Feedback

I told my Twitter followers to give me some feedback on my first draft so that I can get an Idea of what the audience are looking for. I also shared it throughTwitter  because majority of my followers are my age and probably Uni students and I find that people on Twitter are very honest with their comments which I need to be honest. 

1st draft

This is just a draft that I have put together following my story board, there some blank parts, no sound and that's because there are some footage that I still need to film. This draft is to personally help me in what I need to because so that I'm more faster with my coursework as the deadline is near. Today's date is 25/2/14 and i'm hoping to finish and film the rest of my footage in two weeks, the only thing that's delaying me is male actors.

Everything in this trailer is my original work, I created everything by myself including the production logo and black and white pictures. Up to now I have included the conventional features such as titles, subtitles and pictures.

Subtitle & Production Logo Design & Research

As you can see here, I've used different fonts on Photo Shop to give me an idea of what I want my logo to look like. I want it simple but memorable. I think I like the font Kozuka Gothic Pro,  it's different and matches my style I also like French Script MT and Sakal Majalla; this is a mixture of both fonts as I wanted my initials to stand out and keep the 'films' simple.  Overall I'm going to choose French Script MT and Sakal Majalla and have it in the colour white with a black background. 

In this picture I've also tried out different font styles for my 'coming soon' subtitle. As you can see here, I've researched the conventions of coming soon subtitles in horror trailers. There are 6 screen shots of subtitle from different trailers and the fonts are very simple and usually in the colour white. Even though some trailers feature the releasing date, the style still stays the same and the background is always dark. From the list of fonts that I have tried out I like all of them however I'm going to choose Adobe Fangson because it's quite similar to existing subtitles. 

I designed this production by using my college's logo and turning it into a film logo by simply adding a text that says production or adding another image of a film strip from Google images. I like the first one I created; by adding a film strip to it because usually production logos are not simple. As you can see in the below picture the production logos are very colourful however I was inspired by the simplicity of the 'New Line Cinema' Production logo as this company also produced 'The Conjuring'.

Film diary

Date; 11.2.15
Time; 3:15
Location; Green Room

I filmed all the sequences where my witch is featured alone. The lady screaming at the beginning of my trailer is the witches mum and I didn't bother looking for another because I thought I could use the same face as they're mother and daughter and are bound to have similar faces.

I filmed after college as that's the only times my actress and I have matching free time. I had quite a few problems with camera and lighting. The lighting was initially meant to be dark to connote horror and to meet the iconography of a horror film, my teacher and I playing around with the lights it still seemed bright. I took photos of the actress for my magazine before I filmed the sequence. I also filmed me doing her make up. Overall that day was stressful everything was going wrong and didn't meet my expectations but too much time was waisted as I thought I could do an hour and a half as I planned to do her make up in 30 minutes and then film photograph in the remaining time. However, I used more time as expected and wrapped up at half 5.

There was one lunch time were I filmed my actors meeting for the first time during lunch time.


Date: 26:3:15

I was supposed to film today, after college of all of my remaining sequences that I had planned. I got my main actress ready according to my research and my supporting actor had already got ready and went to the cemetery; location. However one of my actresses went home without telling us as she had a family emergency. I respected her situation but disappointed, which then I only managed to film the last scene in the green room whilst she had her make up done. I was initially planning to get the remaining filming done during half term but they were either busy or not in Hull and finding a date for everyone to get together was difficult.

The Monday we returned back to college on 13:4;15 I arranged to meet my two supporting actors as I needed to film a crucial part in the narrative. This was successfully done on college campus.

I finally found a date for filming which was on 18:4:15 in the morning in the cemetery of Spring Bank West. My main actress couldn't wear the make up I had planned because from filming she had to go straight to work. So whilst filming I had to dismiss her face. Once again I was disappointed as my supporting actress didn't turn up which made me impatient. I contacted her a several times but she wasn't responding. I then just carried on filming following my story board but I added another scene in where my main actress is looking at a grave stone to add more footage. If I knew that my supporting actress would fail on me again I should have just filmed on the 26:3:15 and would have learnt my mistakes and made improvements sooner.

DEADLINE DAY! 20/4/15

 I had quickly made arrangements to film my supporting actress screaming whilst she had constantly delayed me before. I couldn't do her make up the way I had planned it but to so I just compromised and drew wiskas, eye-liner, lipstick and eyebrows.

2nd Draft

This is my second draft, however this is an incomplete second draft because I have filmed other stuff but I am having technical difficulties and therefore couldn't edit the sequence. I also haven't designed a production logo just yet.

This draft doesn't quite follow my story board and it's also quite long but I don't know what to delete because In my honest opinion I kind of like what I filmed and edited.

Anciliary Text- Poster analysis

Conventionally posters are very simple and less detailed because they don't to give too much away. However in my research I've realised that the iconography of horror genre still remains the same even in a different text format.

In a horror film poster the colours are very dark, conventional colours such as black, red and white are seen. The text is usually written in white . At the bottom there's all the names of institutions, directors and other technical information. As you can see from the posters above; they are very simple but appealing. This could be because they don't want to give too much away. However, demonstrating the key element of the narrative such as main characters or important props are seen on the poster to give the audience an idea of the film would be about . The conventional layout of posters are very basic they include features such as masthead, main image, listings, reviews, release date technical information and tag line. The main image is usually dark to connote fear and and death. Dark colours are iconic in a horror genre and therefore it is used on posters so that the appropriate audience can identify the film genre just by looking at the features.

There's always one image at the front, this could be because the object featuring is key to the narrative which will get the audience intrigued to know what the film has in store for them. The similarities between all these posters would be that they all have more or less white fonts. This is a contrast to the dark main image and this could because they give an opposite connotations of victim and innocence. This could also just perhaps be that it stands out because from a distance dark images are seen not clearly therefore the font needs to be noticeable. The technical information at the bottom always has it's opacity down this could because the information isn't that important as the masthead, tagline and main image however it saves the company from anyone stealing the poster and claiming it's theirs.
I like the Trick R Treat poster because of the house style of orange connotes Halloween as well as the pumpkin because this narrative matches my Halloween themed narrative however I'm following the conventions of a recent horror film which is Ouija because it's simple and effective.

Photo-shoot and Make Up For The Magazine Front Cover

Location; Green Room
Date 11.2.15

 After I applied some makeup to my actress, I had to quickly take some pictures to feature it on my front cover. My colour theme on my front cover is purple and black, to match the purple make up that I had initially planned when planning my costume and make up. However I was rushing through and managed to get couple of pictures. I already knew the conventions of a front cover main image; close up is key and therefore I honestly didn't bother trying different angles because I had to film too.

 Another problem I had was the lighting, I wanted it a bit dim but after playing around the lights I still couldn't manage to get it how I wanted it. Also when I was rushing my brain stops working and I completely forgot that I could have used the black backdrop instead of the white wall. Now when i'm editing I have to carefully remove the background which is quite difficult to do when there's the actresses hair's out, whereas if I used the black curtain behind her I wouldn't have needed to crop her out the background because my front covers background is black anyways.

(unedited pictures)

This is the make up look I created inspired by Glam&Gore. I recorde myself applying make up on my actress by leaving it on record and on a tripod. I edited this recording on Final cut pro as that's the programme I feel comfortable with. To save time I just retimed the recording to 2x faster. As you can see this clip had already started with the actress with eyeshadow on that is because I forgot to press record. I t doesn't quite look like what I saw on YouTube but I can edit the pictures on PhotoShop.