Evaluation: Question 4

COLOUR CODE
Fenetta - Pink
Lucy - Yellow
Lauren - Blue
Ben - Green
RESEARCH:
For research, I used the most common source of research, the internet to gather some research and some ideas for our work. We spent hours searching online for teaser horror trailers to shadow and mimic in order to make ours look like it is industry-worthy.

Our first task was to make a survey to find out what media consumers mostly wanted to see in a horror movie and I used the popular digital technology

database the internet to find this information out. In the old days, a pen and paper survey wo
uld come in handy for something like this, but because as a nation we are more digitally diverse, and lazy, an internet survey proved to do the same job, but quicker and more efficiently. I used the website http://www.surveymonkey.com to produce a survey that I wanted members of the general public to answer. Our survey http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/FYNVPQN

I distributed it on other forms of popular digital technology websites such as Twitter and Facebook asking people to answer the survey and send it on to friends if they could.

Creating this survey would not only help us understand media horror movie consumers, it would help us develop our work based on the feedback we would get.
I used popular website IMDb to research popular J-horror movies such as Ju-on (The Grudge), and also Wikipedia, a popular website in which its users can change and add things on the website. It is known as the virtual encyclopaedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_horror
We researched and analysed the shots that are used and noticed that a lot of J-horror movies have quick cuts to show continuity and there’s also some faded shots to show the lapsing of time and in trailers, it is common for there to be writing or a voice over in the trailer to give the audience a little bit of an idea as to what they’re watching.

We looked on YouTube watching not only teaser trailers, but normal trailers to analyse the shots and the angles before we started shooting. Firstly we sat down and thought about what sub-genre we wanted our pieces to fit under and we thought that instead of choosing someone else in our class to star in it, it would be better and quicker to use one of the members of our group as they’re more reliable and trustworthy.
We chose Lucy and then the sub-genre just came with the actress, as Lucy is Asian, we decided to make it a J-horror. J-horror’s are known to be very scary and are often remade by mainstream American directors to appeal to a wider audience. J-horrors are made in Japan and are only distributed in Japan, so we thought that making our film available in other countries adds a difference to our film compared to other J-horror movies that are popular. We then after the decision of this, decided to draw up a story board and then plan what would happen.

As I was in charge of the research along with Lucy, I watched a lot of J-horror films just to get a general gist of the conventions of the sub-genre and this helped us gain information about what is often seen in J-horror films and what is not.Secondly, what we decided that we had to do that is that we had to research the name of our poster and trailer to see if a horror movie called Lullaby had been made. We took our task very seriously almost as serious as if we were really going to film the whole movie and distribute it.
We googled Lullaby film and found a trailer on YouTube for one. If this was an actual media project, we would have to deal with copyright infringements if we use the same name, so we decided to add an “E” to the end of the word to create word play and also to avoid copyright infringements.We decided on a simplistic story as it leaves the audience intrigued and makes them want to actually watch it.

Research for poster:
In the media suite in my college, the place in which we go to develop our creative ideas, on the walls there are plenty of posters of horror films that inspired us. We look ideas from each poster and incorporated it into our planning and research. We researched the convention of the horror genre and also used our knowledge of horror movies to make a plan of what we think is common in posters and such. We tried to put as much research that we had gathered together to develop our poster.
We foundout that in a lot of the j-horror sub-genre, they release an English poster and then a Japanese poster to appeal to more than one culture, so we decided to do the same, this not only helping us push the country/audience boundaries, but allows others to understand it and to watch it, because like I said J-horrorhas been known for its scary and gory nature.We also looked at the conventions of averageEnglish posters too because giving our J-horror Poster a twist would make it unique and stand out amongst the rest. The font and the colours was not an original convention because blood is a typical convention of horror films and the fact that the blood is red made us put it on our poster as one of the vital colours, immediately giving the audience an idea that blood will be involved in the movie. The dark background colours is not very unique either, but we decided that by
developing out own font and not using a default font available on the computer already, made our work original and different.


We researched some posters and found out that suspense is a reoccurring theme, and the posters always have the protagonists’ face on show, so we decided to go against this idea and make our characters face not be shown also adding suspense, which would lure an audience in. Research into the history of J-horror movies told us that the reigning feeling of edgy-ness and feeling like something is going to come up and scare you atany minute is what they like going for as a feeling. They add that into whatever they do, that’s why they’reso successful at producing scary movies.


PLANNING:


When planning this project I began using my Digital SLR camera in my spare time, to produce random videos to progress my video skills. During this time I realised this project was more comlex than I thought.
Familirising myself with the equipment meant that during the process of the project things would run more smoothly an
d the outcome which is the teaser would be done to a more professional level.






The group began with practising the whole process, this mean positioning the lights, setting the video camera up on the tripod and making sure the set was a safe enviroment for any one close to the set.Once the group set up once we were able to do so without the aid of any teachers, therefore it took less time wasted and more time to film, this is because the group were set to a specific time to film and during this time we had to produce a good emount of shot.













This is why the group produced a good plan, this came in the form of a shooting script and a storyboard. I produced a storyboard for a visual aid for the rest of the group, this was because eventhough I had a visual idea of what I wanted the final produ






ct to look like, I wanted to show the group small sketches of each shot to show what my idea I wanted to put across were.
This therefore meant that time would be saved, and the group could communicate better using the storyboard knowing what shots were done, and what shots needed adding for example.
The storyboard was produced and brought when I filmed the shots for the teaser. The inicial idea was to produce a simplistic trailer to tease the audience to create a buzz about the film "Lullabye"


As you can see by this photograph the storyboard has been circled to show that it was used throughout shooting so I knew what shots i needed to do and what angles.


Once filming began I decided that certain shots would work in the teaser, this is because they didn't flow well in the process, also this meant that the teaser would have looked very unrealistic as the group was unable to record out of the small closet because it would have ruined the continuity of the whole teaser and made it very unprofessional.


Shot 6 was a simplistic idea, however the small space in which I film this part it would have been impossible to keep the focus of the main focal point and this also meant that the shot would have looked very unprofessional, therefore the group decided that we should look at the storyboard again and remake it.
The group decided to remake the storyboard becuase now we knew what shots we were able to produce. My idea was to make the shot simplistic, however make them experimetal, trying to produce a unique look to the teaser.


Making a simplistic video was planned because I had not used video before and therefore I decided to keep it simple and make the final product look more professional because I would have been able to make sure each shot was to the best of my ability, other than producing something I couldn't do. however I did experiment with each shot, using vairous angles and changing the camera settings manually.
As filming went on the storyboard's second draft became a little more complex because I knew I was able to shoot certain videos to a professional like abiliy.

Photography:

Doing mock shoots, for the photography meant that I understood how to use the equipment, including the light, manual settings on the camera and the tripod
This therefore meant it was less likely for mistake to be made and therefore less time would be wasted during the photoshoot.
This also meant I had a certain vision of how I wanted the subject to look, in this case it was Lucy. Before taking the photographs propley, I knew I needed images for both the poster and magazine front cover.


When taking the images the group made sure all saftey arrangements were kept in order, to prevent any accidents and time wasting. This also meant that there was more room for the photoshoot and there was no congestion in where I could move about the room to take photographs from vaired angle shots.


Using manual settings on the camera meant I could make each image to how I actually wanted them to look. This therefore mean I had to learn fully how to control the digital SLR to a professional standard.
Taking images in my spare time using manual set





tings meant that I could practise, this therefore meant that the outcome of the photographs for the project would be to a more professional level.


Firstly by making my aperture small meant the depth of feild of the image would be bigger, in other words this means less light would pass through the lens and add a difraction blur. I decided to try and produce some images with this type of Apeture to experiment with the camera. This therefore meant I could decide what type of photograph I wanted for the outcome.


Using a fast shutter speed meant that I could take an image of Lucy walking for example, my idea was to connote her being unstopable, (by the small blur on the image that shows up) however, I decided to use a shutter speed of F5.6. This was because I didn't need that much of a fast shutter, I used the light box more during the photographing process becuase i have more control of the placing of light.




I used a constant ISO of 20o, The ISO controls the sesitivity of the camera, therefore the higher the ISO the greater sesitivity the film has to light. Also becuase I used aditional lights it mean I was in more control in another manual experimental way.
Finally using manual focus meant I had even more control over the image, making the focal point what I wanted it to be, also making sure the parts that were in focus and out of focus were for a reason, for example to conote a certain thing.


fter learning where to position the lights to make the images look under/over exposed, I decided to make half of Lucys' face dark and the other half light, this was to connote a dark side from within her, making the photograph minorly disturbing for the people looking at it, also it creates an enigma making the audience try and thing how can this girl be evil.
One thing I would change when doing the photoshoot is I would take less photographs, in other words, I took many of the same image however the focus levels differ, In the future I would make the process slower, trying to produce one photograph to a profession level instead of many.


Also I would make sure I had make a plan for the photoshoot, eventhough I had learnt how to use the manual settings for the camera and also I learnt how to use the light. I didnt have any ideas before the shoot of what images I wanted to produce. However throughout the whole project I had a deep idea of how I wanted the teaser, poster and magazine cover to look, therefore eventhough there wasn't a full plan, I knew what final product I wanted and I decided to take images following the normal conventions, however adding my own unique style to the photograph.
My favourite part of the project was taking the images for the front cover and poster, this was because I was in total control of taking the photographs and also what Lucy did, therefore my vision of the whole project came true in some sense.


Also when producing the photographs I learnt many more things about the complexity of being the photographer on a photoshoot, and making sure everything is in order, and everyone is sticking to the health and saftey. Also making sure each image is not wasting my time, therefore checking the camera settings, light placemeant etc.




POST PRODUCTION:After we finished filming the shots we needed for our teaser trailer 'Lullabye' and had taken the raw photographs, it was then my job to produce the post production work. The post production work consists of making a film poster, magazine front cover, and other aspects of the project which generally come after filming. By being the only member of the group that only works on post production (as i was in the teaser trailer so i production didn't really relate to me) I had to be skilled in Adobe Photoshop but on my process of creating the post production pieces of work i also learned how to use Final Cut Pro and Motion 4.











The first post production work i got started on was creating our film poster but before i could do that i started on creating the font for 'Lullabye' as i was told it would be copyright to use a font already created by someone else. The making of the font was simple, all it needed was the brush tool on Photoshop and a steady hand, with both these skills i hand drew every letter using the brush tool on 2 px making it look as though a child has written it. To make it look like a child had written it i went over the same letter several times to give it a 'scratchy' look as a child's hand writing would look. The colours i chose for the Lullabye font was simple, i wanted it to contrast with the black background and by using white it shows up nicely.



Seeing as the genre of our teaser trailer is horror, the colour that is most generally used and symbolizes death/blood is red so i wanted to somehow include that colour too. Talking it over with Fenetta, we decided that the ending letters 'Bye' should be in red to signify the ending containing blood. I have noticed that on the 'Friday the 13th' film poster, the title starts of being white and then end in red, this could do be done to show that at the end of the movie is when the bloody killings happen which relates to our film poster.




Both the white and the red used in the font go very well against the black background which shows that black is the best colour to use when you want a certain colour to stand out and needing the title to stand out is one of the most important things on a film poster.






The overall process of creating the film poster was creatively simple and didn't require me to learn any extra new skills, this shows how simple we wanted to keep the film poster making sure it is good enough to attract people's eye yet simply not revealing too much about the movie itself. Because we took the images of me in front of a blue screen, it makes it easier to edit and cut out in Photoshop at a later stage, to cut it out i used the magic wand tool and by changing the tolerance i can change how much of the image i am selecting. We kept the background black to make it look like she is alone in a room, creating suspense and fear. After carefully selecting which image to use for our film poster out of the wide variety taken by Lauren, our decisions on the final image was due to the fact that we didn't want to reveal the face of the character in the movie and by using that image that shows her back we are not revealing anything but that she is being trapped somewhere... but where? The original image we wanted to use (a full image of my body placed on the bottom right hand side of the film poster, shown on the draft) we couldn't use because Lauren did not take the photo so instead we used the one we thought suited best. When placing the image on top of a black A4 international sheet on Photoshop, the only change needed was to get rid of the blue background (from the bluescreen) and erase it so the black background is revealed. Ben also added a slight tint of green onto the image to keep the continuity flowing between the three final products.





Every film poster requires the credit section at the bottom of the film poster, this makes it look more realistic and also follows the convention of film trailers. I followed every detail very carefully and made sure each section of the credits such as "casting by" in a smaller font than the actual name to make it look more realistic. To do this i researched a film poster (The Eye) and simply copied the credits but by changing the name and rearranging the names/surnames to make up my own names to fill in each position. At the bottom of the film poster, underneath the credits you will usually see the logos of the production companies which created the film and i made sure we included this too, once again to make our film poster look more believable and realistic, continuing to follow the continuity.









Whilst i was on the internet browsing around, i found an image of the movie 'Black Swan' released with a Japanese film poster so i showed it to Fenetta and we both agreed that we were going to make a Japanese film poster for our movie too seeing as the theme of our teaser trailer comes from J-horror and we wanted the film to relate to our Asian viewers. Unlike the 'Black Swan' Japanese film poster which used a different image to the one on the original film poster, we kept our film poster looking the same but inserting Japanese writing. We didn't change the image of the poster because we wanted our viewers, no matter where they were from, to recognize our film poster with the same image. To get the Japanese symbols, i went onto Google translator and changed the languages to English to Japanese and it automatically gave us the symbols we needed to be able to put on the Japanese version film poster.










The overall process of creating the magazine front cover is the same as the film poster and only needed one programme to make it; Photoshop. Like the film poster, this too didn't need me to learn any new skills to make it but only references back to actual magazine covers such as 'Empire' and copying the ways they structured their magazine front covers. Once again the image we used for our final magazine front cover is different to the one i have drafted as Lauren did not take the photo of what i drew on the magazine front cover draft.
Instead we needed to make use of the variety of images we already had and choose one most suitable. The image we chose shows the character's face which we did not want to reveal on the magazine front cover but seeing as magazines are usually released after the teaser trailer and film poster are released then the audiences would already know what the character's face looks like.






































Our magazine was originally called 'The Big Screen' but Fenetta and I decided to change it to 'The Big Scream' which links to it being a horror themed magazine thus making it a special horror edition. I really like the overall effect that drawing over the 'EN' to make it 'ScreAM' is very effective as it looks like it has literally been drawn on using blood, to do this i used the same technique as i used in creating the font for 'Lullabye' with the scratchy motion going on and extending the M to make it look as though the blood is dripping.


As for the font for the other words in the masthead, we decided we wanted to keep this simple and bold like the font used for Empire's masthead, by using a bold and simple font it allows the viewer to read the text easier it looks much more professional than using a fancy font.


Usually in magazine front covers there is a variety of different fonts used to make each coverline stand out against the other so we wanted to follow this convention and use a variety of fonts; we stuck to three fonts (not including our hand drawn 'Lullabye' font and the slogan font). The three fonts me and Fenetta chose to use for the magazine front cover didn't look entirely different to one another but still looked different, this was because we still wanted to keep the use of simple text to make it easier for the viewer to read. The fonts we used for the coverlines are called Charcoal CY, Candara, and Haettenschweiler.
I can say that our magazine front cover links and has a lot of reference back to the Watchmen edition of the 'Empire' magazine front cover, this is because when i was browsing around for ideas as to how to structure our magazine to make it look professional, i came across the Watchmen edition and i like some parts of the magazine and decided to use it in our magazine. Certain things include the banner which says what issue it is, i thought this looked professional so i used it to write 'SPECIAL HORROR EDITION' so that the viewer knows what edition of the magazine it is. Other things include the '+' sign at bottom left hand corner of the page, i used this to add other features included in the magazine. I also noticed that other magazine front covers usually had some sort of 'sticker' on the front which gave a little sneak peak to what else is inside the magazine and what is exclusive information. I though this 'sticker' really adds the finishing touch to our magazine to make it look like a realistic and professional one.





































To keep the continuity running through out all three of our finished media products, we used the 'Lullabye' font to do this but the only difference between this 'Lullabye' font and the one used in the film poster and the teaser trailer is that this one uses black for the 'Lulla' instead of white. I decided to use black because i thought it showed up better against the dress and we needed the title to stand out which is why changing the colour to black is the best decision for the title.


For the teaser trailer i did not do much editing but i did create all the scenes with the words which flicker, elongate and then fade out. This is where my new learning skill came into position as i have never used or even heard of Motion 4. Whilst adding the text for the teaser trailer i wasn't happy with what Final Cut Pro was allowing me to do, i wanted to make the font look more professional and by wanting to do this i had to extend my knowledge by using Motion 4.


The first thing i did when i opened up Motion was to write my desired words on the black page and then i selected which style and effect of motion i wanted to use, in my case i wanted the worlds to show up in the middle, flicker and gradually elongate then fade out and Motion allowed me to do this effect. Once i had the desired effect i wanted, i export the file and then imported it into Final Cut Pro where i would then locate it to the space left on the timeline.



To watch the teaser trailer again and see the flickering fading texts click here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RJGWrbghy0

After finishing the production of the film poster and the magazine cover, i decided to make some additional promotional images that we could use in our other blog posts. Creating these images involved using Photoshop and warping them into the right position. The images i made consisted of our film poster being promoted on bus shelters, a London bus, at the cinema, on an iPhone and i also created merchandise such as t-shirts, mugs and key-rings for our fans to enjoy.

























I would say that my whilst being the one in charge of post-production and creating all the creative finishing outcomes, I had a great time creating everything and the role was perfect for me. I have always been a creative person and by knowing some skills in Photoshop really helped me put the post production pieces together to look realistic and professional. Whilst using the skills i already know, on the way i also learnt other skills which included using Motion 4 and Final Cut Pro to add to my post production outcomes.

During Post Production I edited the Original Raw Photos using Adobe Photoshop 10 and raw video via Final Cut Pro 6 by Apple, when i started editing the film poster and magazine photo i decided on the repetition of roughly the same steps of effect layering to achieve continuity. I decided the effects because of the following reasons. Firstly, I wanted to start with bringing through the definition within the photo concerning face i.e Blood as this is an important prop used as an convention of Horror. Therefore first of all I proceeded with using a Filter called ‘Unsharp Mask’ to sharpen the characters features and improve the overall quailty of the photo
– this Filter can be accessed from the path Filter – Sharpen – Unsharp Mask. To achieve this effect i focused on adjusting the radius and threshold keeping the Radius low, while adjusting the theshold appropriate to the standard of my choice. I found the correct settings and continued on to access the Brightness/Contrast tool to follow the same skin effects as i had previously used on the Film Poster to achieve this I left the Brightness and pulled the contrast all the way down to -50. The path for this tool is Image - Adjustments -Brightness/Contrast. Afterwards i wanted to achieve a more dirty look as i didnt want the character to look clean/washed as she i meant to represent a ghostly(deceased) and durated character, therefore i went on to add a Shadow/highlights tool and focused on the Amount on Highlights. The path for this Tool is Image - Adjustments - Shadow/highlights. Then last of all i finished with a Photo Filter to warm the picture up and finish the dirty look being conveyed. The path for this Filter is Image - Adjustments - Photo Filter. As for the Movie Poster i roughly repeated the same process. For this i sharpened the Raw image with the Unsharp Mask tool again, Filter – Sharpen – Unsharp Mask. I focused on adjusting the radius and threshold again also but used the radius more harshly as the character is futher away from the lens and therefore the blood on the characters hand needed to be seen more definantly. Then i wanted to give her skin a more artificial look, therefore i skipped the other stages and continued onto the Shadow/highlights tool. Path Image - Adjustments - Shadow/highlights. and increased the amount on highlights until the skin looked almost Doll like, and unrealistic. For the Raw Video footage i tranfered my skills to Apple Final Cut Pro as both the programs use roughly the same functions as they are made/published by the same company Apple. However, this took a bit of Help searching on the program. following simular steps I firstly started by adding a Unsharp Mask. Path: Effects - Video Filters - Sharpen - Unsharpen Mask. Following the same rules of the settings. Then last of all i wanted add a Tint which represents the photo filter stage on photoshop, to add darkness and create a real trailer or movie feel, and made the colour green as a form of convention.








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