Research and Planning: Distribution Logo Drafts.

Distribution Logo Drafts. 

Three rough drafts of logos for the Distribution Company. 

Research and Planning: Social Network Feedback.

Social Network Feedback. 

Facebook. 

Because getting feedback from Facebook has been successful in some past posts I have done, I decided I would do it again, but this time I asked a specific audience which was their favourite name for a distribution company. It is mixed between After Dark and Noir Distribution.

Research and Planning: Storyboard Progess.

Animated Storyboard.

We are currently going through the process of our making our animated storyboard, as you can see here we have uploaded the images and placed them in the order and the rest of the editing needs to be finished and start including sound.

Research and Planning: Meeting Post.

 Meeting Post.

After meeting with Luke we have decided that over half term we will both do extra posts regarding research into our genre and film posters and magazines so that we can slowly begin to create some. 

As well we are going to be doing the production and distribution companies, I will be researching distribution companies and then I will be creating ours, and Luke will be doing the same with the production company. 

We will also decided on a definite film name, and then looking into possible actors/actresses for our trailer through auditions and possibly looking at locations.

Research and Planning: Podcast.

Podcast.

A podcast using iShowU HD of me discussing all my posts on my research and planning blog in preparation for my trailer and magazine and poster.

Research and Planning: Film Name Ideas.

Film Name Ideas.

We made a word cloud of all the words or phrases we thought would be relevant and work with our film and from this we can choose a few names that we like for example we liked; "Eye Spy" and "The Room" "ManHunt".

Research and Planning: Costume List.

Costume List.

This is a list of all the characters potential costumes, the lists in italics will be the characters costumes as they develop through the film so as their appearance deteriorates.

Character One.

Female.

Dark Jeans

Simple T-Shirt with maybe a logo or writing on.

Converse or some sort of trainers etc.

Hair Up in a ponytail.

Minimal Makeup.

The t-shirt will become dirty, maybe ripped.

Blood stained.

Mascara running down her face.

Scratches on her body.

Dust and dirt all over her.

Character Two.

Male.

Checked shirt.

Dark Jeans.

Converse or pumps on.

Messy hair.

The shirt will roll up on the sleeves, ripped one sleeve off.

Dirty, dust.

Scratches on his face, blood on his knuckles.

Character Three.

 Female.

Shorts

Vest

Cardigan

(Looking a lot more girly than the other female)

Possibly a dress

Ballet Pumps (Dolly Shoes)

Tights

Hair Down

Make-up done perfectly.

Scratch right down her face.

Make-up all over the place.

Dress ripped on the shoulder.

Tights ripped.

Character Four.

Male.

T Shirt

Joggers.

Trainers.

Messy Hair.

Blood on Knuckles with the ripped sleeve wrapped around it.

Scratches across his face 

Ripped clothing.

Research and Planning: Prop and Location List.

Prop and Location List.

First location. 

Outside in the woods, open space. 

Single Campfire.

Logs or chairs that the characters can be sitting on. 

 Second location. 

In a small room which looks abandoned, very dark, dusty and no windows with hardly any light and only one door. 

Old chairs in the centre of the room. 

A table against one wall which can be seen clearly at all angles of each camera. 

Rusty, sinister looking tools placed on the table e.g. heavy hammers or screwdrivers or unique looking tools.

Research and Planning: Equipment and Software List.

Equipment and Software List. 

Software. 

  

Photoshop

We will use Photoshop primarily to edit photos for our film magazine and poster. We will be able to alter lighting and brightness or colours in the picture to suit our genre. 

 

iMovie

This software will be used to edit the footage for our trailer or any video posts we need to do for our research. 

 

GarageBand

GarageBand will be used to edit and create any sounds that we will use in our trailer. All of the sound will be made for the trailer in this including sound effects and soundtracks. 

iPhoto

This will be used to upload any photos we took for the magazine and poster. 

Equipment.

 

iMac

We will be using iMac's for more or less everything, all the softwares we need will be on here so the editing of the trailer and magazines and photos and the sound is made on here and anything else we will need. 

Sony HD Camcorder

 This camera will be used for any footage in our trailer that will be stable so most likely may be used with a tripod. 

Canon Mini DV Camcorder

This camera will be used for any handheld footage in our trailer. 

DSLR Camera

We will use this camera for the magazine and film poster shots, as it will give us the high quality image we need. 

Research and Planning: Production Company Name Ideas

 Production Company Name Ideas.

Production Company Name Ideas - Word cloud - WordItOut

I created this wordcloud on worditout.com with any words that related to my genre or production companies or any words I thought to relevant, in the hope that seeing all these words together would help us to come up with a production company name. 

Research and Planning: Treatment

Treatment (Proposal one.) 

After discussing with the tutor, we have decided that this idea is may be the best one because it allows us to play around with editing and cinematography.

•  MPAA Message (Rating)
• Handheld camera of the teens around the campfire with the recording button flashing in the corner. 
• The teens start to sway and then they fall to the ground one by one causing the camera to drop. 
• From the handheld camera's perspective on it's side we see figures being dragged off camera.
• The campfire suddenly goes out and it fades to black. 
• The production company/distribution name and logo come onto the screen and fade to black.
• Then single shot from the corner of the room over the characters.
• Fast editing from four perspectives, a camera in each corner. 
•  Light source in the middle of the room, goes out jump cut to black. 
• Light source is back on, we see a figure/silhouette in the furthest corner from the POV.
• Fast paced shots from various peaks e.g. characters getting hurt, zooms onto specific characters etc.
• Beat of a heart, non-diegetic.
• On each individual beat, the clip flicks between the killer's hand and the victim slowly. 
• Just as the weapon is being brought down.
• Cuts to black on moment of impact, we hear the thud. 
• Film Title come up. 
• Innocent cry of a female character plays over the top. 
• Coming Soon.

Research and Planning: Proposal Two.

Proposal Two.

Character with schizophrenia, during his psychological episodes thinks he is having hallucinations of people being killed when actually he is the killer but does not know that himself. 

Mise-en-scene. 

Various killing locations  e.g. alleys, under bridges etc.

Cuts, blood, scars for the victims.

Killing utensils.

His own room with dark images/posters on the wall. 

Diary of the 'hallucinations' 

Sound. 

Screams.

Mixture of diegetic and non-diegetic sounds. 

Character Theme during his killings. 

 Voiceover.

Editing.

Fast Paced. 

Fades.

Dissolves. 

Jump cuts in the killing scenes. 

Cinematography.

High angles. 

Tight Framing.

Eye Line Matches. 

Over the Shoulder.

POV Shots. 

 

Research and Planning: Proposal One.

Proposals.

Idea One. 

Party in the woods goes downhill and characters end up in a house with no means of escape and no explanation of how they got there. 

Mise-en-scene.

    -Open spaced woods with a camp fire, low key lighting making it seem as though the camera fire is the only light source available 

-Deserted house, low key lighting. 

 -Murderer is going to need some distinctive feature i.e. strange eye, scar etc yet he has normal clothing to make him seem more human. 

-Victims aged 17-19, slow decline in appearance to show stress and vulnerability.
-Titles will be used throughout the trailer to give a rough idea of the plot, vital pieces of dialogue also be included. 

Sound.
-Various themes and stings and highlight areas to shock the audience and add tension to specific areas.
-Diegetic sounds will be used to add realism to the trailer, making it a more believable story.
-Non-diegetic music can be used to build tension slowly and add cause the audience to panic.

Cinematography. 
-POV shots from the murderers perspective will be used in a handheld style so imply that he's watching the victims. These will be on a slightly higher angle to show they are the power figure in these areas.
-We decided to mix between handheld and tripod shooting styles to show the contrast between murderer and victim. We also thought it would make the murderer seem more sinister if he was shown recording his actions.

Editing. 
-Our editing will be fast paced to work with the feeling of panic we aim to create in our other factors.
-Yet it will be slower in the woods to give a calmer feel, showing the equilibrium stage of our plot.
-We will use mostly straight cuts in the abandoned house to emphasise the disruption along with various peaks featured in the trailer. However, we felt dissolves would be best in the woods to the imply calmness of the equilibrium. This also works well with our editing speed.

Research and Planning: London.

 

 We went to London as a Media trip and whilst we were there we went into the London Film Museum and from that we were able to find things which could help us, so there was a lot of costumes there and what we found was that we could identify some before looking at them e.g. Harry Potter, The Krays so we could look into having a distinctive look for our characters. Also the horror room gave us lots of ideas because of characters such as Hell Raiser being in there so we could look into maybe a character like that but also we were able to see some ideas on what the blood and guts looks like to potentially make our film trailers.

Research and Planning: Sound Test

Sound Test.

For my sound test I experimented with Garage Band and the different instruments and effects on there so it will help me when I come to make my soundtrack for my trailer. I wanted to create an eerie atmosphere and after messing with instruments I found the church bell which I thoguht would be a good place to start and then I added the church organ over the top teamed with the creepy girl singing I think it creates the atmosphere I wanted and all three work together nicely although I do think that maybe some more practice is needed before I make my soundtrack so that I will be able to use the instruments to a better standard.

Research and Planning: Questionnaire Results Analysed.

Questionnaire Results Analysed.

 

1&2

The first two questions were used to make sure we were questionning our target audience and it did support us because they were all in the age range 17-19 which is what our trailer will be aimed at mainly because of the rating we gave it in another post and we got a balanced amount of males and females because we aren't making it gender specific, so all the answers we got were balanced in gender which will help us a lot when making our trailer.

 

3

We asked about the character age range appealing to the audience so it will help us to find out what actors/actresses to use and again the prodominant one was 17-19 so our audience are attracted to a film with characters similar to their own age which will make it easier to relate to.

 

4

Before making any definate decisions on our film we wanted to know do our audience prefer the character to be unambiguous or not, and most preferred ambiguous so they prefer a mystery behind the character however we did want to know if the audience said unambiguous then what type do they like and we had one which wanted a masked mysterious character which we have seen in trailers before but then we had two people say a person and one suggestion was a distinctive feature so maybe that could be something we look into, maybe we don't see the character full on we just know about the one feature, so we have both unambiguous and ambiguous.

 

5

We asked our audience about colours so that we could start testing our colours for our trailer and the three big ones which were obviously the most popular by far were black, white and red all typical colours of a thriller which makes it recognisable therefore should be something we look into so that we can attract our target audience.

 

6

So we knew about what sort of filming locations to look at we decided to ask our audience for suggestions and we got a completely balanced answer of enclosed and open which leaves us to the decision of what route to take but through asking this and getting suggestions it has allowed us to see where our audience actually likes filmed based for example a lot of people liked the idea of a house or a warehouse or a specific place in a house e.g. an attic or the most popular open one was a woods so we should think about which route we want to take with locations.

 

7

Our audience seemed to like the idea of mixed mood music and also the use of diegetic sounds so we will have to look into trailers that have a healthy balance of both to get inspiration. If the audience choose one or the other then mood music was a lot more popular maybe because of the atmosphere that goes along with it and it can also make a film recognisable just through the soundtrack for one character.

 

8

Our audience preferred fast paced editing and this is probably because many thrillers out there now are fast paced because it gets the heart racing a suspense from the trailer because it is just small fast snippets so everything is left on edge.

 

9

Handheld cameras were the most popular answer and this may link back to the age range of characters being only 17-19 because many teen thrillers out there do use handheld cameras to create an atmosphere and it also links you directly to the characters which our audience seem to want.

 

Research and Planning: Questionnaire Results in Pie Charts.

Questionnaire Results in Pie Charts.

I put my results from the questions which involved answers relating directly to the trailer in pie charts so it is easier to see what is more popular and not.

 

 

Research and Planning: Questionnaire Results.

Questionnaire Results
After getting our target audience to complete our questionnaire these are the results:

1. Are you: Male or Female?
5 Males  5 Females.

2. How old are you?
All 17-19

3.What character age range would appeal to you?
1 3-5
6 17-19
3 25-30

4. Would you prefer a more ambiguous character or unambiguous?
7 Ambiguous
3 Unambiguous

If unambiguous, what type?
Masked Mysterious
Person with something distinctive like a tattoo or scar
Person

5. What colours do you associate with Thrillers?
9 Black
5 White
8 Red
2 Grey
2 Blue
1 Dark Purple 
1 Pink
1 Purple
1 Glitter

6. Would you prefer a more enclosed area or an open busy environment?
5 Enclosed
Examples
Attic
Church
2xHouse
Warehouse

5 Open
Examples
3xWoods
Forest
Flowery Field

7. Would you prefer mood music to make it more dramatic or diegetic sounds?
6 Mixed
3 Mood Music
1 Diegetic

8. Would you prefer slow or fast paced editing?
7 Fast
3 Slow

9. Would you prefer a handheld camera or stable?
7 Handheld
3 Stable

Research and Planning: Questionnaire

Questionnaire: Questions and Options. 

These are the questions and options we gave our target audience on our questionnaires. 

1.Are you: Male or Female?

2.How old are you? 17-19  20-24  24+

In a thriller trailer: 

3.What character age range would appeal to you?

3-5  17-19  25-30  40-60  Mixed 

4.Would you prefer a more ambiguous characters or unambigious? e.g. In Scream, we know the murderer is behind the mask 

Ambiguous  Unambiguous (obvious) 

If unambiguous, what type? e.g. mask or person 

5.What colours do you associate with thrillers? Write 3

6.Would you prefer a more enclosed area e.g. a house or an open, busy environment e.g. a city? 

Enclosed  example__

Open  example__ 

7.Would you prefer mood music to make it more dramatic or diegetic sounds?

Mood Music  Diegetic  Mixed 

8.Would you prefer slow or fast paced editing?

Fast  Slow 

9.Would you prefer a handheld camera or stable?

Handheld  Stable