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.
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.
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
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.
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)
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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
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:
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.
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.
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.
