Tuesday, 29 April 2014
Monday, 21 April 2014
Tuesday, 1 April 2014
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
When researching horror film marketing campaigns, we found that an important aspect of it was continuity between the products. For instance, when looking at continuity in 'the woman in black' marketing campaign:
click image to view annotation
(left to right: screen grabs from the trailer, fangoria insidious magazine cover, insidious poster)
There is a clear house style throughout the trailer, magazine cover and the poster for the 'Insidious' marketing campaign, most notably through the font used for the title, as well as the red, blue, black and white color scheme. This helps the audience identity the products with one another, and builds on their cultural capital in the film, which helps to develop a familiarity with the product, so the audience are more likely to watch the film.
We emulated this in our marketing campaign, using the same font ('I still know') and colour (white) for the title of our film, 'Annabelle' which made it very clear that all three products are part of a campaign for the same film. We also used the same colour scheme of black, white and dark blue. We also featured the doll and the protagonist throughout these products, as they are the main visual elements that ensure continuity between these products.The location of a normal, middle class family home in east London is also emphasized, with various shots throughout the trailer showing the house, and highlighting the east London accent, the poster also has the house in the background.
click image to view annotation
We also used the same colour scheme (black, white, dark blue) throughout the trailer, poster and magazine cover. This is a conventional colour scheme that is utalised by many horror films. As Steve Neal stated, “Genre is a repetition with an underlying pattern of variation” which argues that some conventions, such as a de saturated colour palette, must be repeated in order to anchor the horror genre .
For instance in the poster, the text the was white, the stormy sky background was dark blue, and the title's drop shadow and the protagonist's hair is black. The trailer also has this continuous colour scheme, with the titles having the black/blue grungy texture in the background, and white text. Many shots have a dark, de saturated colour scheme, with black playing an overriding influence, and some shots have hints of blue (refer to image below - shows a few examples of these shots). The production logo in the trailer also follows the colour scheme, with a black/blue/white stormy sky background and a white logo on top. The film magazine cover is slightly different, although it has the main colours black and white, the red/orange hair of the doll is the main colour and really stands out. We thought that even though this is slightly different from the normal colour scheme, its okay because the cover is still linked to the film though the title and it's font.
One of the main differences is that the red/orange colour of the doll hair is exaggerated. This is mostly because magazines like 'little white lies' make the image on the front cover look really artistic and imaginative.Our magazine brand, 'dark truth' took a lot of inspiration from 'little white lies' in terms of aesthetics, which is why we wanted to make the cover stand out and look quite surreal and unconventional, while still maintaining the horror genre. We also managed to keep the continuity between the magazine cover and the trailer by using the same font for the film title.
When creating the poster, we needed it to be easily identified with the trailer. To do this, we heavily featured the female protagonist, who is even wearing the same outfit. Also, the poster clearly shows her ethnicity, because the protagonist is from Asia, which may help appeal to a tertiary target audience of people from Asia, or other minority ethnic backgrounds. This can be explained by Blumler & Katz (1974) ‘Uses and Gratifications theory’ which suggests that audiences use and seek out media texts for a variety of reasons, one of which is to ‘identify with characters’ which people may do because of a shared ethnic background.
The doll is also featured in the poster, which links to the magazine cover and the trailer, although in the poster the doll is shown more subtly, but still looks quite creepy and malignant. Most of the feedback from a focus group suggests that the visual elements of the doll, along with the colour scheme, where the most significant indicators that the three products were advertising the same film.
Also the protagonist skin was deliberately manipulated in post production to look sickly and pale, to connotate fear, which links to numerous shots in the trailer where she is shot from a high angle to look vulnerable and scared. The house is also emphasized in the poster and the trailer, which helps the audience to relate to the characters, as the primary target audience are likely to be from a normal, middle class family, which makes the characters relatable, and creates this theme that this 'demonic possession' can happen to anyone, even to someone in the audience, which may make the narrative theme seem even scarier.
All three products create a narrative enigma and don't reveal too much of the actual narrative. Roland Barthes argued that the use of a ‘narrative enigma’ in films trailer also helps to capture the audience’s attention by asking them a question and not giving them the answer, which makes audiences want to watch the film, to answer the question.For example, because our product was a teaser trailer, we could afford to be more cryptic in terms of the narrative, and so focused more on setting up the environment and characters. This meant that very little of the actual narrative was revealed, and this acted as a narrative enigma. But because the audience formed a connection with the characters, they feel like they have to watch the rest of the film to find out what happens to them in the end.
These three products helps to target our primary target audience. primary target audience.These are likely to be horror film fanatics, who are mainly male students, aged 15-45, from a C1C2D economic demographic. This is because they tend to seek the ‘thrill’ and adrenalin rush associated with horror films. They are also likely to have much cultural capital in the genre, and are consequently more likely to be desensitized to the ‘gore’ associated with slashed horrors, and are now probably more attracted to supernatural, psychological horrors where most of the shocks are delivered by implication, like in our film where the antagonist isn’t shown, and in the films poster and magazine cover, which dosen't feature a traditional 'moster' but rather a creepy doll, and a scared girl. The primary target audience are also likely to have gained ‘personal relationships’ (a category of the uses and gratifications model) as they are likely to have formed connections with other fans who are eagerly awaiting the film. With interactive web 2.0, consumers can develop personal relationships because of their mutual interests. Trailers are part of the promotional campaigns that has the intention of stimulating promotion through word of mouth promotion by creating a ‘buzz’ before the film’s release. The poster and magazine cover can also help with the off line marketing campaign for the film, and then lead people to watch the trailer and feed into the online, viral campaign.
Overall, we feel the combination of our main and ancillary is effective, the connection between the products is clear, and targets our primary, secondary and tertiary audiences well.
click image to view annotation
(left to right: screen grabs from the trailer, fangoria insidious magazine cover, insidious poster)
There is a clear house style throughout the trailer, magazine cover and the poster for the 'Insidious' marketing campaign, most notably through the font used for the title, as well as the red, blue, black and white color scheme. This helps the audience identity the products with one another, and builds on their cultural capital in the film, which helps to develop a familiarity with the product, so the audience are more likely to watch the film.
We emulated this in our marketing campaign, using the same font ('I still know') and colour (white) for the title of our film, 'Annabelle' which made it very clear that all three products are part of a campaign for the same film. We also used the same colour scheme of black, white and dark blue. We also featured the doll and the protagonist throughout these products, as they are the main visual elements that ensure continuity between these products.The location of a normal, middle class family home in east London is also emphasized, with various shots throughout the trailer showing the house, and highlighting the east London accent, the poster also has the house in the background.
click image to view annotation
We also used the same colour scheme (black, white, dark blue) throughout the trailer, poster and magazine cover. This is a conventional colour scheme that is utalised by many horror films. As Steve Neal stated, “Genre is a repetition with an underlying pattern of variation” which argues that some conventions, such as a de saturated colour palette, must be repeated in order to anchor the horror genre .
For instance in the poster, the text the was white, the stormy sky background was dark blue, and the title's drop shadow and the protagonist's hair is black. The trailer also has this continuous colour scheme, with the titles having the black/blue grungy texture in the background, and white text. Many shots have a dark, de saturated colour scheme, with black playing an overriding influence, and some shots have hints of blue (refer to image below - shows a few examples of these shots). The production logo in the trailer also follows the colour scheme, with a black/blue/white stormy sky background and a white logo on top. The film magazine cover is slightly different, although it has the main colours black and white, the red/orange hair of the doll is the main colour and really stands out. We thought that even though this is slightly different from the normal colour scheme, its okay because the cover is still linked to the film though the title and it's font.
One of the main differences is that the red/orange colour of the doll hair is exaggerated. This is mostly because magazines like 'little white lies' make the image on the front cover look really artistic and imaginative.Our magazine brand, 'dark truth' took a lot of inspiration from 'little white lies' in terms of aesthetics, which is why we wanted to make the cover stand out and look quite surreal and unconventional, while still maintaining the horror genre. We also managed to keep the continuity between the magazine cover and the trailer by using the same font for the film title.
When creating the poster, we needed it to be easily identified with the trailer. To do this, we heavily featured the female protagonist, who is even wearing the same outfit. Also, the poster clearly shows her ethnicity, because the protagonist is from Asia, which may help appeal to a tertiary target audience of people from Asia, or other minority ethnic backgrounds. This can be explained by Blumler & Katz (1974) ‘Uses and Gratifications theory’ which suggests that audiences use and seek out media texts for a variety of reasons, one of which is to ‘identify with characters’ which people may do because of a shared ethnic background.
The doll is also featured in the poster, which links to the magazine cover and the trailer, although in the poster the doll is shown more subtly, but still looks quite creepy and malignant. Most of the feedback from a focus group suggests that the visual elements of the doll, along with the colour scheme, where the most significant indicators that the three products were advertising the same film.
Also the protagonist skin was deliberately manipulated in post production to look sickly and pale, to connotate fear, which links to numerous shots in the trailer where she is shot from a high angle to look vulnerable and scared. The house is also emphasized in the poster and the trailer, which helps the audience to relate to the characters, as the primary target audience are likely to be from a normal, middle class family, which makes the characters relatable, and creates this theme that this 'demonic possession' can happen to anyone, even to someone in the audience, which may make the narrative theme seem even scarier.
All three products create a narrative enigma and don't reveal too much of the actual narrative. Roland Barthes argued that the use of a ‘narrative enigma’ in films trailer also helps to capture the audience’s attention by asking them a question and not giving them the answer, which makes audiences want to watch the film, to answer the question.For example, because our product was a teaser trailer, we could afford to be more cryptic in terms of the narrative, and so focused more on setting up the environment and characters. This meant that very little of the actual narrative was revealed, and this acted as a narrative enigma. But because the audience formed a connection with the characters, they feel like they have to watch the rest of the film to find out what happens to them in the end.
These three products helps to target our primary target audience. primary target audience.These are likely to be horror film fanatics, who are mainly male students, aged 15-45, from a C1C2D economic demographic. This is because they tend to seek the ‘thrill’ and adrenalin rush associated with horror films. They are also likely to have much cultural capital in the genre, and are consequently more likely to be desensitized to the ‘gore’ associated with slashed horrors, and are now probably more attracted to supernatural, psychological horrors where most of the shocks are delivered by implication, like in our film where the antagonist isn’t shown, and in the films poster and magazine cover, which dosen't feature a traditional 'moster' but rather a creepy doll, and a scared girl. The primary target audience are also likely to have gained ‘personal relationships’ (a category of the uses and gratifications model) as they are likely to have formed connections with other fans who are eagerly awaiting the film. With interactive web 2.0, consumers can develop personal relationships because of their mutual interests. Trailers are part of the promotional campaigns that has the intention of stimulating promotion through word of mouth promotion by creating a ‘buzz’ before the film’s release. The poster and magazine cover can also help with the off line marketing campaign for the film, and then lead people to watch the trailer and feed into the online, viral campaign.
Overall, we feel the combination of our main and ancillary is effective, the connection between the products is clear, and targets our primary, secondary and tertiary audiences well.
Wednesday, 26 March 2014
Tuesday, 11 March 2014
Wednesday, 5 March 2014
Sunday, 2 March 2014
Film Poster - Draft one
overall we were quite happy with the way the poster turned out in the first draft. We also collected audience feedback on it to assess whether it could clearly be identified with our film's brand, and also to assess if the supernatural horror genre was clear, and we also use this feedback for any cosmetic changes. We also made changes such as making her skin look more pale to emphasize expressions such as being scared which was also a generic convention of horror, along with removing a red dot on her nose which was caused by the camera quality that we used.
Friday, 28 February 2014
Film Poster Production
The first step in producing the poster was to make a basic, generic template with the name of the film, the credits and the sell lines using the text tool in photoshop. After that, I inserted the image of the central protagonist, after I had removed the background from the original image using the free select tool. After that, I adjusted the 'curves' and 'levels' in order to make the picture look darker so it fits the horror genre better. I also decided to move the credits to the the top, and move around some of the other sell lines to make it look more stylistic. I also decided to add a backdrop to the main title 'Annabelle' to make it stand out more then the other sell lines. I also decided to add a circular gradient of dark navy blue to black in the background to make it look more interesting then just a solid black background. To make it look more stylistic, and more attuned to the horror genre, I decided to make a 'dark, stormy sky' in the background. I did this by finding a picture of a very cloudy sky on google images, and then scaled this image to fit in the background, and then set the layer to 'multiply' ontop of the gradient. This created a nice, subtle background texture. After that, I cut out the house using the free select tool, and removed the background. I then pasted the house into the poster, and placed the image ontop of the 'background' layers (solid black background, the gradient, and the clouds) and behind the text layers and the layer with the image of the protagonist. After that I adjusted the colours and curves so that the house looked a bit older and went with the desaturated colour palette to match the horror genre. After that, I cut out the bckground from an image of the doll, and scaled it so that it it would look a realistic size in the window of the house,to do this i had to crop it, and I also adjusted the curves and colour's to make it look more natural. I had also added the logo for 'nfy productions' aswell as adding a 'rated' warning. I also added the national lottery logo to anchor the idea of it being an independent film, and I also added a hashtag '#shewillnotsleep' to make media convergence links to social networking sites, which is becoming more common in many film campaigns.
Teaser trailer: Third draft
NFY final edit final from Media @ St. Bons on Vimeo.
After trying to edit our original trailer, we had found that many of the elements had been deleted therefore we decided to produce a new trailer including some of the old elements, but also going out and recording more footage in order to anchor our horror genre. This is our first edit of our new horror teaser trailer.
Thursday, 6 February 2014
Trailer development
During our teaser trailer development, we had to alter the sound effects in order for it to link to the conventions of horror soundtracks. Therefore, we had to mute each scene to allow us to add on other sound effects such as 'eerie wind music'. Also, as teaser trailers consist of a time length of 40 secs to 60 seconds, we then had to time stretch various scenes to fit the timing.
Friday, 10 January 2014
Magazine cover: Final product
After we showcased our products to our target audience, we received some feedback for a few changes that we should make to the magazine cover, these were:
1) To fit 'dark truth' into the triangle
2) to make the background more interesting
this is the final product we came up with in response to this feedback:
1) To fit 'dark truth' into the triangle
2) to make the background more interesting
this is the final product we came up with in response to this feedback:
Wednesday, 1 January 2014
Friday, 20 December 2013
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.
This is the final product:
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:
Wednesday, 18 December 2013
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.
or click here.
Tuesday, 17 December 2013
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.
NFY edit from Media @ St. Bons on Vimeo.
Monday, 16 December 2013
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.
Friday, 13 December 2013
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.
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.
Tuesday, 10 December 2013
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:
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:
Saturday, 7 December 2013
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.
Thursday, 5 December 2013
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.
Tuesday, 3 December 2013
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.
Sunday, 1 December 2013
Saturday, 30 November 2013
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.
from the makers of 2 from Media @ St. Bons on Vimeo.
this winter she will not sleep from Media @ St. Bons on Vimeo.
Friday, 29 November 2013
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:
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:
Wednesday, 27 November 2013
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.
Monday, 25 November 2013
Production company logo development
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.
Tuesday, 12 November 2013
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.
|
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