Research and Planning: Production Meeting

• This weekend, my partner and i met up to purchase some items for our 'torture scene'. 
• We got the rope, masking tape and fake blood. We used my chair as a prop and Chloe's t-shirt for the actress to wear, which we made blood-stained, with bits of mud and a few rips to make it more realistic.

• We waited till it was dark and then went to the stables, where Chloe has a horse. She asked the owner if we could use their workshop to film in. We thought this would be the perfect mis-en-scene for our trailer as it had equipment like saws and drills.

• We tied Georgia, the actress, to the chair using the masking tape, and placed the rope in her mouth and tied it round her head, so she looked like she was being gagged. 
•  We kept in mind the cinematography, getting all the different shot types we need and filming from all different angles.

Here is a picture of Georgia in action:

Research and Planning: Location Recces

• Here is a video of the location where we filmed the torture scene.
• We had the saws on display on the wall in the background
• We placed the ladders and cardboard boxes on the ground around near where the actress would be sat, for effect.
• The drill we used for sound in the background

Research and Planning: Shot List

This is the shot list for the 'torture scene'...

Research and Planning: Animated Storyboard

This is my animated storyboard, where you can see what kind of shots and the length of time they will appear on our trailer.

Research and Planning: Publication Plan

This is the publication plan for my magazine.

Publication Plan on Prezi

Research and Planning: Final Draft Storyboard

Research and Planning: Poster Draft

• This is my poster draft.
• I got ideas from the research i did, where i found that there are a lot of posters which include a big close up of a persons face looking scared.
• This is a good idea as it would catch the audience's eye

 

Research and Planning: Magazine Draft

Research and Planning: Analysis of Film Magazines

• The genre of this 'Empire' magazine front cover is horror. You can tell by the dark background and the low key white lighting coming from the lamp and the house. This shows that there would probably be something mysterious in the building.

• We can see the silhouette which adds curiosity to the film. The man looks wary of going into the house, as we can see all of his posture by the long shot.
• There is a quote from the film 'The Exorcist' placed above the title, which says 'The Power if Christ Compels You!' This hints that there is good and evil within the film.

•  The genre of the front cover of this magazine is horror. It isn't the typical horror magazine you would expect because the background colour is white. But this is a bed, which can sometimes be associated with the genre.
• The film featured is the well known 'Paranormal Activity', which is known for it's viral marketing.
• Customers would be drawn to this front cover as there is a girl looking scared and screaming pictured. As well as a man looking quite mysterious, even a little scared too, so the audience will want to know what the film is about.
• The colour scheme is red, black and white - conventional horror colours.

Research and Planning: Meeting

• Me and my partner arranged to meet over the weekend so we could do a little more research. 
• We did this by watching some A2 Media Studies teaser trailers on You Tube that other students over the UK have produced over the years. 
• This made us re-think our idea and we thought of changing the plot slightly, making it more interesting. 
• We decided to carry on with our original plan; however, add more bits to it, to produce a higher grade trailer.

Research and Planning: Actor Release Form

• Here is the actor release form for our main character, Georgia. 

Research and Planning: Cast Auditions

• This is a screen grab of an advertisement that i put on Facebook to look for potential cast, and a advert we put up around college to grab auditionees:

• Here is the people that auditioned, with good and bad points as to why we may have, or not chosen them to star in our teaser trailer:

• This is Sancha. We thought that she might be a good idea for our actress as she has dark hair. This would go well with our horror genre.
• The bad points is the fact that her hair isn't too long as she has recently had it cut. 
• Sancha doesn't go to our college, so she wouldn't be as available as we like her to be.

• This is Naomi. We thought she could have a variety of looks for the film, but the availability of her just wasn't enough for what we wanted.

 

•  This is Georgia. We decided to pick her to be our leading actress.
•  This is because she is generally the better actress of who we auditioned.
•  We think she has a great look about her aswell, for both the everyday look, and the horror look.

Research and Planning: Micro Element

For our teaser trailer, i am in charge of the editing, and we are both involved in cinematography and the sound.


Here is a list of all the ideas for editing transitions i have at the moment:

• Typewriter font for the facts, to add effect to the trailer as it is a computer-based film.
• Fade in and out black - this will be at the start when the trailer cuts from the facts and the Facebook photographs, which will give a professional look
• Wipe to show the passing of time
• Jump cut - to show that the character is going a bit mad
• Fast pace straight cuts - for the last bit of the film after we see the title.

This is the list of our ideas for cinematography:

• Zoom in on the image of the scratched out face
• Zoom out to girl at the computer

• Point of view medium shot of girl
• Close up's - facial expression and the screen
• Midshot profile's - Show body language
• Long shot of the screen - where we see the shadow there, and not there.

Here is our ideas for what sound would be included in our trailer:

• For non-diagetic sound, we have got inspiration from the song by Kings of Leon - Closer. We are going to re-create parts of this song by using Garage Band.
• We will use diagetic off screen sound of a dial-up tone for the start of the trailer, and a disconnected sound for near the end of the trailer.
• There will also be diagetic on screen sounds of screams and deep breaths.

Research and Planning: Plan for the Week

Today i analysed a film poster and made a blog about the conventions of a film poster.


For the rest of the week i am going to start researching film posters so that i have a few ideas of what i might do. Also, i will put my finished draft storyboard, which is made from camera photographs, onto my blog.

Reserach and Planning: Conventions of Film Poster

Here is the conventions of a film poster:


- Big, bold title, which is the biggest
- Tag line, underneath the title
- Stars names

- Director/Producer
- Main picture
- Dark background
- Date
- Certificate

- DVD or cinema etc.

Research and Planning: Analysis of Film Poster

Here is the film poster i will be analysing:




Genre
You can tell that this is a horror film straight away, as the background is complete black, with the only light from the outline of the character on the right, and the girls face is lit up the same colour, to show the relationship between the two.


Narrative
You can tell the story through this poster because of the title of the film, 'When a Stranger Calls', as well as the picture of the girl with a worried expression on her face, holding a mobile phone.

Media Language/Layout
The title is at the top, conventionally. There is a close up of a girl on the left side, almost covering up the entire poster, so that we see her facial expression and relate to that. There is a long shot of the silhouette on the right to show he is not a nice character, which we can tell from the way he is stood.

Audience
The audience of this film poster would be people that are interested in the horror genre, and into technology because of the mobile phone pictured with the girl. They would like the suspense as to who is on the other side of the phone and who is the mysterious male character.


Representation
The poster represents typically the story of a female victim and a male villan.

Research and Planning: Draft Storyboard

Research and Planning: Props List

This is my first ideas and cost of the props we will be using for our teaser trailer.

Research and Planning: Equipment/Software List

This is a list of all the equipment and software i am going to need for my project:


- Video camera
- Microphones
- Lighting
- Imac
- iMovie
- Final Cut Express
- GarageBand
- Photoshop




All of these things are available from college.

Research and Planning: Progress

In my lesson today, we have created a first draft storyboard for our teaser trailer. The outcome was that we have slightly changed our initial idea. We decided to make the story a little simpliar, by just having the start bit of our idea for our whole trailer, and just expanded it. It would be very jumpy, the editing would be very thought out, and the music would make it catchy, which would make want people to watch the film.

Research and Plannng: Production Schedule

This is my production schedule for the next few months. It shows what i have done already, and my plans for what i am going to do in the upcoming weeks, and how long it will take to complete each task.

Research and Planning: My October Podcast