After effects - 'Coming soon'

In today's lesson we used a programme called 'After effect' this programme helped us to experiment text animation. You see the 'coming soon' sign in every horror trailer, and using this helped us learn how to do it for when we put it in our real horror trailer. We experimented with different colours and animations, we made it fade in, we changed the colour and many other things. The programme gave us a range of different animations that we can choose from. Similar to photoshop it had layers, I used 4 layers but cropped it to make sure that they did not over lap.
 

Risk Assessment

When filming there are many things that can happen. We take a risk assessment to make sure that nothing bad or dangerous happens and if something bad or dangerous does happen we know to make the situation better. We are filming is places such as the void, where something dangerous could happen.
RISK = PROBABILITY x CONSEQUENCE
The probability that something will happen is multiplied by the consquences of the event. 
When filming if is vital that you take a risk assessment and many companies do, such as the BBC and other film production companies.

Ideas for Digital Strategy

We had the opportunity to talk to industry professional and they gave us excellent ideas on how to promote  out movies in various different ways. This is called Digital Strategy 
In our horror movie a murder has been taken place, they gave us the idea to think of a background story on 'Harriet'. Why was she killed?, what did she like, what were her interests.
We came up the idea that we could create a real newspaper article about her murder as you would see in your everyday newspaper. 
Brook House Asylum is school for mentally ill children, meaning that they will all have a Facebook or a twitter. By make a Facebook or twitter it will give the effect that they are normal teenagers. All of these things will show the background of the people in the school.
Inspector Sager could also have twitter account or a Facebook, which many middle aged men would have. Social networking plays a major part of advertising.
When making a movie or a horror trailer there are many different ways to distribute and promote it.
We came up with the idea of making a website for 'The Asylum' where people can go on to it, look at the cast and who is playing who, look at the character profiles. They can find out about the background behind Brook House. Find out about Grace's past. Find out about Harriet's murder and the evidence they have. 'Murder' posters on busses and phone boxes 'murderer not found'
For people who are die hard fans we can set up an account on the website http://www.peteranswers.com which will allow the fans to connect with Grace and ask her questions. We can also allow them to follow the investigations.
Speaking to the professionals allowed us to create many idea, We will be making the official twitter and Facebook page for The Asylum and the twitters for Inspector Sager and Harriett.

Filming Day 1 - Grace

Today in the void we filmed many scenes with Grace. We dressed us Hayley to play Grace, we back combed her hair to make it look big and bushy because if it look like long and greasy it would look unrealistic. We put red lipstick on her the smudged it, we also put her in a white ripped up top, on this top was dirt. This created the effect that the top was old and it matched the surroundings in the void.  We also made her face extremely pale using white make up powder, this adheres to the idea of her being a mental patient. In the void we filmed Hayley also know as Grace running towards the camera for the very last scene, we filmed her calling out ' Inspector Sager' which creates the tension and a sense of irritation. The filming in the void was very successful  today as we achieved a lot of scenes.

Adorno's theory - High art vs Low art

 According to Adorno there is a difference between high art and low art. Examples of high art is: Shakespeare, Novels, Plays, Opera, Classical Music). High art is for the upper class and wealthy people, for people who are more intellectual,  Low art or culture is also called Popular culture. Examples of Low art is: Cartoons, Reality and tv soaps such as Eastenders. Differently, low art is for people who are more simple and it is less challenging. Every form of low art is the same.


People think that the things being advertised are a must have and that they need it. False needs are created. From this Commodity fetishism is created. What is meant by this is that people become obsessed with these objects and think that they need to buy things advertised.  Adorno says that every film is the same, this is a form of low art. He also says that popular media is bad for us!

I disagree with Adorno's theory of false needs and commodity fetishism, when I see something on tv i do not instantly want to get up and buy it.  However I do agree with him when he states that every film is the same. Nowadays films of all genre's have become more predictable, we know what is going to happen. 

My horror trailer is adheres to Adorno's theory, our horror trailer is very predictable . It is simple, someone is murdered someone is getting haunted by a ghost. We can predict what is going to happen in the movie from the trailer meaning that every film is the same.

Experimenting with fake blood

In a lot of our horror trailers blood is being used, so in our lesson we decided to experiment using fake blood tear drops. The following video shows us how easy it is to make it look like someone is crying tears.

This is the outcome and what it looks like, from the picture it looks very realistic and believable...

Filming Excerise take 2

In today's lesson, we had another filming exercise, however this time we had different groups and different equipment such as a microphone and a sound beem. This time we had sound equipment. Unlike filming me approaching a door we had the chance to film anything we want and then edit it with the sound also. However we ran into some problems with the sound equipment and it did not record so we could not edit it as good as we could have because we did not have the correct sound. From this I learnt that we should always check whether the microphone and the equipment is on. This mishap has helped because when we go onto filming our real trailers we know how to avoid this from happening again.

Character Profile

Production Logo's

The Production company is very important when it comes to distributing our film. We came up with the name 'Nightmare Productions' because we think that it went well with our film and the genre. The logo will appear at the beginning of the trailer and this is what people will see first, when they see it again they will associate 'Nightmare Productions' with the horror genre rather than a rom-com film. Here are some idea we had for the logo.

The Asylum - Title options

When we start creating our film posters and start advertising, the font is very important. What it looks like is very important, it must go with our genre of film and also the plot. By using http://www.dafont.com we found many different types of fonts that could potentially be our font.

These fonts are from dafont.com, however using photoshop we were able to play around with different colours and techniques. We can change the texture of the font, we can put a background behind to make a shadow effect. By using photoshop and dafont.com we can create a very good title for our film.

Screen play

By using a programme called 'celtix' on Mac to help us but our script on to the computer. Using celtix helped us to develop our script and make important changes. Using this programme we were able to write down the dialouge and all the actions, when someone leaves the room for example. By writing our script and screen play helped us create our production schedule and when and which order we will be filming.

Dialect is a huge part in a film trailer, you don't want to have to much speech that it gives away the film but you want just enough so keep your target audience engaged. This is exactly what we have done. Now that we have finished out story boarding and planning it was time for us to write a script, in our trailer we have a little bit of dialect; reason being is that our trailer is filled but fast shots in pace and tempo meaning that we do not have much speech. However the speech we do have i very effective and will keep our target very much engaged. Our script or speech is mainly at the beginning, this is where we have our slowest shots. Our speech and script creates an inigma code in very different ways. one way it creates an inigma code is when he is talking on the phone to his 'son' and he hears "leave now" this is effective because it creates curiosity within the audience, they want to know who said that and why do they want him to leave. Another part when they are talking is when a mental patient is informing Dr Sager of the spirits that reside in Brook House, this is an important part because it tells us a little bit of information as to what the film is about and what we can expect throughout the trailer.

The image of a Mental Patient

Now we are going to start filming we need to thinking about how mental patients look and how they are portrayed in movies. This is an image from the major box office movie The Ring. From what the little girl is wearing we automatically know that this girl is a mental patient.


Hair - Her hair is long and straight and it also very greasy. This shows us that they have no intrest of what they look like and take no notice of what her hair looks like.


Skin and Makeup - Her skin is very pale and life less, she has no makeup on and neither will the people playing in our horror trailer. The fact they have no makeup on is very important. They have no time or intrest on what they look like. The pale skin makes them look sick and ill.


Costume - The costume we will be having is like the one in the image above, they will be wearing plain white night dresses, the plain white almost represents their mind, very blank.

1920's Makeup Tutorial

Our main character and protagnoist Grace was a patient in Brook House Asylum 100's of years ago. She was murdered and now she is constantly tormenting the residing patients in Brook House. Grace will be played by Hayley who has very long hair and is some what pale which is perfect for our character. However we need to show the time different between Grace and the other mental patients. I found this video on youtube which will help us when we are getting Hayley prepped for the role.




This video showed us what products we can use to make someone look like they are from the 1920s which is very important for us. It showed us that we can use ordainary face paint and make up to create the entire look we are going for. However for our mental patients currently living at Brook House it is very different, they will have very little makeup on however they may have a hint of white face paint to make them look very pale and drained out.

Applying Todorov's Theory to 'The Asylum'

Equlibirum - Inspector Sager has an ordinary  life, with his wife and child. At the same time 'Brook House secondary school' is as normal.


Disruption - A pupil has been murdered at the school.


Recognition - They have recognised that pupil has been murdered and Mr Sager goes there to investigate the murders.


However, when applying Todorov's theory to horror movies is does not always work. In our case there is no repair to the resolution, Inspector Sager becomes to obsessive over the murders and the evil spirit Grace who is tormenting the school. In our horror movie there is no resolution and Mr Sager becomes a victim to Grace's behavior.


Todorov's theory works in many movies, however some movies have cliff hangers or maybe dont even happy endings meaning that not everything is repaired and there is not always a resolution.

Christine Blundell and Cliff Wallace- The Make - up

Yesterday we had the opportunity to meet Christine Blundell,  she works in big mainstream films such as Sherlock Holmes. She is a make up artist and she has worked with big people such as Cameron Diaz.  She allowed us to look at some of the amazing work she has done. She uses make up, which gives movies life like and excellent special effects. This is Christine's website, http://www.cbmacademy.com/ .

After explaining our idea to Christine she help us with effects we can use in our horror trailer.

 Working with both christine and Cliff allowed us to ask them for advice and ask them questions which can help us with our horror trailer 'The Asylum'. In our case we needed to ask how we can turn an ordinary girl into a mental patient (grace, who is going around killing and torturing people). Rather than telling us to pile on make up to give out an effect she told us to do the opposite, she told us to wipe off all the make up, make them look as pale as possible. She told us to make the characters hair as greasy as possible, she told us that we can do this by using simple baby gel which you can buy from any supermarket. She gave us the idea of making them have very dreary eyes, and big dark and hollow bags under neath there eyes, this shows the effect of them being worn out. 

This was a brilliant experience and helped us with our production, they gave us brilliant ideas on how to make our charcters have the full effect and the full feel of being a mental patient.


Other than helping us with our horror trailer, she taught us how to make fake skin and also how to make fake blood. She made us aware of how easy it is to do these things. She told us how to make blood by just using golden syrup and food colouring. She taught us how to make skin peeling but just using tissue. Speaking to Christine and Cliff was an amazing opportunity. 


Here is a picture of some of the brilliant work .... 

  

Filming Excersise

In today's lesson had the opportunity to film short sequences and edit them, this exercise helped us a great deal and has given us a taste of editing and how to do it succesfully. Our sequence involved me approaching a door, however I had to scared to open it because I did not know what was behind the door. Using this idea we developed a very good video with various shots such as over the shoulder,close up , aireal shot and long shot. Using an editing programme we shorthand the scenes, this made it flow more smoothly. Overall I think the exercise was good and it went well.