Finishing of Production of Trailer

This is the final stage of the production of my trailer. All of the finishing touches have been applied. Sound has been added, including music, sound affects and background noise. All of the sounds incorporated are used in order for the trailer to seem dramatised. Some of the edits (such as one of the cut edits) have a sound in synchronisation with it, in order to establish one scene from the next in dramatic fashion. All of the sounds and music are intense, and are something you would hear in a horror / thriller trailer. It includes heavy deep sound which makes the viewer feel uneasy, that anything can happen (in our questionnaire, one of things we found out was that audiences responded well to "things that make you jump", so I picked up on this and made the trailer give off this idea.)

Footage

The footage that is used in this trailer is all footage that was planned to be filmed. It's stereotypical shots of the hand-held film genre. An example being the very last shot before the the Secret Alphabets logo appears. It is a POV shot of one of the characters running, then falling over to create a fast paced scene. The REC trailer shown in the research section uses this at the end of the trailer.

Edit

Only two edits have been used throughout the whole trailer: cut and fade edits. Simplistic, because of the way it is filmed, by hand, its there to keep to correlations associated with the film. Things like the sense of realism is heightened because of the lack of Hollywood style editing.

Sound

Most of the sound that is used is atmospheric and helps towards the general tone that the trailer sets for our audience. You can see below in the final version how sound helps create tension and suspense below.

Finishing of production of poster

This is the final stage of the production of my artefact. As you can see credits have been added at the bottom and a release date has been input in bright white below stating"December 20th"

This finished product follows the convention guidelines that has been researched and shown in my planning. A minimalistic approach was used for this poster. Use of a single image and striking fonts and information.

Image

A photo that I chose from a number of shots that I took for use in my poster. Chosen for its simplicity and effectiveness. Much like the shot from a Blair Witch poster I analysed, it uses a shot of scenery in order to keep audiences away from any plot give-aways, characters, specific iconography etc. The website will do the things listed, the poster is merely the part of the promotional package that will entice audiences, its not put in place to inform.

Fonts / Colours

There are only three colours that are used in the entireH poster: Red, white & black. Most is the use of white on a black background. Doesn't give off a very vibrant feel, but I wanted to keep the tone serious. Fonts that have been used are simple in order to not draw attention away from the films logo. This logo is going to be used in all part of the media package. We want it to be as recognisable and distinguishable as possible for obvious reasons.

Layout

The layout is based upon a stereotypical convention among horror posters, where one main image is focused on to draw a reaction. I thought the image of the tunnel would be most effective because of the amount of interpretations that can be drawn from it. Around this are endorsements, the logo, the film makers names etc.. All there to create interest for our audience.

Source of Sound for Trailer

As now for the sound being absent from my current trailer, I have managed to get hold of a sound effects package for implementation in my trailer.

http://www.videocopilot.net/products/dsfx/

It's called "Designer Sound FX" and all sounds, music etc. will be from this piece of software. It will be a good sound package to use as it has a very diverse range of sound clips for use. I will be using atmospheric music and loud sounds for edits in my trailer. All of it will be non-diegetic except for that of heard in the filmed clips. Like with the Cloverfield trailer, and The Blair Witch trailer, I intend for the sounds to be fairly loud. Atmospheric sound was made to great use in The Blair Witch Projects teaser, without any non-diegetic sound I don't think it would have had the same impact. So I intend to use sound to the best effect.

Continued Trailer production

This is continuation of my trailer production. Now I have inserted text, and endorsements into it so that there is now some structure to the plot of the trailer. The little back story at the start was something that I found was very effective, that was used in The Blair Witch Project trailer. Gives the audience a hook, and a small back story to base their judgement on. Fonts that were used were very simplistic, nothing too fancy or colourful to draw focus away from the actual structure of the clips, I wanted a bleak tone throughout. Along with this I have followed on from the poster production and added endorsements to keep the continuity going of critical hype in our media package, all to position our young audience into seeing that our film is an well rated piece of entertainment that they are likely to enjoy.

The second version of the trailer is below.

Poster production continued

Following on from my last post about my poster, I have now added several endorsements at the top of the poster, along with the address for the website which my partner is producing. In the previous post I forgot to mention the small title above our film logo saying "A Coleness Brothers Film" Several films use this convention where they put iconic film makers near their film title. It's done because if Directors have a good enough reputation for their films (examples being The Coen Brothers, Ridely Scott) then this will inspire audiences to go and see it, because of the quality of their previous films, or because of their reputation. As mentioned before, I have added endorsements at the top from several different publications. This, much like the directors title, adds hype to our artefact. In my research section there is the analysis of the poster for Paranormal Activity. I followed the convention guidelines from this, where several endorsements where present at the bottom of the poster. That film was built around media hype, and public reaction, we aim to have the same principal for our media package. Finally the website address at the bottom appears in red, and sets itself apart from the rest of the poster in order to stand out, as the website we feel is important to the promotion of our film. With modern technology being what it is, most films are researched on the internet before they hit cinemas, and we want to take advantage of this fact.

Beginning of Trailer Production

This is the beginning of the editing process of my trailer. So far I have just managed to edit the clips together, with fade edits, and cut edits based on the storyboard that is in the planning section. At present no sound effects, music, captions etc. has been added, at this stage its the base of the trailer. It has been cut together to be very paced and dramatic, much like the Cloverfield trailer analysed in the planning section. I have used all of the clips that were filmed, that appear in the uncut video shown earlier. It is currently very short in length clocking in at 1 minute 20 seconds, I aim to keep it around this length throughout its production, as stated earlier in planning, there are reasons to keeping it a short trailer relating to audience positioning.

Below is the media trailer in its first version.

Poster Production: Main Image

In the beginning of my poster production I wanted my text to apply to the codes and convetions of several stereotypical horror posters. The majority of Horror movie posters will focus on one central image as their drawing point. I used this convention in my media text. The photo I used is show below:

After this I darkened the image slightly so it could blend into the black background, therefore the focus of the image is the white sky that appears behind the trees towwards the end of the tunnel. I chose this image from all of my previous ones, because of its meaning to the audience. The idea of a tunnel is almost representitive of the journey that the characters will have to go through to escape, Almost like a light at the end of a tunnel. I liked this idea, as in a predominantly black poster, is a bit of white, almost showing human presence. Which in itself is the focus of our film: the hunting of lost people. The slightly more darkened version is shown below.

Beginning of Poster Production

As you can see, I have begun my poster within Page Plus X3 utilising both the logo stated earlier, as well as one of the images I took from my planning. I have followed the codes and conventions of the Jacobs ladder poster. Using one image, In black and white over a black background, with very little use of colour at its present stage. I have inserted a tag line stating "SOME THINGS SHOULD REMAIN UNKNOWN" again in capitals. Very similar in style to the logo, a font that is easily understandable and can be taken seriously, like the film itself should. Above I will show you what I did to blend the photo I took into the background, too make it look like one large image.

Film logo

By using a site called "dafont" I have created my film logo:

This is to be incorporated on all of the promotional mediums that my partner and I will produce. I have a reason for it being in this such style. I think this font has an iconic and striking feel to it. Much like another film logo such as Blade Runner.

Like the Blade Runner font, it is instantly recognisable and unique. The reason for the font being in an ancient look, is because of the certain connotations it carries with it. Our film plans to be about missing people that is shrouded in mystery. The font itself looks as if it is some sort of lost / forgotten language, by the way it looks. Along with this it is all in capitals which makes it stand out firmly among other film titles. Other example of film fonts similar to this are: The Star Wars logo and The Matrix films logo. Instantly recognisable among audiences, I want our film logo to carry the same idea.

Trailer Footage

This is the footage that my partner and I filmed in the woods for the creation of our trailer. My partner decided to shoot the scenes for our trailer, while I will be in charge of the editing and creation of it. All of these scenes are based on our storyboard, and are in the un-edited video below.

Filming

The filming for our Trailer took place in Branksome woods in Poole over the period of a couple of hours in an early evening. Our location was very accessible to use and offered a number of beneifts.

Because of the time of day we shot it, the film footage that we have is fairly dark and murky adding to the connotations of our film, and its visual representation. It also allowed us to take advantage of the natural lighting, an example being in the shot shown in our clips video below, where one of the characters has the camera to his face speaking to the audience. On the actors face you can see natural lighting. Also other things that were good was some of iconography that we managed to incorporate into the filming process. During one of the clips there is of a close up of what appears to be a stone arch in the middle of nowhere. We found this when filming and decided to incorporate it into the filming process. Finally the woods in which we filmed in was fairly out of the way of the public, which made the whole process easy, not having to re shoot, or find new places to film because of interference.

Software

For the editing of my film Trailer, I will be using a free programme called: Windows Live Movie Maker. The reason for its choosing is for a number of reasons:

- It's very easy to use
- The interface is easy to navigate through
- It has a number of different functions & features (such as edits, film effects, and sound editing)
- It's free and available to anyone
- I have past experience with this software for the production of my preliminary task

http://download.live.com/moviemaker

As for the production of my Poster, I will be using another piece of software that I have past experience with called Page Plus X3, again the reasons for its choosing are:

- For a desk top publishing programme it is very easy to use
- It has a large amount of fonts, and features, which enable the end product to look professional
- I have past experience with this software for the production of my preliminary task

http://www.serif.com/pageplus/pageplusx3.asp