Film Poster Research

Movie posters are a visual form of advertising films. They come in all sizes and advertise every genre of film. Up to the 1990's, Film Posters were illustrated, but now however, they have digitally created using high quality photographs of the main actors. Film Posters usualy have the same layout, they include a large piece of text, which is the title. This is usually large and bold. Posters also contain taglines, which state a short line either from the film, or about the film. the same images used in posters are also displayed on the DVD covers and other merchandise. This is usually the iconic photo of the film.

I will be looking at horror film poster, because that is the genre of my trailer. the first poster I will be looking at is Scream 4. It is a simple poster, with big bold letters and colours. The mask in the middle of the photo transforms into a sharp knife, which works well in the sense that the person wearing this mask is the one who murders the chaacters in the original film. The text at the top is the tag line, which reads 'New Decade, New Rules'. I think that this film poster works very well but for anyone who has not seen the trilogy before it will be dificult for them to understand the poster, especially the knife part of the photo.

Finished Film Trailer

After weeks of filming, editing, mishaps and planning.. here is the finished trailer. Get the popcorn ready!

(Please watch the Trailer in 720P High Definition for better quality)

Most of the filming done.

Most of our filming is now done. We all met up on Friday 21st October and got the bus to Pembury where our filming location is. We were at the abandoned house 2 hours filming and we have over 6-7 minutes of footage, which we can cut the best bits from to put in our trailer. We yet still have to do one more scene of the remaining character running through the woods, so that will be filmed shortly. I have already began to edit the footage we filmed on Friday. At the moment I am only cutting the clips and putting them on the timeline. When we have filmed the last part, I will then, (with the help from my group) edit the trailer. Once I have put the clips together and in an order which makes the trailer gripping and interesting to the viewer, I will begin post-editing. This means I will add effects to the trailer, such as colour grading. I will edit the contrast and saturation of the footage, as well as add music and sound to the clips. For sound, I will to record some of the characters voices, because my camera does not pick up soound very well.

2nd Screening

We did our second screening of the trailer to the class. Class enjoyed the trailer and helped me to pick out certain parts which needed improving. Such as the voice recordings, which is really bad quality. There are also some spelling mistakes which were pointed out to me. I have the Adobe Premier File saved so I can easily edit the titles and correct the spelling.

Magazine Photoshoot + Some photo edits!

Whilst filming the last shot for the trailer, we were already in a nice setting for a photo shoot. The woodland provided some nice backgrounds and scenes which, when edited, can look quite spooky! I photographed the girls in my group posing in serious expressions. Here are a few of the photos.

I like this photo as it shows a 'dirty' effect in the girl's faces and clothes. I achieved this by increasing the contrast and de-saturating the colours using Adobe Photoshop CS5. It gives the photo a gritty look.

 I like the blurred effect in this photo, its gives the impression that the character is pumped with adrenaline and fear. I did this effect simply by tilting the camera to a different angle while the photo was being taken.

This is by far the best edit I have done. It is in fact a composite of 3 photos blended into one. The trees in the background where of the trees in the woodland where I did my photo shoot, the house is where most of the filming took place, and the girls were photographed in the wood land. I also edited the saturation in this as well as the contrast to create the gritty effect.

I am also planning on doing a better photo shoot. For example, by using black backgrounds and low key lighting to create dark, frightening shots of faces. I would like to achieve a show similar to that of the film poster for 'The Grudge', A horror film by Sarah Geller. Here is the photo from the film poster.

I want to get a shot like this where the background is completely black and all you can see is the hair and the eyes.

Film Magazine Mock Up Front Cover

Magazine Front Cover - Research.

As well as producing a Film Trailer, part of the coursework involves also creating a Film magazine front cover. Firstly, I will do some research on film magazines such as Empire, which is very popular worldwide. I will look at the codes and conventions used in order to create a good front cover which is both eye-catching and looks proffesional.

Empire Magazine

Empire is a monthly film magazine published by Bauer Media. It's circulation was around 194,000 in 2009, and just like all magazines, it makes money mostly by advertising. As it's a film magazine, it advertises films, so it makes a lot of money that way. The magaine contains films reviews, interviews with the directors and stars and behind the scenes stories.

I will be making only a front cover of a film magazine, unlike my previous works where I created a double page spread and contents page as well as a front cover. Empire magazine's front covers are always unique in every issue, depending on the main feature film they are writing about. This front covr of Empire is about the hit film "Avatar". The main feature title in the magazine shows the name of the film, with the director's name above it.This catches the readers attention and makes them want to read more.

Total Film is a British Film magazine produced every month. It was established in 1997 and informs readers about upcoming films, reviews, interviews and much more. The magazine is published by Future Publishing (PLC). I like the front cover in this magazine as it shows a big photo of the two main characters in an upcoming film. This really attracts the readers eye. The colour scheme of the front cover works very well with the what the girl behind Daniel Craig. From this we can tell that this film has a gothic taste to it. In every front cover I see, there is always words like 'Amazing' or 'the best..'. These sort of words can always convince the reader that they are reading the bet magazine of it's kind. 

All magazines have forms and conventions. These are techniques used to attract the audience and make the magazine interesting to read. The most obvious form and convention is the Masthead. This is the main title of the magazine, obviously this is important so that the reader knows what the magazine is. 

Then the other forms and conventions come as follows;
The Main cover Line is the headline of the magazine, this is similar to a newspaper, the most important story or article is displayed partially on the front page to attract the audience's attention. 
The Main cover lines is backed up by a photo of the main article. This photo could be of a band or particular artist, or any other thing depending on the genre of the magazine. 
Puffs are used to boost the magazine's status, things like "the greatest magazine ever" are often said to make the reader want to buy the magazine. 
Plugs are used to hook the audience and catch their attention. This could be a Competition Notice on the front cover or a Special Offer. "FREE Music CD Inside!". This makes the reader or audience want to read on to find out what it is. 
Strapline is a secondary headline, usually under the main headline, to further explain what the main article or story is about. This Anchors the meaning of the headline.

Cover Price- This isn't really something that is used to catch the audiences attention, but to show the price of the magazine. However, it does have to be clear otherwise the audience may not see it and buy the magazine for a diffrent price. 

Bar Code- the bar code is also next to the Cover Price, which is also accompanied by theissue number. The issue number tells the audience what the magazines number it is. For example, monthly magazine running for 24 months would be Issue 24.

Filming a closing scene

I want to film a short, fast paced scene, lasting around 5 seconds, to put at the end of our trailer. The scene shows Jess, played by Kate Burden, as the last remaining survivor of the horror, running throughthe woods. She falls on the ground in front of the camera. We then see a close up shot of her arms, dirty and covered in blood. something drags her away fast and we hear a scream.
We will film this scene on Tuesday 6th December and hopefully finish the montage part of the trailer by the 10th of December.

The Trailer... So far.

We did our second screening of the trailer to the class. Class enjoyed the trailer and helped me to pick out certain parts which needed improving. Such as the voice recordings, which is really bad quality. There are also some spelling mistakes which were pointed out to me. I have the Adobe Premier File saved so I can easily edit the titles and correct the spelling.

Storyboard for first sequence

This goes with the Script in the post below.

Script for first scene

Molly, Jess and Katy sitting down in a park bench.

Katy: Ghosts? Are you serious?... Don't tell me you believe in that pointless crap.

Molly: What do you mean?

Katy: How can it be true? an invisible being floating around?

Molly: Think about it, where do you think you go when you die?

Katy: I don't know but i just don't believe in ghosts and stuff like that.

Molly: Okay.. I'll prove it to you..

Katy: Ha! good luck doing that, How you gonna do it?

Molly: I don't know let me think

Jess: Wasn't Alex talking about an abandoned house last week that went with Will?

Molly: Oh yeah he was, can you ring him and ask him about going?

Jess: yeah no worries i'll ring him when i get home

Trailer - Second Edit

This is a completely different edit to the one I have shown before. I prefer this one a lot more.

Montage

Although we have drawn some storyboards showing how our trailer would look, those were just for the scenes which we were filming. Now we are drawing storyboards to show the montage of the trailer. This means the order the clips are going to be edited together. We want to create a trailer where it shows different parts of the movie in non-chronological order. So for example, we might show a shot of the abandoned house at the very start of the trailer to grab the audience's attention.

Our first edit didn't go very well because it was slow and didn't look like a horror trailer. So I spent some time looking at other horror trailers to gather some ideas. I found out that a god way of showing clips is fast and with fading to black at the end. This gives the trailer flow and works well.

This is what our trailers looks like now. I added some loud horror sound effects such as loud bangs, which work well with the titles.

This is the plan for the montage. As you can see its different to the storyboards I did because
this is for the finished trailer. some clips will not be in the same order.

Editing The Trailer

With all of the filming done, apart from one very short scene, I am now in charge of editing the Trailer. I will need to spend as much time Eiting as I did filming, in order to ensure the montage works well and the trailer works. I need to design a plan for the montage, trying out different approaches. I also need to find suitable music for the film trailer. It needs to be tense music with a horror feel to it.

Karl Marx and the Representation of the Working Class

Proletariat - People working, doing labor in order to earn money. A fine example of Proletariat in Britain is the coalworkers in 1935, who spent 6 hours per day down in the mines doing dirty, manual work. The Proletariat is the main working class in the UK.
Bourgeosie - People making profits from other's labor. These people are usually large bussiness owners or factories owners.

Scenes 3 and 4

Scene 3 – Alex, Molly, Jessica and Katy are walking through the forest. Medium camera shots tracking their legs are they walk.

Katy: so how is this place?

Alex: not far, just a couple more minutes.

Long shot of the abandoned house in the forest, with the 4 friends walking towards it on the right, medium long shot of the house, with Alex, Molly, Katy and Jessica standing in front of the house.

Close up shot of the 4 friends facing towards the house (the camera)

Alex: Come on, let’s go inside

Molly: Hmmm I don’t think so Alex, it looks dangerous

Alex: Well im going in, you coming or not?

Katy, Alex, Molly and Jessica start climbing through a broken window, extreme close ups of their hands on the window frames.

After going in, the camera slowly zooms in to the window and fades into black and into the next scene.

Scene 4

Inside the house, Alex and the girls are inside. Long shot of them through the window frame. House is trashed, rubbish everywhere and graffiti on the walls.

Girls are too scared so they wait outside

Katy: No way, im waiting outside

Katy climbs through the window back outside. Molly and Jessica follow her. Close up shot of them walking out.

Alex walks around the house and looks at the walls. He sees the names of them written on the walls in black ink. Over the shoulder view of alex with the writing in the background. Extreme close up of alex’s face and eyes.

The girls are waiting outside sitting down against the wall, talking and laughing. They then hear a scream from alex inside the house, The screen quickly goes black.

Film Distribution

Once a film has been produced, the next stage of the timeline is the distribution. Distribution means the selling of the finished product to the cinemas and film company's. Marketing is a big part of the distribution process because it involves the advertising of the finished film. Without advertising, there isn't going to be a big enough audience, which means the film will lose money.

Marketing


Printed Advertising - Poster Campaigns, Billboards, Bus stops, buses, Tube stations, Magazines

TV commercials - costs a lot of money

Cinema trailers

Youtube Trailers/ Official Movie website

ALL of the above are examples of above the line advertising. This means that they are the types of advertising which has to be paid for.

Below the line advertising is the opposite, it is a free form of advertising made possible by recent changes in technology.

The 'Share' function available on ALL Youtube videos

For example, the introduction of social networks in the recent years has had a huge impact on the distribution of films. Let's say someone watches a film trailer on youtube and they like it, so they decided to 'share' the video on their facebook profile, this then becomes available to everyone else. This way of advertising is free because the film producer does not need to pay, instead, the audience advertises the film through facebook. Another way social networking can advertise films for free is through facebook pages. Facebook pages can be created absolutely free and can help to advertise the film.

Stars being photographed by the media

Empire (Film magazine)

Film premiers can attract a lot of media coverage. A lot of media companies, especially those based in Films will often visit premiers and photograph the stars and the film makers. Magazine companies such as Empire will get photographers to travel to the premiers. This is free advertising for the film company because they are not paying for any of it, instead, the other media company are advertising the film in their magazines or tv shows.


The same goes with Film reviews in magazines and talk shows. There is a Symbiotic relationship between film magazines and the actual films themselves. This means that they both benefit the fact that the magazine covering the film, as the magazine needs material, and the film needs to advertise. Obviously if the film has a good review, readers will want to go and watch the film.

Word of mouth advertising

This sort of advertising is usually what gets around the quickest. It is simply advertising through people communicating. Simple people talking to each other about a recent film trailer they saw can lead to other people finding out about it. Someone who has seen a film trailer which they liked can recommend it to a friend. This send works like a chain letter and it gets around quickly.

Unique Selling Proposition
"Scariest Film of the year"
"Funniest Comedy since..."

First and Second scenes edited

We have filmed our first and seconds scenes. We have edited them together using Adobe Premier Pro and edited the colour to create a more professional look.

Scene 2 - A more detailed script..

Scene 2

Here is a more detailed script for the second scene of the film trailer.

1^st Shot

Establishing shot, Extreme Long shot with the forest in the background. Cloudy Day.  Pan up slowly. Shot length – 5 seconds.

2^nd Shot

Fade into shot of Alex sitting on his bag smoking a cigarette. Use Rule of thirds to create a more interesting shot. Shot length – 5 Seconds

3^rd Shot

Shot of Alex from behind with the girls in front walking towards him. Medium shot, blurred background then focuses on the girls.

Alex: where have you been? I’ve been waiting so long!

4^th Shot

Shot from the side view, The girls walk past Alex

Molly: come on, hurry up and finish that stupid thing.

5^th Shot

Close up of Alex taking one last puff from the cigarette. Close up of his hand flicking the cigarette .  

Close up of alex picking up his bag.

6^th Shot

Alex runs to catch up with the girls and  they walk into the forest. Medium long shot from behind. Fades into black screen. 

Our Filming Schedule

The filming schedule will help us to stay on track and make sure we don't overrun past our deadline. ALL filming must be completed by christmas. We hope to finish filming in a couple weeks time, then we have time to edit our film trailer, which should take about 1 week.

Monday 3rd October

• Check camera for battery and memory. 
• Get Katy to come to a location and film first scene. 
• Film first scene.
• Transfer clips onto laptop and edit them together.

Thursday 6th October

• Filming Scene 2 of the trailer. 
• Charge camera
• check equipment - tripod
• Go to location and set the scene. 
• Film the scene
• Drop of the clips onto computer.

Friday 21st October


 Filming scenes 3 - 6

• Charge camera and check memory
• Prepare equipment
• Meet my group and catch the bus to the location
• Prepare scene, props, costume
• Set camera
• Start Filming
• Finish Filming
• Upload clips to hard drive

Tuesday 22nd November

• Check camera battery
• Prepare equipment
• Prepare setting, scene.
• Find good spot to shoot from
• Film
• Upload clips to hard drive for editing.

Script for Scenes 1 to 4

I have finished the scripts for the scenes 1,2,3 and 4 in our trailer. obviously the scenes are very short because this is a trailer.

Scene 1 – Medium close up shot of Katy sitting down, smoking a cigarette. Then receives a text message. She picks up her phone to look at the text. Extreme Close up shot of the text and Katy replying to it. She presses 'send' and the frame stops there. The scary music starts and fades to black. 

Scene 2 – Friends approaching the forest. Establishing shot with forests in the background, Alex sitting on his bag smoking, in the middle of the shot. Then it fades into a medium shot of Alex:

Alex - ‘where have you been? I’ve waited ages!’

Next shot is Jessica, Katie and molly walking towards him, then as they walk past (without making eye – contact).

Molly – ‘come on, hurry up, and finish that fag.’

Close up shot of Alex taking one final drag and flicks it on to the floor, picks up his bag. There is an extreme long shot of Alex walking to catch up with the 3girls and them walking towards the forest. Fades into a black screen.

Scene 3 – Alex, Molly, Jessica and Katy are walking through the forest. Medium camera shots tracking their legs are they walk.

Katy: so how is this place?

Alex: not far, just a couple more minutes.

Long shot of the abandoned house in the forest, with the 4 friends walking towards it on the right, medium long shot of the house, with Alex, Molly, Katy and Jessica standing in front of the house.

Close up shot of the 4 friends facing towards the house (the camera)

Alex: Come on, let’s go inside

Molly: Hmmm I don’t think so Alex, it looks dangerous

Alex: Well im going in, you coming or not?

Katy, Alex, Molly and Jessica start climbing through a broken window, extreme close ups of their hands on the window frames.

After going in, the camera slowly zooms in to the window and fades into black and into the next scene.

Scene 4

Inside the house, Alex and the girls are inside. Long shot of them through the window frame. House is trashed, rubbish everywhere and graffiti on the walls.

Girls are too scared so they wait outside

Katy: No way, im waiting outside

Katy climbs through the window back outside. Molly and Jessica follow her. Close up shot of them walking out.

Alex walks around the house and looks at the walls. He sees the names of them written on the walls in black ink. Over the shoulder view of alex with the writing in the background. Extreme close up of alex’s face and eyes.

The girls are waiting outside sitting down against the wall, talking and laughing. They then hear a scream from alex inside the house, The screen quickly goes black.

The Theory of Trailers

What is a marketing campaign and why is it needed?
The marketing campaign plays a big role in advertising an upcoming film to it's target audiences. The companies who loan the film to cinemas to show for a period of time are called the distributors.

Film producers pay a Sales Agent to sell the film to a distributor, who then sells to a cinema. Its quite simple when you think about it. It is said that 25% of a film's total budget goes towards marketing, which is a huge amount when you think about it, given that the film is massively expensive to produce.
Before a trailer is made however, a test screening of the film is shown to an audience of mixed social, race and gender groups. These people watch the test screening and vote for which bits are best to pick out and go on the film trailer. Also, if the audience do not enjoy the film ending, they can give ideas how to change it, so the producer can then quickly film a new scene. The older scene is then put as an alternative ending inside the film's DVD package.

It is important for a trailer to show the genre of the film because the audience need to know if they are going to see the film depending on what genre they enjoy watching. Film trailers need to show evidence of genre which we, as the audience, can decode as we watch. Things like the film Title can give away the genre. Acting, Props, Music, Location and Script can also show the genre.

When is the film trailer produced, in terms of the production timeline?
Most trailers are produced at the same time as the film is being cut and edited.

Script Writing

Before we start filming our trailer, we need to write up a script. We can't just start filming as we go along, we need a plan so we know exactly what we are doing and what each character needs to say. Things in the script include location, character voices and lines to say, camera movement.

On the right is an example of a script I downloaded of the internet. The script describes the scenes and the mise en scene.

Me and my group have already started writing our script. We are writing a short script for each scene. That way we can script a scene and write a storyboard for it so we have it planned straight away. 

Class Presentation

Me and my group, Kate, Nicole and Zoe had to put together a class presentation about our film trailer idea. We first talked a bit about what our film is about, the genre and the target audience. We then moved on to talk about our key scenes, together with storyboards to show the class our idea in picture form. Our teacher, Mr Morris, video recorded each group whilst they did their presentation, as evidence of planning. My group's presentation went rather well. After we finished, we used the video cameras to record two interviews with a student and our teacher. We asked them what they thought of our idea, and then we asked if they spotted any potential flaws in the idea. I will post the two videos as soon as I can get hold of them and edit the clips together.

This is the trailer for the 2006 movie ' Silent Hill'. It is a horror based on the video game series of Silent Hill.
This trailer contains certain camera shots which are effective in horror films.
However, apart from camera shots, the editing is also a good convention. The footage is de-saturated and the contrast turned up slightly to create a more cinematic look.
I plan to use this technique when editing the footage from the film Trailer we are doing.




This is a video clip showing what our presentation looked like.

Conventions in Film Trailers

Titles
Music
Voices form characters
Diegetic Sound
Captions
Revews- start ratings and quotes
Production Companies
Famous Actors
Director's previous work
Genre
Non-Linear
Voice over

Diary

This will be a weekly diary post where I talk about what I've been doing in the lessons each week.

19/09/2011 - In today's lesson, we premièred our short films and trailers to the rest of the class in order to receive feedback from them. The class like my short film ' Day in the life' and they gave me good feedback. They said they liked the camera shots, and that the music and the black and white effect really fitted in nicely with the shots.
Next lesson, we are going to start planning our Proper Productions. The short films and trailers we did were practise. Hopefully from the feedback I received form the class I can create a better quality film trailer.


20/09/2011

In today's lesson, we were given 4 days to put together a presentation as a group to talk about our idea. We were given a word document with a series of question which would help us with the presentation.

24/09/11

In today's lessons, each group did their presentation to the class. My group was up first, and our presentation went really well. Our teacher had filmed each presentation so we could upload the clip to this blog, which I will be sure to do as soon as I can get hold of the clip. We then interviewed people about their opinions of our ideas.

29/09/11
In today's lesson we studied two trailers of upcoming films and we looked at their conventions. we determined what genre the film was and what made the director or producer choose those conventions. It is important for me and my group to take ideas from other trailers of the same genre as ours and use them in our own.

30/09/11

In today's lesson we edited the videos form last weeks class presentation. I cut some parts out of our presentation which weren't so important and then edited the interviews by a classmate and our teacher.
Me and my group also started to draw storyboards and writing scripts for the 1st, 2nd and 3rd scene in our trailer.

03/10/11
In today's lesson we were looking at the theory of film trailers. We looked at how films end up in the cinema and the steps producers take before producing a film trailer. I learned about why it is important for a trailer to show us the genre and how this is established.

04/10/11
In today's lesson we finished our storyboards for scenes 1 to 4 and also wrote our scripts for those scenes. We have already filmed our first scene, which is very short but I have began editing it. We now need to create a filming schedule and then we can continue filming.

06/10/11
Today I went with my group to film the second scene of our trailer. It took us 25 minutes to film, with some mistakes made in the acting. I then uploaded the clips to my computer where i began editing them. I cut the clips to create a montage. I also edited the colour in the clips, to create a more movie-like effect.

21/10/11

Most of our filming is now done. We all met up on Friday 21st October and got the bus to Pembury where our filming location is. We were at the abandoned house 2 hours filming and we have over 6-7 minutes of footage, which we can cut the best bits from to put in our trailer. We yet still have to do one more scene of the remaining character running through the woods, so that will be filmed shortly. I have already began to edit the footage we filmed on Friday. At the moment I am only cutting the clips and putting them on the timeline. When we have filmed the last part, I will then, (with the help from my group) edit the trailer. Once I have put the clips together and in an order which makes the trailer gripping and interesting to the viewer, I will begin post-editing. This means I will add effects to the trailer, such as colour grading. I will edit the contrast and saturation of the footage, as well as add music and sound to the clips. For sound, I will to record some of the characters voices, because my camera does not pick up soound very well.

08/11/11

In today's lesson I showed my trailer so far to the class. People in the class, including my teacher, then made comments on my blog post. They left opinions on my trailr and what they enjoyed about it. After watching other people's trailers, It really got me thinking that I need to get my trailer going. We have filmed all of our footage, and now I need to spend as muchtime as I can to edit the trailer. I need to find some good music to go with it, and design a plan for the montage.

22/11/11

Today we filmed an opening sequence for the trailer. Through Audience Feedback, we realised that our original sequence didn't have much of an impact on the viewer. I have drawn a storyboard for this opening scene and we filmed it, with some Audio difficulties. The camera i am using doesn't record audio vey well, so the sound was recorded using a mobile phone, which made the audio worse.

29/11/11

I saved a copy of the trailer so far and showed it to the class. They thought the trailer looked good apart from the sound of voices, which is hard to understand. So in the same lesson we managed to get a good microphone and we recorded the voices we needed. I then put the voices over the original ones and synchronised with the footage. The result was fantastic and now our trailer has very good quality sound.

Practise Short Film

For my practise production, i want to produce a short film about a homeless person. I want to film different scenes showing parts of their day.
I wanted to film the whole thing in black and white. After watching the music video for Ed Sheeran's song 'A Team', about a drug addict with no home, i was inspired to make my film also in black and white. I think it creates a nice effect and changes the mood of the audience.

Scene 1 - The establishing shot. This is an extreme long shot showing the setting of the scene. I want to show the whole scene, as well as the homeless person sleeping on the bench in the distance.
I then zoom in to the homeless person to create a long shot, showing her sleeping on the bench. the girl then wakes up and looks around her, confused and hungover.
dissolves from long shot to close up of the her face, showing her emotions.

Scene 2 - The next scene shows homeless person begging for money in the streets holding up a sign. Pedestrians walk by and ignore her. I will use medium close ups showing the homeless girl in the corner of the shot and the streets in the background. The homeless person then receives money from a passer-by.

Scene3 - supermarket-the homeless girl enters a supermarket and buys food with the little money she has made.

Evil Awaits - Film Trailer Planning

Media Film Trailer Pitch

Film title: Evil Awaits

Genre: Horror

Setting: Forest, Abandoned House

Location: Southborough, Pembury

Mise en Scene: forest, inside house, dark lighting

Storyline: A group of friends, Katy, Jessica, Molly and Alex, go camping in a forest, only to find they are not alone in the forest. They encounter a paranormal entity during the night, an evil spirit craving for death. One by one they each encounter Evil.

Cast

Katy – played by Zoe Hilton

Jessica- played by Nicole Taylor

Molly- played by Kate Burden

Alex- played by Miguel Pilgrim

Key Scenes

Scene 2 - The 4 Friends meet up to go camping in the forest. Medium close up camera shots and medium shots. The 4 friends walk of into the forest, long shot from behind slowly panning up and showing the top of the tree line. Panning shots. 

Scene 4 - Low angle, long shot of the house, trees in the background. Alex, Jessica, Molly and Katy are walking through the woods when they come across the abandoned house. Long shots panning. the 4 friends are looking at the house in confusion, medium shot. 

Target Audience

Males and Females 15- 30 year olds. Mostly British Teenagers because the film is about a group of teens.

What trailers have offered inspiration? (part or whole)

The Blair Witch Project- A group of friends camp in a forest in search of an urban legend. They encounter something paranormal and disappear one by one. This film inspired me to create a similar trailer to it.

Paranormal Activity- This is similar to Blair witch Project in the sense that it was very low budget and filmed with ‘hand held camcorders’. 

Production Case Studies

I will be talking about 2 Film Production case studies, talking a bit about the films, their budget, profit made and why I think the film was produced.


The first film I would like to talk about is Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later. I will talk a bit about the film and included a link to the movie trailer.




Genre: Horror, Sci-fi, Thriller
Directed by Danny Boyle
Written by Alex Garland
Budget (cost to make) £5,000,000
The film is about a highly contagious 'rage' virus which spreads across the United Kingdom rapidly and devastates country. The story follows the characters Jim, Selena, Mark, Frank and his daughter Hannah as they search for safety. However, throughout their path to 'safety', they have many encounters with the 'Infected'.
The opening scene I think is the most powerful part of the film. It shows Jim, one of the main characters, waking up from a coma 28 days later after the initial start of the virus spread, in a deserted hospital in central London. He wanders around on his own, confused, wondering what is happening. Then he walks through the streets of central London, across the famous London bridge and Big Ben. The streets are littered and completely deserted. Everything is dead silent.

The film was a huge success in the UK because it was so well made. however, it wasn't just the fantastic camera work and acting that made the film worth watching, it was the fact that it was filmed on location. The shots of the deserted London streets really shocked the audiences and created a sense of fear amongst them. Just imagine yourself walking through the lonely streets of London just like Jim did in the opening scenes. When people watched the film, they see the locations it is filmed in and they think to themselves, "Hey, I've been there".
Personally when I watched the film, I experience a cold chill down my spine various times throughout the film. I live in the UK myself, so when I watched the film I just imagined "what if this really happened?"
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The Second film I want to talk about is Saving Private Ryan. The film was released in July 1998 and the movie follows the story of a group of soldiers in WW2 Europe on a mission to rescue Pvt. Ryan, the last remaining son of a mother of 4 sons who all died in the invasion of Normandy in June 1944.

Director: Steven Spielberg
Written by: Robert Rodat
Main Cast: Matt Damon, Tom Hanks
Genre: War, Drama
Budget: $70,000,000

The movie starts with a view of a cemetery in America. We then see Pvt. Ryan as an old man, walking with his family who are walking a few metres behind him. He arrives at an unknown grave in the war cemetery and he burts into tears of sadness. The movie then flips back to June 1944 and we see the main protagonist played by Tom Hanks. We see the invasion of normandy, thousands of soldiers invading the beaches of German occupied France in small boats. The invasion scene lasts a long 20 minutes, with a lot of blood and gore, a lot of war scenes such as ultra realistic explosions and mass killing.

The film was a huge success when it came and today is a modern classic. I think the movie was such a success because of it's realism and accuracy to the real life events that happened in June 6th, 1944. The camera work directed by Steven Spielberg is fantastic, using the hand-held technique to really put the audience into the action. The film shows exactly what the war was like, the bloody scenes of gore and devastation.

Film Production

1) Idea- A Writer comes up with an idea for a film, but it could also be a Producer or a Director coming up with the idea.

2) Development Finance- The writer or person with the idea then goes to a group of film investors and pitches their idea to them. If the people like it, they will give the writer some development money to further develop their idea.

3) Script Development- A script is then made for the film, and a sales treatment which will be used to sell the film to investors.

4) Packaging Moment- Merchandise for the film is made, in order to make some money before the film is produced and released. The genre of the film is also decided, in order to determine the audience for the film. A storyboard is also created with the cast listing.

5) Financing- Investors. Pre-sales. Insurance. Completion Bond- insurance in case the film doesn't get finished, so the producers don't lose all their money.

6) Storyboarding, Casting, Equipment, Special Effects, Set Design.

7) The Shoot

8) Post Production- working on editing the film, sound editing rough cut ect..

Audience Feedback from my Pitch

Last lesson me and my classmates formed a small focus group to discuss ideas for the short film which we have to produce as part of our coursework. Each member of the group discussed their ideas for the potential title of their film, the genre, setting/ props to use, a description of a key scene, the target audience and the relationships the films has to previous films. it was helpful to know what other people were thinking of doing, as i could gather up some extra ideas for my own film.
The group then did a poll and everyone voted for the idea which they                thought would be most successful, my idea received 4 votes which i was pretty happy with.

Pitch

Potential Title for my short film - Alone

Genre - post nuclear war/ post apocalypse

Setting/Props- Nuclear Bunker, clothes, debris

Description of one key scene - main character wakes up in a nuclear war bunker in the year 2020 to find his town devastated by a mass terrorist gas attack following an invasion by air. The main scene is Joe Fetts emerging  from the bunker and seeing the devastation first hand. he wanders through his town looking for survivors, a task proven much difficult as Joe had ever imagined. I will use series of extreme long shots/ establishing shots to show the opening scene, as well as many medium/close up shots to show the emotion of the main character. i will also be using props to create mise en scene, such as the dead people and the damage

Relationship to previous films- my short film has a very similar opening scene to Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later, when the main character Jim wakes up from a coma in a London Hospital. He wakes up to find he has been abandoned in a seemingly empty London. As he wanders through the empty streets of central london we see that he is infact alone.

Target audience- 15- 40 year olds.