Trailer Completed

I am pleased to say that today we were finally able to finish editing our trailer, and complete to it to what I think is a very high standard of work. The reasons why I think this is because I believe we really took on board the feedback we received in our audience feedback, and worked on the advice given to us in order to make our trailer look better, which I think has worked to good effect. Most importantly of all, I believe the themes, story and emotional hook of our trailer is really noticeable now. We should have the completed version posted up soon.

This Weeks Work

This past week with all the filming work done we have focused solely on editing, in which we are putting our all into, to make sure that part of our storyline is being made clear to the audiences, as well as leaving a part of it up to interpretation in order to create enigma, thus creating anticipation towards the film. This includes putting music and sound effects in that give the trailer pace, and matches the images on screen, as well as setting a certain tone and mood to our trailer, also we need to make sure we've put out clips in the correct order as we need to make sure that audiences can understand what is going on fully, and so the order in which it is in then becomes important at this point, also it is important we create a equilibrium at the start which will allow us to build up to a certain moment.

Audience Feedback Given To Us

Here is the audience feedback that was given to us:

• "The trailer is good and you have a lot to work with, I especially like your shots at the end showing the montage of deaths as should be in a horror trailer, however I feel you need to add more shots in, especially at the start because at the moment, it is not building up to a certain moment, or giving me a brief understanding of the story of the movie"
• "Very freaky, the alternate timeline editing really added some great tension, but once a message is made you can cut away"
• "Need more emphasis on the cheating, as seeing as the movie is based around this idea of the consequences of cheating, at the moment it is not very clear that any cheating has taken place"
• "It would be a good idea to use shots of the exam hall and perhaps a clock  throughout the trailer, so audiences know this is the main reason why these students are dying, also I believe the clock winding down would create a lot more tension"
• "I like it, especially some of the shots, but I think you need to add some music in to the exam hall scenes to add pace to it because it becomes boring to look at after a while"

Film's Cool Session 6: Pre Final Audience Feedback

In yesterdays session of Film's Cool we had Jesse O'Mahoney and Hugh Spurling back in to give us some feedback on our trailers so far.

In the feedback given they gave us a detailed discussion on the good points of our trailer and things that they thought we were doing well, and also on the aspects of our trailer that they thought needed improving. As well as this, we also had the chance to look at each others work and give some feedback on each others trailers, again pointing out what we liked, and also the things we felt could be done differently in order to improve the overall trailer.

This was very beneficial as it provided us with many different views on our trailer, which meant we were presented with various different ideas on how we could go about improving our trailer, and we plan to implement a lot of these ideas into the editing and filming of our trailer.

Film's Cool Q & A Student Feedback Trailer Project Pre Final by Film's Cool

Also, at the end of  the session in a podcast we were given the chance to discuss how film's cool has helped us with our work and the way it has increased the quality of our work, as well as how it has helped us in gaining a better understanding of the film industry.

The Examined Facebook Page

Here is a link to the facebook page I have created for The Examined which we plan to use in order to promote the film, because as seen in one of my previous posts about social media, social networks like Facebook, Twitter etc are really good promotional tools for a business.

Today's Lesson

In today's lesson we made sure we divided up the work so we could finish different tasks as quickly as possible. Whilst John worked on the film poster and Morgan worked on the production company logos, I spent the lesson editing our footage and adding music to it, as well as adding on necessary voice-overs. As a result, we managed to get a lot more work done which means we can focus on finishing all of our filming next lesson in order to finish editing all of our footage by the end of next week.

UPDATE: The Examined Poster 1/12/2011

This is a further updated version of The Examined film poster created by John, as you can see compared to the last version the title stands out a lot more now, and also such details like our actors names, film tagline and production company logos have now been added on to the poster which I feel makes it look even better than before and a lot more professional. Still to be done though, is the logo for two production companies; Film Works International and Slasher Productions.

Marketing Campaign

I decided to take one of my ideas for our digital campaign and go further into it by actually creating it, what I did was take the idea of a fake exam paper and actually create one which expresses the themes and topics covered in our movie, as well as maintaining the element of horror to it and also appealing to our target audience. The main thing I would want this campaign to achieve is to encourage our target audience and possibly even a wider range of audiences to go to the cinema and watch our film, and I think this campaign will manage to do that cause as I learnt in my digital strategy lesson at film's cool, a successful digital campaign is one that allows audiences to become involved with it, something I believe ours does perfectly.

We plan to have copies of this exam at schools, cinemas, fast-food restaurants, youth clubs, sports centres etc. They can only be handed in on the premier day at selected cinemas around England before the movie is about to begin, we plan for the actual answers to be revealed in the movie and at the end of the movie when the audiences are on their way out, the winner will be selected and given a prize.

UPDATE: The Examined Poster

Here is a updated version of the poster designed by John whilst me and Morgan edited our current footage. I think this is a great improvement on the last design as production details have also been added on to the poster, as well as a release date. Also, the movie title 'The Examined' stands out a lot more now, as there is a lot less distractions on the actual image which is a big improvement on our last effort, and makes this version of the poster look much more professional.

Production: Next Filming Day

The next scenes that we plan to film, are the scenes prior to the exam hall scene where we have the five students (Harry, Kate, Sarah, Jordan and Lucy) plotting to cheat and ruin fellow student Kate's chances of success, Kate's death and the students receiving their exam results. Although we plan to film this all on the same day, we are planning to prepare for any delays just in case we have to stretch it over a two day period.

These are the things we will need in order to film these scenes:

• Red food dye
• Fake Blood
• Our six actors playing Harry, Kate, lucy, Sarah, Jordan and Hannah
• Fake mock exam results
• Fake diary

Production: Wednesdays filming session (Exam Hall Scenes)

Yesterday we filmed our exam hall scenes for our trailer, in which we had a very productive and excellent filming session This is because I feel we did well in creating the illusion of a exam through the set we created, where we managed to book out the exam hall for the day and used desks, chairs, real exam papers and a print out of the rules of exams. In addition, we also managed to get a real exams officer to play the role of the teacher lecturing the students about the rules of exams, and most importantly, the consequences of cheating. This was very convenient, as it meant we had someone who had actual real life experience to play the role, as a result what she was saying became much more believable which can only benefit us and our trailer. We also managed to get 12 students to play the students taking the exam, we again wanted to cast people who we knew would have experience in taking exams, as a result it again looked much more believable and as a result, we had a very productive filming session.

Production: Next Filming Day

We plan to film our assembly hall scenes this Wednesday, and so I'm posting up the props/ costume and characters I believe we will need in preparation for it:

• At least 5-7 extra's to play kids in the assembly hall taking their exams (Characters)
• The five teenagers Harry, Jordan, Lucy, Sarah and Hannah (Characters)
• Kate and the Teacher Mr. Moore (Characters)
• Exam Papers, Exam Desks, Exam Equipment (Props)
• Books and folders (props)

Production: The Void (final scenes)

Today we filmed our final scenes in the void which, although we encountered problems early on, managed to do and finish to a high quality.

The problem encountered was that one member of our group and on of our actors was unavailable to film today which meant that we had to do a quick change of the scene (Harry's death) in order to fit in with the resources that were available to us on the day. Luckily, our class has a great group ethic so members of our class helped us out with the filming which allowed us to film our scene to a very good standard, in fact i believe it was better than we had originally planned it.

Now that all the Void (death) scenes are done we look forward to editing them and creating a montage of these deaths that will look good in our trailer, we also look forward to filming our next scene which will be our assembly hall scenes which again my whole class will be present in order to help other groups out if they are in need of help.

Ideas for 'The Examined' digital campaign

In the aftermath of our film's cool session on digital strategies, I've taken it upon myself to think up some possible digital campaigns that me and my group can use to promote our film 'The Examined'.
Here are some of the ideas I came up with:



Online diary: I had the idea of creating a online diary from the viewpoint of the character 'Kate', in which she posts things happening in her life in the context of the movie, this way audiences will become familiar with the characters back story, as well as providing a seperate story line within the play. Doing this as a 'online' diary, is good as it reflects not only the age of our character, but also our young audience who are very accustomed to using things digitally. We also plan to include this diary in the actual movie, even if only briefly, to provide that link that creates a sense of realism about the diary. The main thing I think this will achieve is enigma, as it will provide audiences with many questions that can  only be answered if they watch the film.




Exam Sheet Posters: I also had the idea of actually creating the exam paper that the killer is going to make the students take in the movie, and maybe post them online for audiences to take. I had the idea of either doing it as a online game just for general fun, or as a competition where the winners (person who answers the most correct answers), get awarded with some sort of prize with the answers of the exam actually being revealed in the movie, this then not only lets audiences get involved with the film, but also builds anticipation towards it.

Film's Cool Session 5: Digital Strategy

In today's session of Film's Cool we had Mat Wakham and Megan Stuart Wallace talking to us about digital strategies, we focused on three digital campaigns in particular that have been very important in promoting a movie and reaching out to a wider audiences.

The key thing that we learnt is that with the dominance of the 'digital age' and importance of the internet in society today, that digital strategies and campaigns are key ways to help promote the film even more, with the most important point being that "a digital strategies is a plan ensuring you get what you want out of your online activities".

We were also introduced to some digital campaigns that have been successful in the past including:

Paranormal activity

Here is a example of the digital campaign made by paranormal activity, where they smartly put out a campaign where audiences could decide whether the film got put out in cinema's worldwide by 'tweeting their scream', this was massively successful and they ended up receiving over one million tweets in 20 hours. Thus, showing the power of social media and the ways in which you could use it successfully to build a strong digital campaign due to the fact that social media allows you to connect to a wide range of people.

Batman: The Dark night

The Dark Night used a flashmob for its campaign strategy, in which they had various people participating in a game which helped bring the story of gotham and batman to life in the real world, the smart thing about using flash mobs is that it allows audiences to get involved with the film, in a active way which helps bring anticipation towards the film, as a result audiences feel as if they are actually a part of the film, and these flash mobs only grow bigger due to word of mouth which helps enhance the films popularity and reputation, even before it is released.

District 9

District 9 make the much simpler route of using signs and posters for their digital campaign, and uses this  as a way to try and bring the story of the film into reality, but still maintains that fact it is a film in it. The fact it provides a website and number to call, make it seem realistic and so allows audiences to get involved in the idea. This helps bring anticipation towards the film, due to the fact audiences are playing a active part in the film before it is even released.

At the end of the session we had a Q&A session with Mat and Megan regarding information on the industry and their work and experience:

Film's Cool Q and A with Mat Wakeham and Megan Stuart Wallace by Film's Cool

Production: Void Scenes (Day Two)

Today we again went down to The Void to film two more of our death scenes for trailer of our movie The Examined. We had some success with todays session, as we were successfully able to film one of our death scenes with different shots from many different angles.

The other shot we filmed was of Harry's death, where we were able to film some of the scene but were hampered from being able to film all of it as we faced issues with how we would present the allusion of his death when we were down in The Void as we had not initially planned to film Harry's death on that day.

As a result, we went away to discuss on how we could present his death in a way that made sense and really represented the genre of the movie. We now plan to, show his death in real quick shots in order to clear up any confusion about the shot in a clear and efficient way.

Production: Behind the Scene shots of the Void Scenes

 These are two shots taken  by me during filming showing my group preparing to film our death scene which take place in the void..

 

This picture shows us setting up the set in order to create a dark and sinister atmosphere that fits within the themes of our movie. As you can see we made sure that we chose to shoot the film in a small and entrapped setting in order create this isolated feel to the setting.

Planning for production - Storyboard of our death scenes

Following our 4th session of Film's Cool we decided it would be useful to create a more detailed storyboard of our death scenes as these scenes will be the most important of our trailer, as it is the part which really highlights the genre of the film the most. Also due to our more extensive knowledge on make-up and make-up effects used in films now, we thought it would be good to create our storyboard considering what we have learned.

Planning for production - How Film's Cool Session 4 Has Hellped Me?

Session 4 (make-up and make-up effects) of film's cool has helped me greatly as I am now aware to a extensive amount of ways to create the allusions we are planning on using in The Examined,, as well as how we can go about doing this without having to spend a lot of money (e.g. using golden syrup and food coloring to create blood). The most useful advice however that I think I received was from Cliff Wallace were he emphasized that the internet is our friend, and if still in doubt just research up on the different ways that we can create these allusions professionally and cheaply. how to create fake blood

Planning for production - Film's Cool session 4 (Make-Up and Make-Up Effects)

In this session of Film's Cool we were overly excited about the prospects of having Oscar winner Christine Blundell and Cliff Wallace in to talk to us about how to apply make-up and make-up effects in films in order to create a certain allusion. This would be especially important when making a horror film, as we wuld need to think about the ways in which we could show cuts, bruises, blood and in general how we would present the death scenes in The Examined in a way which isn't dangerous, but also looks real as a result of the allusion created by the make-up and make-up effects used.

This was something brought up in the session, especially seeing as we're working on a low budget to create our trailer, so would need cost effective ways to create this allusion. To tackle this allusion my group we're given the chance to have a private conversation with Cliff Wallace, where he explained the different ways in which we could create our allusion without having to spend a lot of money, one of the strategies he suggested, was in a scene where a girl is being dragged in our trailer, we should have the camera close-up to the girls face with a chain around her neck to show that she is being dragged, and just use a skateboard for the girl being dragged to push herself on, in order to create this allusion of her being dragged. I felt this was very useful, as not only did it present us with a cheap way to create these allusions in our trailer, it also opened my mind up to the different creative ways in which we could create our allusions without spending a lot of money. This will also help us create the storyboards of our death scenes.

Also, we were given the opportunity to have a look at some of the things created by Christine Blundell and Cliff Wallace in the films they've made, and what impressed me most about this is how realistic prosthetic creations looked and the attention to detail that they've been given. For example, everything down to the facial hair of these manikins had been done in supreme detail in order to create this correction. This not only showed me how good these two are at their jobs, it also showed me how hard me and my group are going to have to work in order to make our allusions look anywhere near to the same standard.



We rounded off the session with a Q & A session in which we had a detailed discussion not only about our own individual projects, but also about the film industry in general:


Q & A Film's Cool Makeup and Makeup Effects by Film's Cool

Planning for production - Discussion We Had In Class

Yesterday in class we received back our first draft of our screenplay with suggestions on how we could improve it by Mr. Rosen. He said that although it was very strong, we still need to make sure this theme of Success vs. Failure is highlighted in the screenplay as at the moment it seems to be getting a little bit lost, he also maintained the use of Todorov's narrative theory in order to give our trailer more structure as at the moment it we're jumping back and forward too much which might confused audiences.

Planning for production - The Examined Screenplay

This is a early screenshot of the screenplay of our horror trailer The Examined. In which we were lucky enough to be able to use Celtx, which gave us all the features neccessary to create a professional looking screenplay. In the screenplay we have tried to incorporate many of the thing that we have learnt in the research tasks, like the six elements that make a genre learnt in Burton's Genre Theory, however like with all great movies, we think it is essential that we do another draft of it and make improvements, to ensure that it is at the best quality that it could possibly be.

Planning for production - Halloween

Combination of two popular formats gave it a stand out USP.

This Halloween there were plenty of classic horror movies showing on television, something I saw as a chance to help improve the quality of The Examined even more. The movies I watched were Friday 13th and Halloween: Resurrection, however what impressed me most was a five-part horror show called 'DeadSet'. The thing that impressed me most about this Television programme was, its use of its USP to help draw in their target audience. What they did was, take the concept of zombies taking over London seen in 28 days later, and combine it with popular reality television programme Big Brother. This was unique as it was something I had never seen done before as it combined a popular horror movie, with a popular reality TV programme, to form a movie that therefore appealed to the target audiences of both 28 days later, and Big Brother. Although this was a tv programme and so some of the conventions used will be different, I think its still very interesting in the way there were able to use this USP to attract their target audience, something I hope we can similarly do with The Examined.

Planning for production - A Song I think links well to our movie

Today I was listening to a song called 'Successful' by Drake and it really spoke out to me because of the lyrics on the song, especially the repetition of "I just wanna be successful". What I also realized was the link between this song and The Examined, in the sense that the main goal of the characters in our film is success, and them willing to do anything to achieve it and the repetition of "I just wanna be successful" in this song I feel really points out the underlying thing that our target audience wants, success and so links well to not only the themes of our movie, but also to our target audience.

Because of this I think it would be useful to play this song with those repeated lyrics at the start of our trailer where we will be showing shots of the school, as we want to implement this idea of success into the minds of our target audience.

Video of the song:

Planning for production - Idea of a Shot I Had

Lately I've been thinking deeply about the variation of shots we should use in our trailer, particularly in the killing scenes. In class recently we have been talking about how we might show, as the last shot of the entire trailer, someone getting dragged back of a chair of finishing 'the killers exam', this is in order to shock audiences by creating a lasting visual effect that they will remember. This will appear after the title and release date of the movie is shown and so kind of spoils this, appeared to be, equilibrium in order to shock and surprise audiences.

My original inspiration for this show as from looking at the poster of a song by rapper Kanye West called 'Monster'. In this poster there is a image of a arm around his shoulder almost pulling him back, whilst makeup is used fantastically to make Kanye West himself, and the actual arm look horrific, thus playing on themes of horror.



This use of a image to shock audiences as the last shot in a trailer has also been used in a variety of horror movies, including Freddy vs. Jason where the director has used a shot of Freddy Kreuger appearing out of nowhere to create, as a said before, a last shocking image that audiences will remember. We plan to similarly do the same.

Planning for production - Update of The Examined Movie Poster

This is a updated version of The Examined teaser poster and shows general positive improvements that were made in the aftermath of our front planning of movie posters. To update our already existing one what we have done, is remove some of the images that were in the image before that we felt were nonessential and just acted as a distraction the actual title, and also add production details of the movie (production company name, name of director, name of actors etc). However, I still feel as if the poster is under-par as I feel it doesn't really represent of give any hints towards what are film is actually about and so something needs to be addressed to fix this, also there are still many thing not present on the poster that should be there, for example; there is no production company logo, no links to external social websites, the typography of the title needs to be bigger and brighter because at the moment it hardly stands out and there is no tagline to further entice audiences to see the film. When all of this has been addressed, the poster will look a lot more effective, and will act as a big promotional tool for our movie.

Planning for production - Tagline of The Examined

Following up on my research on taglines, I have finally came up with the tagline of The Examined after having a long and hard think about it. Originally I was planning to just use one of the rhetorical questions we created in one of our earlier tasks, but I realized that whilst it did well in revealing the theme and some of our movies plot, I don't feel it revealed much about the genre, something I learned was imperative in my research on taglines. Instead I came up with the tagline 'Only the talented and tainted will survive', as not only does it play on the subject of school life and exams, it also highlights the genre through the use of the word 'survive', and also does well in being short and blunt, whilst at the same time revealing what some of the movie is about.

Planning for production - A Improvement I Would Make To The Front Plan of the Movie Poster

One improvement I would most definitely make, would be to try and include a image of perhaps a character dead in the poster, I had the idea of including a character sitting up against the whiteboard dead with blood smudged all over the board. This is because at the moment although I feel the idea is good, I believe that the image itself of just a whiteboard is quite bland, and wouldn't really strike out to a audience instantly, so the image of a character dead against it will provide something that will immediately catch audiences eyes, and as a result would be very useful for promotion.

Planning for production - Inspiration for my drawing of the front plan (main image)

Like with all great creations, when creating the front plan of my movie poster (second image in 'front plan of movie posters'), what I first of all did was look at different movie posters of movies with similar themes, refer back to my analysis on movie posters, and also look at different icons/ images that linked to the themes of 'The Examined'.

The movie poster that I looked at was 'Saw', as I felt it portrayed similar themes to The Examined of isolation, as well as a similar story as likewise with our movie, in Saw characters are put into a test for their lives. However, when looking at the the poster I realized while it is very successful in highlighting themes of isolation and fear, it in no way actually relates to the plot of The Examined as I feel that it is imperative that this aspect of 'school life' is made evident in the poster.



So what I did next was look at different objects that you would see present in a school, and see if I could subvert these different objects in order to make a film poster that can relate to our movie. So after looking at various school objects like pens, desks, rulers, compasses etc. I lastly looked at a normal school whiteboard where it suddenly struck to me out of nowhere, that I could use a actual whiteboard with details on it about The Examined (film name, release date, tagline etc) and use it in a exam theme (exam name = film name, start time = release date), in order to relate to the themes of our movie whilst also maintain the horror aspect through the typography.

What I then did to make sure the the poster still revealed something of the genre, was add a tagline "failure = death, success = life" in order to express the genre in the poster, as well as using a font similar to 'slasha' for the typography in order to make the genre of the movie still remained evident.

Social Media as a promotional tool

Today on twitter the number one trending topic in the world was #StepsToSurviveAHorrorMovie. Not only did this provide me with tips on how, ‘The Final Girl’ Sarah in The Examined might go about surviving in our movie, it also made me realise the big impact social media can have on a film, and the way in which me and my group could use the convergence of social media and film, as a promotional tool for our film. Particularly, as social media is targeted mainly at teenagers/ young adults who are our primary target audience. Because of this, I now plan to report back to my group and discuss ways in which we can use social media as part of our promotional campaign to promote our film.

Front Plan of Movie Poster

Here are two hand drawn idea of the movie poster that I had:
Front Plan of Movie Poster

10 ideas typography & textual analysis

Research for production - research on tag lines of popular horror movies

On my research into trailers in the trailer analysis and movie posters, something I realized immediately was the way in which horror movies and movies in general use tag lines to express the general theme of the movie as well as the genre of the movie, the tag line is also useful in providing audiences with a bit of a hint of what the film is about.

Taking this into consideration me and my group have decided that I should do some independent research into the tag lines of popular horror movies, the tag lines considered to be the best (in terms of horror) and how these movies use these tag lines as a representation of their movie. From this bit of research we should have a better idea on what we shold be looking for when creating our own tag line.

To do this I have looked at the top ten movie tagline's list from five different websites and produced a analysis on the four tagline's that come up the most on all five websites.

WHAT I'VE LEARNED

The thing I've learnt most about tagline's from this task is that to create a really good quality tagline for your film it MUST be able to create a sense of enigma, this is because audiences have to be intrigued by the tagline and has to leave them wanting to know more so it builds up their anticipation for the actual movie. The tagline must also reflect the themes and plot of the movie, without giving too much away. Also, the conventions of horror must be conveyed in the tagline to distinguish what type of movie it is, which will help towards attracting your target audience. Overall, from this I have a very clear idea of what I now should look to include (i.e. enigma codes, themes of movie etc) when creating our tagline, and I feel much more comfortable and prepared to create a very good one now due to my analysis and research on taglines for horror movies.

Planning for production - Last lessons discussions and planning

Script for the movie 'Final Destination'

In Thursday's lesson we went further into our planning by again at first choosing to assign different jobs for us to do. Whilst I did some research on the tagline's used in horror movies, and did some planning what tagline we could use for The Examined, John continued his work on designing the films poster and Morgan started to begin doing some work on writing up the script of the trailer. In the second part of the lesson however, we felt it would be better if we all came together and collectively worked on the script of the trailer, in which we used our synopsis and storyboard to help guide us. From looking at some of our script already, it is clear to me how much I have progressed from the research task, as even on the script we have added in many elements of things learned in the research task, like Burton's Genre Theory for example, where we have made sure we've included all six elements of genre in the script, to make sure our trailer can instinctively be recognized by our target audience as a horror trailer.

Planning for production - Film's Cool session 3 (Music Production)

For this weeks session of Film's Cool we not only had the pleasure of meeting musician Awate who previewed some of his music to use that we possibly be able to use in our trailer, we also had a Q & A session as part of film's club with Corinne Ladeinde who is a animator.

Corinne Ladeinde Q & A by stoliros

As part of our Q & A session with Corinne Ladeine we were shown a short movie of a animation she had recently created and had previously previewed in the London Film Festival. However, what I found most intriguing about this Q & A session was her comments on the importance of having a narrative structure to your movie/ trailer. She stressed that this was one of the, if not the most important part, of making any successful movie and so a good narrative structure is essential. This made me think back to the work we previously done on Todorov's theory of narrative, and the ways in which we should look to include his theory and use it as a basis for the narrative structure of our movie in order to enhance the story and make it even better.

The second part of Film's Cool was a seperate session with musician Awate who allowed us to listen and even have the choice of using some of his music in our trailers. Listening to his music I realized how essential music is in a trailer to set a certain tone, something I researched but never fully understood until now in my research on multimodal texts, and also to reflect the themes of your movie. For example our movie is based around school life and targeted at a young audience, so therefore the use of Awate's urban music would fit in very well with the themes of our movie.

Planning for production - making of the production company logo

What I first of all did was open up adobe photoshop where I opened up a new document and selected the 'International paper' page size so i could access an A4 sized document.

I then got a free image of an eye (due the fact our production company is called 'the eye productions') from google and copied it to photoshop so I could begin to edit it.

I then selected on 'layer' and then 'blending options' so I could begin to edit the image to give it a more shocking and better horror apeal so it could appeal to our film even more.

I first of all reduced the opacity level of the image to 49% to create a distant and unusual look/ feeling to the image.

I then maximized the opacity level of the drop shadow at a 120 degree angle, and then reduced the distance, spread and size of the drop shadow. This is what created the 'fuzzy' effect of the image which I believe adds to the grotesque nature of the image.

I then added a inner shadow to the image by decreasing the distance of the shadow and also increasing the choke and size of the shadow to create a close and entrapped look/ feel to the image which reflects the conventions of horror.

I then believed it necessary to create a outer glow to the logo to make it stand out more to audiences. This was done by maximizing the opacity and noise level of the glow, whilst slightly increasing the spread and maximizing the size of the glow. I also made sure I maximized the jitter level of the logo.

After I had finished editing the blending options of the image. I then decided to edit the color of the image even more by clicking on image and then adjustments and then black & white in order to change the color of the image to black and grey. I chose these two colors particularly because I believe they connote themes of doom and death often found in horror films.

The final thing I did was edit the Hue/ Saturation of the image as I felt to really emphasize our movies themes and the genre of the film, the image of the eye should stand out more.

As a result of all that, we came out with this image as our logo which I feel is really successful in its representation of the themes of our movie and genre of the film. As learnt in the trailer analysis film, the film production logo should indicate what your film is about, something I think this logo does very well.

Planning for production - Initial design of the logo of the production company

This is the initial design I had for the logo of our production company. As you can see we have tried to highlight the theme of horror through this by creating a disturbing image of a hand coming out of the eye. The use of an eye, also reaffirms are themes of cheating as it creates the feeling that you cannot hide the fact you have been cheating as a higher power (e.g. God) can see everything and so will punish you for your sins. Overall I think that this logo represents our movie effectively, similarly to the way that Warner Bros creates the image of the logo to fit in with the themes of that particular movie, something we learned is effective in the trailer analysis task. As a result i feel that this logo is going to make our marketing campaign even more effective.

What I learnt from the 'Representation of women in horror movies task'

From this task I have not only learnt a new theory, that being Mulvey's "male gaze" theory, I have also learnt the different ways women are portrayed and represented in horror movies. From my analysis on this it is clear that whilst women are portrayed as weak and vulnerable and there seems to be a focus on their sexuality, due to the fact we are seeing the movie from the eyes of a man meaning that the common stereotypical images of women are then applies, because of the fact the movie is a 21st century movie stereotypes also differ quite a lot presented new representations of women as being dominant and powerful. Because of this when characterizing the female characters in my movie, me and my group are going to have think carefully about whether we are going to try and adhere to Mulvey's theory, by presenting the women in our movie as stereotypically weak, vulnerable and desired as we are seeing it through the eyes of a man, or if we are going to challenge this by presenting a different view of women perhaps not focused on your typical horror movie. This task as a result, has been very beneficial in helping us to see different ways in which we can characterize our characters.

Representation of Women in A Horror Trailer of Your Choice

In my last post I talked about Mulvey's "male gaze" theory in which it is believed that woman are made subjects in films and so seen as a object of desire through the presentation of their sexuality to appeal to a male audience.

However what I will no do is judge whether her theory works by analyzing a trailer with focus on how women are represented.

Mulvey

View more presentations from jmoore16.

Below is the full trailer for 'Filth To Ashes, Flesh To Dust'

Research for production - Laura Mulvey's 'Male Gaze Theory'

Laura Mulvey's male gaze, a theory first created in the 1970s, suggests that woman are subjective to a "gaze" i.e. (point of view shot) from a males perspective. Laura Mulvey has implied that similar to Freuds theory, in which he believed films take people as objects and subject them to a controlling and curious gaze, that woman are made subject to this same look but instead exploited by their sexuality.

Here is a breakdown of her theory:

• Her theory suggests that the camera adopts a male point of view to appeal to a presumed male audience
• This is highlighted by the movement of a camera over a woman's body, which therefore focuses on the sexuality of females to appeal to male audiences
• It is also argued that the majority of the main characters are male so the that male audiences can relate to their viewing of woman as being passive
• There is no such thing as a female gaze and so female audiences are made to identify with the male gaze and so see through the male's eyes

However there are many ways in which this theory can be challenged. For example:

• This theory was made in the 1970s and so highlights the traditional view of women, something that has very much changed in modern society
• Not all central characters in movies are male 

Planning for production - Film's Cool session 2 (Storyboard)

As I said last week, we had the privilege of being able to work with professional scriptwriter Jesse O'Mahoney, who's written scripts for successful television programs such as Sky 1's 'Dream Team', who gave us a tremendous amount of help in creating a idea for our film and without his contribution I feel we might not have advanced to such a stage in our planing right now.

However, we were once again blessed as this past week we not only had Jesse O'Mahoney back to help us, we also had professional scriptwriter/ producer Ben Harris and also the head of media and film studies at LaSwap Kate. They were here this week to give us some help on creating our storyboards and helping us transfer our synopsis into a storyboard, as well as giving us a oppurtunity to ask them questions at the end of the session.

Again my group worked closely with Jesse O'Mahoney who gave us some very important tips on what we should do before creating the actual storyboard. He said that although we already had the synopsis written out we should make sure we knew exactly what was going to be in the film like settings, props, portrayal of the killing scenes etc. As with that knowledge it will become much easier to then draw out the storyboard, He also stressed the importance on imputing Todorov's narrative, that we recently learned about, into our trailer as it will give a nice structure that audiences can recognize to our trailer. These are all tips that we though deeply about and made sure we imputed in to our work when creating our storyboard the day after. So not only did this help with the creation of the storyboard, it also helped us gain a further grasp on what our film is actually about, and what specific details we are planning to include in it.

Q&A WITH BEN HARRIS AND JESSE O'MAHONEY by Film's Cool

Afterwards, towards the end of the session we were lucky enough to have a Q&A session with Jesse O'Mahoney and Ben Harris who answered any queries we had about how we are going to go about our work, and also about the film industry itself. This was beneficial in allowing us gain more of a insight into the film industry, as well as helping with the advancement of our work.

Planning for production - Choosing actors

There are going to be many considerations to take when choosing actors to play different roles in our film. First of all we have to be realistic when choosing who we can get to act in our film, it would be very unrealistic for us to attempt to get a established actor (E.G. Daniel Radcliffe) to take part so we are going to have to find people relatively unknown that fits the role we want them to play. That brings me on to my next point, when choosing actors we have to make sure they fit the role as there is no point in putting so much time into producing a good film if the actors we choose do not fit the role we want them to play. Lastly we have to ensure that we choose people that are able to work together well and get the job done well by showing professionalism as if not it might effect the end product. These, as well as others, are all considerations we're going to have to take when making the film as they can and will have a big impact on the outcome of the final product.

Planning for production - Protagonist and Stock Characters

This past week in class me and my group have had detailed discussions about who and what sort of characters we are going to include in our film, and whether they adhere or challenge conventions of characters in horror movies. To do this, we made sure we referred back to our research on the depiction of killers in horror movies/ killers in horror movies and also our research on stock characters in horror movies, to make sure we had a clear idea on what sort of conventions of these characters we should be looking to include and also to see where we could possibly challenge any of these conventions.

PROTAGONIST

From looking back on our research on killers in horror movies we found that the commonality between these killers were that they all seemed to be hampered by a troubled background, and hid their identity through the use of a mask or deformity. So looking at that we decided to adhere and challenge these conventions. We adhered to these conventions by creating a troubled background for our character in which she is mentally ill and suffers severely from bipolar and relies on her sister Kate (who commits suicide) for moral support, we did this as with most of the killers we looked at there seemed to be something that triggered off these killers rather than it being just random acts of murder, so we have decided to adheres to these conventions by likewise creating a troubled background for our killer in which the suicide of her sister triggers the murders in our film. However we have also challenged these conventions by not hiding the identity of our killer through some form of disguise (i.e. masks/ deformity), but although our killers identity is known we plan to still create a sense of enigma by making our killer the twin sister to the suicide girl but not revealing the fact they are sisters. This maintains the sense of enigma we are trying to create and in a way still ensures the identity of our killer is hidden without having to use some form of disguise. Also just the fact our killer is a woman challenges conventions of horror movies massively as it subverts this view of male dominance often seen in horror movies like Friday the 13th and Halloween, the only similar movie that also challenges conventions in this way is The Ring. This then perhaps hints at themes of a growing social disruption in society and the fact everyone has the ability to be dangerous.

STOCK CHARACTERS

The Final Girl - Sarah

Looking back on our research into Stock Characters, we've decided to adhere to the conventions of having a sole girl survivor at the end of the film and have made sure the characteristics of this character is very much similar to the characteristics normally found in The Final Girl. Like with The Final Girl in most horror films, although she may take part in the illicit activities of the group, she is is still a very much likable character who is very sincere and has been pressured into cheating and therefore audiences, whilst not liking the rest of the group, will warm to her as they will feel they can relate to her. Because of her good nature we plan to highlight the guilt she feels from cheating and so highlight our underlining message that cheating is wrong and doesn't ensure happiness.

Suicide Girl - Kate

Like with her twin sister, Kate is very much a outcast amongst teenagers and in someways society, which highlights themes of isolation often found in horror. We plan to highlight the themes of our movie through her as she is a very ambitious girl with big dreams, but doesn't seem to ever succeed perhaps due to the fact she is different and doesn't fit in. This plays on the themes of Ambition vs. Disaffection and Success vs. Failure of our film. Whilst also highlighting out emotion hook, something scriptwriter Jesse O'Mahoney stressed was important to have in a film, of cheating, deceit and fail of failure. Like with all horror movies there is a trigger that causes a chain reaction of bad events and so we plan to highlight the death of this innocent character as the trigger that causes the following chaos of events.

The Lad - Jack

As this is a British movie and not American, instead of creating 'the jock' character often seen in horror movies, we have created a British alternative 'the lad' so we could create the type of character that would appeal to a British audience. However Jack still does play on the conventions found in 'the jock' stock character as he is very trendy, popular and confident in his looks and ability, however like 'the jock' seen in American movies this confidence is instead replaced with cockiness and so the character will become disliked by the audience. Adhering to the portrayal of this character in horror movies, he does not survive and is one of the first to die in the film.

OTHER CHARACTERS

Other characters we have created who will play a prominent role in our movie are two more characters who are with the group cheating, one boy and one girl with the boy being very similar top Jack whilst the girl will resemble 'The Popular Girl often seen in horror movies. Both characters will adhere to conventions and therefore will die quite early in our film. Other characters will mostly consist of extras who will just help us to reenact the atmosphere of a school in our movie. This will include a teacher and students.

Planning for production - Ideas I had on the use of makeup/ props

Red food coloring can be used
to create fake blood

Whilst trying to think up some items we could use for props that will help portray the themes and emotional hook of our movie whilst also showing conventions of horror, I had a epiphany about a drama workshop I once had and on how they showed us how to us how and what to use to help show physical injuries. For example they introduced us to a fake type of blood that can be applied to the fact to help show physical pain and suffering, this will be useful as physical pain and how it is portrayed is a big element into distinguishing the genre of a film.We were also shown a type of paint and makeup we could use that can be used to help show deformity or some sort of physical damage to the face. This could come in handy because as seen through my research on killers in horror movies, disguise through deformity is a convention often used by directors to portray killers in movie, playing on fears of the unknown. Knowing this gives me and my group the advantage of being able to play on these conventions through the appearance of our killer due to these resources at hand.

Planning for production - Initial idea for 'The Examined' film poster

As well as researching on the different fonts we could use for the title of The Examined. John also researched and went on to even design a initial teaser of the movie poster of 'The Examined'. As you can see here we have tried to represent the themes of our movie through the poster. This has been done by using a exam desk to represent our target audience of young people who are still in education and is also relevant to the actual movie as much of it bases around a actual exam. Also the typography of the title suggests something about the genre as it looks to have been carved into the desk which represents not only vandalism which is something common among youths but also highlights the 'slasher' aspect of slasher horror. This is further emphasized by the use of red color which resembles blood dripping off the title which connotes death and pain, thus suggesting the nature of our film. The image of a knife stabbed into a heart further conveys this feeling of pain and death and also gore, themes usually associated with the horror genre.

The Examined' film poster on Prezi

To further highlight the effectiveness of this movie poster what I have done is, similarly to the work and research I done on movie posters, create a Prezi to highlight what it is exactly that this poster does which makes it effective and also represents the genre through its use of typography and iconography.

Planning for production - Initial idea on 'The Examined' movie title

Before sending John off to do his research on the design of different movie titles we could use, we at first as a group at down and drew a image of the type of title we at this point thought would be and best. To do this we looked back at the work we did analyzing the typography of different movie titles and what they represent to get a idea of what we should be looking for when choosing ours. As our movie bases around school life and is targeted at young people we thought we should use a graffiti style of font in red and black to represent the life and culture of young people in Britain, with the red and black connoting danger and death. This however is just a initial design and we plan on doing more research into film titles in order to get a clear view on what we should be looking for exactly.

Planning for production - Characterization of our characters (cheating methods)

To further characterize some of our characters me and Morgan, whilst John was analyzing the fonts for our movie title, researched ways in which are five characters cheating could cheat in a way that would resemble their characters. We go the inspiration for this from a clip that sir showed us in class of a man finding various ways to cheat in a test.

So what we done was looked up cheating methods on Google and decided on what methods to choose that most resembled the characteristics of the characters cheating in our movie (e.g. the trendy 'jack the lad' male character using the hat method and the guilt stricken final girl using the simple method of writing answers on her arm). Although they were only stock characters, we had previously learned from our research on Stock Characters and Burton's Genre Theory that they play a very significant part in a film and so must be made with real detail.

Planning for production - storyboard

This is a image of the first half of our storyboard, which due to the extensive planning we done for it as seen by our aerial shots and the received from industry professionals Ben Harris and Jesse O'Mahoney this past week, we have been able to do in real detail. If you look at the difference between this storyboard and the one I did for the prelim task you can see the massive difference in detail and quality, which is largely due to to the amount of planning and research we have been doing into the film industry, horror as a genre and on the making of trailers. All in all I feel much more confident about the making of our trailer now.

Planning for production - Aerial Shot 3 (Bathroom)

This is how we plan to set-up the scene where one of the characters (Kate) has committed suicide. We planned to do this scene in a river but decided instead to do it in a home as it links to themes commonly found in horror of intrusion of the domestic sphere. We plan to have the camera positioned at the far end of the room facing towards the bath where the camera will start of in a long-shot but slowly zoom into a close-up of the body, whilst tracking the movement of the character walking towards the body. This is because we want to create suspicion and fear which not only reflects the general themes of horror, but as learned from my exploration of movie trailers can create enigma.