Teaser trailer: Final draft

NFY edit further edit from Media @ St. Bons on Vimeo.

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.

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. 

Teaser trailer: second draft

NFY Final Edit1 from Media @ St. Bons on Vimeo.

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:

NFY Animated Storyboard

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

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.