.

This is the first stage of the creation for the poster, we had included other images as a replacement to see what they would look like but we believe that this picture is the right one for the job in hand.

The next part of the creation that I had done was to include the logo of our film company and thinking of taglines is a common convention of most poster posters and we want to make sure that we follow these conventions and carry them over onto our own ancilliary work. This is the dominant image that we have chosen for the moment but we are still currently experimenting with different close ups on photoshop but I will be showing and evidencing this very soon.

Poster Creation | Part 1 | Deciding on Elements

We have begun to create the poster for our trailer: Forest Of The Unknown

I have decided on the font which was BloodFeast and I have started to create the title for it that is going to be used on the front of the poster.

When deciding on the colours of the font me and Sam reseached colour patterns that where closely relative to that of blood colour and it is #660000 which is the closest that we got to this colour.

I decided to duplicate the image originally created and turn that into a back drop/shadow image to really give emphasise onto the title of the film and it also makes some parts looks more bloody and more effective. Furthermore the blood drips make it look fresh and recent.

I know that this is only a small post but this is the starting point and will be uploading more as the poster, trailer and webiste get further developed.

7/11/13 – Going Through Changes

Because we both want to create the best media products that we are capable of, Michael and I have changed roles within the production. Now, rather than me making the website, Michael making the poster and both of us doing the editing. We have decided to have me making both of the ancillaries, and Michael doing the editing of the trailer.

Because Michael has more experience with using iMovie, he will be able to make a good trailer, and because I have taken graphics, and enjoy design, I will be able to make a better website and poster.

Also, in regards to the filming of the trailer, we changed the character roles around. Now, rather than Ben having the main role, Callum will be the main character in the trailer because of various time constraints with us and with Ben. This is not a problem as both are great actors.

Trailer Creation | Part 2

The next stage of the trailer creation has begun and there have been some pretty significant changes. The first and main change that has been made by both me and Michael is the content of the trailer. We have decided to take out the final part of the video, which was the interview stage of the trailer. the reason behind this is because we though that it wouldn’t be right to have this as a part of the trailer because effectively this is the end of the film and we didn’t want this to happen. And so as a result we want the trailer to end on a slight cliff hanger because this is the connotation of a typical horror film that we want to give off for the audience.

Back to the creation I have added a static type effect for the video and a reason for this was because I researched other films such as Paranormal Activity which had that static effect which gives off the impression that the film has been lost or that the contents of it is damaging to anyone who watches the trailer. I think that effects like this is going to make sure that we follow the typical conventions that are associated with most horror films that are released. At this stage we are still experimenting with lines and things that will hopefully increase the suspense that we want to have in this trailer.

Furthermore I believe that to give the trailer as much realism as possible we have included the green trailer screen which doesn’t effect the trailer in any way but we think that it makes the trailer look more realistic and like a professional production. There has been further images inserted and other words which will be showing the extent of the film.. This is because at this stage we are roughly 75 – 85% completed in terms of the trailer and what we need to do is we need to carefully go over each piece of footage and the trailer as a whole to make sure that specific audio has been edited correctly an that other background and unnecessary sounds have been removed and that it is to the best of our ability.

2/11/13 – Creation Commences!

Michael and I have began to start work on our Trailer. Along with actor Callum Henn, we filmed the various scenes and parts that will happen in the forest section of the Trailer. Whilst there, we also took the various photos that we will use on our website and poster.

Because we actually took the photographs in the woods at night, we were able to make them look authentic and real, as though he had actually gone camping.

We still have to film some other parts of the trailer, as well as edit it. This will all be completed once we get back to school after the half-term. We will also need to complete the design and creation of both the website and the poster.

Trailer Creation | Part 1

The construction for the trailer has officially begun and this is where I will be uploading specific stages of the construction elements and talking about why I chose these certain aspects.

The first aspect that we had to decide on was if there was going to be a sound track/clip being played in the background whilst the trailer was being played. The decision as that we where going to use a sound track of some sort because it meant that we could make the trailer seem eerie but on another level and this would connote feelings emotionally and to hook the audience into the trailer.

This piece of music really grabbed our attention because the first thing that hit us was the title that included “Don’t Look or it Takes You” and this is basically the theory/plot of the story and this is ideal for our movie trailer.

And now because the music for the rest of the trailer has been set we now started the trailer and we decided to use one of the clips as the start of the trailer and in particular the piece of film with sound and no film. This is because the sound plays a major part in a horror film/trailer and so we thought that just having the audience hear running through woods and sticks breaking that this would be very effective. But from this it jumps straight into the trailer and it is like a teaser part of the trailer to see and show the audience what they can expect.

As you can see from the screenshot we have a caption suggesting that they didn’t know what hit them and made the decision of using this because I think that this will be very effective because in some ways in makes the audience think what could possible be attacking/hunting the two actors down in the forest. The production logo has been included as well because it when looking at similar horror film trailers they always show the production company’s logo as a form of advertising and letting them know who has made this film.

All of the effects and editing has been done using the effects that are selected in the top row under the screen preview. these have become very useful because it means that the fade in and out can be used to the full potential that we originally intended for and get the full effect across to the audience. The use of the text functions as well has allowed us to put messages within the trailer itself and connote specific emotions towards the other characters and the audience at the same time.

To make sure that the clips are edited correctly and that no background noise has been detected/picked up from anywhere else I used the precision editor setting to really go through the clips and slowly pick out all of the un needed sections to make the clips as realistic as possible. This is a really good aspect of iMovie because it means that the full use of any connotation implemented into the trailer can be used to the maximum ability. Throughout the construction of the trailer we had changed a couple of parts such as clips because they would have been too difficult to film with the light and this could be a slight disadvantage if the quality of it isn’t very good to try and edit and implement.