Poster Design

After Choosing the image we would use as our poster, using photoshop, I began to edit the brightness, colour and contrast of the photo to ensure it could be easily seen as the photo was taken in a dark location:

I then inserted the title/logo of our film into the top of the image, and added a Vignette to the title to make it blend in more with the poster:

I then added the details of the film, including the release date, tag line, who was involved in it and production crew. I used the same font on the tag line that was used in the screen caps in the trailer to ensure consistency. I also used a compact font for the production and crew details to be able to fit in all the information without taking up all of the poster:

Finally, using 'GreatPhotoPro', I edited the colour and brightness and applied various different colour effects to the poster to make all the text, logos and images 'blend' in more. This will make all the elements of the poster appear as a whole. The final result in seen below:

Teaser Trailer Editing.

Teaser Trailer Editing

One of the most important bits of our trailer is the end, we subverted Todorov's Narrative Theory by starting in equilibrium and ending in disequilibrium. Therefore our final scene needed to grab and scare the audience, it needed to be unexpected. We decided on having Millie Mae scene as our final one. We had a 5.5 second long clip and were unsure whether to keep it long or cut it short, almost like a jump cut.

We edited the scene by changing it to a green filter making it look like it was in night vision, this was reinforced by using a torch when filming to add a two toned effect.

We inserted a blank text slide between a title slide and edited clip. We then made the screen black for 0.4 seconds to give the audience a sense of calm to think that the trailer had ended before the disequilibrium of the scream.

 We also decided to divide the clip and mute the first half and placed a heavy breathing recording over it to create suspense as the camera moved jerkily around the room and then reached our villain.

Website Creation.

Website Creation



We used the site wix.com to create our own teaser trailer website. It was simple to navigate and allowed us to be creative with our website.

Fig1

Due to the nature of Wix, the height and width of our website would vary on laptops and computers used by the viewer to combat this we decided to have the background a generic black and then add our time lapse on top of this. We ensured the time lapse was a smaller size so it would still be seen fully on whatever device the viewer was using. The black background was used to ensure the sight looked professional all the time.

Fig 2.

We also added active links to other pages on our website. We did this to ensure a professional exterior. We named the pages to give the impression that the teaser trailer was based on real events, so instead of having a page named "Gallery" for cast photos or posters we chose to call it "Evidence", similarly we named another page "News Clippings" instead of for example "Klinger in the News". This was following conventions of other films such as Amityville Horror.

Fig 3.

 We also added our title "Klinger" as an image as we had downloaded and edited a specific font, this also helped to ensure our media texts were cohesive as a media package. We moved the title to the left of the page we did this as we wanted the main focus to be on the moving image of the Klinger factory we had as a background. We ensured the font was a dominant size so to be obvious to the audience it was linked to our trailer.



Evaluation Question 3.

3.) What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

We created a questionnaire using SurveyMonkey to ask one hundred people about our teaser trailer to gage opinion on certain aspects of what the audience expects.

Our Media Survey.

The first question we asked was to find out what gender the audience would prefer the news reporter to be. This was so we could decide whether to follow the conventions of what the audience suggested or subvert them. In the time when this clip would be set there were more male news reporters than female as depicted in the post, so we were inclined to have a male reporter. However out of the 100 surveyed 66 said they would prefer a female news reporter subverting the conventions of the time. Therefore we went with those surveyed and used a female actress to be our news reporter.

Our female newsreporter.

The type of genre our teaser trailer would be means that if we followed convention, either the whole film would be shot in hand held or a mixture of hand held and tri-pod shots. As this type of style of film is relatively modern , inspired by The Blair Witch Project (1999), we asked those surveyed whether they would want the trailer to be shot in hand held.

Question number 2.

The answer was split almost evenly so we decided to film the majority of our teaser trailer in hand held  to give the point of view of the actors, similar to the clip shown below from Blair Witch, and then to break it up we had tripod shots to create a sense of stillness.

 

A major issue we discovered when planning our teaser trailer was how much of the villains/monsters to show. The other teaser trailers or theatrical trailers we used for research seemed to vary in whether they had villains in masks and also whether the audience saw the villain straight away, never or just fleetingly at the end. As a group we were undecided how to proceed on this issue so created a question on our survey to see what the audience would prefer. To keep the villain hidden until the end would create enigma and suspense throughout the teaser trailer but to show it at the beginning may lead to an anti-climax. We first asked whether they would want to see the villains face or for them to be hidden for example by wearing a mask.
The majority of those surveyed said they would not want to see the villains face. Therefore based on this result we decided to only show the villain briefly on two separate occasion creating suspense and enigma for the audience, securing this idea further we went to ask whether the audience would prefer our teaser trailer to focus on the victims, villains or a mixture of both.


The two scenes where our villians are shown

This was split 50/50 between focus on the victims and fair amount of both. Whilst taking into consideration these results we decided to focus on the victims leading on to their terror as they realise they aren’t alone. This ensured the audience could sense the disequilibrium but didn’t know what they were afraid of necessarily till the final few seconds.

Question number 3.

Another question we asked to those surveyed was whether they would expect to see a majority of male or female victims. Convention dictates normally victims are young females and as a group we were unsure whether we wanted to subvert or conform to this convention. We therefore also asked how old the audience expected our victims to be. The majority of those asked said they would expect our victims to be aged between 17-20 years old this conforms to conventions already set. We subsequently decided to choose actors from this age bracket as actors were easier to find but also it follows a natural convention set by horror films.

Our young actors aged between 17 and 18.

Linking on from this we decided based on result to our survey to have a majority of female victims; we had three female victims and one male victim. This was due to the fact the plot of our teaser trailer involved a group of young teenagers going in to an abandoned factory.
 

Evaluation Question 2.

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

To ensure our products were effective as a cohesive promotional package we ensured a number of factors were the same such as colour schemes, typography and imagery. Our main product was a horror teaser trailer and our ancillary texts were a poster and website.

Products: Poster, Website and Teaser Trailer

Our poster has a colour scheme of metallic colours consisting of browns and black reinforcing the factory location element of our teaser trailer. The single bright light added to the filters used to edit the poster over expose the actors face creating binary opposition with a sense of light versus dark. This idea is reflected in other aspects of our products with the website having a colour scheme of brown and grey and reflecting more subtly the idea of binary opposition and good versus evil, the use of the time lapse as a background establishes the idea of our film being location focused on the “Klinger Factory”.  The editing of the time lapse creates a vivid contrast with the brightness of the clouds creating a darker “Klinger Factory”. And this links more cohesively to our teaser trailer which focuses directly on location with the Klinger Factory shown in the first four seconds.

The same title typography on all three texts creates consistency and a brand associated with our product with which the audience can identify. The typography was chosen to conform to other films similar to ours such as Chernobyl Diaries. Our typography was chosen to make an impact and tie in with the idea of an abandoned factory this is highlighted by the fact it is a rusty brown colour and has been edited to look eroded.

The use of a tagline only on the poster is to reflect the plot of the teaser trailer as it can’t accurately be shown any other way. It is needed on the poster only as the teaser trailer has title slides which highlight the plot and this is similar to the website whose background reflects the narrative similarly to films such as Amityville Horror.

Poster tagline to suggest narrative to the audience

Our poster follows convention by having a single victim inside our main location with the hand creating a hint of the danger that will unfold.  The single victim is also easily recognisable in relation to our teaser trailer as they have a speaking part creating a sense of cohesion between the two.

Actor prominent in both the poster and teaser trailer

More obviously the combination of our main product and ancillary texts is effective by having the trailer directly on the homepage of the website playing automatically. This reinforces the brand created and enables the audience to quickly identify with our teaser trailer and product.

Website; embedded video of teaser trailer which automatically plays.

 

Poster Final

Final Trailer

Final Website

This is the final website promoting our film trailer.

http://pierj017303.wix.com/klinger

Poster Ideas.

Initial ideas for the movie poster.

 

As a requirement for the course we need to do a movie poster. Looking at films similar to ours such as Grave Encounters, Rec and Paranormal Activity. The main convention for a poster for these types of hand held films is to have one of the protagonists, in the shot with a camera or camera effect also to represent the type of film it is. Also the main supernatural being will be in the shot reflecting Strausse's binary opposition with the representation of good vs evil.

Many of our ideas comprise of all three of these factors and use our excellent location to represent the isolation of our characters.
Some of our ideas.

Rough idea #1

Rough idea #2 inspired by TFL adverts

 

Shooting Script.

Shooting Script



Once we had edited some of our footage we realised that our footage didn't reach a high point in tension, so we needed to film some more scenes that would either create a jump or that will fill a scary montage. Our next shooting day is the 28th of Januaryso we made a script so our day could be as efficent as possible...

Ideas for scenes we need  to film-

• Film the predator crawling down the stairs backwards, then when editing reverse it so they are crawling towards the camera in jaggedy way looking haunted.
• Film someone speaking to the camera, with a predator in the background slowly rising up behind them.
• Film a pan of a room, look at one wall, Stop filming write something on the wall, then film again so it looks like it's just appeared.
• Shot of someone filming themselves talking to the camera about how scared they are, then hand over mouth as they hear the predator come nearer them.
• Shot of someone holding the camera themsleves talking into it, they don't how where the others are etc. Person pauses, looks to the side as though they have heard something, camera drops hears screaming, camera goes blank.

Whilst there we are going to take pictures for our poster, this saves us time and allows us if necessary to go back.

Tag Line Ideas

Tag Lines

When considering ideas for our poster, we also noted we needed to come up with a tag line that would suit our genre and specifically our niche area in that genre. Some of the ideas we brainstormed were:

Possible Taglines-
-Something Never left
-It Will Find You
-They Will Find You
-Dont Go In
-They Can Smell Your Blood
-Something Wants To Say Hello
-They Will Trap You In
-They Wont Let You Leave
-Your Time Is Up
-If Your Lucky They Will Only Kill You
-They said it was an accident, they said everyone was evacuated, they lied....
-Would you go in?
- For the toughest explorers
- You don't know what you're getting into
-Klinging on for life
-They thought it was abandoned...it wasn't.        Our chosen tagline.

All of the tag lines we came up with create an enigma. We wanted to have a tag line that creates mystery so we chose to use words such as 'they' and 'it' so the villian is not identified. Some of the taglines relate directly to our horror genre by using words such as 'trap', 'blood' and "kill".

Tag Lines Research

Tag Lines

Most movie posters have a tag line which is used to create a memorable phrase which people can relate to the film. A really good tagline will be become embedded in modern popular culture like "Be afraid. Be very afraid" from The Fly and also "A long time ago, in a galaxy, far, far away..." from Star Wars.
We are researching horror movie tag lines to see what the most effective one are and also what makes them effective.

"Heads will roll..." Sleepy Hollow. This is a good tag line as it is simple and direct. It sums up the type of the movie it is, and give some definitive detail in what to expect from Sleepy Hollow e.g decapitation.

"Who will survive and what will be left of them?" Texas Chainsaw Massacre. This is an effective tagline as it uses a rhetorical question, which poses a question the viewer has to answer...by watching the film.

“On March 11, 2008 the government sealed off an apartment complex in Los Angeles. The residents were never seen again. No details. No witnesses. No evidence. Until now.” Quarantine. Quarantine is a similar film to ours with victims recording their story. Therefore looking at their poster and tagline will enable us to look at conventions of these types of films. This tagline is unusaly long and very detailed but this is to go with the theme it is a real life story. The short snappy sentences add tension to the tag line also adding drama.

"The rules are simple you break them, you die..." Carriers. This film tag line is simple and effective with a good use of ellipsis to let the viewers mind wander and ponder the film. Although it doesn't give an idea of the film plot so could belong to another film.

"Ten years again, the Ukrainian government let tourists visit the area surrounding Chernobyl. They said it was safe... it wasn't." Chernobyl Diaries. Like Quarantine this tagline plays on the idea the film is based in true events. It's very long so doesn't capture the audiences imagination although it does reinforce the "true story" idea. Again this film is similar to the genre of which we are filming and is a great tag line to take inspiration from.

"Fear is just a word. Reality is much worse." Grave Encounters 2. This tag line is effective due to the short snappy sentences which people can quote. The film is similar to ours in the way that it's based on a group of people filming themselves. However the tagline doesnt give much of the plot away and is quite vague.

In summary, we will have to create a short, snappy tagline which is relatable to our plot and genre of film.

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.

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.

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 Pact- Poster Deconstruction

• Tag line- "Are you alone in your house?" rhetorical question, playing on everyone's underlying fear of not being safe in their house, house not home, interesting. Reflects the horror genre.
• Quotes from the critics promote the film- pick catchy quotes to grab attention in bold white font. People who the quotes are from in smaller text, less important the who than the what.
• Tag line and quotes sandwich the picture which isn't entirely the focus, unusual.
• Picture takes up an equal third of the poster. Supernatural, confuses viewer is the person evil or a victim- trapped/suffocating in the paper. Anonymous person, could be anyone-the viewer? Old fashioned wallpaper, bronze colour sepia. Homely?
• Typography- The Pact- All in capitals and white text, Pact in bold, almost glowing, supernatural, light in the dark.
• Colour scheme- Black and white with the bronze in the middle. Lots of shadows reinforcing danger and genre of horror. As it's do to with a house, its creates a ominous feeling.

The Eye -Poster Deconstruction

• Genre of thriller/horror.
• Colour scheme of brown, beige and white. Links to the colour of the eye (more amber), unnatural occurance? Sepia effect only colour is the eye, draws audience in. Colour drained from everywhere else.
• Main pull of the film Jessica Alba, central above the films name- big America star. Female convention.
• Unusually no tag line.
• "The Eye"- Eye in bold, draws focus of the picture as well linking to the picture.
• Picture of the eye coming out of the hand-possession? Someone/thing inside her. Eye is called gateway to the soul, which she doesnt have. Clear links to the genre. Makes reader squeamish, don't usually touch your eye, unusual and sensitive image.
  

The Devil Inside- Poster Deconstruction

• Genre of horror/ thriller reinforced by colour scheme and scary nun.
• Colour scheme of deep red, crimson, dark creates a better juxtaposition between the text and pictures with the dark background. shows evil, danger and sinister nature of the film. Traditional gothic colours; black, white, red.
• Picture of nun main focus draws in viewer reflects movie genre. The eyes are glazed creating an enigma, possessed, supernatural?
• Tag line "No soul is safe" like the nun who is holy isn't safe. Use of alliteration. "Soul" links to religious image of the nun.
• Typography- Old fashioned gothic text, backward D- reflection and mirrors and unnatural. White text with flecks of black, infecting the goodness. Looks scratched again unnatural

News Reporters Script

News Reporters Script

1.News just in! The Klinger Factory has been shut down. The Government are not revealing the incident which has caused the Factory to be sectioned off. No one is allowed in or out of the building. All civilians have been ordered to stay out of of the area and the residents of Sidcup have been issued with an immediate evacuation. (14.5 secs)

2.The Klinger Factory has been shut down. The Government are not revealing the incident which has caused the Factory to be sectioned off. No one is allowed in or out of the building, and local residents have been issued with an immediate evacuation. (11 secs)

3.There has been a serious incident in the Klinger factory today, causing the area to be sectioned off. Four workers have been reported missing. (6 secs)

We created three different versions of the script that were varying in length so if we use a certain one depending on the amount of time we had left in our trailer.
(The script was kept short and to the point as we do not have much time with in the trailer. It sums up the main point we want the audience to receive; that something has happened in the klinger factory and the government are not revealing what)

Amityville Horrors 2005 Film Deconstruction

Scene 1.

• I chose this scene due to the fact it's from an old fashioned news clip. This is similar to what we will be doing. However it is different from our idea as they are filming a policeman at the scene whereas we want a reporter based in a studio.
• The sound is of the man's voice however it sounds older and different through the microphone. This is played as a voiceover through other shots which have been jump cut into this scene to create a montage.
• The montage is of photographs taken by police and of a body being removed from the house. It's interesting and clever editing. The speed of the pictures and jump cuts creates panic and gives a sense of the shock and horror people felt when hearing about the killings.
• The crowding around the policemen seems to add to how big this story was, again reinforcing the panic and shock people felt.
• The footage also seems more dated, not as clear as we would expect it due to it being recorded in 1974.

Scene 2.

• I chose this scene as it's the last scary bit in the film and because it's a time where you get to clearly see the evil. Like in our film Amityville had a great location and here they are using it to their advantage with the staircase and the evil child.
• The child is playing on the modern stereotype that children can be scary, a recent occurance. She is holding a teddy bear, a symbol of innocence but it adds to the malice as the audience know it has one eye, as is representing the danger.
• There is minimal lighting in this shot as you would expect but the lighting casts a green/blue tint over the whole scene which is again common in a modern horror.
• This scene is very important as it's in the staircase which first caught the attention of the Lutz family, and it's almost as though the film came full circle with the house. 
• The girls is wearing a night dress, the one she died in and you can also see the prominent head wound of how she died adding to the horror, she's staring directly at the camera, but almost past it through to the Lutz family or the audience.

Scene 3.

• I chose this scene as it is where the evil comes from in this house, the mise en scene is good and it is similar to what we need to do.
• The lighting is limited and constricted to a grey/blue scale. There are a lot of shadows which is to be expected as it is the basement and this creates the haunting atmosphere.