Our finished trailer PSYCHEDELIC

Back up plan for our magazine poster

If our idea fails for the woodcut print or it turns out shocking then we have a backup plan to do a poster for Empire magazine including all of our main characters lying down in the leaves (similar to this skins image on the right). This idea may be harder to organise as we have found difficulty in gathering all of our actors together at the same time due to their commitments. We think that this would look effective for this kind of cover. We would have to use a bright bold colour title and writing on top of our image to make it stand out as there would be a lot going on in the background of the cover. 

Empire magazine covers are a lot more busy compared to Little White Lies which is more an Art house style. Empire has other aspects of the magazine printed onto the front which shows the reader what else is to come within the magazine. It may also sometimes include other films on the cover but we would have to be careful what we put on due to copyright issues.

Film Magazine inspiration

After looking at a selection of different film magazines such as Empire, Total film and the specialist genre film magazines we decided that Little White Lies was the most appropriate for our film. After looking through their previous magazine covers we decided the one below was our favourite and then got the idea of doing something similar using our main character Ellen. 

We then found this video on Little White Lies website which shows the process of them making their cover. They used a wood cut print using a laser cutter to create the scratched effect. As I do art and have previously worked using a laser cutter we had the idea of taking a portrait image of Ellen and editing it in Photoshop to then transfer to a woodcut print. This could then be printed and scanned in to create an artistic magazine cover appropriate for Little White Lies. 

Psychedelic Film Poster

Here is our finished film poster

Poster ideas

Poster inspirations

As our film trailer was inspired by some of Project X, it makes sense to look at the poster created for that film. Below is the poster, which is quite plain and simple but yet effective and catches attention of people around the same age as our target audience. We could use aspects of this poster in ours. I particularly like the caption across the middle of the page, so maybe we could do something similar.

Skins

We have used the tv series 'Skins' as quite a lot of inspiration as it includes some very similar story lines and themes that we have portrayed in our trailer. Although it is not a film, Channel 4 have produced some posters to promote the programme, and we found some of these images quite inspirational as they capture the image of young adults and the themes of drugs. An image like this...

... could be quite interesting to use but with our characters looking dead lying on the floor of the forest we filmed the majority of our footage in. This was one of our ideas on our mind map but we have quite a few to choose from.

Regrets

Unfortunately, we haven't been able to film the main idea of the powder paint fight which we were inspired by a music video of Example's. This was due to lack of time and we were not able to source the materials to do it with. Also, the weather hasn't been too great these past few weeks and therefore it wouldn't of worked as well, and trying to gather all of our actors together on one day to film it would have been a difficulty. However, we do have quite a few really good affects which show the actors enjoying themselves in other ways, so we are not too sad about it missing from our trailer. 

Filming/Editing update

We have now finally completed ALL of our filming. On monday we filmed the boys in the woods searching for another character Chris. Tuesday we filmed the girls in the woods with one of the boys again looking for him. We have been editing all week and have made quite a few changes to the storyline. I filmed an old tv screen with the white noise black and white screen which I thought we could use to make the characters filming themselves look slightly scarier. During our time editing we added this effect in and it actually really worked well. We now only have to add in a few last minute touches to the editing and add our titles in and hopefully will be finished by the end of today!

Yesterday's filming session update

Yesterday evening we successfully filmed two of the characters, Abi and Molly, in Harvington woods walking through messing around and having fun. We are going to edit this footage and the rest of what we filmed on Tuesday afternoon and put that all together hopefully by the end of this week. We do unfortunately have one more scene left to film but I think we are quite safe in the sense that we have quite a lot of good shots and a variety of angles already included in our trailer so far. I think we will be finished by next Wednesday at the latest.

'Home Video' effect

As the majority of our footage is handheld and mostly flashbacks of Ellen's story, we want the viewer to understand that the characters were filming some of the story on their own 'home video' cameras, which would probably be from their phones. To create this affect we will probably put this red record button on top of parts of the trailer. We were inspired by Paranormal Activity as they have the times at the bottom of the screen for their filming.

Filming and editing update

So far we have got the majority of our footage filmed, with many changes to our storyboard. We have changed our story slightly so that Ellen (the main character) is now being interviewed about the road trip and what happened. This makes our trailer a little bit more interesting and easier to understand. We have been editing this footage the past couple of days to make it more choppy and scary. We found this filming quite fun as it took a lot of good acting and concentration.

We are currently editing the rest of this footage into the trailer to make some of the flashbacks flow and less repetitive. This is quite a slow process and requires a lot of quick editing skills. We aim to of finished this bit of editing by the end of today so that we are ready to film the rest of our trailer and then edit that.

Current filming scheduele: 

Tuesday 13th November (today) -  Film a couple of the group walking through the woods in Harvington at around 3.30pm- 4pm. We will also take location shots of the area we're filming.

Wednesday 14th November - We will film the rest of the footage we need in the woods and possibly re film the car scenes as they were not very clear. We may film the 'powder paint' scene but possibly using another material. This will hopefully be our last filming day although if we find our footage isn't perfect we can easily fit another filming day in.

We aim to of finished all of our filming by this weekend and hope that we have edited all of our footage so that our trailer is complete by next Tuesday/Wednesday.

Filming Update

Today we filmed another section for our trailer, this wasn't included on our storyboard as it was an idea that was in the shadows over the past couple of weeks and we decided to give it a trial go to see how it fits in with the rest of our footage as we are doing a last filming session over the next week, then we will do the final edit.

Below is a printscreen of what is to be expected (if we use the footage!)

Another update of our trailer so far will be uploaded by the end of this week, to show our current progress as we have made changes during the editing process, which includes the change of our current music choice.

progress with filming

Here is our film so far, we are contemplating changing the music as it isn't fitting with the shots as nicely as we would want to. The editing is also just a rough edit as we imported all of the footage today and did quick cuts and changes on some of the footage.

Update on filming etc...

Over the half term we have been filming parts of our trailer and experimenting with new shots, not just ones we initially had on the storyboard. We collected around 20 mins of footage and with rough editing we have around 30 seconds of footage. We're happy with the shots that we've done so far as we feel they are close to the genre and appeal to our target audience. We did encounter a few problems whilst filming, and after discussing them amongst the two of us we feel more confident for the final film where we will go over any shots we feel are weak, and add in some new and quirky shots as all the time we're experimenting with the camera and what looks good to us.

One of the disadvantages we came across when filming was the lighting. For our first filming session we met at around 3:30pm and started filming our first sequence of everybody putting their stuff into the car. By the time it was 4:15pm it was so dark and because we didn't anticipate this change in the weather to be so quickly, we were unequipped as we had no floodlights on us or any source of light on the camera we were using. One of the advantages of having this problem is that we now know that when filming we must meet a lot earlier, as even though we want some night shots, we only want about 5% of our trailer to have darkness, and some of the footage we got wasn't clear at all when uploaded onto iMovie.

Logo

Here is our final logo that we filmed and added a grainy effect and sped it up also.

Final Logo FILMED!

As  mentioned before we were in the process of filming and editing our logo...
it is now complete with an added effect of film grain and also we have sped it up.

Underwater?

As we may have mentioned earlier on in previous posts, underwater shots are something that we may be considering.  Below is a video focusing on underwater shots. We think that if we were to use an underwater shot it would be representative of a lake, but in order to get clear filming we would have to film underwater in a swimming pool, which may take away from the eerie feeling that we want to evoke as the lighting would be blue from the swimming pool. Although, saying this there are various effects on iMovie and iMovie HD that we could use to distort it and make it scary.

A shot like the one above is one that we may consider doing as we aren't completely submerged in water, we are just on the surface.

Update on Filming and progress on film schedule..

Bianca and I have already started to film some shots that we need for our trailer which doesn't require people. Some has already been posted (the sky moving etc) but that still hasn't been set in stone in terms of editing as we have been playing around with different effects as we have 20 minutes of footage that we need to cut down to around 5/6 seconds. We have also started filming other parts for our trailer that don't require people such as setting. We have chosen to do this as we want to get at least 50% of our trailer done as half of it is landscape. The other half (that requires our actors) will be done during and just after the half term, as we collectively need to gather everybody and have a whole day/ couple of days filming our key shots, as the shots with our actors/actresses in will be the most adventurous.

Over the next few days progress on our filming and film schedule will be updated on the blog, a copy of our music mashup will also be put on the blog very soon and also a re-edited animated storyboard as we are going to put the music with the storyboard to give a rough idea of what our trailer may look like.

Skins - Inspiration

As mentioned in earlier posts, influences that we looked at included the teen drama series "Skins" which is based on similar concepts in relation to our film. One particular episode that we looked at was an episode where the group of friends go on a drive to stay at a forest for a weekend. We chose this episode as we believe it would be the most useful one to watch. We spent a lesson watching the whole 45 minute episode and Bianca took screen shots that were useful to us in terms of shots that we liked/shots that we could use as inspiration when filming our trailer. Below are the 5 screen shots we liked.

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As you can see in this shot we have a clear view of the forest area and also the tents and an unlit fire. We particularly liked the foggy atmostphere as it gave an eerie feel when we were watching the episode. One thing we would probably want to change if we were to use this shot as inspiration would be the colour of the tents used as in a horror we don't want to use too many bright colours as it would contradict the setting and the audience intention we want to have.

This shot we thought was key as it is one of the first shots when the group of them are in the car. This particular shot we thought would be useful when filming them in the car driving to the place, and perhaps showing the different emotions that characters are feeling. For e.g. Naomi (Blonde at the back) looks unhappy whereas Freddie and Emily look very neutral, and we will take the smallest detail such as facial expressions into account when filming for our trailer. We may also use this shot as inspiration and use a focus pull on the characters faces for added effect.

This shot we thought was interesting as it wasn't a shot that we had in our storyboard initially. We never really thought that showing them walking into the forest would be something that is necessary, but this clear shot of Freddie (Left) and JJ (right) is really effective as we can see their full profiles, and also the two characters behind them. This creates a sense of distance between the characters which we would take into account when filming as not only does it look good, it also adds another dimension to our trailer in terms of creative shots.

These last two shots we thought were interesting as again, it shows distancing between the characters and interaction between some (effy (left) and pandora (right) in the shot above) We liked the night time shot more as the fog was present again which adds the element of fear and eerieness to the scene.

Altogether we found that watching this episode of skins has broadend our minds in terms of shot ideas as we will now find it easier as we can use this as inspiration to create interesting and quirky shots for our trailer.

Practice Filming

Yesterday, I randomly went on a drive through the country lanes with a friend (another media student) and realised that some of the scenery I was going past was similar to the places me and Claire discussed filming in. I luckily had my camera on me and so filmed some quite shaky footage of the car journey, which is similar to some of the shots we are going to include at the beginning of our trailer. Here is the short film I took...

I found that I like the idea of us filming in the car as it gives the viewer a chance to feel what the characters are and enables them to get into it more. We will film something similar when they go on the 'roadtrip' but not use such a long clip, and the camera shots will be more thought out. 

I also took some possible location shots of the surroundings, this area (Westerham) could be a possible location to use for some of our trailer. Here are some of the images I took...

Music Inspiration / Looking at different tracks.

The last couple of lessons Bianca and I have been looking at possible tracks that we would like to mix together to create our soundtrack for the trailer. Below is all of the tracks that we looked at and liked the sound of, we will upload a mix of all of them in a few days time. Some of these videos also gave us inspiration for possible shots that we could apply and use in our trailer.

Additional Inspiration / Research

Holi from Variable on Vimeo.

Above is a video on Vimeo that we were linked to by a friend who thought that we would find this video useful. As you can see the whole video is in extreme slow motion and features powder paints / coloured powder; which is one of the main aspects that we want to include in ours. We really warmed to the use of slow motion, which is something that we hadn't considered that much or looked into in depth. As you can see the camera used for this video is of very high quality, as the frames run smoothly even when put into slow motion. We thought this would be a problem as the cameras we are going to use to film are of poorer quality than the one used in this clip, but we decided to test slow motion on the MAC camera's to see how a movement came out on there when edited in slow motion, as the MAC cameras are of the lowest quality, and if we could create an effective slow motion using the MAC camera, we could create a better effect with the video cameras within school.

Above you can see the short video that we filmed on the MAC cameras which is of Bianca walking at a normal sped past the camera, we then edited it on iMovie with the slow motion effect and found that it had the desired effect that we wanted it to have, but when we use a better camera it will be of higher quality. 

Schedule

As you can see we have created a facebook group calling together all the people we are having in our trailer, on here we will discuss availability and times we will be filming. More printscreens like this will be put on the blog in due course.

Animated Storyboard

as you can see, our wonderful animated storyboard. Enjoy.

Storyboard - Part 3 - Finished!

This is our final page of our storyboard, we will be putting up an animated storyboard very soon with more annotations.

Storyboard Part 2

Target Audience Prezi

Target Audience on Prezi

Project X - Inspiration

I have looked at another trailer, 'Project X' and feel that we could take some aspects from this edgy film and use them in our trailer. It's about a group of teenagers who throw the 'most epic 17th birthday party', with shots from their digital handheld cameras, as the party gets way out of control. This film appeals to a similar target audience that we want our trailer to so I think this is a really good inspirational trailer to use for ideas. I really liked a few of the shots and the way that every shot was short and choppy, this would be a good thing to do with our trailer.

Here are a few shots which i think we could maybe re-create in our trailer:

We like this particular shot as it was a film which stopped and turned into a picture, which also had a sound effect of a camera snapping a picture. We could use something similar to this in our trailer as you can see the shot is taken outside. 

 

We also really liked this shot as it is basically showing what happened from the inside of another car on a handheld 'home-made' film, which is similar to what we have ideas of doing but using a phone to film some footage inside a car. 

Beginning of Storyboard

We have started sketching out our storyboard for our trailer and here are our first few shots that we have come up with. We will post the rest as they are completed.

The House At The End Of The Street

Last night I went to the cinema to see 'The House At The End Of The Street' and was slightly disappointed by it as the storyline didn't really match my expectations. However, despite this I did pick up on a few shots that I feel could possibly be included in our trailer. The main shots that caught my eye was when the main character was looking out into the woods and there was a striking shot-reverse shot between her eyes and the rustling bushes. We could include something similar as we plan to film in a similar location. Also, the use of the soundtrack helped to convey the emotions of the characters, which is definitely something we intend to achieve with our trailer.

bianca prezi link

http://prezi.com/ngd5fzdmkhxt/edit/?auth_key=4tk3jg7&follow=gr8rm7ikscrs

This is a quick preview of what our logo is going to look like on A3 paper. This is how we made it (quick and simple!)

Timeline for Creep Trailer

This trailer is the trailer for the film Creep, which is a British horror film about a woman locked overnight on the London Underground who finds herself being stalked by a hideously deformed killer living in the sewers below. We decided to use this as our main influence and below is the trailer and our step to step analysis of each shot etc.

Below are some screenshots which caught our eye and why...

This part of the trailer caught our eye due to the angle of the camera, the eerie lighting and the grim picture that is in the shot. We would like to incorporate something similar to this into our trailer, for e.g. someones hands dragging through grass, or a shot of the feet as shown in this clip, but in a dirty forest/field at night.

This was one of our favorite shots which is at 1:24-1:28 which is the protagonist (main character) holding a torch to her face in pitch black. We thought this looked particularly effective and scary, and as it's a simple shot we will also think about using this in our trailer, or something of similar effect.

This shot, which is at 0:00-0:07 is a handheld shot of someone walking through a tube station, with a point of view shot. We thought this shot was particularly effective as it was the first shot, before the production logo and before any credits, and it really helped to set the tone of the film due to the lighting, and the setting, which at first glance may appear as a hospital, but as the handheld gets closer we realize it is an underground tube station. We also would like to include handheld shots as most horror trailers that we have watched include handheld camera work, as it adds to the trailer by making it jagged and unsettling, which is the feel that we would like to give off in our trailer.

Final Logo Decision

Above is our final decision for our logo. Which was decided by the followers of our blog and also others that visited it, and this was the most popular font. As shown in a video a few posts earlier we showed how we would like to film our logo, we did an initial test trial with a lighter to burn the piece of A4 paper from the centre outwards to create a burning visual effect. We encountered some problems such as the paper being too small and also holding the paper with our hands and not clips. We will be filming again in the next few days with A3 paper, and some clips to hold the paper to ensure we don't burn ourselves or the area that we are filming in.

Logo - Branded or generic?

We have decided to use our own personal branded logo as displayed below...

We will use the results from the poll that we carried out to decide on the font that we want to use for our production logo.

We feel that a personally branded logo will give more of an individuality to our film and it also allows us to be more creative instead of copying and pasting a generic logo,which doesn't show off our design abilities.

We have decided to go with a simple "BC productions" B for Bianca C for Claire and productions to make it clear that we are a production company.

Production Logo initial ideas and poll

As you can see, we have narrowed down our design ideas for our logo and scanned it onto the blog, below is a poll where members of the public can vote for which logo they think looks the best.

Which Logo?
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pollcode.com free polls

Texas Chainsaw Massacre Trailer (2013) inspiration

Above is the Texas Chainsaw Massacre trailer, which I think could be used as inspiration in terms of the beginning of the trailer, as in the first 20 seconds the shots and framings used are very interesting and it's something I think would be useful to use as inspiration when building our storyboard.

This shot and the shot below I thought were really nicely filmed as it's something that looks good and would be easy and practical for us to film/have something similar.

This shot (which is a continuation from the shot before) i really liked as it is shot in a different location but the editing from the previous frame has made it run smoothly and show the audience there is a leap in time, which is something i really found effective and clever. 

This shot I thought could be used as inspiration as we have discussed doing a shot within the car, we wouldn't do something like this as it might be seen as explicit. Instead we would do a shot of someone laughing, or eating.

Fuller Synopsis

A group of teens plan to go to a festival, they leave, ready to go, but halfway there break down and end up camping in a forest, deciding to make the most of their weekend away from home. But, after a few hours, they start going missing one by one, and a dark secret within the forest is uncovered. Little do they know, it's their own friend Will, who is also the protagonist in the play, that turns poisonous and plans their deaths.

"BC productions"

We have decided on what we would like our production logo to be called and we decided on calling it " BC productions. We sketched a few ideas out on paper which will be scanned in on our next post, and we will be using a poll to get people to vote for which one they feel  is aestetically pleasing, as we always have our audience in mind whilst making our trailer.

We then thought about how we would present our logo in a 3/4 second opening before our trailer. Our first idea was having the logo printed/written on paper and burning through it with a lighter. SO, we did a test run.

Bianca's Moodboard

Initial Ideas

Below is our Prezi which explains in a nutshell some of our initial ideas, such as props, genre and other ideas we have had along the way, we are going to do a few more prezi's and presentations in depth on these certain areas and possibly add more, but for now this is just our initial, raw ideas.

Initial Ideas on Prezi

Claire's Moodboard

This is my mood board that I created, on it you will see the main inspirations towards the trailer.

Initial Ideas (brainstorm)

- Last shot to be of everybody lying down in the dark (birds eye shot) surrounded b bottles, tabacco packets, clothes, and the powder paint and maybe some blood..

- powder paint
- car trip
- examples of the videos - 'we found love' 'stay awake'
- some pictures of possible locations that we would like to use
- some sketches of possible shots/how we want it to look like
- use variety of cameras/shots (possibly iPhone)
- maybe guitar
- campfire/bbq
- lots of food
- drink
- cigarettes

25 Word Pitch

A story which features a road trip, a breakdown and an eerie forest. it's all fun and games until someone mysteriously goes missing...

What is a Trailer? What is a Teaser Trailer? - Feedback

In this post Bianca and I are going to give a brief overview on each clip that we were given to watch in class, whether it was a Trailer or a Teaser Trailer.

The first Trailer (feature) that we watched was called "Looper" which is about a killer who works for the mob of the future and recognises one of his targets as his future self.

The main characteristics of this trailer are
- fast paced action/quick cuts to represent the fast paced movement of the film.
- set in a big city
- voiceovers of characters
- gun and physical violence
-fades in addition to the quick cuts

We think to a certain extent this trailer is effective as it grabs your attention due to the fast paced movement and action within the trailer, there is also a direct mention of the theme of the film which is time travel. On the other hand We feel it's problematic as it looks like every other action dilm due to the way that it's been presented, so after about 30 seconds we lost interest in the trailer as there's nothing thats particularly unique. The music is very generic - thumps and subtle waves of dubstep to create an adrenaline filled atmosphere is something that I see across the board of action films in the last 2 years.

Below is some of the stills that we found interesting in the trailer "Looper".

Looper Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eI3ju17W070 

The next trailer we watched was called "Man of Steel" which we found mostly boring due to the shots taken and we don't feel that it did the film justice as the title "Man of Steel" portrayed it to be an action film but instead it took a very calm approach. On the other hand we liked the fact that there was very little talking as it allowed us to focus on what we were watching rather than what the characters were saying, the music chosen also complimented what we were viewing, which on the whole made it different from other trailers we have seen in the past. 

As you can see from this poster, it shows a completely different picture to what was shown in the trailer which was the fact that we were deceived to believe that it was a calm, emotional film but the poster portrays something completely different due to the font, the colours and the muscly figure which is featured on the poster. 

The main characteristics of this trailer are:
- Calming, emotional music
- Very little dialogue
- Shots are longer, to show there is less "action" in this film
- Boat imagery
- Visual effects towards the end

Here are some of our favourite stills and why:

This particular shot is featured right at the beginning of the trailer, we like this because it sets the mood of the trailer as we associate the colours blue with calm and water with tranquility. We would also like to use something like this in our trailer as it's an easy shot to achieve but has an amazing effect.

This shot is also featured in the first 30 seconds of the trailer, which shows a bird flying through a clouded sky over a house. We would like to incorporate something similar into our trailer as we like the way it's been filmed and also the eeriness of the sky would be effective in our trailer.

This shot is featured in the second half of the trailer (around 1min) and it shows a boy running through grass, it is shot at a low angle. We like this shot the most as it's unique and something that we would definitely keep in mind when shooting our trailer as we have ideas to shoot it at a similar location that is used in this shot.

The next trailer that we watched was called "The Master" which is about the relationship between a charismatic intellectual known as "The Master" whose faith-based organisation begins to catch on in American , and a young drifter who becomes his right hand man.



Below are some screenshots which caught our eyes

This picture caught our attention as it was very unique and colourful from the rest of the trailer. The pose the woman is doing is also quite youthful and fun, which is something that we would like to incorporate into our trailer.

This shot caught our attention also because again, it is something very youthful and reminded us of a teen for e.g. jumping off Brighton pier. We would like to include something similar, but not something of this scale as of course we have to consider health and safety whilst filming, but at the same time this is a concept which really gripped us whilst watching this trailer.

The features of this trailer include:

- Powerful voiceover

- Love/couples

- Fighting

- Gun crime / violence

- Credits at the end

Personally we quite liked this trailer as it has a quirkier approach in comparison to the other trailers that we have watched. Although we think the quirkiness may limit the audience that views this film, not just the trailer. As it seems as if it would be an adult film, for e.g. 25+

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