Development of final shot

For one of the final shots in the trailer, we had planned to create a shot where the dolls eyes (and nothing else) would move, like one of the shots in the 'dead silence' trailer. To do this is I started off my taking pictures of the doll, experimenting with different angles, and in the end chose one I thought would work best.

I then opened the image on photoshop, and used the 'polygon lasso tool' to select the iris of the dolls eye, and cut and pasted it as a new layer. I then selected the rest of the eye, and once again cut and pasted it as a new layer. I then filled in the blank parts of the 'whites of the eye' using the 'brush tool' and the 'smudge tool'. I then darkened the corners of the eyes once again using a black 'brush tool' and then using the 'smudge tool' and 'blur tool'. 

After that, I manipulated the colour of the iris by adjusting the 'hue/saturation' the 'levels' and 'curves' until i got the sharp blue colour. I wanted the eyes to stand out and look almost lifelike and real to juxtapose against our already perceived idea of the 'lifelessness' of an inanimate object like a doll. I also darkened the edges of the iris to make it look more sinister, by creating a new layer and using the 'brush tool' and then blend it by making the layer blurry (filter>blur>Gaussian blur). 

I then wanted to manipulate the colour of the skin to look pale and sickly. I did this firstly by selecting the skin of the doll and then cut and paste it as a new layer. I then adjusted the hue/saturation until the desired look. I then created a new layer, and using the 'brush tool' in black with an opacity of 50% I went over areas where I wanted to darken. I then blended it by using the 'Gaussian blur' filter. I repeated this step once again in areas I felt needed to be made even darker. I then changed the colour of the dolls lips by selecting, cut and pasting them as a new layer. I then manipulated the colour using the 'curves'. 

After this I saved the three different psd files, one with all the layer for the iris, another for the whites of the eyes, and another for the skin and the rest of the doll. 

I then opened these psd's on after effects, positioning them so that  first was the main image of the doll and skin, next was the iris and beneath that was the whites of the eyes. I then clicked the stop watch icon for 'position' under the layer for the iris.I then entered a key frame at the start where the iris is placed in its original position, and then a key frame near the end, where the iris is placed to the left. 

This is the final product:

Teaser trailer first draft: feedback

A focus group of seven students aged 15-20 years old, from an ABC1 socioeconomic bracket had watched the first draft of our teaser trailer and then completed this survey.The findings are summerised in the prezi bellow.
or click here.

Teaser trailer: First Draft

This is our first draft of our teaser trailer in which we started to embed our footage.


NFY edit from Media @ St. Bons on Vimeo.

Edited images!

For our teaser trailer we decided to add some fast paced shots of original images of the cursed doll Annabelle as it is based on a true story and we thought this would invite more of a wider audience. We decided to edit the images so they are not exactly the same of the original ones and we did this using Photoshop by editing the colour, brightness and contrast. We tried to make them look as historical as we could.

Soundtrack influences

For our first edit of our teaser trailer, we chose to use a sound track from an influential film to us which is called 'Dead Silence'. At first, this version seemed to fit into our narrative and was going to be used throughout, however as everything started to come together, it did not bind with the images or clips shown at the time and did not submerge with our edit the way we intended it to do so.



After noticing the soundtrack did not fit, we searched for the same soundtrack but in a different version which started off quietly and tied our teaser trailer together.

We went back onto our research and was drawn into how 'The Conjuring' had a contrast of an 'uplifting' music' in binary opposition to the loud horror music towards the end. This enabled us to understand the generic convention of a horror trailer and decided to follow the same pattern by using the same soundtrack which is called 'Hurdy Gurdy Man' by Donovan. Along this, we recorded mouse clicks to sound like camera shutter lens to portray the historical images which can also be seen in 'The Conjuring' from 00:26 seconds and we thought was to be effective.

Magazine cover development

I started to develop the magazine cover by firstly by looking at the covers of independent film magazines, particularly at white lies, and found that many of the covers took a very abstract, surreal, artistic way in manipulating pictures to make them look like sketches and illustrations, which I thought looked very unique and I wanted to replicate that in our magazine cover.

We all then drew up some drafts for the general layout of the magazine cover, and in the end chose to incorporate aspects of all of them. We decided a central medium shot of the doll was the most suitable, with an upside down triangle as the basis of the logo which we all thought looked very unique and edgy. We also copied some aspects of little white lies with the half the barcode overlapping the logo. For the title we had also decided on 'dark truth' because it infers the horror genre with the word 'dark' and 'truth' helps suggest the magazine is reviews and rates films.

In the production stage, I started off by taking a shots of the doll at different angles and then picked one. I Then developed a template based on the feedback from the rest of the group. I started off by developing the logo, by creating an upside down triangle with the 'rectangle tool' and the 'free select tool' in the colour black. I then added the title using the 'text tool' and positioned it on top of the triangle, making the text a little bigger. I then right clicked the text layer and selected 'alpha to selection' and using the 'paint brush tool' coloured the parts of the text outside the triangle in white. I then decided that a black background would look better, so I inverted the colours of the layers (colour>invert).

I then began manipulating the image of the doll I had taken, I started by duplicating the image and going to (fliter>gaussian blur) and set the radius quite high. I then went to (colours>desaturate) with the setting lightness. I then adjusted the curves (colours>curves) so that the outline of the doll could be seen more. I then set this layer to 'overlay' ontop of the original image, and merged them together. After this I removed the background using the 'free select tool' and adjusted the curves, levels and brightness-contrast, so that the colours stood out more. I then pasted this into the magazine cover template. After this I duplicated the layer three time, on the first layer, I filtered it (filters>blur>gaussian blur) and set the radius very high, and i also set the layer mode to 'hard light'. On the next layer I set the mode to 'dodge' and then to the layer ontop of that I simply adjusted the opacity and colours until I got the desired look. Then I simply added the barcode and the text 'Annabelle' to the cover.

this is the first draft:

Magazine sketch

At first, from researching other independent magazines such as 'Little White Lies', we decided to follow the same conventions used by using a main focal point. However, since our genre is horror, we changed the title and did the opposite which led our magazine to be called 'Dark Truth' to anchor the meaning behind it. To make it our unique selling point, we altered the shape to a triangle in order to not be too similar to existing independent magazines.

Magazine Influences!

We decided to look at horror magazines in order to get a brief idea of how we could create ours. Here are some of the magazines we looked at:  

We looked at a few Fangoria magazine covers and discovered that a lot of their main focal point were of the gory genre however this was in contrast to our supernatural genre so we was unable to get ideas for main images. We did like the layout of some of the magazine covers, such as having a mid-shot of the main image and the title just above in a bright red colour to stand out and catch the eye of the audience. It also connotes blood to show the audience that the genre is horror. The title Fangoria binds in with the genre of this magazine as the word 'fang' relates to vampires and vampires, which are conventional for horror films. There is also sell lines along the sides of the main image and is also a generic convention of a magazine. We liked the position of these and they are all about other horror films creating a narrative enigma for the audience.

Another magazine we looked at was 'Little White Lies'. This is a British independent movie magazine. All of the main covers for this magazine are very similar showing an illustration of the lead actor of the film. This shows how artistic and differs from all other magazines. The logo of the magazine is always placed in the center of the top of the magazine over lapping the main image and this is seen as its Unique Selling Point as no other magazine follows this pattern. The bar code is portrayed as cut in half within the logo which makes the audience and fans of this magazine familiar with it and so it is more recognizable. 

Poster Ideas

Here are some drafts that we drew out for ideas for our official film poster. We were influenced by other horror film posters and tried to use the codes and conventions of them in order to make our poster look more towards the genre. 

Here is one poster draft. The poster was influenced by the film 'The house at the end of the street'. On the left side of the poster there is the main female character looking in shock and in the far background there is a house. In one of the windows of the house we see the doll. We thought that this would create fear towards the audience and that it would be a good idea as it does not reveal the story but keeps the audience wondering why the doll is there. The title is written at the top, big and bold in order to stand put and the tag line 'She will not be asleep' is at the bottom. 

Here is another possible draft that could help us with our final film poster. This poster consists of a close up shot of the doll revealing details of the doll in order to scare the audience. We found that a lot of horror film posters were very simple and just consisted of one image so therefore we decided to keep one poster simple in order to follow the conventions. The poster is dark and the tittle is written in big at the bottom of the image to stand out and catch the eye of the audience. 

NFY Animated Storyboard

NFY animated storyboard from Media @ St. Bons on Vimeo.

Poster Influences!

For our film poster for our horror teaser trailer, We decided to get familiar with other horror film posters in order to give a slight idea as to how we could create our poster. This helped with the layout of film posters and also helped to decide the shot we will use for our main image on the poster.The following images obtained from research shows us a clear convention used to make the posters effective. They tend to follow a trend of a dark background. As shown below, they have obscured the eyes in some way as the eyes are generally what create a personal connection with the audience. Furthermore, the most emotion comes from how the eyes look. This has influenced us to follow in the same pattern and create a poster with a doll’s face to be the main image to achieve the effect of binary opposition where the doll is stereo typically supposed to be an innocent toy for girls but instead it is the main reason for the supernatural events. 

This is the film poster for the film 'Dead Silence'. As you can see the poster only consists of three main colours, red white and black and this is conventional to horror film posters as most of them only consist of three main colours. The colours all contrast well together and match well with the genre showing the audience that it is a horror film. The typography of the title is written in white and the font is unique and blurred in order to give the audience a blurred vision and to make it more effective towards horror. There is a only one image used in this poster which is of a doll and since our horror teaser trailer is based on a doll we decided to get ideas from this poster. The image is a close-up shot and the action that the doll is doing matches with the title of the film. Although the poster is very simple, it still allows the audience to know the genre of the film through the different elements such as the tag line which says 'You scream, You die' which would attract an audience looking to watch a horror film.

The 'Bride of Chucky' film poster also consists of three main colours which are black, red and white. The background of the poster is all faded black which is similar to most horror posters which has given me an idea as to how our background for the film poster could be. There is a close of shot of half the faces of two dolls. The eye on one of the dolls is blue and on the other is green suggesting evil. One of the dolls consists of scars on his face which shows pain and violence has been involved. This suggests that something bad will be happening in the film and could attract the audiences attention as they would begin to wonder how them scars had got there. As violence along with a lot of darkness is shown, this represents the genre making it clear that it is a horror film. The tag line which says 'Chucky Gets Lucky' is very short and simple. It does not give too much information out to the audience but it rhymes and this may give excitement to the audience and be effective towards the genre.

'The conjuring' film poster is quite different to the other two posters we looked at. It still carries the dark conventions however it is not as dark and the background is not black like the others. There is a dull colour palette used here and the colours are mainly black, grey and white (still three colours used throughout). we decided to look at this poster, as the film also consists a doll which is where we got out idea for our horror teaser trailer for. It was one of our main influences and so the poster will also help with ours. In this poster they use a long-shot and the image is not very clear to the audience, however we can see a child sitting on a chair with a doll on her lap. The child is facing the other way which creates mystery for the audience as to who it could be, however the audience are able to see a little bit of the dolls face. The typography of the title is written in a white bold font in binary opposition to the background and so it stands out and is clear to the audience.

Title development: production

I had decided to do something simpler for the titles in the middle of the the trailer as this is a convention many other trailers seem to follow, take for example, the Conjuring;

at first where the narrative was being set up, and all the horrific/scary events had taken place in the past, the titles were very simple, with just a plain serif font on a black background, and the font was positioned near the top left.This simplicity may have been used to help establish the historical context and add to the idea of it being 'based on a true story'.Once the narrative is established and the the horrific events start in the 'present' the titles also change, and become more animated, with the grunge texture starting to peel and crack through the background, the text now has sans serif font that's in the center of the frame.

The title of the name of the film 'the conjuring' also has a light effect across the text to make it stand out from the rest of the titles and fonts. This is what I decided to replicate in my trailer, by using no light effects in the titles for the middle of my trailer, but using the light and shadow effects with the last titles for 'Annabelle' and 'coming soon'. For the titles in the middle of my trailer, I decided to maintain a house style by using the same font and the same texture in the background, however, instead of having the light and shadow, I decided to have the text subtly scale the text so that it grown slightly in size.



from the makers of 2 from Media @ St. Bons on Vimeo.


this winter she will not sleep from Media @ St. Bons on Vimeo.

Main title development: production

After choosing a font from our story board of typogaphy ('I still know') we then chose a grungy texture by simply doing a quick search for them on Google images. I found a texture from hdwallpapers4free.com which stated that the texture could be used for free for personal or commercial use. I then opened the texture on Photoshop and manipulated the colour (image>adjustments>curves) and levels (image>adjustments>levels) and then added text using the horizontal text tool, and then added effects to the text (add layer style>drop shadow) so that it looked how we wanted it to before animating it on after effects.

























I then opened it up on after effects and made it a 3D layer. I then created a created a new solid black layer and cut out an ellipse using the ellipses tool, and then I set it to subtract, and adjusted the feather to a place where I liked it.I then added the effect CC glass to the layer, which made the image look bumpy and blurry so i adjusted the surface, softness and height until it was back to how it was supposed to look.

I then added a new light (layer>new>light) and then adjusted the settings so that the light type was 'point light' and then adjusted the softness and height so it had the desired effect. I had also adjusted the settings under the 'shading'. I then started to animate it by pressing the 'stopwatch' icon next to the light position.I then linked the annabelle light position using the 'expression pick whip' to the layer 'light 1'. This then brought an 'error' pop-up,which I resolved by typing in 'thisComp.layer("light 1").toComp([0,0,0]);'. I then made the light move across the image by pressing the stopwatch next to 'position' under the 'light 1' layer. Then with my key frame at 00s with the light position far to the left, and then dragged the key frame to the end of the timeline and dragged the light position to the far right.

I had then also managed to to get the shadow to fade in and out with the light position by pressing the stop watch next to all the options under the 'shading' tab under CC effect, and bringing the options down to 0 at the start and the end of the composition. This is the final product:

Title development: planning

Often in trailers the last shot is the name of the film that is often used at after one of the most effective and shocking shots in the trailer, in order to make the shot of the title very memorable and very effective and shocking. One thing I had noticed is that often the font and background used is in keeping with the genre and narrative of the trailer and film. For example, for 'the woman in black' the background is of a window frame, with what looks like a very cold windy day behind. This location is an important part of the narrative of the film as many of the narrative turning points take place here, which is also captured in the trailer. For example, the window sill is where three little girls inexplicably committed suicide in the open sequence, and is also a feature of the trailer where the protagonist is looking out of the window and see's a demon/ghost. Including the window frame as the background in this shot is therefore very effective at tying the whole trailer together. The font is also quite symbolic as it looks quite faded and almost 'ghost' like which is in keeping with the supernatural and historical horror genre. I had also noticed there's a slick like fabric that flows on top of the text, which I think represents the material of the dress of the actual 'woman in black' which is also quite effective at tying together all the narrative themes and the genres conventions.

Other titles for films also use a font to help convey the genre of the film, for example 'the conjuring' 'the women in black' and 'sinister' uses a serif sans font which adds to the idea of a historical setting of narrative and draws very subtle references to old religious beliefs about possession and exorcisms. From this is realised the importance of font, so I found some fonts on dafont.com and collected my favourite ones in the name of our film 'Annabel' in order to compare and contrast them.


























From this mini storyboard of font ideas, me and my group decided to go with the font 'I Still know' (http://www.dafont.com/i-still-know.font). This is a sans serif font with a distorted kind of texture which is very similar to the font used for the 'women in black' 'sinister' and 'the conjuring' all of which are films with very similar to narratives to our films, so hopefully we will be able to recreate the same sort of atmosphere and mise en scene as the trailers for these films.

Production company logo development

One of the first shots in our teaser trailers will be our production logo. One thing I had noticed while looking at various trailers is that the logos of production companies shown at the start of the trailer often has a general 'theme' that matches the horror genre. For example, in the trailer for insidious: Chapter 2 the logo for e-one is still recognizable, as it keeps its general shape and font, but the colour palette is darker, it has a black/white colour scheme which follows the general de saturated colour palette of the trailer as opposed to their original bright blue logo. The same goes for other production logos in The women in black trailer where the CBS films logo uses the same font, but distorts and manipulates the text to look more ghostly and creepy. The 'cross creak pictures' logo had also changed its colour palette and style to look more stylized and also fits the general conventions of the films trailer as well.

One thing I had also noticed about the production logos in these trailers is that they are often very simple, and understated but also quite recognizable and memorable. This is something I have therefore incorporated when creating the logo for my production company.

nfy LOGO from User22113231 on Vimeo.

Sound Tracks!

Soundtrack

After creating our storyboard, we started to consider music for our teaser trailer. The theme song of the film ‘Dead Silence’ by Charlie Clouser was one of our favourite choices. We preferred the piano version because we thought it would match well with particular scenes in our teaser trailer, for example the carousal scene. It was much slower and would build more tension towards the audience. It also matches with our sub-genre of horror that is supernatural and psychological. We decided that we are only going to use the first 28 seconds of the song as we don’t need that much of it and it will only be playing during certain scenes of the teaser trailer.

For the other parts of our teaser trailer, when messages appear we decided to add eerie wind sounds as this will anchor the audience into the teaser trailer as it is very common for trailers to add these. It would also make the audience feel anxious as there is no music playing and there is just wind and messages appearing on the screen. It will make them anticipated for what is coming. We decided to use the first 26 seconds of this clip that we discovered on YouTube as we thought it would fit in well with our teaser trailer. 

Storyboard Frame Sheet

Here is our updated storyboard in which we added more detail in the types of shots and sound we are going to be using. We also changed the story line to fit into the sub-genre of horror which is demonic/spiritual.

Timings	Sketch Frames	Visual	Audio
Shot No: 1		BBFC film certificate will appear as we are doing a UK release film.	No audio.
Shot No: 2		Our production name and logo will appear on the screen in order to promote our company to other audiences to increase marketing popularity. The camera will zoom into this.	No audio.
Shot No: 3	‘From the producers of Paranormal Activity and Insidious’	This will appear for two seconds for the purpose of showing the audience that the company is associated with other well-known films and this anchors into the genre of horror and creates cultural capital for the audience towards this genre. This is also known as director marketing. The typography will be bold and big and the camera will zoom into it.	Diegetic sound of an eerie type of music.
Shot No: 4		-Wide shot of the two main characters Mise-en-scene of props will show that they are just moving in to a new house.	Dialogue of the two girls talking and noises in the background.
Shot No: 5		-Close up shot of the doll. Camera will zoom in to reveal the face of the doll. -Questions are asked about what the doll is	Dialogue of the girls talking. Quiet music when the camera zooms into the doll into a close up shot.
Shot No: 6	‘Based on a true story’	A message will appear. The typography will be bold and big. The camera will zoom into the message before changing to the next scene.	Diegetic quiet music.
Shot No: 7		Jump cuts of loads of shots of the history of the doll. Flash cut editing in order to make the pace faster and create tension to the audience. Mise-en-scene will reveal a de-saturated colour palette here.	Diegetic quiet music. Every shot that appears on the screen, there will be a ‘click’ of a camera sound.
Shot No: 8		Wide shot of the girls having a conversation. They decide to keep the doll.	Dialogue of the girls talking.
Shot No: 9	'This winter she will not be asleep'	A message will appear on the screen to the audience letting them know a hint of the story line.	Diegetic sound of music will be added in here.
Shot No: 10		More jump cuts of scenes from the actual film giving the audience a hint of what they are going to see.	Diegetic sound of fast paced music will be added in here.
Shot No: 11		The screen will be blank here for approximately two-three seconds. This anchors in with the genre as a lot of horror teaser trailers contain these blank screens to build suspense.	It will be silent in order to build the tension.
Shot No: 12		A random scene of the camera zooming into a carousal (showing the doll in the corner). The camera will be zooming in at a slow pace.	There will be slow diegetic sound added in which will be child play type music.
Shot No: 12		There will be a jump cut, the screen will go blank and then the doll will appear closer to the carousal.	Slow diegetic music added here and will then stop.
Shot No: 13	'Coming Soon'	‘Coming Soon’ will appear on the screen. The typography will be bold and similar to those of other horror teaser trailers.
Shot No: 14		The title of the film ‘Annabel’ will appear on the screen.

Logo inspirations

We have been looking at templates for our production logo and these are a few of our favourite ones. We then asked a few friends between the age range of 15-21 which is our target audience, what they think and most of them chose number 4. This led us to use this template but alter it to make it our own unique selling point.

1 

                                                                                            

                                                 

                       

 

2

                         

                                                

3
                                                                                                             









4                                                  

Call Sheet

The main reason we have decided to produce a call sheet is to maintain our time efficiently and to be organised with our work.

NFY MEDIA

Call Sheet

Production team and crew

Producer: Yohanna

Director: Nadia

Cameraman: Fatimah, Yohanna, Nadia

Soundman: Fatimah

Actors

Character	Actor	Filming Days
Emily	Shaista	Friday
Mariya	Fatimah	Friday

Scene no.	Props
4	Doll
4	Boxes
4	Photo frames
11	Carousel toy

Scene no.	Location
4	House
4	Empty room

Monday 21st Pre-Production	Tuesday 22nd Pre-Production	Wed  23rd Pre-Production	Thursday 24th Pre-Production	Friday 25th Pre-Production	Saturday 26th	Sunday 27th
Monday 28th Pre-Production	Tuesday 29th Pre-Production	Wed 30th Pre-Production	Thursday 31st Pre-Production	Friday 1st Pre-Production	Saturday 2nd	Sunday 3rd

Monday 4th Photo shoot	Tuesday 5th Titles development	Wed 6th Locations	Thursday 7th Storyboard draft	Friday 8th Finalise storyboard	Saturday 9th	Sunday 10th
Monday 11th Sketches of magazine	Tuesday 12th Font styles	Wed 13th Evidence of development/ drafts	Thursday 14th Comparison between independent/ mainstream	Friday 15th Start filming	Saturday 16th	Sunday 17th
Monday 18th Filming and Editing	Tuesday 19th Filming and editing	Wed 20th Filming and editing	Thursday 21st Finishing poster	Friday 22nd Poster completed	Saturday 23rd	Sunday 24th
Monday 25th Additional Shots	Tuesday 26th Soundtrack research	Wed 27th Inspiration of soundtrack	Thursday 28th Final soundtrack to use	Friday 29th Reflection of storyboard	Saturday 30th	Sunday 1st

Props

Locations

Shooting Schedule: Friday 15^th

08:00 – Meet up at school (St Bonaventure’s Sixth Form)

09:00-12:00 – Shoot our two female protagonists who will be in an empty room showing they have newly moved in. Then shoot the other scene of them discussing the random doll in the room.  PROPS: Boxes, papers, clutter everywhere, photoframes, the doll. ACTORS: Olivia and Vanya

12:30- 1:30 – LUNCH

2:00-5:00 – Shoot multiple scenes of the doll and any significant features that fit into our genre of film.

SHOTS: Close up, wide shot, camera panning, mid shot, two shot