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Friday, 3 May 2013

A2 Media Coursework Feedback video from target audience.

Mood Board for magazine covers

Mood Board for Magazine Covers by kerim5

Shooting Schedule

Mood Board for magazine pages

First Poster Mock ups


These were the initial ideas we had about our poster design. We decided that the one of Tom Banks in front of a computer would be the one to use as the fact that you can only see that back of his head creates mystery adhering to our thriller genre, and the computer adds levels of technology which is a key theme in our film. We will take the photograph with a Canon EOS 600D and edit it using photoshop.

Poster Prop list

Location:Room 17 in College
Chair and Computer screen

Shot list



SHOT LIST

Colour coded to location:
Blue- Sandra's uncle's house
Yellow- Jennie's office
Pink- Karl's house
Orange- Garden at college

Scene 1
Sandras uncle’s house
1. Distant shot, heavy breathing (possible canted angle)
2. Extreme close up with chains around arms
3. Extreme close up of mouth and nose (including heavy breathing)
4. P.O.V Shot (blurry sharp movements)
5. Foot shot



Scene 2
Jennies office
1. Long office shot
2. Medium of the two characters.
3. Over the shoulder shot of the Tom Banks
4. Close up of Tom banks to help the to increase identification with the audience.
5. Over the shoulder shot of the Boss.
6. Close up on Boss your fired lines.

Scene 3
Karls house
1. Walks to a living room of some sort
2. Notices a small letter / parcel through the letter box. (slow mo perhaps as it drops)
3. Extreme close as it is picked up.

Scene 4
Karl's office
1. Opens the letter to finds USB,
2. Extreme close of USB to bring high significance to the USB.
3. Extreme close of Expression on Banks’ face and as to why there is neither address nor sender.


Scene 5
Karl's office
1. Medium of computer room of a kind, and banks sits down.
2. Extreme close of banks putting in the USB into the computer / laptop.
3. Medium that includes banks and the screen showing the computer


Scene 6
 Karls house (make sure footage of cell is on screen)
4. Extreme close of glitch screen
5. Extreme close of banks reaction
6. Zoomed shot on the can that leads banks to the location of the cellar.


Scene 7
Sandra's house

1. Banks opens door to dungeon, medium long.
2. Close of hand opening door.
3. Close of feet as they step into the door.


Scene 8
Sandra's house
1. Banks walks down the stairs, medium as he does so.
2. Shots close of his feet to help bring suspense.
3. Close of his POV and increasing suspense.
4. Finds banks, long including both characters.


Scene 9
Sandra's
1. Close up of Brian, his chains, and face.
2. Medium as banks unties him.


Scene 10
Garden at college
1. Banks and Brian become friends, they drink a pint. Close up of drinks,
2. Medium of the two.


Scene 11
Jennie's office
1. Banks is fired, as he fails to find a story to sell to his boss, medium of boss, saying he’s sorry but you just had to go.
2. Banks medium of packing his items
3. Close of him picking up an old article on brains past, a photo of Brian and how he was a killer.
4. Banks is shocked and leave immediately, medium of him running.



Scene 12
Sandra's
1. Banks is in the chair again, monochrome, tied up again.
2. Close of chains
3. Close of heavy breathing of face.
4. Last shot of panning out close up shot of breathing and then cut.

Shoot Day


Overall, the filming of our theatrical trailer went pretty well. The locations were a great success and we managed to get some exciting footage. We managed to get all the footage shot on one day, which was very intense but brilliant.

All the footage came out very well, especially the shot in which we placed the camera in the top corner of the 'torture chamber' where we were shooting and held it up on a tripod so it was completely still, we then shot our lead character struggling in the torture chair and are going to turn it into black and white so it looks as if it is CCTV footage. This well adhere to our thriller genre. Shooting at college was also really successful because we shot in the main office which looked exactly like the type of office our lead character would work in as a journalist with lots of papers and folders everywhere.

There were, however, some minor problems with our footage. For example, the footage of the boss firing our lead character was not completely in focus which meant we had to discard much of the footage. The hand held filming of our lead walking down the stairs of the torture chamber also proved quite difficult because it was a very narrow staircase and keeping the camera at his exact shoulder level was quite difficult.

Ancillary Product- Poster


Ancillary Product- Poster

I am very pleased with this final product and think that it fits in very well with our other ancillary products and main task. We used Photoshop to edit the image and a Canon EOS 600D to snap the shot. The film title on our poster was written in bold black writing with a red wash around the words, this proved successful as created a spooky horror-like theme, almost producing blood connotations and appealing to our target audience.

My skills in Photoshop have developed considerably since AS, and the tools I used were: crop, clone tool, merge, cropping, manipulating colours, levels and curves (adjust lighting) colour editing including ‘red wash’, hue and saturation, levels, hardware (A2 - PC), jerky style font- gave poster an edge.

The screen behind Declan's head on our poster is shining bright white, which we emphasized in photoshop, this immediately stands out and creates super natural images, as computer screens are never just completely blank and glowing like that- these super natural connotations appeal to our target audience and adhere to the thriller genre.

The words 'Coming' written in red in combination with the black words suggests horror almost suggesting it is 'coming' for you.We shot this image as night so that it was completely dark outside, this again suggests horror and fear as well as making the computer screen stand out, as this is key in our film.

The Making of the Magazine

Magazine Page spread: Corrupted Karma


Thursday, 11 April 2013

Editing Process






We have been editing our trailer over the past couple of weeks and I have found that I have seriously improved my skills since last year and become increasingly quick with the software- Adobe Premiere, things such as using a range of library sound effects, understanding of use of non diegetic sound, shot selection and a range of transitions including dissolves and fades to black, which are all included in our A2 product. 

Sound wise we have removed most of the background sound and added our own track with a spooky feel, the use of additional non diegetic bang sounds added during post production to create dramatic impact and again reinforce genre conventions. We have also recorded and added a narrative voice over this allows for a first person exploration of narrative and allows the audience an understanding of the preferred reading which is a convention of mainstream genre films like Thrillers. We had our lead character read out the lines 'It came in the post this morning' and 'I think it's trying to tell me something', these give the audience a brief understanding of the plot as well as adding mystery and excitement.

We have also used the pace tool to add a slow motion sequence to create dramatic tension and ensure the audiences attention is focused on the central protagonist entering into the chamber for the first time – this encodes narrative enigma for audiences and reinforces genre conventions.

I have found my skills had developed to the point where editing was far more time efficient in A2 than in AS. I learnt to avoid jump cuts, which confuses the audience. I have also learnt to add multiple audio face transitions (difficult process but necessary to ensure audio sounded smooth) We have also played around with the manipulation of colour to change some of the footage into black and white to give a gritty, shocking representation (we wanted the image to look old, blurry and mysterious). 

We have also been focusing on transitions including a significant use odissolves and fade to black to build tension and allowing for backdrop for  titles which is a convention of film trailers. The remaining footage mainly used straight cut for purposes of continuity. 

The structure of our trailer actually challenges typical conventions by beginning at the end of the film-Tom Banks in the torture chamber. It also challenges conventions by introducing the conflict at the  beginning of the film- followed by the normal world (Banks in his office). However we attempted to create a 'trailer rush' in the middle by using fast paced music. We also followed the idea of introducing the lead first, followed by the villain. 

The next thing we will do is put our final trailer on YouTube as an example of Web 2.0 to get interactive feedback on my production at A2–  it is also helpful as users can easily upload short films for audience feedback and for marketing purposes.

Friday, 11 January 2013

Poster Mock Up


This was made so we had an original idea of what we wanted our final poster to look like: