Ewan Leslie. Media

Institutional Analysis

Second Audience Feedback

Like we did previously we showed a newer cut of our trailer to a selection of people in order to gain some feedback. At this point our trailer was far closer to completion as the music although not the final piece was very close to how the final track would sound. We had also begun making our graphics and had completed half of them along with putting in our first ident. We had also made our title, which we created using ink in water and placed this in.

Notes from the feedback:

2nd shot, remove and place at the end
For the 2nd set of graphics, use a different font, perhaps the same as the title?
Need to make those graphics fit into the style of the title, perhaps add a clipping mask of ink
4 star empire review breaks up the suspense, use shot of her getting grabbed
Maybe add a boom and fade back in after the black
2 car shots don't work
Take out 'improv side car 1' use it to make it clear that they're in a car
Hold longer on the 3 shot, to send the message that they can't decide
4 stars should be placed her, between the shot of them not being able to decide and the car in order to show that they are separate
Montage, layer in booms
Music, hold at end and ramp back up
Boom on the black at end
Title should come in slower
Ink drop needs more time
Final music, ink drop should be in silence
Use more booms, boom from title to credits
Add a sound for the title, perhaps the breathing or clock??

As this was close to our final version we hoped that we wouldn't have too many negatives, thankfully we didn't as we took the advice on board from last time and made the necessary changes. Overall the main pointers were to clean up the title a bit, this we knew as we had only just put it in as well as change up the narrative graphics as at the moment they are fairly similar to each other. We were also advised to remove several shots which don't work, this is completely understandable. We also had plenty of positive feedback particularly towards our Full Circle ident and the title. We were were thankful that the title came out how it did, as when filming it we encountered several problems such as the reflection.

AF
EJ
EL

Poster Research: THE REVENANT

Poster Research: ENEMY

Adam Magazine Analysis - Hunger games

Adam Magazine Analysis - Sherlock

Adam - Magazine Analyisis

As I'm targeting a mass market in my magazine, I researched Total Film and Empire. These two magazines are very similar in style and I will aim to adhere to these conventions. You can see many different conventions which are used throughout, notably the large title behind the central image and a tag line above the title. In these magazines, a lot of action is going on in the cover with a lot of different parts, given a cluttered but specific feel.

I extremely like the use of a bar to showcase other films, this gives the cover a professional feel that I hope to replicate. The title of the film is also shown centrally, and covers the whole page. I also hope to include a puff to showcase another film along with a bar at the bottom, giving a brief teaser to what's inside the magazine.

Emmas Magazine Analysis

When researching into current magazines, I found the ways in which they present their content to the audience greatly varied. Magazines such as Empire and Total Film cater for a mass audience, making content easily visible on the front cover so the potential consumer is aware of the best features. Magazines such as these, vastly advertise their content, selling the magazine on the content rather than the name. Despite this, it could be suggested that film fanatics are also interested in these mainstream magazines, as the advertisement content at the back includes fan paraphernalia.

In contrast, magazines such as Clash and Little White Lies aim at a niche audience, primarily featuring arthouse and indie films. As people buy these types of magazines for the name and reputation, minimal advertising is present on the front cover giving it a very professional and minimalist feel. Sight and Sound magazine strikes a contrast between mass audience and indie magazines, showing interest in both areas. For my own work, even though I prefer the design of magazines such as Clash, I want to create a cross between Sight and Sound and Empire. I believe that this will strike a balance between stylised design and practicality, testing my abilities to produce a convincing magazine.

First audience feedback

We showed a very rough draft to several people in order to get a grasp of how our trailer was shaping up. At this point our trailer had all the shots from the shot list put in with the correct length, along with a 1st draft of the music. We had only put in black spaces in place of the titles/graphics.

After showing them our trailer we asked for tips on what needed to be improved:

Soundtrack needs more drama, and crescendo
As a trailer needs to be more thrilling, with the montage being quicker
Sound/dialogue needs to come in much tighter as they speak
Layering of sound
Too much posing in the shots
Opening and closing with the same shot??? Cut one
Fit quick shots to sound, maybe longer
Doorbell replaced with a knock
Longer black after the graphics
Cut tighter on the opening of the door
Spade in Act 1 shown too early, makes the job appear to be something that it's not
Shot of house needed, ESSENTIAL
Remove echo
Bag thrown down too slow
Too long on cocking of gun
Everything is too placed
Split audio 'lets go' over establishing shot of house
Music: Needs more drama
Some shot needed of them breaking into the hosue
'We're done here' needs to be far quicker
Noise of door, doesn't work
Act 2/3 needs more danger, faster cuts, more happening, quicker, tighter montage
'What are we going to do with her 'could come earlier, soundbridge + split audio edit
Pull out to the three shot later???
Start with single line 'What are we going to do with her' perhaps???
'We can't kill her' in the montage???

Overall the main pointers are the music needs to be faster and every shot needs to be far tighter. These are both areas that we know need to be improved and we are already working on, as the music is only currently in it's first draft and we've only just begun editing the whole piece together. We also received plenty of praise, particularly surrounding the stylised nature of the shots and the overall feel of the trailer

AF
EJ
EL

Emma - Poster Analysis

Adam - Poster Analysis

I produced a video to analyse the 7 minutes poster, when the video uploaded the colours in the video became much more muted, and therefore the red has turned into an orange shade. The original poster can be seen below.

Adam - Poster Analysis

Adam - Poster Research

Here are some of my favourite posters, I particularly like both the use of red and black and think that they complement each other well. I also found that looking at different posters for the same film was particularly interesting and seeing the differences between them. All of these posters have a key central image and that is certainly something that I need to be looking at when producing my own.

Filming Plan

Poster Research: LOOPER

Poster Research

Here are some of my favourite film posters, all of which are very different in the way they present the style and tone of the piece. Generally the colours are bleak and dull, often with the text being on white or black, and the background being some form of black or white. I like the subtle use of colour, such as the vibrant yellow in the 'Nightcrawler' poster, and the red 7 in the '7 minutes' poster. These will all be influences in my own film poster product.

Font Plan

For the font itself, we generally looked at thin sans serif fonts, some found online, and others taken directly from movies, such as the Skyfall font. We liked the straight edged bold effect the fonts have, but liked the boldness of the serif font, Rockwell extra bold. This font is not our favourite, but we particularly liked Avenir Next and PT Sans Caption. After debate, we decided that the PT Sans Caption was too curved, and didn't fit with the edgy urban feel of our product, hence we chose Avenir Next.

We next had a look at styles and effect we could make to the font for titles, and narrative graphics:

The Skyfall title, despite the font being unknown, is simple sans serif in bold. The effect over the top is some sort of dusty, snowy or smoky brush, contrasting the precise bold outline of the black text. We like this style as it fits the action thriller style of our film trailer. I recreated the style, using a similar font to that used in the 7 Minutes trailer and poster, and overlaying it with a similar brush effect. It created the same effect, and I used the font Avenir Next heavy. I created both black and white text, both overlaid with the grunge effect, much like how the Skyfall titles are both black and white. We will generally use this font for all titles, and all narrative graphics, but the grunge effect over the top will only be the font for the main film title.

Relentless is one possible title for our media product, so I used this to create several mock fonts that we could use. We had inspiration from the film 7 Minutes, where the title had some form of line through it. We liked this idea for a font, as you can see above, I thus tried to create a similar effect using the Avenir Next font. As well as this, I made two other mock ups, including another grunge effect, much like the font in Skyfall, and another basic change to the Avenir Next font.

One of our other possible titles is Stalemate, and so I created several more adaptations of the Avenir Next font, for examples that we might use as our own font throughout the entire trailer. We liked the Line running through the title 'Stalemate', as it represented the two sides in the film, the side who wants to kill the hostage, and the side who does not. The sides are unequal, being 2 against 1, which is also represented by the font being split into thirds.

For our font, we are keen on using the font Avenir Next, with some form of our own customisation, as we will need to decide between the grunge effect, or the line running through the text. These effects may not be consistent between all text in our trailer, but we will definitely use the Avenir Next font for all text.

EL

Narrative graphics plan

After doing research into narrative graphics, I found a key element was for the lines of text to be presented boldly and kept short. A working narrative we have is "Three men; Two choices; One decision". We liked the idea of a countdown to build the tension and the simplicity of the sentences.

I began with a modern sans serif font in black against a white background. Although simple, if shown correctly, black against white can create a powerful bold effect, especially if shown in a predominately dark colour palette trailer. I then experimented with a much bolder font which evoked a more classical action film feeling. I prefer the more modern font as I believe it leaves the audience with less presumptions about what the film will be about and allows them to decipher it themselves. Furthermore, our action thriller is set in the present day and I believe that a lighter looking font will reflect this.

I also wanted to experiment with what the effect would be with a different colour. I choose a dull blood red to signify the possible death and dark nature of the film. This colour will also connect with our title, being shown against flowing ink, which itself could be seen to resonate blood. I did like this look however I felt it lacked the impact factor we are looking for.

To contrast, I later experimented with white against a black backdrop. I liked this overall look the most due to its punchy and eye-catching nature. The white also lifts off the black making sure that the audience sees the text even though it will only be visible for a limited number of seconds. However, if our trailer ends up have a predominately dark colour palette, this may cause the narrative graphics, if they were in this style, to blend in with the visual images. We would not want this as the narrative graphics break up a trailer and feed the audience vital information about the core plot of the story.

We know that we want to keep the graphics clean and with bold colours. However, when we approach our final narrative graphics, we need to first consider the overall colour palette of our recorded footage that will allow us to make a judgement upon the backdrop.

Ident: EAE productions rough plan

We were clear about the sort of style we wanted for one of our idents, and so I had a go at creating a small 2d version of what we want using motion. I started by creating the logo in Adobe Illustrator, sloping the two E's against the side of the A. I then put this into motion to create the effect shown. A further idea is to use a texture and different colour over the letters, much like that seen below.

In an ideal world, this ident would be in 3d, meaning when the E's spin, you seen the side angle of the E. I will be looking to achieve this by using an application called Cinema 4d, which allows one to render clean text in 3d.

Making the prop gun

Sound Plan

For our sound, we particularly liked the Disappearance of Alice Creed trailer, as well as Welcome to the Punch trailer, as they both effectively used layers of foley sound over the soundtrack. For our soundtrack, we want a low key rhythmic beat which slowly builds throughout the trailer. This should be layered with some form of synth sound that repeats a melody when the most suspenseful scenes are on screen. This will all be layered by foley sounds, some of which we will record ourselves, such as the water drop sound, and others we can find online for free. Our music producer will be Joe Reeves, who creates his own music and posts it on soundcloud. His link is below, and he creates various styles of music, including more alternative rock, but also more suspenseful piano pieces, such as his most recent work titled Spilt. Over all, we will ask him to create a suspenseful piece, with a heavy background beat to fit out trailer. We will send him early edits of the film so that he gets a feel for the timings, and thus he can fit the music to the trailer, with beat drops, pauses and moments of silence worked into the soundtrack at times of dialogue within the trailer.

https://soundcloud.com/joe_reeves/tracks

EL

Title ideas

We have produced this graphic using Wordle showcasing all the potential titles for our film. Many of them revolve around similar ideas, such as incorporating Dark or Three in to the title or centring the title around the key plot point of the film, the decision what to do with the girl. Ideally we also wanted a title which was only one word, disregarding The. This is because we thought that it would instantly tell the audience that this is a thriller film

Currently our favourite titles are:

Stalemate - This informs the audience that the film centres around a conflict that can't be solved. We also like how it's one word as it stands out far more
Relentless - This title sounds exactly like a thriller film, which is essential however it doesn't quite fit with the narrative of our film which may be confusing for audiences
The Prisoner - This title immediately tells the audience about the one of the central conflicts in the film; the girl. The title is also short and to the point which is important in a thriller title.
Deception - This title sounds exactly like a thriller film, which is essential however it doesn't fit with the narrative of our film at all which may be confusing for audiences

Title Background Graphic influences

One of our ideas for one of our ident, the ink going into water looked so good that we have decided to use it for the background of our titles. If the ink is a deep red then it looks like blood. The plan is to shoot this on a clean white background with no reflections.

Several films has influenced us in this idea, in particular the horror genre where several trailers contain a final shot of blood dripping down.

'It Follows' a modern horror film final shot of the trailer is exactly this. In this a shot blood is flowing into water, with the title then appearing in the middle of the blood.

As you can see this effect is very similar to the look we are going for and have already achieved. Our ink probably wouldn't be as thick or cover up as much of the screen however. Our's though will certainly arrive from the top and fall into frame, similar to this example.

Another horror film which utiltises blood in it's title is Oculus. In this the blood is shown to be forming in several shots before the camera then is pulled out to show it dripping of the side of a wall with the text in the middle of it.

The white title stands out over the blood which is dripping down, our plan is to utilise water so that the blood is less thick however this shows how effective using this effect can be as the deep red catches your attention, along with the dripping blood which is very striking.

As much of Skyfalls opening credits are under water, there are several shots of blood in water.

The blood particularly in the second image is very influential to us, particularly as it looks similar to our attempt, the close up of the blood/ink twisting in the the water. This just shows how powerful the effect can be given that it was used throughout the opening credits to one of the biggest films ever made. Skyfall is also a thriller like our film, showing that this effect also fits into our genre.

Using Art of the Title I have also found another credit which uses a deep red and flowing water/blood. Hannibal's opening credits are very powerful and have been critically acclaimed. Our titles wouldn't be making any shape however and again this is for a TV show however several aspects can be used.

The white background works extremely well when combined with the red, this is useful as it's similar to our plan. The contrast in the colours makes the red pop out of the screen and therefore drawing your attention towards it.

Ident Practice: Ink in water

Ink in Water Ident/Title Practise

Above you can see our practise for filming ink going into water. Originally the plan was for this to used as an ident, however because of how effective we feel it is, we think it perhaps could be better served as the background for the film title. Using a deep red could perhaps give the impression of blood which would fit in with our film plot. After playing around with the speed of the footage we also found that having it is slow motion is perhaps the superior option as then you can clearly see the ink slowly twist and contort.

Several problems arose during this practise that would need to be fixed for the actual product, most importantly the reflections. These are extremely annoying and were an oversight on our part when filming this. Another area which needs to be changed is the outline of the bottle, if this effect is going to be successful for a film title then it needs to be a clean white with nothing except for the ink coming down.

AF
EL

Ident rough cut

This is an adaptation from my Ident practice 7. When playing with the look of the Ident, I tried to think of a good production company name. I came up with 'Full Circle Productions', as with every revolution of the kaleidoscope it created a 'full circle', hence the invention of the name. From our Ident research I knew the importance of choosing the right font. The use of block capitals increases the attention to the name of the production company; I also spaced out the characters to the limit of the widest circle created and chose an imperfect font that is not fully white to reflect the imperfect changing nature of the kaleidoscope. I tried to add a slow effect to space out the pulses so that only one or two occur in the frame of the Ident, however this consequently made the frames jumpy. I will have to investigate this further if I want to slow the intervals.

The Ident needs refining however I would like to use this for our final cut as i believe it has a professional feel to it.

EJ

Ident water practice

When approaching the possible visual design of our Ident, I was interested in using water due to its fluidity and multiple options available. I filmed all of the practices on my white kitchen surface, I believed that this would give the Ident a professional feel. However, due to this, normal water was hard to see against the surface, I therefore decided to use food colouring to 'lift' it off the surface.

Practice 1

For the first practice, I poured the purple water on the surface, and filmed at the height of the counter. I wanted to achieve the look of the water approaching the camera, this was best when the stream of water couldn't be seen. I then rewinded the video and found this had a more interesting effect. Although I was pleased with the effect, I felt it failed to look fully professional.

Practice 2

In the second practice, I left the water to expand across the counter and after adding an effect over the top, was able to create a mirror effect. I really like the mirror look however if we were to use this for our ident I would have to do further research or consider greater ideas on what could be reflected in the water.

Practice 3

In an attempt to try to contain the spreading water I used a plate, and poured onto it. I felt that the overall effect needed something more to improve the Ident.

Practice 4

Whilst playing with Final Cut Pro, I found a kaleidoscope effect. I added this on top of the video from practice 3. I really liked the patterns that were made, however it was rather inanimate.

Practice 5

I used the kaleidoscope effect again but over a video of me swirling ink on a plate. In this video the white flashes are my hands moving over the plate. Although this had an interesting effect, i felt that the unavoidable flashes need to be at more regular intervals. However when trying to apply this to the video by repeating my hand movements at regular intervals, it also repeated the intricate designs which made the effect less impressive.

Practice 6

Surprisingly I used water and milk to create this effect. I used milk as I wanted a liquid that had a different consistency to water and would allow it separate. The effect was good, but as with the other practices, wasn't as visually impressive as professional company Ident's.

Practice 7

This was my favourite practice. I created it by swirling a plate and then adding the kaleidoscope effect. I would like to adapt this further, and see where I could take this