News Backdrop Design

Our News Report follows the closing of the Klinger Factory in the 1970's. We create a News Report that not only looks genuine, but looks like it was broadcast in the 1970's.

Following Chloe's research into BBC News Reports from 40 years ago, I created a backdrop similar to one from the 1970's. 

Using IStudio Publisher, I created a simple backdrop which will be transferred onto a green screen in which our news reporter will speak in front of. I used a simple gradient orange background with a lighter shade at the bottom to represent any studio lighting that may have been used.

I then added an establishing image of the Klinger Factory in the left corner as would have been in the old News Reports and the old style 'BBC News' logo below.

The Final result can now be transferred onto the green screen with the news reporter and desk on it.

Survey Results

The majority of those surveyed wanted a female news reporter and this follows the convention. We decided to go along with this idea and managed to get a female actor to play the part.

Those surveyed were split quite equally in terms of what music they wanted. Powerful music had a slight edge. So we only made the decision on what music we wanted in the final stages of editing to see what went best with our trailer. In the end combined with these results and our trailer we went with powerful music.

Conforming to convention of our genre the majority of people surveyed said they would like to see a handheld shot in the trailer. Again this was quite divided, in relation to this question we decided to have the most of the trailer with hand held shots and a montage at the beginning that wasn't.

Again this was quite divided but the majority said they wouldn't like to see the villians face conforming to conventions. We used this data by not showing the villians face till the very end creating enigma, even when the villain was seen it was quick enough not to ruin the mystery.

In response to the data retrieved in this question we ensured we used young actors in our trailer, conforming to the usual conventions. Our actors aged from 17-18 years old, we had three female and 1 male.

Quite a strong majority wanted a lab coat smothered in blood as costume and we decided to follow this with one of our villains in a lab coat linking in to the plot of our trailer.

The majority of people surveyed said they would prefer a villain in a mask, so we further researched masks. However in further planning for our trailer we decided to go against this idea and use fake cuts and blood instead. We felt this fit better into our genre and plot than a mask did.

Inkeeping with the results of this survey we decided to have three female victims and one male. As the plot involved a group we decided this would be the best majority conforming to conventions.

Based on these results we decided focus mainly on the victims to set the scene a give a backstory then towards the end of the trailer reveal more of the villains to create an enigma.

Storyboards

Actor and make up

Tom Emmans was our actor playing the 'infected' worker. 
After changing into the overalls and labcoat, Millie applied the make up. The final results are seen below:

Screen shots of the actor in some of the scenes:

Shooting List

Date: 29th October 2012
Time: 3:00-5:00pm

Things to take
- Make up
- Masks (protection from any harmful substances in the air
- Torches

Scenes to Film                                                                                         Angles (all hand held)
- Introducing the ourselves outside the factory                                    - Medium shot
- Exploring around inside the factory during the day                          - Medium/Long shots
- Exploring Basement and 'sighting' the zombie for the first time     - Medium shot
- 'Confused' and scared Cameraman                                                   - Medium shot
- Group of us running down corridors                                                   - Medium/Long shot
- Millie screaming for help at metal fence                                            - Medium shot
- Cameraman alone in basement and faces Zombie                         - Long to extreme close up

Summary: We went home with a large quantity of footage and film all the scenes on the shooting list. After watching the footage back on the Macs, we noticed that the quality of most of the shots were not good enough. This was due to either poor lighting or poor sound quality. 
As the factory was very dark, we could not properly see the footage on the camera whilst we were filming or watch it back. This meant we could not see what we had filmed at the time.
Shots that were filmed outside are of good quality and can be used. 
When we go back, we will need to complete filming and film again any scenes that need re-shooting. We will also make sure we look through the footage in detail before we leave so we know what we need to re-film there and then.

Amityville Horror Trailer Sound Deconstruction

Sound Deconstruction

• Firstly voiceover of male protagonist speaking over production companies mentioning the area being out of price range with subliminal music playing as well underneath it.

• A montage plays with the voice over of a a conversation by the couple
• It’s all reasonably happy music till the estate agent mentions “A CRIME” then music changes, a drop then beeping like an alarm this links to the clock we see turning to 3.15am
• A gun shot is heard, mixed with the beeping then a voiceover of a news report, all mixed together creates chaos and isn’t clear. Gun shots continue infrequently as though he is killing them then and there. Voice over changes to male to suggest it was big news, probably national.
• Then you see a flash of the house, dark spooky and rainy. Music comes in to traditional choral music will long drawn out notes, linked with the rain and thunder.
• Children laughing modern horror, spooky
• Voiceover of main protagonist played of archive footage, piano music.

FIRST DAY FILMING

On Monday the 29th of October we went to the klinger Factory to start our filming. Once inside the factory we started to set up. Christina, Chloe and Jack scouted exactly what rooms we wanted to use and tested the lighting to make sure everything would go smoothly. They also filmed a few scenes of the characters interacting with eachother to show the relationships between the characters.





Whilst the other three were pinpointing locations and testing lighting I started on the make-up. I began by spreading black eyeliner across the face to make it look dirty and then I created the wounds and finished off by adding fake blood. Everything went smoothly except the wax on one wound fell off so i had to re-stick it down more firmly. We then dressed the actor in the lab coat and smeared some extra blood over it.










We then experimented with extra lighting as we came across a red flair which lit the whole room red. This lighting worked really well as it made the scene look more scary as we associate red with blood and danger. After this scene we taped a torch to the camera and filmed the scenes in the basement where it was pitch
black. We used extra torches where needed to add extra light.











Jack was incharge of most of the filming, however we did take in in turns to film scenes that we felt needed adjustments and all shared our ideas. After the basement scenes we filmed the scenes in the broad day light. These were mainly scenes showing the characters reactions to the strange happenings.

Overall the day went well, however one of our biggest mistakes was that we did not get enough footage. Some of the footage was not usable so we will have to go back and refilm some scenes.

Teaser Trailer Name

Trailer Name

 

• Our teaser trailer is of the horror/thriller genre and usually these have descriptive names that tend to reinforce the genre such as "Sinister", "The Exorcist", "Evil Dead", "The Possession" and "Physco". All of these films have relatively unambiguous names that suggest the genre and allow the audience to gauge whether they want to see the film.
• However some other films of the same genre have gone with the more ambiguous names to create enigma and to not conform to that obvious stereotype such as "Jack and Diane", "Carrie", "1408" and "Lovely Molly". These films link more directly to the film, not necessarily a description of what it includes.
• Inspired by films names such as "1408" we have tried to link our name to something directly in our film.
• Ideas we came up with were -Viral (suggesting the disease or chemicals that went viral), Warehouse (linking to where the trailer is being filmed) this is similar to The Factory. Another idea was to base it on the name of the actual factory where we would be filming this was Klinger. We liked this name the most as it was basic, ambiguous and linked majorly to the narrative and theme of our teaser trailer.
• We created a question on our survey to gauge public opinion of the four possible names and will post the results when the survey is completed. We want to see the public reaction to the names as ultimately they will be the ones seeing the film. 

The results are listed above to our poll we placed on the blog. The majority of those who answered the question preferred the name Klinger to any of those listed. Therefore after conferring as a group and taking into consideration the poll results we decided to name our trailer "Klinger". It's unique and creates different imagery for different people.

The Basics of Typography making

Here, I look at the basics of how to use typography effectively and what type of fonts would be best for our poster/website.

Serif

This font is mostly used for body copy in print documents as well as for body text and headlines online in news articles. There are a number of sub type fonts including Times New Roman. This is the most traditional type of font and wouldn't really link well with the message/theme of our trailer.

Sans-Serif

This font is a more modern version of serif created in the 18th century and tend to appear more in magazines and in some posters. They have a much plainer appearance compared to serif. This font was used in "The Pact" in bold and spaced apart and shows that you can use a very simple font like this and still make it look effective. You also see humanist fonts within this section and are the most popular when it comes to the body of a text paragraph in websites - this is because they're more calligraphic compared to other fonts and hence look more legible to read.

Script

Scripts are based upon handwriting and are common for very elegant and elevated designs. They are unsuitable for a bulk of text and don't tend to be used in titles for posters as they are not the most legible font.

Display

Display fonts tend to have the biggest amount of fonts available and also include the most variation. The main characteristic is that they're unsuitable for a bulk of text and are best used for headlines or other short pieces of text that needs attention drawn to it. They can show any type of mood which would be great for our film. This is the type of font we will use for our poster/website as the title & font would be one of the first points that the audience would look at and hence is really important to quickly show the mood of the film within a second.

Mood
The mood of a font is an important part of how it should be used. Commonly used moods include formal vs informal, modern vs classic/traditional and light vs dramatic. Some fonts have very distinct moods e.g. Times New Roman is always going to be a traditional font; hence why it's so commonly used for business. This is compared to other fonts which can convey almost any mood based on the content & other fonts they may be combined with.

Silent House: Sound Deconstruction

• At the beginning and the end of the trailer, we hear the sound of the shutter of a camera which is used to break up the diegetic sound of the protagonist.
• We hear a number of sound effects including door slams and screams to keep the audience on edge during the trailer.
• A voiceover is used to tell about the story of what happened within the house. This is to inform the audience about the story but not give away too much. This voiceover does give away quite a bit of the plot though as the trailer is a theatrical trailer yet as our trailer is only a teaser trailer, not as much plot is needed to be shown.
• As the motion of the trailer becomes quicker; we hear a number of clock ticks breaking up the equilibrium of the film before suddenly we hear a number of clocks ticking sounding like an alarm clock. The number of clock ticks heard at the same time could resemble a nightmare occurring and suddenly it had stopped because of the "alarm". This is very easy to create & edit on a trailer as you can use the same ticking sounds but just lay each sound on top of each other to create one big alarm ticking sound.
• The trailer is constantly in disequilibrium as at one point you hear silence and then you hear sudden beats and sounds to create a cliffhanger before returning to silence again.
• We then begin to hear piano music playing which sound like a bedtime nursery rhyme which shows there could be a "light at the end of the tunnel" for the protagonist yet we realise this does not happen as once again the tone of the trailer changes.
• During the final scene we hear cries and screams from the protagonist before you hear an echo during the fade of the trailer. This is really effective as it can give a final lasting effective towards the audience. This effect is very easy to edit onto our trailer as there would already be an echo effect within the program we use to edit and then it can be edited to how big an echo we would like.

Chernobyl Diaries: Sound Deconstruction

• A big alarm goes off at the beginning of the trailer with sounds of alarms going off towards the end of the trailer. The first alarm sounds like a big panic & evacuation alarm and in the film we find out that this was a nuclear reactor. This is very relatable to our film as our plot is about an abandoned factory and can show the connotations of danger and possibly a bleak future.
• We then hear a voiceover of the description of the events that had happened during the nuclear explosion. Here, a professional voiceover speaker is speaking and to make our film sound more realistic and relatable to past events, we are using a news reporter as our voiceover to explain the background of the abandoned factory.
• Throughout the trailer, we hear constant diegetic sound from the speaker and the characters within the film.
• Sound effects used within the film includes screams (typical convention of horror films) and also the use of the shutter of the camera. This is useful in the trailer as it shows the transition between different scenes and also a sudden sound to give the audience a little shock.
• Towards the end of the trailer, we hear the beat of the music louder than before and also faster to show the change in motion of the film - this beat could possibly symbolise the tension within the group during the outing/could show how much their heartbeat is now beating from the beginning to the end.