Ancillary online feedback

As part of my audience feedback I had used the popular online photo sharing platform instagram to share some of my work and ask for opinions. In recent years instagram, Facebook and other sorts of web 2.0 platforms have layered the foundation of producer to audience relationship by granting content creators with a contemporary take on researching and marketing. I had used instagram as a form of researching as it allows me to post the content I make and get feedback within minutes.

Ancillary Final Mockups

Here are the final draft for my ancillary task, I am featuring two movie posters because I am planning on using cross media convergence to promote my movie on different platforms, the first poster would be a regular movie poster that can be found in magazine articles or billboards whilst the second movie poster would be an animated digital iteration that could be found in webpages and advertisement in online browsers and mobile devices. I had decided to include the final draft I had created for a video game box art for my horror film, it was a last minute decision to scrap this idea as I do not believe that it would be used as a source of advertisement unlike the other ancillary drafts featured in this post.

This will the traditional movie poster that will be featured in billboards and magazines. 

This will be the magazine front cover.

This will be the digital iteration of the movie poster.

This was the final draft for my video game box art.

Movie poster draft two

Movie poster draft one

Feedback

Introduction 

This is a mood board that I have created to showcase the feedback I received for the from the first draft of m y teaser trailer. From now on I will use this mood board as a reference for when I continue to produce my trailer and any other task. 

 

Click the image above to be linked to my initial feedback board.

Turbine Films intro

To further add to the authenticity of my teaser trailer I though it would be quite reasonable to create a pseudo movie institution to publish and distribute my film. Film intuition introductions send to fall into two categories; the cinematic and the indies. The cinematic introductions tend to borrow a lot of conventions from cinematic pictures; this includes motifs like lenses flares and cinematic sound FX whilst on the other hand the indies tend to come across more plain and would often just include some text and or an image whilst in other cases they may replicate motifs of bigger institution intro (an example being Lionsgate Entertainment) ; these motifs add to the overall aesthetics of the indie style.

   

An example of a cinematic intro 

    

An example of a indie intro  

Magazine draft one

Finding the right sound for my trailer

Now that I am in the post production portion of my project it is time to start searching for some resources to use when composing my trailer. The first on my list would be to find the right sound for my trailer. In order to add authenticity to my trailer I will be using sites such as freesound.org and YouTube to find sound effects.

Poster Mockup

Introduction  

This is the first draft of my movie poster, this movie poster is reflective of the original movie Suicide club movie poster. I had decided to go with the same colour scheme of the original movie poster, this colour scheme is yellow and black, I added the splash of white/grey to add a little more dynamic to the colour scheme. I added the hashtag to the bottom right of the cover to draw the attention of  the viewers to the social network section of the movie posters.
 The masthead of the movie poster is slanted because I was applying the technique of the rule of Z into my movie poster. The rule of Z applies to this poster by directing The viewers attention firstly to the slanted masthead of my poster, audience attention is then directed to the reflection of the masthead to further staple the film tittle into their minds, this rule of z then directs the viewers attention to the social links at the bottom left of the poster; to allow the viewers get more information about the film, finally the rule of z directs the viewers attention to the hashtag at the bottom right of the screen.

Ancillary Task- understanding film magazines

Introduction

Film magazines or monthly or weekly prints that are published by several publishing house that are used to promote and or discus; film topics, release dates and trivia. Film magazines do not tend to often stray away from the conventional formulas that are present in any other type of magazine publication. The conventions of film magazines are pretty basic and these are; mastheads ( the title of the publication), cover line (the short statements often found near the masthead that are used to promo the content of the magazine and  to  tempt readers to purchase the issue) and puff (these are
the brightly coloured shapes that you can find poping out of the cover page, these work similarly to the coverline as they temp readers to wanting to buy the issue).


Masthead

Whilst researching into film magazines I had found that the must popular publications had catchy titles; the type of titles that just roll off the tongue, this is very vital for as it is a marketing startergy that gets the name of the magazine well branded into the public mind. Major examples of catchy titles range from "Total Film" to "Empire"; to further increase the authenticity of my ancillary task I had decided to duplicate this formula and slap it into my own magazine. Using "Total Films" as a stimulus I began to brainstorm ideas for magazines names by coupling a bunch of film terms together
such as "Motion" or "Flick" and had then settled on the name "Total Flicks".

 

With the title of my magazine chosen I had then began searching for the font I will like to use for my masthead; using dafonts.com I had came across five different fonts that caught my eye, I had then tested these fonts and took a pole in my media class for which font I should use. 

Storyboard and shooting order

Above is the storyboard for my horror teaser trailer, I am planning on having a dark and "techy" look on my footage; I can achieve this by using Adobe premier pro to change the colour grading of my footage so that it appears like an authentic Hollywood movie. I will also use Adobe After effects to generate and animate some glitch/computer error animations to implement into my teaser, these computer error animations will be effective at connoting the themes of technology in my trailer as well provoking an uneasy tension into my audience.

Test teaser trailer

  

This is a short test teaser trailer that I had produced to sort of test and try out the different techniques I could use in  my final product. One of  the main techniques I was focusing on in this teaser trailer are dolly movements, I really wanted to give the teaser an authentic blockbuster feel so instead of having normal static/still shots in my sequences I decided to having moving shots. Moving shots make scenes for engaging for audiences and also emits a feeling that the scene is pacing faster than it actually is. When shooting these scenes I wanted to get as many shot types in as I possibly could the majority of the shots consisting of mid-shots, close ups and extreme close ups.

 In the first sequence of the teaser I had used a computer desk chair and a tripod to emulating the feeling of having a dolly to track my actor with, I found this quite difficult to do and I taken many takes because on like an actual dolly track the desk chair does not have a predetermine track to follow and would sometimes swerve out of focus when trying to convincingly follow my actor. The second sequence consisted of a pan movement that showcased the items on the table, this shot was much more easier to capture as all I did to motivate the shot was place my camera on cardboard and slide it along the flat surface of the table.

 The second dolly track movement I did was much easier to execute than the first one,  this is the part v of the trailer where my actor is using the laptop and the camera zooms in to show the audience what my said character is doing on the computer. To achieve the dolly shot all I did was use the desk chair and tripod again as I moved closer to my actor.

 Another initial part of the trailer as the lighting originally the only lighting I had was the ambient lighting that was emitting from the lamp in the scene but this turned out disastrous as the scene was lithely dimmed causing the footage to come out noisy and hard to view, to tackle this I had borrowed the industrial flood lighting from my schools drama department to properly light the scene but even with flood light the final footage still turned out less than desirable; to combat this problem I had done some research into the type of equipment that would solve my lighting problem and found that I was using the wrong lenses. The camera I was using was the Cannon 600D which came equip with an 18-55mm lenses, this lenses is known to let little light into the sensors thereby making it worthless when filming in low lighting area. I had then bough a Cannon 50mm 1.8 lenses which is one of the lenses suggested to me for filming in know lighting, the difference between the two lenses was amazing, the 50 mm lenses produces a much more professional and sharper looking image and would be the lenses I will use to film my final product.

Test teaser storyboard

Before I big shooting and editing my final product I though it would be quite appropriate to get a film for the kind of work I will be producing. I had storyboared a short teaser trailer that would showcase some of the themes in my narrative and some of the techniques that I may use in my final teaser trailer.

Adapting the themes to my teaser

When creating a film of any genre it is important to always set a particular theme/tone that will be apparent throughout the course of the entire film, my doing this content creators are injecting the motif and connotations of the film into the viewers sub consciousness to help them to fully grasp unto the narrative of the film and the major plot points. 

The themes present in the original Suicide club film consist of; fear, death/suicide, brainwashing and technology, as I am using the original film as influence for my own narrative I will need to implement the themes and motifs of the original source into my teaser trailer. I will be using technology as my major theme in my teaser trailer, by capitalizing on the themes of technology in my teaser trailer I will  be casting a very thorough reflection on the use of technology in our separate everyday lives, in turn I will be making my trailer reliability surpass those in my target demographic to everyday users of technology, I can achieve this my making the characters in my teaser trailer interact with technology one way or another; this could be done by showcasing my character getting a text message or showcasing my character visiting a certain website.  

What is a teaser trailer

A teaser trailer plays a major role in the marketing side of the film industry as it allows a film/content creator to slightly "tease"/temp any movie goer to viewing the movie.
 The conventions of a teaser trailer are kept pretty simply, with the duration of the teaser trailer being a major practicality of of the conventions, film makers tend to produce a teaser trailer that varies between 60 seconds to 120 seconds in duration. The short duration of the teaser trailer is then used as an essential mechanisms when attract the right demographic as the viewers of the trailer would in turn be persuaded to wanting to watch the full feature length film.
 When creating a teaser trailer it is important the the content creator showcases the right amount of narrative and plot twist in the trailer, if the content creator was to showcase a small amount the attention of the demographic would barely be light thereby causing audiences to not be interested  to watch the film, in addition to this if the content creator was to showcase to  much of the narrative in the teaser audiences may believe that they would not need to watch the film because they believe that they already know the story line and wouldn't want to spend money to watch the actual film. If the content creator was to showcase just the right about to make the teaser ambiguous but still quite captivating to make audiences interested on watch the actual film then the content creator has achieved his goal of creating a successful teaser trailer. I am planning on using this technique of my teaser trailer to thereby increase the authenticity of my product.
Above is a teaser trailer for an up and coming horror movie to reach the cinemas. As we can see the teaser is only 137 seconds long which is close to the 120 seconds rule I had mentioned earlier in this post. From this 137 second long trailer we that audience are introduced to some of the themes are and narrative of the film, from the teaser we are introduced to enough of the narrative that we know the basic outline of the narrative whilst the teaser is still ambiguous as we are not informed of the events that lead up to the graphic scenes that are showcased near the end of the teaser.
 We can see that Todorov's theory on narrative has been applied to this trailer this is evident due to the beginning of the teaser portraying the equilibrium; the part of the narrative where the characters are living out their normal lives unaware of any of the danger they are about to face this is highlighted between the 0:00-0:29 of the teaser were we see our to main characters enjoying each others company whilst a peaceful backing track is played in the background to connote the sense of stability. This stability is disrupted at 0:46 were the disruption appears the characters are put in unrest by this disruptions and are now aware that they might be in danger, but that is as far as Todorov's theory of narrative is applied to this teaser; then rest of the teaser showcases different points of the disruption section in the film, this was done by the content creator as a way to ease the audience to watching the film in cinemas, as the ambiguity of the characters fate will then captivate the audience to sit through the entire film. As I had mentioned before this technique plays a major role in the marketing side of film making and would be the technique that I am applying to my teaser.

Suicide club

Introduction

Suicide Club otherwise known as Suicide Circle in Japan is a Japanese horror/thriller film directed by Japanese director Sion Sono and was released October 29 , 2001. Unlike other critically acclaimed Japanese horror film, this film did not receive a western transitional film adaptation; which is what influenced me to use this film as an influence for the narrative of my horror teaser trailer.

 I am planning on replicating the successful conventions that were placed in place by other directors that had transitioned Japanese horror film into western horror blockbusters.

Plot

The story takes place in Tokoyo, Japan in the course of six days. The story follows a band of detectives as they are tasked with uncovering the case of the mass suicides that keep occurring all over Japan. The first case of suicide occurs when a massive group of school girls jump in front of a speeding train and thus taking their lives, this causes mass hysteria as more and more suicides are being committed. During the course of the story the detectives were tipped about a website that displays red and white circles that signifies the amount of male and females that had committed suicides in the past few days. At the end of the film the detectives discover that the cause of the mass suicides were the doings of a Japanese pop group called Deserts who's music had drawn people to commit suicide.

My interpretation 

In order to avoid plagiarism I have been advised by my teacher to use the narrative of the movie as influence for my own narrative as I am not allowed to replicate or mimic any of the original source. As I am using the original narrative as influence for my own narrative I will focus on some of the key themes in the original source to use as a  stimuli. I have decided to keep the theme of mass suicide as a major plot point in my narrative. I want to set my narrative in modern day London and thus I will research into the conventions I must use to make the regional location of my narrative known.

Instead of using a Japanese pop group as my main antagonist I will be enforcing a practical and western stereotypical uncanny antagonist as my antagonist establishes that I have successfully translated the film from eastern to western as most western horrors follow the conventions of having a uncanny/paranormal antagonist in their horrors.

One shot perspective

One shot perspective is a visual technique that was popularized by acclaimed director Stanley Kubrick. This techniques refers to the center of the attention being in the middle of a grid. This type of technique has been acclaimed by many critics praising it stating that the one shot perspective is visually pleasing to the eye.

In the image above we can see an example of Kubrick's famous one shot perspective from the movie 2001: A space odyssey, from this image without knowing what the one shot perspective is it is obvious what the main focus of the image is the man in the middle, this is simply because our brains recognise that the subject is the most important part of the image straight away simply because it is placed in the middle. Many believe that this practice contradicts with the rule of Z; this can be disproved because the rule of Z is used whenever the content creator is trying to draw the attention of the viewer to the different subjects on the screen periodically whilst the one shot perspective is generally used when the surrounding objects are smaller than the main subject in the shot thereby making the viewer pay attention the subject first.

Rules of Thirds and Rule of Z

Introduction
The rules of thirds refers to a technique that is used mostly by photographers to establish and separate the center of attention from the surrounding objects, this technique as also been adapted by content creators as a technique that they go by to create an eye fulfilling shot were everything that is present of the shot.
   The technique is titled the rule of thirds because the guideline consist of a three by three grind with each grid being equal in size.

When using the rules of thirds it is important to strategically place each subject and its surroundings in a particular grid in the guide line. In the example above the exist to road is placed in the furthest right of the middle row of the gridline. It is evident that the photographer had placed it there to connote that it is not the subject of the picture, the  subject of the image being placed in the middle grid thereby attracting the viewers attentions first. To contradict this there is another technique called the rule of Z; this technique is quite similar to the rule of thirds as they both use the same grid guide line. The rules of Z is called this because it states that the attention of the viewer of the picture will firstly directed to the upper left grid of the image followed by the attention being directed to the upper right section of the image and then the center grid of the image, this then continues by the attention of the viewer being directed to the lower left section of the grid and finally the attention is directed to the lower right section of the grid. After following the rule of Z the viewers attention will then be directed to the section of the image that they had not viewed; these sections being the middle left and middle right section of the of the guideline.

Todorov narrative theory

 Introduction

Tzvetan Todorov is a Bulgarian-French philosopher who had lived in France since 1963 during his life span he had written a lot of essays and books detailed several theories of his. One of his most influential theory was his narrative theory. Todorovs narrative theory details the different sections of a given narrative in the films and multimedia content of today. Todorovs theory transcends past whether a film as a clear "beginning", "middle" and "end" but rather states a film consist of an "equilibrium", "a disruption", "realization", "restored order" and "equilibrium again".

Equilibrium

Equilibrium refers to stability, this is the beginning of the film, this is the part of the film where the characters are going around living their every day lives unaware of the events that are about to unfold before them. Content creators achieve a state of equilibrium by incorporating a lot of content that the audience at home are familiar with and can relate with into the scene, a fine example of this could be a middle aged woman returning home from work only to head off and pick her children from their primary school or a teenager having am argument with their parents. The content creator knows that these are part of the everyday scenery of an average person their by making the scene canny to the audience allowing them to make a mental link that this part of the story is the "normal/average" part or better yet the equilibrium.

Disruption and Realisation

Disruption refers to the part of the film that is uncanny to both the audience and the characters that exist in this diegesis world. This part of the film signifies the beginning of the adventure or even the beginning of the unrest as it "rips" the characters out of their everyday lives and violently tosses them into a "realm" of uncanniness, the audience is then also disrupted by this sections are they had already made a mental realisation that the events that occurred during the equilibrium of the film also transpire during their everyday lives but know are faced with an unsettling sense of uncanniness but cannot do anything but watch the events unfold before them through the eyes of the characters, because the audience had already made these links with characters their can project themselves onto the characters as they embarked on during the film.

Restored order

Restored order refers to the part of the film where the characters attempt to repair the disruption that had occurred earlier during the film. It is at this point that the audience see the characters begin to develop. The content creators used this point at the film to showcase the characters emotions are their different responses to each stimuli this allows the audience to further strengthen the link that they had made to the character most similar to them, as the audience once again make a canny link to the ways in which each character handles the position that they are in. Restored order is very crucial to the narrative of the film as not only does it showcase character development but it also ties each individual uncanny plot hole together thereby making the viewing experience canny for the audience again.

Return to equilibrium

Return to equilibrium refers to the "general" ending off the film as everything returns to "normal" and a state of canny that the audience is familiar with. This allows the audience of the film to evaluate the personal journey that they had taken during the film my projecting themselves into a canny character. The return to equilibrium also signifies the return to a state of stability and for the most part a happy ending.

Sound and music developed

In addition the diegetic and non-diegetic sounds there are also a vast array of other sub-conventions that the content creator may use to fully enrich their multimedia piece. like I have stated before many of these conventions are put together in the post-production process but some of these conventions are engaged during the production process such as conventions like soundscaping, ambient sounds and ambient lighting.

Volume control

Volume control is am effect used by the content creators during the post productions process to emphasis the tone and emotions that have already been set in the scene by the diegetic and non-diegetic elements present in the scene. Volume control usually parallels with the pace of the scene.

Example of volume control


In this clip we can see a fight scene between the protagonist and antagonist of the narrative. The volume control is used most effectively in the sections of the fight scene when the protagonist is the danger, the first instance is when the fight begins; as the volume and the tempo of the fight scene is greatly increased to let the audience know that a fight is about to transpire. Volume control is the further used multiple times across the scene whenever the antagonist gains the upper hand during the fight as the rise in volume control will influence the rise in the audience anxiety. The most successful use of volume control is at the very end of the clip as the antagonist had won the fight this sparked the decrease in the volume and tempo of the clip and signifies the "all is lost" moment to the audience.

Dialogue

Dialogue is any speech or spoken language that is given in the multimedia piece and is really self explanatory. When using dialogue the content creator has to consider three major aspects. These aspects are language, tone and accent. The use of language refers to the words that are spoken by the characters and the connotations of these words, language is used by the content creator as the main story telling contributor of the multimedia piece. Tone refers to the way that the character delivers that dialogue that they are saying, giving the tone of the scene that the content creator is trying to achieve that character can deliver the dialogue in parallel to the tone that has already been established by the content creator, for example the is an aggressive tone as been establish the by the use of the diegesis and non diegetic elements the actor will have to deliver the dialogue in an aggressive tone. Accents are used to allow the audience establish the origins of the characters, there really not that much to it, from the accent exhibited by the character the audience can establish the regional identity of the character and thereby make a further judgement on their possibly upbringing and lifestyle.