Welcome Moderator

ALEX WAIN

CANDIDATE NUMBER : 1779

CLAREMONT FAN COURT SCHOOL 64680

Hello moderator, I worked with Charlie Slorick 1770 and Thomas Hutchinson 1733.

We had to produce a promo package for our film, which included two trailers, a teaser and a proper trailer, a poster, a film website and various social media accounts that would all promote our film. The genre we decided to make our film was a thriller/military/horror style film as we have never experimented with those genre's before.  We believed it to be an interesting, new experience for us. As such we came up with the idea of two military soldiers hunting down a monster and giving it the title 'silhouette' after the fact that the majority of appearances the monster makes is as a silhouette. 

To effectively create the promo pack we needed to research the elements that are needed to create an effective promo pack and to make them as professional as possible. We utilised a large array of creative tools, including adobe photoshop, adobe after affects, and adobe premiere pro. These tools helped us create a professional looking trailer that we would be proud to present as our piece of work.  Another part of the promo pack that I created was the social media, namely an instagram and twitter page. This gave me better insight as to how to create a professional campaign.

Directing

This role was taken up by everyone but I gave a-lot of advice on how to do the camerawork, the angles, the editing, etc. I made sure that the production ran as smoothly as possible and that everyone was happy with any creative decisions made by the crew and the cast. I offered advice as a creative consultant to the cast and crew but allowed the cast to express themselves as they wish, which helped to bring together the entire project.

Editing

Tom took this role due to his prior experience with editing in the production of the film Duty Calls, his prior experience allowed him to correctly understand what would work in any situation and how to go about doing what we, the team, wanted to happen. This helped to create a unique film trailer that only we could produce.

Camerawork

Charlie Slorick took on the role as director of cinematography, his experience with cameras in his Photography A level helped to create the film trailer.  He utilised a variety of camera angles and shot types, including a panning birds eye shot, a close up, follow pan, worms eye view shots and a variety of others. Due to his masterful camerawork we were able to create visually captivating trailers that show off the quality we were able to produce as a team.

Poster

Trailer

Teaser Trailer

Website - link here

social media

TO SEE THE ACTUAL SOCIAL MEDIA PAGE PLEASE CLICK THE PICTURES AND IT WILL TAKE YOU TO THE RESPECTIVE SOCIAL MEDIA PAGE

To make sure that I was able to understand how social media worked and how film companies used them I created two social media accounts on two separate platforms, Instagram, and Twitter. I chose these two platforms because of how popular and commonly used they are in marketing films, some examples being Captain Marvel's social media campaign, as well as the modern Star Wars films.

WEBSITE : Reflections

Firstly, the overall functionality of the website was my favourite part. At the top of the website there were links that would take you to the various different sections, but you could also just scroll down and you would be greeted with the different sections, making it is easy to navigate throughout the website. 

The design of the website was also very successful as there was consistency in its colour pallete. The writing was all in the same font, colour and size, which helped make the website easier to look at for viewers. 

On the festivals section I managed to incorporate a link to the film websites homepage, the links were imbedded in the pictures of the websites logos. This helped to make the website look far more professional and more interactive and engaging to the viewer. 

I also managed to make a behind the scenes photos section. This section would help our viewers get invested as they would see how much work has gone into the film. It showed the variety of locations we had to use to to make our vision of the film work. The gallery also makes our production team more human and relatable as there will be more pictures that will be able to show sneak peaks into the film.

Finally, I also incorporated the same technique of imbedded images and made two social media links that would take you to my Twitter and Instagram page respectively. This would increase the chances of the viewer being able to keep up with the production of the film and the trailer. 

TRAILER : Changes

For our trailer we decided that we would give our film a blue colour wash to help give off a colder, harder vibe for the film. This meant that we could create a much more creepy, offputting feel for the film trailer and draw in our audience much more effectively.  The colour grading was done in Premier Pro, and we adjusted the entire film trailer at once as opposed to adjusting it on a scene by scene basis, which helped to enforce the continuity of the trailer.

The camerawork was sometimes shaky, but to reduce the shaky affect that the footage had we employed the smooth stabilisation effect. This helped to make the film trailer easier on the eyes and make the trailer more visually appealing when watching it as the viewer would be able to focus on the characters.

To create the paranormal effect that we were going for we used special effects in Premier Pro, helping give the illusion of our monster flying, and making it look much more believable.  It helped my project to look more professional as the special effects cojoined with the usage of the colour grading helped to make the monster look much more menacing and dangerous than it would have looked without them.

Before colour correction:

After colour correction

TRAILER : Edits

In order to edit our project we used Adobe Premire Pro, an editing software developed by adobe to help edit footage for filmmakers. This helped us keep track of and easily update our work when necessary. 

For the special effects Adobe After Affects was used to help make visually appealing special effects that didn't stick out too much. This meant that we could add more to our project in post production, this included a keep out sign that was added with CGI later on.

To create the Silhouette logo and to cut out the image of our monster, played by Amy, we used Adobe Photoshop due to its ease of use and large variety of editing options available to us to help us create the image that we wanted to make.

Adobe After Affects has a useful feature that allows us to identify the best positions to add images and edits in post production later on called "3D camera tracker" this allowed us to use the image and the colouring to help create a realistic image of our monster in the sky, which fed into the creepy, paranormal style we were attempting to create for our project.

POSTER : Refinements

For my film poster I went through a vast array of redesigns with the one below being my final design. The refinements that I did for this poster included increasing the contrast of the colours, which allowed the purple/pink light to really pop alongside the green colour of the refraction of light caught by the camera. 

It also allowed for the finer details of the characters to show much easier, as seen with the shadows created by the soldier's clothing in the poster below. It then allowed for the poster to be much more appealing to look at as the colour choices were easy on the eyes and still looked unique enough to grab passerby's attention.

I added the Instagram and Twitter logo to add professionalism to my poster and make it look more like an actual movie poster. The white colour of the logos follows the continuity of the poster and helps the poster to blend by following the present colour scheme.

CONSTRUCTION : Promotional T-shirt

To promote our film brand I made a shirt that has the brand image of the soldier with the purple flash over the eye on the front. This promoted the brand as our film is targeted to a younger audience and t-shirts are a form of attire that are commonly worn by the younger generation, predominantly teenagers. This serves as evidence to support that a t-shirt would be the best form of merchandise to use for most efficient promotion to our target audience.

CONSTRUCTION : Filming 2 - News Reporter

To start our film we decided that it would be best to open with a news report as it would set the narrative and provide enough information to grab the audience's attention without jumping straight into the action immediately.  This will help provide enough information for the film to make sense but isn't as simple as an exposition dump through a textual opening, such as Star Wars. 

We used a greenscreen to allow us to the edit the footage in post production and make it seem that this is an actual news report. Using the ultra key in Adobe Premier Pro we could cut the subject of the frame cleanly, allowing us to edit the background to look more like a newsplace. 

To make sure that the sound was as good as we could make it we utilised the external microphone available in the media room. This allowed us to capture the best sound we could and help the news report look more professional.

Another technique that we used was clapping before starting filming, so that way we could keep the camera on until we finally got the best shot for our film. The clap served as a marker for where each batch of filming started and ended, the clap showed as a very high frequency on the soundwaves, showing precisly where the clip starts and ends which we could then use in post productioon to cut the section we needed and delete the rest.

So we decided that we would do a news report to start the film, this would work as it would provide information to the viewer to help the short time we have to tell our story flow easier. The footage that we captured is shown below.

CONSTRUCTION : Filming 1 - Action Sequences

Members of the production team (and actors) met on 27th of October to start the first filming shoot. Discussions had taken place in class to determine what type of genre of film we wanted to make but no clear decisions had been made on the plot because it wasn't fully developed. The focus was on capturing general footage that suit the tropes of the genre we wanted to portray. 

This filming session was focused around filming the transitions that could be used to show the characters moving around the setting, allowing audiences to gain a glimpse of the characters and making sure that the transitions were clean, as well as work on the actual narrative for the story.  

An idea was to use light from the torches to cause over exposure to the camera and then when the camera's focus shifts it would reveal the characters. It was felt this would make for a more interesting introdcution to the characters rather than just straightforward static introduction. A great idea from the team on the day but unfortunately the light from the torches caused some shots to be dark and blurred and meant that the characters weren't perhaps revealed as well as they could have been. 

Overall the team took a lot of useable footage that can be used and incorportated into our final film.

CONSTRUCTION : Cinematic Storytelling

To make sure that we correctly engage with our target audience for our film we looked at 'Cinematic Storytelling' by Jennifer Van Sijil to study the most powerful and useful film conventions, I list them below as well as a brief description and examples of each one.

Smash Cuts

Some examples of smash cuts, a term referenced by Jennifer in which there is a sudden, seemingly abrupt hard cut to an entirely separate scenery or sound that is different to what the story has been focused on. Examples are listed below:

Psycho : In this film a smash cut is used to jolt the audience by sabotaging the audiences building expectations. Psycho did this whilst also incorporating the use of a high angle shot.

American beauty : the smash cut in this film changes a scenery of a vast city of buildings to a close up of a clock. This also affected the audio as well, turning from a silence to the loud banging of an alarm clock.

If I was going to use the smash cut in our my own production it would be to cut time from unnecessary traveling and allow us to make full usage of our limited time. This would also allow us to maintain the audiences attention by not adding in any un-necessary filler scenes. 

Climate

The natural elements that surround the scenery it enhances the actions of the characters, and when used correctly it enhances the mood of the film in the genre, for example darkness in a horror film, or soft lighting within a romantic film. Examples are listed below.

Sixth Sense : The woman enters the basement and breathes out a cloud of cold air, which leads the viewer to believe that it is initially due to the coolness of the basement, however as the movie develops we notice that the temperature drops whenever any ghosts appear in the film. Which provides an early clue that the protagonist is in fact a ghost.

Directing the eye

By directing the eye to make the viewer fell that something could happen it engages the audiences attention. This can be used to subvert the expectations of the viewers and to make them more engages in the film itself and direct they eye to the screen and the story being told.

Citizen Kane : Some journalists are shown watching a movie about Kane's life then the lighting decreases and only scattered light is shone of the central characters. This centres the attention onto the small variety of characters shown and makes the viewer gain a sort of tunnel vision, as they are told only those that have light shining on them are of importance to the story.

PLANNING : SCP

How will SCP influence our project? by Keyhole Productions

PLANNING : Props

 

prop list by Keyhole Productions

PLANNING : The Target Audience

For a film to have a successful release the marketing team must identify and reach out to the target audience, we did the same. We identified our target audience as thriller/horror enthusiast that are reasonably young (15-25). This must be done to ensure that the people that would enjoy the film are aware of the films release and would be willing to watch it, to help us find our target audience we created a questionnaire to better understand the audience that we would be marketing our film towards.

In order to make the questionnaire and ensure that it reaches a respectable amount of people I incorporated the use of google forms, an online free software that allows me to make questionnaires and include trailers from YouTube as well as posters found on the internet, this will make it easy and convenient for the people filling in the from to understand what my questions are talking about.

PLANNING : Top Line and The Big Question

In order to undertand the way that storytelling in film is crafted as well as the importance of a good top line I studied Frank Ash's work and his words, and because of his work as the creative consultant at the BBC Academy he was someone qualified to seek advice from. As I am trying to create a trailer that would fall into the horror genre I learned that it is best to hold the audiences attention with a well written story and raise the tension and suspense as the film goes on. I also feel that minimising jump scares would be best as I feel that they often remove the tense atmosphere that the film builds up. To help us achieve this, Frank came up with two questions that film-makers should aim to answer in our final production : The Top Line, and The Big Question. 

Top Line : A creature of unknown origin pulled from the depths of the past. mankind believed that they could control this threat, however they were wrong.Its location is deemed too dangerous to be common knowledge, an organisation that specialises in dealing with these unknown threats sends in two elite operatives to subdue the being. Do they stand a chance against something beyond human understanding? 

The Big Question : Will they survive and defeat the unknown being?

PLANNING : Social Issues And Groups

Our film is focused around military soldiers as they combat an extra-terrestrial threat. Therefore the group and social issues that we will represent will be soldiers and how they are affected by their experiences. We might represent how soldiers are both physically and mentally affected by their experiences, maybe through representing them as crippled, or developing PTSD after the events that they witness. We could potentially show this through a time skip, or maybe they develop issues immediately. 

There is the option to have the monster be a physical representation of  depression, anxiety or other types of mental health illness. By doing this we could be bringing awareness to that disorder similarly to the way that ALTER bring attention to disorders or social issues through visual metaphors or in some cases making it clear as to what they are trying to do. This is seen with some of their work such as Dual in that they bring attention to a mental illness, in this case it is duel personality disorder. We may take inspiration from ALTER's work to make our Thriller/Horror piece be more unsettling and make our work be more unique and memorable. 

Our film will be primarily centred around the problems that veterans and soldiers face during and after experience on the battlefield, however we could try to implement an aspect of mental illnesses or social issues to help raise awareness.

i have done a pinterest on veterans and war to help me study the reality and help to portray realism in the film

PLANNING : Casting

 

Casting from AlexWain1

PLANNING : Thriller Genre Codes and Conventions

Thriller Codes by Keyhole Productions

PLANNING : storyboard

We created a story board to portray the types of shots and the overall story that we wish to make and present, below the shots are roughly drawn out and labelled as to the type of shots and what is going on, for example a POV shot of one of the soldiers looking at a picture of their family to make them more humanised.

PLANNING : Treatment

We studied Frank Ash, who taught creativity and storytelling to production teams within the BBC as well as to production teams outside the BBC using questions such as what will interest the audience? along side how the narrative will evolve within the time that the story is being told. 

Through Frank ash we learned that there are certain tropes for every genre that will satisfy their audience and we learned that a good film balances the story being told with the characters, the tropes of the genre that the story will incorporate, and the time available within the film to tell the story.

Top Line : A creature of unknown origin pulled from the depths of the past. Man thought that they could control it, they were wrong. The location of its whereabouts is deemed too dangerous for the outside world to know, therefore an unknown organisation sends in two elite operatives to neutralize the being. Do they stand a chance against something beyond human comprehension? 

The Big Question : Will they survive and defeat the unknown being?

PLANNING : Call Sheet

The call sheet is important for the production as it allows for anyone to get hold of any other members of the production, regardless of whether its a director or actor. The call sheet will have the names of the people involved in the production then it will have the phone number that each member has next to it, this will make it easier to get hold of whoever they may need. The call sheet is below:

PLANNING : Initial Development

 

In order to make sure that we know a rough outline of what we want to do we made several mind maps showing roughly what we wanted to achieve in our film, it is not specific as this is still the development stage but it contains enough information that we can formulate a rough outline of the story as well as get a better idea of what we want to make