WEEK 13 – w/c 13/12/10 (Ancillary 1)

This week I have started working on my 1st Ancillary project which is a promotional poster for the film that me and my partners are making a teaser trailer for.

To start off I am going to research promotional posters relevant to my genre and analysee them.

From examing these posters among others that relate to my movie trailer's genre i noticed a few common aspects between them which are as follows:

• They usually have a centrepiece picture of the main protagonist/antagonist of the film.
• The subject of the picture is usually posed in an intimidating posture.
• There is enough lighting in the picture to bring out the shadows and makes the subject look more like a sillhouette.
• These pictures almost have a mistly/smokey look to them.
• The important text for the horror/slasher movie posters e.g. the title, release date are often coloured red which has strong connotations to blood which is to be expected in the film.
• I also noticed that most of the posters (not just horror movie posters) have a common layout of the credits text being centred at the bottom with the title and tagline just above it and miscellaneous items at the far bottom.

WEEK 12 – w/c 06/12/10

This is the first draft trailer that me and my partners have submitted for the UK version of the teaser trailer.

As this is just the draft version it was missing quite a lot of vital parts that make a teaser trailer. however by showing it to our colleagues we were able to receive some feedback. These are the main things that were addressed after we told our colleagues not to hold back on their creative criticism:

• That there was no title graphics.
• There no release date.
• That there was only 1/2 a minutes worth of footage.
• Some of the acting did not look real enough.

However we did receive some good comments as well:

• A lot of people especially liked the last close up shot of a black man's eyes in the dark, but with some ambient light that made him look sinister.
• They liked the cuts to different shots for the same scene e.g. the gang members running from the car park.
• The varied use of interior and exterior locations for shots.
• The different angles in which these shots were taken.

WEEK 11 – w/c 29/11/10

One of the main things that my teaser trailer is integral parts that my teaser trailer is missing is the catchy part that usually occurs just before the end of most teaser trailers. these scenes might have a catchy phrase or something that will happen that is basically put in to catch the viewer's attention and make them want to come and see the film. An example of this is Sorority Row.

The catchy bit being the scene just before the release date is shown at the end.

WEEK 10 – w/c 22/11/10

This week i have been concentrating on the trailer sounds that that set the mood for the movies because i have noticed from watching films that if the music is muted then the scare factor of the film drops drastically there was also a vital part that was vital to make my trailer a truly complete horror movie trailer and that was the horror movie trailer noises which play when scenes are transitioned. However i had a problem and this problem was that when i tried to find out what these noises were called in order to download them i could not so this was also were my improvisational skills came into play.

First i went to youtube.com and searched for various recent horror movie trailers e.g. Nightmare on Elm St., i then proceeded to copy the url and put it in an online youtube audio to mp3 converter on http://www.listentoyoutube.com/

Once it was converted i opened the file in a audio editing software that i downloaded called Wavepad Sound Editor and then picked and grabbed the pieces of it that i needed.

Here is the list of the sound effects that i sliced, some of them i had to change the pitch on to meet my need.

WEEK 9 – w/c 15/11/10

(post-production: introduction to video-editing or re-drafting layouts)

This week i have been starting to edit my shots on Adobe Premiere.

I have started to create an ident for my teaser trailer which is the approx. 10 sec animation that shows at the

 beginning of most teaser trailers. I first had to look up examples of these, some of which are shown below.

Through the combined use of Adobe Photoshop to create the base graphic and Adobe Flash to animate it, i created my own personalized movie production ident for the teaser trailer, i also distributed the base logo to my partners for them to use in their Ancillary Movie Poster.

This animation will play at the beginning of my teaser trailer just after the MPAA Green screen is shown.

WEEK 8 – w/c 08/11/10

I have been applying the angles and shots from some of the scenes of films from similar genres to my product as i go along in a veriety of ways, an example of this is hown below:

This is the trailer for the 2011 film called Attack the Block, this film is similar to what my one is based around seeing as it is also British and being set in South London, centres around the hood aspect however unlike my trailer which is a slasher/horror, this film is more sci-fi. From this trailer i caught an idea from the shot where the protagonist swereves his head when he hears the door being slammed by aliens and combined it with an idea from the trailer below.

This is the trailer for Eden Lake a 2008 British thriller Film which connects more to my product in terms of genre and storyline however not so much in terms of scenery. The idea that i took from this trailer was also related to the banging on the door closing towards the end.

The first shot has already been edited, it was recorded with my cousin's Canon 7D Camera inside of his house in Woodpecker Estate, New Cross, South East London. I went through the trouble of borrowing a painted BB Gun from one of my friends to use as a prop, i tried to use the contents of a teabag as fake cannabis but it did not work out properly and ended up falling out onto the floor, and i got his help to give the shot a sort of really light sepia tone using his Mac to make it seem more dank and gritty. The scene is supposed to show the suspected protagonist waiting for the killer to come for him.

This is the continuation of the previous shot that has not been edited yet and was shot in my house using my Samsung PL100 12.2 Megapixel camera. This shot will be cut down and have sound effects added to it to make it seem as if the suspected protagonist is alerted by someone banging the door.

This is one of the shots that i will edit and use in the final product to make up a scenario similar to the ones shown in the trailers at the top.

WEEK 7 – w/c 01/11/10

During this week I have been reviewing the key points of Mise en scène by looking up the core parts of it on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mise_en_sc%C3%A8ne and then actually watching films such as "Nightmare on Elm St." to personally review things such as the lighting and other aspects to do with Mise en scène related to films from the genres that I will be combining and these are:

• Lighting - A common factor that I found between the two genres is that most of the killing seems to occur under the cover of darkness, dreary places or at night time, this enforces the ideology that murderers like to make their move under the cover of night which proves to be intimidating, this can also act as a trick e.g. in the video below they give you the impression that the murders are over and give you a false sense of security (enhanced by the light) but then out of the mirror Freddie murders Nancy's Mother.

• Space - In terms of space, the slashers in the slasher/thriller movies usually operate in spacious but secluded areas so that there is enough room for the victim to run but no way for them to escape & no one to hear them scream; it almost signifies a hunt. On the other hand, hood movie murders seem to occur on anywhere that is available to the killer or relevant to the situation e.g. the location of where an altercation has occurred. A way i can incorporate both styles would be to let it be in an open space in the outside world but make it seem like a ghost town (nobody is about) so they can't hear you scream.
• Costume - In terms of costume there is a big difference between these genres; it is common in slasher movies for the antagonist/killer to wear 1 outfit throughout the whole film and this acts as a sort of uniform e.g. Freddy's striped jumper & hat, Jason's mask, etc. While in hood movies the characters are not usually seen wearing, the same outfit more than once because an aspect of this culture is that if you dress nice then you have money & money = Respect. I will try to incorporate both styles into my trailer by possibly making the main character wear different clothes but in similar styles and colours.

WEEK 6 – w/c 18/10/10

On the blog

This week i am using a new form of media technology by transferring my A2 Media Research  entries from my Word Document onto a real multimedia platform which is known as Blogger

WEEK 5 – w/c 11/10/10

Soundtrack???

This week i am going to choose which music i am going to use for the soundtrack in the trailer, the soundtrack will play through the movie trailer, when people are talking the sound will be lowered to a certain level and depending on the scene of the trailer the tempo or beat that i am going to use will change.

I used the internet to search for information about soundtracks at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soundtrack here i found out that there are there are 3 diffrent types of soundtrack:

1. Musical film soundtracks which concentrate primarily on the songs
2. Film scores which showcase the background music from non-musicals
    
3. Albums of pop songs heard in whole or part in the background of non-musicals

I believe that the type of soundtrack that would be applicable to my trailer would be a film score which i would create by using rap instrumentals combined with a little rock to develop the horror aspect or just use one rap song that relates to the genre of the movie.

At the moment i am thinking of using 1994 Gangsta Rap/Horrorcore single "Natural Born Killaz" by gangsta rappers Dr. Dre & Ice Cube, i will use either the actual single or the the instrumental. This idea could change later on during the development of the movie trailer. The media technology that i used was listening to the album "Murder was the Case" and then using youtube to download a version of the instrumental.

Narration

I also had planned to put in a news report to go along with the soundtrack, for this i wrote up a script:

News reader

“In news today, there has been a string of missing persons reported from the notorious Dante Heights Estate aptly dubbed (the devil’s block) in Lower Abbadon, South London. 16 year old Jamal Reid is the 7th known affiliate of the Reaper Ryders gang to go missing in the past 2 weeks. Metropolitan Police believe this to be the work of a vigilate who is believed to be armed and dangerous. Residents of the area are urged to stay indoors.”

Abbadon: A place of destruction, a name given to hell.

New Entry: Unfortunately i was not able to put my news report into the film as there was to much going on soundwise and the report on top of it did not sound appealing.

WEEK 4 – w/c 04/10/10

Location, Location, Location

This week i have been concentrating on the location and scenery that will be in my trailer. In terms of location there was some disagreement between me and my partners because while i wanted to portray a gritty urban underbelly of horror, my group did not want to delve into the "hood" aspect of the trailer to that extent.

The first scene that is going to feature in my trailer is a graveyard where a group of gang members are burying a body and with it their secret. The media technology that i applied to my project this week is the film "Sorority Row" which is a 2009 slasher film because my thoughts for my trailer were similar to the plot for the movie however my idea challenges the movie in the fact that the  body in my trailer is not being thrown down a mine shaft but rather buried in a graveyard and unlike sorority row that revolves around college girls, mine follows a group of male gang members.

Originally i did not know how i would go about, going to a graveyard to bury a body but when i thought about it carefully i decided that i would do a pan over the grave yard and then find a patch of normal land to dig up so that it looks like the grave yard is the plot of land that is being dug up.

section of the trailer that i wish to recod is at a train station where the killer is at the train station and is noticed by one of the victims but when the train passes in front of the killer, he is no where to be seen.

New Entry: I did record this part of the trailer however due to the low quality of the camera that was used the footage came out blocky and there was multiple stripes covering it, rendering the footage useless.

Location, Location, Location Pt. 2

The locations that I predominantly used for my recording is the Heygate Estate & Aylesbury Estate in South East London. The Heygate Estate is being prepared to be demolished in 2015 and therefor has been emptied apart from a few low-rise council houses. Due to the lack of inhabitants the estate has been neglected and been covered from head to toe in graffiti.

I passed the estate everyday on my way to college and thought that it would be a great location to record on, however it seems that i was not alone in these thoughts since because of the housing estate being the epitome of urban decay, hood films among other films and shows have been shot there e.g. Fallout, Shank, The Bill, Etc. I did not know this however until it i saw the estate's wikipedia entry and then reviewed these films and recognised the areas.



WEEK 3 – w/c 27/09/10

This week i have returned from my IT work experience, since returning i have realized that me and my partners have a lot of different ideas about what the teaser trailer should entail, my partners wanted the trailer just to be urban in terms of scenery with a small segment relating to hood life while i wanted the film trailer to have these hood aspects to be the centralized theme with the horror aspect taking over. So somehow we had to get around this problem, i did this by researching myself and i discovered that there are some films that have more than one trailer e.g. Friday the 13th (2009).

(production: writing and shooting & presentation session)

Friday the 13th Trailer 1

Friday the 13th Trailer 2

This is done for a variety of reasons such as there being a American and a British version or there being a trailer coming out and another trailer coming out closer to the date of the movie's release. After discussing it over with my partners we decided that their trailer would be the one that comes out in the UK and mine would be the one to be shown in the US. So i decided to research more into it and i realized that American trailers have a particular difference from British trailers which is the green preview screen shown below which only appears in American teaser trailers.

This where the age rating given by the MPAA (Motion Picture Association Of America) is displayed as to allow American viewers to know right off the bat if they should allow their children to watch it.

New Entry: After i put this image into my teaser trailer and showed it to one of my tutors he advised me that i should not use it because it is not something that i created or edited to make my own, to get over this problem i decided to edit the image in Photoshop by giving it my own rating. Instead of R for Restricted i changed it into T for Traumatic.

WEEK 2 – w/c 20/09/10

This week i have been focusing on the audiences that these horror movies as well as hood movies are targeted at, I did this by not only researching online from various websites but i also asked my Facebook friends via my Facebook status asking questions such as “do you like to watch the Saw movies?” & then ask them their age, although i was just attempting something new, this proved to be rather beneficial, the results that i received indicate that the majority of people that enjoy these types of movies are Young Adult Males (or as i like to call them Y.A.M) demographic aged from 16 – 25.

A new type of multimedia that i used this week was the website that i used to create my simple survey called http://www.survermonkey.com/ where they allow you to create your own questions in a prefered style e.g. text box answer, multiple choice and allows you to distribute the questionnaire via diffrent multi media platforms such as Facebook and twitter, i put my questionaire up on Facebook as shown below

However there was some contrast in age groups from what i researched on the Internet and the Intel i received from friend in terms of age groups for watching Hood movies; because these movies usually contain violent scenes and some sexual content they are usually rated for ages 18+ but my individual research shows that allot of teenagers aged 13 to 18 enjoy watching or have watched hood movies e.g. Menace II Society, kiDULTHOOD, etc.

The main reason that i see behind this could be for a number of reasons such as the fact that gang life and crime has been glamorized by the media, they relate to this lifestyle or problems that the subjects of the movie are going through, etc.

Some people don't realize it but slasher movies and hood movies if properly Incorporated would blend with each other nicely e.g. both genres usually involve murda in cold blood. in my project I am setting out to make the two blend together well enough to attract both demographics from each genre.

WEEK 1 – w/c 13/09/10

(pre-production: mock-ups & storyboarding)

For our A2 Media Project me and my partners decided to create a Teaser Trailer for our film. However during this week i was on work experience for my IT Course so they were working together without me. Despite this i have been doing research on my own time at home because i know the basic background of our trailer from the storyboards that we created.

Because of this conflict of timeing I decided to note down my research and ideas for the teaser trailer and inform my partners about it when I got back.

The genre that we chose was an Urban Horror so i researched some over the internet e.g. http://www.horror-movies.ca/horror_14174.html into the aspects and conventions that are associated with the genre and this is what i realized:

• Isolation: this is a convention that is commonly used in horror movies which is essentially the killer keeping their prospective victims within a certain vicinity, basically isolation = no escape.

Other conventions that i gathered from actually watching films e.g. Scream, was the reasons for people being killed which sort of gives off ideas to the viewers that the people who do the wrong things often have their wrongdoings catch up with them, the reasons i identified are:

• Partacking in sexual activity (victims do not notice the killers presence)
• Drinking or doing drugs (makes the victims easier to take care of)
• Leaving the group e.g. to go to the toilet
• Being arrogant or selfish (Often left till later on in the film, usually having the most gruesome death)
• I also believe that in the past being black also affected your survival rate in horror films, this is not so apparent these days however (this was mostly due to society being less civilized then it is today)

The most prominent conventions that i picked up from watchin urban hood films like Gang Tapes & Menace II Society are as follows:

• These films are predominantly centred around young black men 18 and under without father figures in their lives leading to gangs
• Poverty is another factor that icreases their reasons to commit crimes
• They usually involve acts of violence via gun and knife crime (e.g.the scene below)
• They are often looked down upon by the rest of society due to the way they have been represented as a group as well as being mistreated by the police and therefor adopted it seeing as if someone tells you are no-good after some time you will believe it too (these views are also seen below).
• Reasons for killing are often trivial because of ignorance however this often leads to deserving retaliation through a serving of street justice.

These genres meld together & challenge the conventions of the individual genres, here are some of the ways:

• Sexual activity, drinking and doing drugs are commonplace within urban hood films.
• Usually when you watch a horror movie like Friday the 13th or My Soul to take the number of white people out number the number of black (showing the minority), this however is contrasted in urban hood films with the some exceptions.
• The main common factor that i discovered between the two genres is the bloodshed, however it is the motives that differ; in a horror movie the motive comes down to the killer while in a hood movie you dont really need a good reason to kill someone or at least try to hamr them.