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.