Mock-up Film Poster

Magazine Second Draft

This is my second draft of the film magazine front cover.

First Draft Magazine Front Cover

This is my first draft for my magazine front cover, obviously this isn't yet finished, but this is what it will roughly look like. The front cover will consist of a big photo covering the whole of the page, like most of the film magazines do, and big titles put over the photo.

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.

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.

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.

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.