Wednesday 9 February 2011

Font Changes

When choosing fonts for our tasks we looked through on a non school computer so when coming to putting the fonts into the productions we found that the school computers didnt have some of the fonts we had wanted.

Another reason we changed some of the fonts was because we decided that there were better fonts that we could use from the website dafont.com and from the school computer.

Playback- Magazine front cover name will be in font - Franchise.

Darkness Awakens- Title of the film on the magazine front cover, film poster and movie trailer will be in font- ACID LABEL of Dafont.

Film awards 2010 highlights- writing on magazine front cover will be in font- impact

Exclusive interview- writing on magazine front cover will be in font- Copper STD

Issue 217-writing on magazine front cover will be in font-200 Century gothic

Trailer writing (Eleanor Failes/ release date)- will be in font Tosca Zero

Behind the scenes- magazine front cover- impact

Production of Poster

Ella began designing the film poster using Adobe Indesign. Beth hadnt taken the pictures for the poster so Ella made a simple template of the main ideas we had come up with in our poster planning, like the placing of the text she also played around with fonts and colours whilst myself and Beth gave her ideas and our opinions of what she had done. The font she began using is not what we ended up using for the final production, Beth managed to find a font that worked alot better off the website dafont.com. Ella decided to make the first names of the stars bigger then their last names because it is a conventional aspect we found in our research into conventional thriller posters. Having the names large at the top of the page is used to instantly attract peoples attention throught the box office draw.







Ella then did the same thing with the rest of the text on the poster like the title, review line and the release date.




Beth arranged a date with Ellie to take the pictures Ella needed to use in the film poster these included one of Ellie and one of Beths house. Here are the unedited pictures beth took for Ella to choose from.








We decided to go with this image of Ellie becasue Ellie had the best expression in this image, it was also one of just half the face which is what the origional design had so we thought it would be easier for Ella to edit if she didnt have to go to the bother of cutting half the image as well. This image also had the best lighting for the effect we were going for once made darker and more contrasted we though this lighting would be the best to fit with the atmosphere we were trying to create.






As a group we decided that we wanted to use some of the ideas from the film poster for 'Dead End' we liked the use of the red and blacks giving and instant mystery and thrill to the poster, however we were still going to use the main template we as a group had already decided on.



Ella produced the poster using the software Fireworks MX.





1. Ella began the production by editing the origional image od Ellie to remove all the background she did this using the magic wand tool this left her with just the image of Ellies face to work with.



2. The next step was for Ella to edit the image of Ellies face. First she added an inner glow to the picture and then changed the brightness and contrast of the image, she lowerd the brightness to -33 and made the contrast higher to 49.



3. She then made the colour change to Ellies face using the idea from the 'Dead End' film poster. At first we werent sure weather we wanted Ellie green, blue or red, but eventually decided that a blood red would be most effective for the genre.



4. Next Ella needed to edit the image of the house. This was done by Beth becasue Ella needed to concentrate on perfecting other aspects of the poster. Beth changed the image to black and white and rasied the contrast significantly, and also lowered the brightness.









This the the creative process our film poster followed to get ot our final production. First is our original plan we came up with through alot of research into conventions of film posters picking the bits we liked and thought worked well. Next is the 'Dead End' poster this was our final piece of inspiration, as soon as we saw it we all liked the idea of the colour coverage because we felt it added a sense of mystery to the poster. Finally is our finished production in which you can see our original design along with the ideas taken from the 'Dead End' poster.


Editing

To edit our film trailer we used the software Movie Plus 5.

This allows you to piece together the different shots add in different shot transitions e.g. fades, cuts and wipes to name a few.

It also allows you to add multiple sound layers to your trailer allowing for dialogue and background music.



We edited our trailer as a group, we took it in turns to use the programme so that we could add our own creative touches to the trailer. Because we finished our filming quite early we had alot of time to try out different ideas and see what worked best.

Putting the trailer together was a lenghty process because even minor mistake were incredibly noticeable so we had to edit it to eliminate these filming mistakes to give it that professional finish, another difficult part to get perfect was the continuity, making separate shots look smooth had to be so precise for it to work.

In this shot we had to change the contrast of the image becasue it was to bright for the effect we wanted, becasue we wanted a more mysterious feel and having to much light in the room took away from the atmosphere we were creating in the trailer.

After getting the trailer flowing smoothly we had to add in the backing tracks. With the first few we had to add the track and cut it so it didn't reach the climax of the music as we only wanted the beginning for its creepy undertone, we did this repeatedly until we had enough to cover what we wanted. Our next piece of music had to be faded into our first bit but fitted quite well with not much altering from us. We then did the same as the beginning for the next section of the trailer and moved it into our third bit of music which again instantly fitted well into the trailer and in fact we didn't have to edit it at all, finally we added our final track which was the mysterious piece for the end credits of the trailer again this fitted quite well with only a few minor alterations having to be made.

After everything we watched the trailer through and made any minor changes we felt necessary, we were then happy with our trailer and were able to export it to a DVD disk to be submitted.


Filming

We did our filming on the 7th December 2010. We began filming after school at our first shot location in Coulsdon, this was the pan shot of the car. We used the road we did because it was a quiet residential road and allowed us to easily go up and down it to shoot and re shoot the scene, without any disruptions by other cars. This first shot took a couple of times to get it perfect becasue we either paned too fast or too slow we eventually got the right balance for it to look like we wanted it to.

We then moved on to Caterham to do the rest of our filming at our chosen location. We began filming here with the establishing shot of the house, this involved Sam driving into the drive and parking as well. Whilst I was operating the camera Ella and Beth took care of the directing roles.

The next shot we filmed was the one of the girls getting out of the car and going into the house. This was an easy long shot to film, the second half of the scene with the conversation between Ellie and Lucy was harder, we had to film it in three sections first a mid shot of Ellie saying her lines, then we stopped the camera and continued with a second shot of Lucy saying her lines finally we stopped the camera again and continued with another long shot of the girls walking into the house. We had to make sure we had enough room before and after the shots so we could cut parts inorder to ensure a good continuity.

We then moved to our next shot in the house in the living room, We had to rearrange some of the furniture to fit all the girls around the table, we also had to add in our props to the shot this included a bottle of alchol and shot glasses with water in to represent the fact the girls were drinking, we also had the main prop of a Ouija board which we made ourselves. The first part of this scene was a crane shot of the shot glasses and the girls doing the shots over the board. We managed to get this shot first time, slthough it was difficult as we had to hold the camera steady over the table without being in the shot itself, Ella filmed this shot becasue she is the tallest in our group and so found it the easiest to do.

The shots of the girls playing the Ouija board was broken down into several shots to compose the scene. The first was of the girls playing the next was of Lucy acting possessed, although we wanted snaps of her possessed we decided to film it in one and just cut it up in editing. The next shots were of the girls reaction shots. our final shots came out well, however this sequence took time to film as the girls found it funny at first and would start giggling as did me, Beth and Ella at points. We Then did a similar sequence for when the Lucy reveals shes joking we filmed Lucy start laughing and saying her dialouge and then filed the reaction shots of the other girls round the table. The main shot we had to focus on in this sequence was Ellies shot of throwing the board off the table as this is meant to trigger the beginning of the action. These sequences involved a mixture of long, mid and close up shots. We also had to film them a few times becasue of the same giggling problem.

We then moved on to the phone scene, also split into a few shots. We had to create the sound of the phone and so used a ringtone from Beths mobile to act as the home phones ring. We began the sequence with a cross cut of the girls looking at the phone to a close up of a phone, this is a match on action. we then move to a longshot on Lucy walking to answer the phone and then onto a close up of her picking up to phone and then we zoom in, finally we moved back to a mid shot of her slamming the phone down.

After we had finished the group shots we moved onto the individual action scenes. We began with Beth Joyce's becasue she had to leave early becasue of the ice. This shot consisted of Beth running and tripping up the stairs, this was and easy shot to film becasue we just had to set the camera up in onw postion and let her do the acting.

Our second action shot was of Sam, this was split into 3 shots first being a long shot of her running into the kitchen, second a close up of her rummaging through the draws and third a long shot of her backing away holding a knife, it was important in these shots we got enough footage before and after what we needed in order to get a good continuity.

Our final shot in the house was Lucy's action shot where she was in the bathroom and the door is slammed she had to run towards it to try and catch it before it shut and then panic when it does. This was very hard to film becasue we obviously couldnt slam the door ourselves so we had to make Lucy slam it whilst making it look as if she was trying to stop it. We eventually got a good enough shot after a few takes.

We then moved on to our final couple of shots outside. We needed to move to the woods opposite Beths house, firstly we needed a shot of Ellie running past, this was easy we just had to switch to night cam and position the camera at the side, however the ice posed a few problems becasue it made running very difficult, we did manage to get the shot after a couple of takes.

Finally we need the point of view shot following Ellie throught the woods, this again was difficult, I was the one filming the shot whilst Ella and Beth directed, this took a few takes becasue of me zooming too fast and too far, then in another me and Ellie slipped over on the ice, but we finally managed to get a good shot.

Prior to our filming we warned the surrounding neighbours of the house and the woods what we would be doing as we needed to scream and didn't want them to worry what was happening.

Preparation For Filming

After finishing all our planning we had to start filiming. In order to gather everyone and set a filming date we used variety of medias. First we created a thread on facebook to inform eveyone of the dates we wnated to film. A thread is like an email sent to a group of people, however unlike an email every body can see everyones replies, it creates a good organised way to arrange meetings and so we decided it would be a good form of communication for our filiming dates.

Unfortunately this date fell through due to snow, this meant that becasue we were all coming from different locations not all of us could attend, the snow would also have created difficulties for the driving scene as the roads were very icy.

Next we decided on a second filming date and created a text to inform eveyone of this.


This second date was successful and we were able to gather everyone and get most of the filming done apart from one scene which we are having to re shoot.