This is the final edit of our teaser trailer.
Tuesday 16 March 2010
Sunday 14 March 2010
Audience Feedback
Overall, we recieved really positive feedback. We were happy with the response and reactions of the audience. During the viewing of the trailer, we witnessed that many of the students were actually afraid when watching the video. This means that we were quite successful in creating a shock factor. Some of the comments that were given were as such:
'I liked the poster as the effects worked well'
"Really liked how you made
her eyes so luminous on the
magazine cover. Very Haunting"
There are some changes that could be made to improve our trailer such as cutting down the walking scene as one of the comments indicated that it was too lenghthy and therefore ineffective.
Other than this, the trailer as a whole was very successful indeed.
'I liked the poster as the effects worked well'
"Really liked how you made
her eyes so luminous on the
magazine cover. Very Haunting"
There are some changes that could be made to improve our trailer such as cutting down the walking scene as one of the comments indicated that it was too lenghthy and therefore ineffective.
Other than this, the trailer as a whole was very successful indeed.
Tuesday 9 March 2010
Monday 8 March 2010
Adobe Premier[ing]
Creating 'The Summoning' title movement in the trailer
Editing process of the 'walking scene'
Adobe Photoshopping
The editing process of the magazine cover. The layers used in the process are listed on the right
The Editing Experience
Adobe photoshop is definitely my comfort zone now. My previous project helped me develop my skills and so, I was able to use and abuse photoshop CS3 for my project. The ancillary tasks were to create a magazine front cover and poster for the trailers that we created. During the filming period, we decided to take mulitple images of Elizabeth in costume as we knew that it will be useful for this task. We worked with the lighting and differnt camera shots/angles to make sure we have a variety of different images available to us. I have included some of these images above.
I was specifically involved in creating the magazine front cover. Before we began creating this, we researched different 'Empire' magazine front covers to understand the conventions used throughout. It was obvious that 'Empire' love to be original and quite oftenly, adapt the concept of the featured title on their front cover. We decided to follow up these conventions and perhaps challenge them if it was appropiate to do so.
During our research we found that 'Empire' magazine used many close up shots of the main character. This was relevant for us because the highlight and understanding of our trailer is heavily based on the eyes of the protagonist. A close up shot of her will be a perfect way to draw attention to the eyes. So we picked an image that we took during the filming period and edited it in photoshop. Firstly, I cropped the image from the background and blended it in with a black background. This denotes that Elizabeth is coming out of the shadows. Much like 'The Grudge,' We wanted to brand our trailer by the protagonists eyes. I was able to whiten and luminate the white eyes to make them look more apparent. In the original image, the actress was not wearing her nitey, we decided to use the brush tool to create the white nitey. This worked really well. I then moved on to airbrushing the actress's skin to create a more professional presentation. The lips were soft in colour and therefore I blended a bit of colour into it to again, create a more professional and airbrushed look.
After working on the image, we concentrated on the text that we wanted to include. We started by looking at a typical 'Empire' Template. We used the same masthead to keep it similar. We smoothed out the masthead as it was pixelated when we added the layer. Thereafter created more layers to include text around the image. We also adapted the theme of our trailer as we used the font (open classic) when presenting the movie title and tagline above the masthead.
After this, I created a kind of mist on the black background to combine similarities with the poster and trailer.
All in all, I really enjoyed performing this task.
I was specifically involved in creating the magazine front cover. Before we began creating this, we researched different 'Empire' magazine front covers to understand the conventions used throughout. It was obvious that 'Empire' love to be original and quite oftenly, adapt the concept of the featured title on their front cover. We decided to follow up these conventions and perhaps challenge them if it was appropiate to do so.
During our research we found that 'Empire' magazine used many close up shots of the main character. This was relevant for us because the highlight and understanding of our trailer is heavily based on the eyes of the protagonist. A close up shot of her will be a perfect way to draw attention to the eyes. So we picked an image that we took during the filming period and edited it in photoshop. Firstly, I cropped the image from the background and blended it in with a black background. This denotes that Elizabeth is coming out of the shadows. Much like 'The Grudge,' We wanted to brand our trailer by the protagonists eyes. I was able to whiten and luminate the white eyes to make them look more apparent. In the original image, the actress was not wearing her nitey, we decided to use the brush tool to create the white nitey. This worked really well. I then moved on to airbrushing the actress's skin to create a more professional presentation. The lips were soft in colour and therefore I blended a bit of colour into it to again, create a more professional and airbrushed look.
After working on the image, we concentrated on the text that we wanted to include. We started by looking at a typical 'Empire' Template. We used the same masthead to keep it similar. We smoothed out the masthead as it was pixelated when we added the layer. Thereafter created more layers to include text around the image. We also adapted the theme of our trailer as we used the font (open classic) when presenting the movie title and tagline above the masthead.
After this, I created a kind of mist on the black background to combine similarities with the poster and trailer.
All in all, I really enjoyed performing this task.
Saturday 20 February 2010
Other Media Text Analysis
We closely analysed four different popular horror movies. The following pictures show a summary of the different aspects of the movies we looked at and then compared them to eachother.
Background and Other Media Text Research
There are some very important themes and theories that we observed before creating our trailer. These are also listed on my links which show my own research on them.
Moral Panic: A semi-spontaneous or media-generated mass movement based on the perception that an individual, group, community, or culture is dangerously deviant and poses a menace to society. A public outcry.
Marketing - USP: Unique selling point. An aspect of a product/service that is unique which makes it more appealing, e.g extremely high graphics
Todorov's Theory: Todorov proposed a basic structure for all narratives. - Films and programmes begin with an equilibrium, a calm period then disruption causes disequilibrium. Then a new equilibrium brings chaos to an end. The simplest form of narrative is sometimes referred to as 'Classic' or 'Hollywood' narrative.
Male Gaze - Laura Mulvey's theory that women are almost always represented in a sexualised way in order to appeal to a male audience. This is not necessarily deliberate - she contended that the media is populated mostly by male photographers, directors, editors, lighting technicians and so on; thus, most of what is produced is made FROM a male point of view and in a way which will appeal TO males.
Propp's Theory: Vladimir Propp came up with the idea/theory that there are 8 types of characters in the basic storyline. These characters are: the hero, the villain, the donor, the dispatcher, the false hero, the helper, the princess (damsel in distress) and her father, [These people don't have to all be different people]. He also states that there are only 31 things that these characters can do (Sphere of Action). Once we identify the character we can guess the actions. e.g. A Fairytale
http://sismedia.wetpaint.com/page/Glossary
Moral Panic: A semi-spontaneous or media-generated mass movement based on the perception that an individual, group, community, or culture is dangerously deviant and poses a menace to society. A public outcry.
Marketing - USP: Unique selling point. An aspect of a product/service that is unique which makes it more appealing, e.g extremely high graphics
Todorov's Theory: Todorov proposed a basic structure for all narratives. - Films and programmes begin with an equilibrium, a calm period then disruption causes disequilibrium. Then a new equilibrium brings chaos to an end. The simplest form of narrative is sometimes referred to as 'Classic' or 'Hollywood' narrative.
Male Gaze - Laura Mulvey's theory that women are almost always represented in a sexualised way in order to appeal to a male audience. This is not necessarily deliberate - she contended that the media is populated mostly by male photographers, directors, editors, lighting technicians and so on; thus, most of what is produced is made FROM a male point of view and in a way which will appeal TO males.
Propp's Theory: Vladimir Propp came up with the idea/theory that there are 8 types of characters in the basic storyline. These characters are: the hero, the villain, the donor, the dispatcher, the false hero, the helper, the princess (damsel in distress) and her father, [These people don't have to all be different people]. He also states that there are only 31 things that these characters can do (Sphere of Action). Once we identify the character we can guess the actions. e.g. A Fairytale
http://sismedia.wetpaint.com/page/Glossary
Thursday 18 February 2010
Past Research
I know its a little late to be showing the research that we did before but its never too late. Before creating any aspect of the trailer we performed some research on the plot that we chose to film. So here are a list of trailers that we looked at which inspired us to create the following:
Slide 2
Trailers:
- •Exorcism of Emily rose – the concept close up, setting, use of camera
- •Gothika – The walk in the woods
- •The ring – the enhancement of the eyes
- •Haunting of Molly Hartley -
- •House of Fears -
- •Carrie – The bathroom/shower scene
Monday 4 January 2010
Editing: 15th December 2009
It was not easy getting used to Adobe Premiere but I guess if you sit there experimenting nearly every tool and pressing buttons that look like they are going to do something really does help understand the programme. In the short space of time that I had, I spent learning how to use new and unusual tools in Adobe Premiere. I dedicated a whole day, from 10:30am - 3:00pm editing the footage that we filmed. I enjoyed it, but found that my eyes were twitching out of tiredness towards the end.
I started off by sorting the footage out in chronological order. I did this with the help of the storyboard but found that we made a few changes along the way. I also tried to focus on the main protagonist of the movie being Elizabeth in the state of exorcism (Her mother's spirit). The aim is to keep the viewer guessing but also highlighting the theme of the story. I think my main concern at this point of time was that we had to create a teaser and not a trailer. I had to narrow down the best of the footage that we had to make it as effective as possible.
Back to the editing process, I found that the timing of each shot was very important. I speeded up the establishing shot, being of Elizabeth praying to her mother's picture. This creates a frigtening effect as we did one extreme to another; slowing the shot down as she opens her eyes which appear to be ghostly white. The shot then immediately goes on the birds flying across the sky upwards. This denotes disruption to normality. This shot was also filmed out of curiosity, just to see how it looked on camera. Who knew that we were actually going to include this shot in our trailer. Between every shot I put a video transformation, this was called 'dip to black,' it created fluency throughout the trailer.
The scene of Elizabeth walking towards the camera was edited and re-edited several times. I wanted this scene to look a frightening as possible so I decided to to mix the shots of the handheld shots of running in the forest and Elizabeth walking in towards the camera. I also maximised the speed of the shots to about 300% to make it look abnormally quick and more sudden to shock the viewer.
Our own trailer was beginning to freak us out.
I will continue blogging about my 'editing' experience in a short while.
I started off by sorting the footage out in chronological order. I did this with the help of the storyboard but found that we made a few changes along the way. I also tried to focus on the main protagonist of the movie being Elizabeth in the state of exorcism (Her mother's spirit). The aim is to keep the viewer guessing but also highlighting the theme of the story. I think my main concern at this point of time was that we had to create a teaser and not a trailer. I had to narrow down the best of the footage that we had to make it as effective as possible.
Back to the editing process, I found that the timing of each shot was very important. I speeded up the establishing shot, being of Elizabeth praying to her mother's picture. This creates a frigtening effect as we did one extreme to another; slowing the shot down as she opens her eyes which appear to be ghostly white. The shot then immediately goes on the birds flying across the sky upwards. This denotes disruption to normality. This shot was also filmed out of curiosity, just to see how it looked on camera. Who knew that we were actually going to include this shot in our trailer. Between every shot I put a video transformation, this was called 'dip to black,' it created fluency throughout the trailer.
The scene of Elizabeth walking towards the camera was edited and re-edited several times. I wanted this scene to look a frightening as possible so I decided to to mix the shots of the handheld shots of running in the forest and Elizabeth walking in towards the camera. I also maximised the speed of the shots to about 300% to make it look abnormally quick and more sudden to shock the viewer.
Our own trailer was beginning to freak us out.
I will continue blogging about my 'editing' experience in a short while.
Questionnaire
Before we decided on some of the aspects and features we have included in our trailer, we conducted a questionnaire to help us decide with the audiences' preferences. I will present this quantitative research as soon as I have finished drawing up the graphs of results.
The Movie Title
It was hard enough to decide the story line of our horror film but it was even harder to choose a title for it. Our story line is based on murder, exorcism, mental instability and death. Although these themes are quite typical, we found it really hard to agree on a perfect title which will avoid giving away the plot but will also sound appealing to our audience. We thought of 'Unhinged' being a possible movie title as it relates to the mental illness of the main protagonist. However, when we checked if it has already been used we found that the title has in fact been used for a 1960s movie.
Back to the drawing board.
We then brainstormed again and found that we really liked 'The Summoning.' The word summoning, meaning to 'call' was relevant to the theme of our story line. The mother's spirit was being called down by her daughter in sorrow and distress which lead to the horrific events of the story. The word also has biblical aspects which highlights the religious motif in our story. All in all, the title sounds horror-like and is also very relevant to the film.
Back to the drawing board.
We then brainstormed again and found that we really liked 'The Summoning.' The word summoning, meaning to 'call' was relevant to the theme of our story line. The mother's spirit was being called down by her daughter in sorrow and distress which lead to the horrific events of the story. The word also has biblical aspects which highlights the religious motif in our story. All in all, the title sounds horror-like and is also very relevant to the film.
Sunday 13 December 2009
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