Saturday 4 May 2013

F I N A L C U T O F T R A I L E R

This is the final and finished version of our trailer 'Cirque'.



Untitled from jessie keegan on Vimeo.

T I T L E S

I have created these titles using InDesign to go into our trailer to add a sense of storyline and plot, and to add some narrative. This is one of the things that was really emphasized in all of the feedback we received from the first draft viewing. The idea of the titles is that they are quotes from local newspapers and news channels reporting the events surrounding the travelling circus, and I thought this was a good way to narrate our trailer and quite a unique way of doing so.

The first title is to set the scene and is quite innocent and not scary at all, building suspense and not letting on that anything bad has happened yet. The second title is suddenly introducing the idea that there have been murders at the circus. This title goes well with the heightened sense of urgency that the footage and trailer is now reaching. As the suspense and tension builds, the final title is the most extreme title urging people to 'lock their doors', hinting that this clown character is on the loose and very dangerous. The build up of these titles I think will be really effective at not only building up suspense and action but also letting the viewer know what will be going on roughly in the film itself.

The design I incorporated into the titles relates well to my poster design too, with the coloured lines that look quite graphical and arty.






T R A I L E R F E E D B A C K (AUDIENCE/CLASS FEEDBACK)

We were able to do a showing of our first rough cut trailer to our class and three teachers and we made a questionnaire for them to fill out.

1.Our peers thought that our establishing shots were to light and un-threatening so they suggested that we grade the images so that they are darker and build on the idea that the trailer is for a horror.


2.They said they thought the clown (the killer) is introduced to early on in the trailer and they think it would be better if he was introduced near the end to create shock, but our best visual shots have the clown in and we really like using the spinning tunnel at the beginning as we find it quite chilling so we will have to discuss what we are going to do about this.
 

3.They said that they liked how the fast shots were edited but they think that we should use more of a variation between slow and fast. Perhaps a slow cut of the hands round the door in slow motion and then a quick shot of the clowns head close up, this would create building tension then shock.

4.They liked the titles that had been used but they thought we should explain more of the story with them, maybe use reviews as titles or a newspaper cutting with something like “mysterious deaths at local circus”
 



These are the results from the audience feedback questionnaires:












T R A I L E R F E E D B A C K (FROM MODERATION)



www (What Went Well):
  • You have so much great footage. The whole trailer has the potential to be absolutely brilliant.
  • Looking through the footage you have not yet incorporate into the trailer, you have more than enough shots of the public to hint effectively at the narrative (contrasting the normal life of the circus with the ominous clown).
  • We loved your long, leggy shadow shots!
ebi (Even Better If):
  • Think very carefully about how you are going to cut the clips together to build pace and tension. Remember, when you are editing a trailer you only need 1 or 2 seconds of footage to show the audience what is going on. You shouldn’t tell the story or follow a chronology, but think about how you can use length of shots and contrast of light/dark, normal/sinister, etc to raise questions and build tension.
  • Re-watch some of the indie and horror trailers you analysed to remind yourselves of how many – and how short – the shots are.
  • You need to include: BBFC screen, title (at end, rather than beginning?). Actors names? You can get away with being very minimalist in how much you give the audience, but experiment with including conventional title shots, and then try stripping them back.   

T E A S E R F I R S T C U T

This is the first rough cut of our trailer:



TRAILER 21ST APRIL from jessie keegan on Vimeo.

This is a very rough cut of the trailer and it still needs a great deal of work, including adding titles and a soundtrack. However, it was helpful to start putting all the shots together into some kind of order and sequence. We now need to focus on the things we need to add to it and we will also be getting feedback next week from both moderation and also from our class so we can use this feedback to improve it further. 

N E W A N D F I N A L W E B S I T E D E S I G N

This is my new and final website design which I will now make into a website using Dreamweaver and also embed my trailer into.



WEBSITE URL: http://www.stmaryleboneschool.com/studentsite/Media%20A2/Jessie/index.html

I have followed the feedback I received and have made a new website design which not only follows the feedback I got but also now relates to my new poster design too. The white box is where the trailer will be inserted and there are going to be links to the official Twitter, Facebook and YouTube pages of Cirque. 

I think this website design is a lot more effective than my first draft design which was much too bright and cheerful. I think that having the black background is a lot more scary and typical of a horror genre website. I have also tried to keep the website related to my poster by including the same imagery and graphics and also the billing box, ratings and title. 


W E B S I T E F E E D B A C K

I received this feedback, after moderation, for my website:

  • Same as poster – experiment with a dark background to make the genre more explicit.
  • Play around with a billing box (beneath the trailer) and incorporate Ts & Cs.
  • I’m not sure about the font for ‘the circus is coming to town’. I don’t think the simplicity quite works – consider blurring the text, and playing with colour.

    Since I have already updated and completely changed my poster in order to work on the feedback I got for it, I will now have to both follow this feedback and also make a new website design that is based upon my new website design, which is a lot more scary, with the inclusion of much darker colours.  

    Since my new poster is mainly black in colour, my new website will also be black to relate to the poster and therefore should hopefully therefore allow me to make sure that my new website follows this feedback I have just been given. 

W E B S I T E D R A F T

This is the first draft that I made of my website, still with my first draft poster in mind when I made it. I made this quite quickly and therefore I am really not pleased with it but hopefully when I receive feedback for it I can input changes and improve it, or even make a new one if I decide to change my poster too. I also wasn't able to use very good fonts as I made it on the school computer and couldn't download new fonts, so I want to change these at some point.




Friday 5 April 2013

N E W U P D A T E D F I N A L P O S T E R

After taking in the feedback I got for my poster, I decided that I didn't really like my original final poster and agreed with the feedback that it is too fun and innocent looking and doesn't really scream out horror to the viewer. I also took on board the idea that my poster should have a darker colour palette to make it seem scarier and decided the make the background of this new poster black. I have also included a strap line 'roll up, roll up' to this poster, which was another recommendation I received in my feedback. I have used the same review quotes and the hexagonal shaped stars, as well as the same billing box. I have also maintained a similar colour scheme of yellow, blue and red in this new and updated poster. The involvement of the lines on the image of the clown face also hints at the fact that the film is a slightly art-house horror in that it is unique and creative. There is also still as aspect of simplicity and blank space, which I wanted to remain as I like the look of a more simplistic poster, which also relates to the art-house genre.


P O S T E R F E E D B A C K

I have recently gotten feedback for my poster following its moderation and, although positive feedback, I will now have to implement the recommended changes in order to improve it further.

'It follows the conventions and is stylish and well designed' however the recommendations are:
  • at first glance, it is too jolly: until you look closely, the poster is not clearly an advert for a horror film. Even an art-house film would need to follow some generic conventions to draw in passersby.

    • To remedy this, we suggest that you play with a darker colour palette. You might find that using a grey or black background, rather than a white one, is all you need to make it clear what genre you are working in.

  • Include your strap line (present on the website) on your poster.
  • ‘Coming soon’ at the top in the centre would balance out the poster and be in keeping with poster conventions.'



Wednesday 27 March 2013

F I R S T D R A F T P O S T E R



This is the final first draft poster I have created using InDesign in time for my first set of feedback. I wanted to keep the design simplistic as I really liked the designs of some of the more simplistic existing horror posters, with a lot of use of white space and imagery within text. I think I also have achieved a good sense of colour scheme, using the eye dropper tool in InDesign.


Monday 11 March 2013

P O S T E R S W I T H S I M I L A R C O N V E N T I O N S

I have found these movie posters, two of which are for horrors, that have similar conventions to my final poster design:


I really like how in this poster, for 'The Last Exorcism', has quite a lot of white space which I think is really effective and is why my poster has a lot of white space. I think it also evokes questions from the viewer and intrigue into what the film will be like. I also really like the black and white style. 


This poster also has a similar style the one above, with white space and one central image which is really eye catching and again, evokes questions to the viewer. I really like the simple text that is spaced out, similar to the title on my poster where the letters are well spaced out from each other. 


This particular poster reminded me of my poster in that an image is combined into the text, and I think this is really effective as it ensures the poster achieves quite a simplistic look, as if only with text and one simple image, but in fact has multiple image because there is an image within the text. The image is hinting at a main character, which mine also does. I think this effect looks really cool. 

Wednesday 20 February 2013

R E J E C T E D F I R S T D R A F T D E S I G N S:

F I R S T  R E J E C T E D  D E S I G N :


S E C O N D  R E J E C T E D  D E S I G N :

T H I R D  R E J E C T E D  D E S I G N :



B I L L I N G B O X C R E A T I O N

Since a billing box is a compulsory aspect to a film poster I needed to create one for my own poster, using a similar structure and design to those on existing film posters, like the posters I analysed previously. I looked at the billing box from the poster for the film 'Peep World', which was a billing box we looked at in class, as I liked the structure of it and this really aided me in the making of my own:



I noticed that the name of the production company and distributor are located at the top of the billing box in larger, more spaced out lettering. I decided on 'Capture Pictures' as the name of the production company and 'Playhouse Entertainment' for the name of the distributor as I searched related words to the word 'film' and 'cinema' and the word 'Playhouse' came up in my thesaurus search. I liked how it sounds and how it looks as a logo. It also relates to cinema and motion picture.

I came up with a few variations of logos before deciding on my final two which are on the third billing box down, which is my final billing box design. I really liked the mix of bold and regular text so I thought that for the 'Capture Pictures' logo, the third one down would be the best and not too fussy that it diverts attention away from the poster design itself.


I created a few different billing boxes, with the third one down being my final design:




I N I T I A L P O S T E R M O C K U P S + B R A I N S T O R M







F I R S T L O G G I N G O F F I L M

Today I logged all of our filming onto the harddrive which is connected to a Mac computer in the muse studio. I began to sort out the useful clips that we will consider using in our trailer from the not so useful clips that can be rejected. This way when we begin editing we won't have masses of footage to go through and will be a lot less complicated.

We finally figured out how to convert out footage so that it was compatible with Final Cut Pro using a program called MPEG Streamclip, which was successful in converting the footage. I didn't want to begin editing yet as Melody wasn't in so I thought it best to wait until next time we go to the muse.

Next time we go to the muse we will now be able to begin editing and making our trailer with the footage we have shot!

Saturday 12 January 2013

P O S T E R A N A L Y S I S

W I N T E R W O N D E R L A N D F I L M I N G C O M P L E T E D

Filming at Winter Wonderland in Hyde Park was really successful and we managed to get loads of really useful and exciting shots that we will definitely be able to use in our trailer.We were able to go into a fun house, which we had hoped we would be able to do, and in there we were able to take our time getting lots of different shots. Once there we saw lots of opportunities for shots we hadn't particularly planned ahead for but that looked really good, including a shot where the clown is standing over a wind machine so that the costume is blowing in the wind and looking really creepy, whilst the public walked around, to emphasize the clown causing a disturbance to the public and being let loose on people. We also went on a ghost train, which wasn't as successful in terms of filming as it was very dark and the camera therefore didn't pick up much. However, we did get shots of the strobe lighting in the ghost train ride and the sounds of screaming which may be useful in the editing stage of the trailer as a non-diegetic sound added on top of footage.  Within the fun house was a rotating tunnel which looked amazing in shots and things like a mirror maze etc, where we were able to get loads of really interesting shots that look really unique and arty, to go with the idea of having our trailer being for an art house/independent film.

Some stills from some of the footage we shot at Winter Wonderland: