Allocation of Production Tasks

We have produced another task allocation list for the production of our trailer, magazine and poster. This is to evenly spread the work within the group.

Trailer Tasks
Directing - Beth and Ella
Filming - Charlotte
Lighting - Group
Editing - Group

Poster Tasks
Taking the photos - Beth
Production - Charlotte
Final Edits - Group

Magazine Tasks
Taking the photos - Beth
Production - Ella
Final Edits - Group

Trailer Planning - Final Story Board

This is our final story board for our trailer, it has a frame by frame representation of what will be in our trialer with descriptions of shot types, editing notes and approxiamte times. This will help us when filming and when editing our trailer as it gives us a very detailed guideline to follow. After looking again at our story board we have decided to add in an extra frame at the end, this will be of the films web address http://www.darknessawakens.com/ and the producers and directors names. We decided to add this in after taking a final look at our previous research and finding that actually the release date is usually the penultimate frame and other details were the final frame, adding this in will make our trailer follow more of the conventions of a trailer and therefore making it look more proffessional.

Trailer Planning - Final Shot List

After drawing our story board and filming it we realised that we needed to add more detail to both our shot list and our story board. This is the edited more detailed shot list.

1. Production label flashes up
2. Pan of car driving past
3. Text - Starring Eleanor Failes
4. In the car found footage girls excited about weekend away
5. Establishing shot of house with car pulling into the drive
6. Girls walking into the house two remain by the car
7. Dialogue camera on one of the girls 'i have heard stories about this place'
8. second girl 'oh don't worry it will be fun'
9. long shot of girls walking in to the house.
10. Text - lets play a game . . .
11. Shot glasses birds eye view shot with ouija board visible when they bring down the glasses
12. Girls doing the ouija board hands on a glass on the board
13. one girl acts possessed
14. shot of two girls panicking
15. shot of the other two also panicking
16. Girl possessed laughs because she was joking,
17. 3 of the girls laugh along with the original one shown in a medium shot
18. another gets angry and throws board on the floor and says 'this isn't even working, lets just stop' other girls go silent shown in a medium shot
19. Phone rings close up
20. phone rings again and girls all look
21. Text - If your brave enough . . .
22. Close up of girl picking up phone hears white noise
23. Girl slams down phone close up
24. Lights turn off and all the girls scream
25. Flashing up images ... girl running up the stairs looking behind screaming
26. Girl runs in to kitchen
27. close up of opening the draw and frantically grabs a knife
28. girls turns around and holds up the knife
29. medium shot door slams
30. girl runs up to it to try and open it screaming 'What are you'
31. girl running through the woods looking behind her
32. Point of view shot chasing the girl through the woods
33. girl trips
34. Point of view shot getting closer to the girl zooms into her face as she screams 'Somebody help me'
35. Title 'Darkness Awakens' fades in
36. Tagline 'Do You Wanna Play' fades in
37. Release date '20th July 2011' fades in

Trailer Planning - Wardrobe Choices

We have two outfit choices for each character, we have gone for casual clothes for the characters and just need to decide which outfits will work well together in the trailer.

Trailer Planning - Story Board

Today we drew up a story board for our trailer:

Trailer, Poster and Magazine - Final Typography Choices

As a group we have chosen what font we want to use for our productions. Together for our magazine, poster and trailer we have 5 different fonts that we are going to use. We chose these based on our research into other similar productions and chose what worked best with our plans.

Trailer, Poster and Magazine - Typography

As a group we need to decide on a typography to use on the poster, magazine cover and in the trailer. We are using the website http://www.dafont.com/ to look for different fonts as possibilities.

Font one:
We thought this font would be good to use because of its distorted look. It has the conventional look for our paranormal theme.

Font two:
This font differs from the first one ,the drips look like blood which makes us think that it could be easily confusing in making our audience think that our film is in the horror genre.

Font three:
This font although simple, it appealed to us because of how bold it is. The scratches through the font give a sufficient scary effect to go represent our genre without looking like it belongs to horror.

Font four:
This font has a distorted damaged effect making it looking like it has been in a bad situation, this relates well to our genre of thriller. The font would also stand out in the trailer as it is still quite bold.

Font five:
This font also has the distorted damaged effect that links it to the thriller genre making it a good possible font for our title. The font is also still bold even though it is more damaged than font four and being more damaged gives a scarier effect.

Trailer Planning - Final Music Choice

After shortlisting for the sencond time we managed to finally choose our 4 pieces of music. We chose Dnager for the neutral track as we can cut the middle of it to keep it neutral with a mysterious undertone, we then chose Finding The Body for thge scence where Lucy pretends to be posessed, this had to have a really scary haunted feel, Then we chose Condemmed as our fast tempo action piece for the sequnce of action shot towards the end of the trailer and finally we chose Grim Reaper as our mysterious end track.

Trailer Planning - Music Choice

When choosing our music we had a choice of 150 different music pieces. Beth then took them home and shortlisted it down to 50 of the best ones for our trailer.

As a group we went through all of the 50 and short listed again our favourites. We had to choose them based on the speed, weather it fits the genre. We also had to think about choosing different pieces to fit different parts of the trailer.

We needed, a neutral track for the beginning of the trailer, a track with a build up to a fast tempo action type sound and finally a mysterious sounding track to end the trailer.

Trailer Planning - Final Production Logo

As a group we looked at the choices of logo and decided that the Name with the stars surrounding it looked the most professional of them all, and so have decided that this will be the logo that appears at the beginning of our trailer.

Trailer Planning - Production Logo Plans

These are the chocies of production label logos, that will flash up at the beginning of our trailer.

As a group we narrowed it down to two choices between the logo with the name below the yellow star and the logo with the name in the ring of stars. We have decided to choose between these two logos becasue we feel these are the most professional looking of the 5 logos.

Trailer Planning - Production Labels

Paramount Pictures is an American film production and distribution company, founded in 1912 and currently owned by Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio. Paramount is consistently ranked as one of the top-grossing movie studios.

Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. is an American producer of film and television entertainment. One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank, California and New York City. Warner Bros. has several subsidiary companies, including Warner Bros. Studios, Warner Bros. Pictures, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, Warner Bros. Television, Warner Bros. Animation, Warner Home Video, New Line Cinema, TheWB.com, and DC Comics. Warner owns half of The CW Television Network.

Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation is one of the six major American film studios as of 2010. The company was founded on May 31, 1935, as the result of the merger of Fox Film Corporation, founded by William Fox in 1915, and Twentieth Century Pictures, founded in 1933 by Darryl F. Zanuck, Joseph Schenck, Raymond Griffith and William Goetz.

This research will be helpful when we design our logo and shoose the name for our production label.

Final Magazine and Poster Choices

As a group we have chosen our final designs for the Film poster and for the Film magazine front cover. We have chosen these by looking at our whole groups research into the two types of promotion of films. We have chosen these ones for the conventions that they follow and we believe that they will look the most professional.

The only thing we will be changing is on the magazine cover, we will be moving the magazine title to the top of the cover as we feel this is more conventional of a magazine.

Poster - Second Draft

These are mine and my group members second drafts for the poster, these were better informed by further planning for our film, we have now decided on some of our cast and we have a definite name choice.

Poster - First Draft

These are my first drafts of a film poster for our film. I have lightly annotated them to explain my ideas. My friend who does art has drawn the image and title for me follwing a plan I made for her, this is beacuse I can not draw and wouldn't be able to show my ideas well enough.

Magazine Front Cover - Second Draft

These are mine and my group members second drafts for the magazine front covers, these like the posters were better informed by further planning.

Magazine Front Cover - First Draft

Here I have done my first drafts of a magazine front cover, featuring our film.

Trailer Planning - Final Cast

These are our final cast choices and there audition videos that we origionally took. We went with these five people becasue we felt that they would work well together and professionally. They also are all in the immediate friend group making it easy to arrange a filming date.

Trailer Planning - Cast

To choose our cast we will be working partly with and partly against the feminist theory. Budd Boetticher summarises the view: "What counts is what the heroine provokes, or rather what she represents. She is the one, or rather the love or fear she inspires in the hero, or else the concern he feels for her, who makes him act the way he does. In herself the woman has not the slightest importance." This is where our trailer goes against the feminist theory as our trailer infact has no male roles for our female characters to come second to. However we want our traile rto comply with part of the feminsit theory that being of Laura Mulvey she says "In their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness," This means that when choosing our cast we will be looking for the girls classic attractivness.

As a group we met today and discussed possible people we could feature in our trailer, we looked at the drama students who would be good for the acting roles, the parts with the dialogue. We also looked at the people who live close to our possible locations for shooting, and the people who would be comfortable working together, the image of the people isn't too important as we will choose there clothes and do there makeup how we want it in the trailer. This is our short list of cast and later as a group we will narrow them down even more to get our final cast members.

This is Annabel Roberts, we short listed Annabel because she is of the right age for the role and because we feel she would be confident enough to perform in front of the camera and the group of people we will be filming with.


This is Bethany Joyce, she has the glamourous, star quality look, and altough in this picture she is rather dressed up, for the trailer we will dress her in casual clothes and have her in more subtle make up. Beth is also part of our imediate friendship group and therefore we would easily be able to arrange times for shooting the trailer with her as we spend our time together anyway.

This is Eleanor Failes she like Beth has the star quality sort of look. Eleanor also does drama A2 therefore making her a good chocie to place in the trailer, if we do cast Eleanor (which is most likely) we would give her one of the main roles in the trailer. Eleanor is also part of the imediate group and she also lives close to our shooting location so would be able to get there easily.

This is Imogen Clapp she has a different overall look to the other girls however this isn't too much of a problem becasue we will be dressing and doing the make up for our cast, Imogen is also the right age for the role she would be cast in.

This is Katie Leask she is a confident person so we have no worries that she would feel unfomfortable acting in front of everybody, she is also of the right age and although we are taking care of the look of the cast she naturally has the right look for the role.

This is Elizabeth Hopkins she is also part of our imediate friend group and so she would be comfortable to act infront of us all, Elizabeth has the typical blonde teenage girl look very good for our type of film trailer.

This is Lucy Jane Smith she is also part of the imediate friend group and she is an A2 drama student therefore we would have no worries about her confidence infront of the camera. We would probably cast Lucy in one of the major roles in the trailer.

This is Samantha Caunt being part of the main friendship group she has alot of confidence around us and wouldnt have any problems acting inf ront of the group. Samantha also has a good look for the trailer, personally i can imagine her in the film that we are shooting a trailer for, Samantha also lives close to the shooting locations.

This Georgie Lewis she is a very loud and enthusiastic person making her a good choice for a role in our trailer as she will not get embarrassed. Georgie also lives close to our chosen locations and so will be easy to access when needed. Georgie has a different look to the other girls with short hair, giving a needed asthetic variation in the cast.