Front Cover Analysis

These film magazine front covers all have things in common. For example all the covers have two main things standing out, the title of the magazine (EMPIRE and TOTAL FILM) and one main picture which relates to the main article in the magazine.

The main picture gives the reader an idea of what a section of the magazine is about e.g. if it's got the Joker on the cover then there's likely to be a large review of the new Batman film "The Dark Knight" inside. The Main picture also tends to be infront of the masthead therefore blocking out one or two of the letters in word. Although on one of the front covers (an Empire cover with Harry Potter) this is not the case and the main image is behind the masthead. The font and colour used for the title links to the main picture as does the background e.g. for the front cover of the Total Film Magazine with the New Moon article the text is sort of glowing like a moon and the background of woodland at night time reflects the genre of the film. For the articles with Megan Fox on the front cover the backgrounds are white possibly implying she is pure. You could say that each issue follows a kind of house style which depends on what the main focus of the magazine is on.

Some things to be aware of when creating our own front cover is how there should be none or minimal text obscuring the main picture and generally the text is kept to the sides, the top or the bottom. The price and bar code are shown on the front page of each magazine. It seems more common for the main image to be infront of the masthead so i think we will do it that was on our front cover.

Production Schedule

We intend to do most of our filming on the 4th of Febuary. We have two houses available to use and will use one as Tom's home, where some of the creepy things happen and the other for the killing house where the poker and killings happen. We intend to do get all the shots done on the 4th.

After looking at what weve got we have decided to do another filming session next thursday (the 11th of Febuary) This is to retake a couple of shots were not happy with and take a few new ones of some of the actually killings.

These two images are our storyboard which we brought with us when filming and used to check we had done each shot by ticking off the shot on the storyboard once we had done it.

Revised Idea

We were not happy with our first idea and decided we would much rather do a Trailer rather than a short film.

New Idea
Title:

Teaser Trailer
Genre: Horror

Characters: Tom, Theo, Jack, Ben, Joe, Alex

Starts with a flash back from 1 year earlier when two mates are out on the moors, but Tom is only their for revenge as Theo stole his girl and hes taken Theo onto the moor to kill him. Tom kills Theo and 1 year on hes still having nightmares about it.
Freaky things start happening to Tom on the aniversary of Theo's death. As Tom gets more and more creeped out throughout the day he is relieved when he meets up with 3 mates for their poker night.
The killer has planned it all and intends for none of them to leave the house alive. After the friends have had quite a lot to drink and played some poker, the killer first picks off two of Tom's friends when they go for more booze and to the toilet respectively.

Tom and Joe the two remaining realise what is going on but there is no way out of the house.

Theo's older brother is the killer and having figured out what he thinks happened on the night of his brothers death he is out for revenge. He toys with Tom and his mates and then kills the mates so only Tom and Theo's brother remain.

Pod Casts

Pod Cast 1

Pod Cast 2

Research

Pocket Essentials Film: Slasher Movies
Author: Mark Whitehead

According to the book:
1) Top 3 slasher movies of all time: Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Halloween and Friday the 13th
2) Top 9 Tips for a slasher film:

1. Phone doesn't work
2. Car doesn't start
3. Snapping twigs
4. Standing next to windows, either fall through, get puled through or something thrown through
5. Asking stupid questions
6. Vulnerable when naked especially bathrooms, on toilet, in shower
7. Saying "I'l be right back"
8. sex/drugs/music, allow someone to sneak up on you and then death
9. Avoid scary places on significant dates e.g. basements on Halloween

Another book I looked at was The Legacy of Blood

From this i learnt that the slasher genre was born from John Carpenters Halloween which overuses one shot in particular - the first-person-point-of-view-shot which features so heavily in all it's imitators as well. Jim Harper writes that one critic described Halloween as the shower scene from Psycho stretched out for an hour and a half. Mainly because of the overuse of the shot.





The Book also mentions the commoness for horror film to be of a relatively low budget which is one of the reasons we chose to do a horror trailer as we did not have any money to spend on it. Another common convention of horror films is for their to be a final girl.

Final Girl: Brunette, Intelligent, strong willed and a virgin.

The girls who die: Slutty, blonde haired, big breasts and stupid.

Many horror films such as Halloween, Scream and Nightmare on Elm Street use a final girl, and it has become a common a factor in Slasher films.

However as part of our research of the horror genre we watched a few horror films.
One of the most inspirational films we watched was Dead Mans Shoes.

This involved an ex army member murdering a group of men who abused his little brother who was a simpleton while he was away in the army. For the killings he wore a gas mask making him look extremely menacing. We tried to use this in our film and although we did not have a gas mask available to use we had a hoody which fully zipped up over the face creating the desired effect. There is a picture of the hoody earlier in my blog, the link below takes you to the page.
http://snowden-alexa2.blogspot.com/2010/02/mise-en-scene-props-and-casting.html

We also noticed in this film that a final girl was not used and we decided to adopt this into our film as we really enjoyed Dead Man's Shoes and wanted to make a trailer for a film similar to it. This was useful as it was harder to get hold of the girls to act as they had alot going on.

Codes and Conventions (Short Films)

Short Film 1: Sebastians Voodoo
Directed by Joaquin Baldwin (2008)

• Starts with footsteps, and a shot of a dark room, quite creepy. 
• Close up of a voodoo doll waking up, can tell by the expression on his face and the music which builds suspence that something is wrong. 
• Then a change in music, to a scary drum beat as the camera pans out to reveals there are lots of voodoo dolls all waiting to be killed. 
• You can see the person's hands as he kills the first voodoo doll, high angle shot of the doll showing it is going to die. 
• The person leaves the room, and one voodoo doll helps another to escape. 
• Depth of Field type Shot used where you can see the first voodoo doll trying to think of a way to save the voodoo doll that helped it in the foreground and the human about to kill the second doll in the background.
• As the voodoo doll stabs himself the music quikens and the camera cuts between the two voodoo dolls with one stabbing its self and the other other about to be stabbed. 
• Match on Action? as the first doll stabs its self the human reacts to the injury? 
• Quick cuts between one shot of the person bringing the needle closer to the voodoo's heart and another of the first voodoo building up the courage to stab himself in the heart to save his friend. 
• Finally a panning shot showing all the voodoo dolls free and finishing on the voodoo doll which died to save them. The music and lighting make the atomasphere scary and tense.
  

Short Film 2:  Reach
Directed by Luke Randall (2009)

• Establishing shot of city/town then pans down to a window and there is a second establishing shot of a room in which everything takes place. 
• Happy tune at first bt then fades away to the sound of heavy foot steps. 
• Pair of hands put together a little robot which appears not to work. 
• Then match on action? as a horn beeps the hands show aknoledgement and the person leaves. 
• The robot does actually work and the camera zooms in on it as it takes in its surroundings, song played gradually builds happyness. 
• Point of view shot ( through the robots eye). Very happy and then POV shot out of the window and the tune stop and the robot zoomz in - connotes it wanting to go outside to the real world. 
• Tries to get outside but cannot , camera zooms out to show that the length of his wire prevents him. 
• Happy tune builds up as he makes a final attempt to break away from the cable and reach the window, pauses momenterally as the cable momenterally stops him but then builds to a climax as he gets closer to the window and it cuts between POV shots and panning shots of him running, his arms are reached forward in anticipation then its sight fades out as do the music as it runs out of power.
  

Short Film 3: Strangers
Directed by Erez Tadmor and Guy Nattiv (2004)

• Starts with the sounds of a train approaching and long shot of an entrance/exit on to the station platform, quite dark except for the entrance. 
• Train comes into the shot from one tunnel and then leaves out the otherside without the camera moving once. Signifying that the film will be set on the train. 
• Shot of man stepping onto the train, walking towards the camera then it follows him, signifying that he is the main protagonist.
• Sits near an asian man, seems to be tension between them, they keep looking at each other. 
• Heavy music comes in and a shot down the train showing a group of rough looking males coming down the train. 
• They crowd around the two men and spray a swazsticker onto the asians paper. glimpses of a swazsticker tatoo on one of their heads, connotes that they are probably nazi supporters. 
• Close up shots of the nazi's their expressions show disgust and anger, close up of the asian show he is worried. 
• The tension is now way bigger than it was, cuts to shot of the train pulling into a platform, the camera pans the train to show the group of men through the window. 
• People start to get off the train, the protagonists phone rings making the situation awkward as he tries to find his phone. Shots of all the nazis looking at him in anger. 
• Sudden beat is played as the two men jump up and run down the train away from the nazi's and jump off the train train just before the doors close, shot of the nazis looking angry through the train windows. The two men cheer at the nazis and then nod to each other and walk away.
  

Short Film 4: The Black Hole
Directed by Phil Sampson and Olly Williams

• Camera zooms in to a close up shot of a tied looking man, can tell he is an office work by his shirt and tie and surroundings. 
• Digetic noises coming from printer (beeping sounds). Strange humming noise coming from black hole, cup disappears into it and then he can put his hand through it as well. 
• Look of confusion on his face. His eyes light up when he looks up and sees the vending machine, and he walks away from the camera to the vending machine. 
• When he looks at a door (probably the bosses) a look of determination is shown on his face and he uses the black hold to unlock the door. digetic sound of door handle being used, light flickers on, signifying danger?.
• Uses the sheet to rob money from the safe. quick cuts between he money he is taking, his expression and him taking more money, the constant hum can be heard, cuts get faster signifying he is getting greedy. 
• Then he goes all the way through the black hole to get the money at the back and he can't get out.
• Camera jumps further away from the safe and you can hear him tapping from the inside trying to get out.
  

Short Film 5: Forna: Watched from Leeds met short film compilation DVD

• Starts with a shot of the main protagonists
• various shot types used; two shots, mid shots, and close ups showing facial expressions and converse between the characters.
• Film aimed at an older audience, very strange narrative about penis's springing out the ground. difficult to see the preferred reading.
• Dis equilibrium, an attempt is made to resolve it but it fails and the film ends with the character in an even worse situation than at the start.

Short Film 6: Cherries: Watched from Leeds met short film compilation DVD

• Main shot of the protagonist at the start.
• Urban setting with a shabby looking school in a rough looking area.
• Mixed race school, various ethnicity's, tension between some boys, seems to be high level of tension between the protagonist and the antagonist who are different skin colours.
• lots of mid shots and long shots of groups of boys and also lots of close ups showing expressions especially as the storyline is revealed to the actors.
• Seems to be quite a high budget film, with military involved in some scenes and a large amount of actors used.
• Strange twist, in that the kids are forced into military training programmes which scares a lot of them, one boy runs away.
• Genre seems to be social realism

Short Film 7: Mr. Eryams: Watched from Fangoria Blood Drive short film DVD

• Low budget production - set in a small shabby house, poor acting, only 2 characters.
• Woman looks like a bit of a scream queen - (blonde hair, lots of skin on display and seems to be a bit of a slapper.)
• Genre appears to be thriller but the twist makes it seem more horror orientated, lots of long takes which is quite unusual for a horror film.
• poor lighting and not many bright colours reinforces the feeling its a horror film.
• Quite gory scenes and quite scary sound effects/music used also suggesting it is typically a horror film, this, the strong language and the shots of the woman lying naked and dead on the bed suggets the target audience for the film is adults.

Short Film 8: Lovefield

• Starts with an establishing shot of a large wheat field
• The camera pans down the screen and creepy, tension building muic is played.
• Camera pans to a shot of a swinging sign making an eerie creaking noise
• Shot of a crow on top of the sign and then cuts to a close up of the crow as it caws
• Conventions of a typical horror genre film
• Camera returns to a panning shot of the wheat field, and the music rises again building a higherlevel of tension
• A beeping sound gradually gets louder as the camera moves through the wheat field and then comes to rest on an open mobile phone which is the source of the beeping
• The camera then gradually zooms out bringing a bag of money into the shot and then a woman making a screeching crying noise can be heard.
• Camera rest of a shot of the woman foot which is squeming about and connotes she is in pain
• The sound of the woman screeching and her foot shaking stop simultaneosly which connotes that she has died, then a knife is rammed into the ground
• Quick cut to a shot of the crow squaking and then cuts back to a shot of a mans feet and then pans up is body. The music which had faded away comes back very suddenly as soon as the knife is slamme dinto the ground.
• The pace of the music quickens as the man runs out of the wheat field and onto the road to a parked car. The man appears worried and the camera cuts between shots of him and of the crow squaking.
• The man opens the boot which is filmed from inside the boot
• Music tension builds as the man looks through the boot in a hurry
• The crow stops squaking casing the man to look up, it has flown to his car and landed on the roof
• shot of the womans uncovered legs in the foreground with the man running to her with a pink blanket
• The balnket is for the new born baby, the woman had been giving birth, gentle music played and camera pan out to reveal the area wasnt quite as scary as it seemed
• Very clever twist at the end and good switch from seeming to be a horror film into a happy storyline

Short Film 9: Offside

• Starts with a shot of a danger sign
• Digetic soundheard froma radio help by two soldiers
• Camera pans along the fence to reveal the two soldiers walking down a track
• Radio is a commentry off a world cup final involving brazil and Italy, then two rebel soldiers appear on the other side of the fence, they all seem to be interested in the match so they don't shoot each other
• Lots of quick cuts between the two pairs of men, they look really upset when the italians just miss
• the radio loses signal and crackles out, then one of the italians nudges it with his foot, can tell there is tension between the four men, they all want italy to win
• Then the brazilans score and one of the men fires a shot in anger, which then cause them to shoot each other until tey are all dead
• After there all dead the radio anounces that the goal was offside, so they all died for nothing.
• Quite a good short film, good props and clever twist

Short Film 10: Catch

• Starts with a establishing shot of of a field near a housing estate, and three guys are playing catch with a baseball
• soft gentle music played, digetic noise of the ball being caught in a baseball glove, cuts to close up of the baseball glove catching the ball
• Music fades away a bit as the three guys start talking to each other, carrying on catching the ball as they do
• One is distracted from catching the ball while they talk and it hits him in the chest
• He shouts at the guy who threw it
• shot of the guy who was hit throwing it back and then there is a quick cut between the guy who hit him with the ball catching it and the guy who got hit, and it is obvious he is going to get hit again
• This time it hits him in the face and he gets angry
• Lots of quick cuts between the 3 guys, raised tones and angry facial expression connote they are getting angry with one another
• One guy ran over by his father at the end, not a very good film, quite low budget and poor acting
  

Production Schedule

We are planning to film our short film in November over a weekend on the mooors. The dates are the 21st and 22nd of November.

Genre Research and Intertextual links

Locations

Poster Research

Here are some posters we looked at for inspiration into our own poster.
I really liked the silouette effect created on The Deadly Silence poster and tried to create a poster similar to it for our poster.

The Hardware

The camera we used was a canon md101 30x optical zoom.

This was a good camera to use because it is a very basic camera which made it simple for everyone in the group to use, even for people who haven't used a camera much before. Another plus point is that all you have to do to get the footage from the camera to the mac is open Imovie plug the camera into the computer and wait until you see import icon pop up and then press it and wait for it to load.

We also used a tri-pod to improve the quality of some of our takes where possible and avoid unwanted shaky camera work.

To record the audio for the podcast we used our friends Nokia N95, it was really simple to record with and the audio was of high quality, also all you had to do to extract the audio was turn on bluetooth on the phone and computer then send. We formatted the audio in i tunes then used http://www.archive.org/ to upload the pod casts. Then we embed the link to the pod cast on the Blog.

The Software

This year we will be doing the majority of our editing on Final Cut Express 4. Final Cut is alot more complicated but also alot better than iMovie HD which we used last year, however we will probably do the basic editing on iMovie HD before importing it onto Final Cut to do the more complicated things.

 Here are some of the specifications of Final Cut Express 4 gives you:

• Ability to import iMovie '08 projects
• Editing of AVCHD, HDV and DV — NTSC and PAL — in a single Timeline
• AVCHD support (Intel-based Mac computers only)
• Support for FxPlug third-party plug-ins

IMovie
IMovie is very simple to use as it only does a limited ammount of tasks but this was perfect for the early editing stages of the teaser trailer such as deciding which clips we should put where, and which clips we should delete. We also added a greyscale lense to the beginning of our short trailer as it helps show the clip is a past event. After we had done these basic editing tasks we moved the partially edited trailer onto final cut for the more advanced tasks and to apply the music.

                           

Final Cut Express 4
For the more advanced and final stages of the editing we used final cut express, This is a much better piece of editing software and is even used in hollywood by directors such as Francis Ford Coppola. This software has two different screens to edit with but does require you to know what you are doing to even get started. We did a morning course on Final Cut so we would know some of the basics and we also have a media technition who helped us out if we got stuck.

                        

          

Garage Band
To create a soundtrack for our media product we could use garage band 3 which is installed on the mac computers at school. This again is quite a basic level of software ideal for a short soundtrack needed for a teaser trailer.

Another option we are going to use also is the use of some copyright free sounds

Here are the links to the main sit and two avilable packages. 

• 
  
  http://www.videocopilot.net/
• 
  
  http://www.videocopilot.net/products/proscores/ 
• 
  
  http://www.videocopilot.net/products/dsfx/

Final Proposal Draft

Initial Idea

Idea 1
Title: Death or Dinner

Short Film
Genre: Horror/Comedy

Characters: there are three main characters; Dan, James and Steve.

Three friends (dan, james and steve) meet up at a local field to play football in the evening, some other friends are ment to be arriving soon but they are late. Steve accidently kicks the ball over the fence and it rolls through the door of an old abandoned house. Steve who kicked the ball goes along the road and enters the property to get the ball. Through the fence dan and james tell him the house is haunted, but steve knows its not so he enters the house anyway. Steve comes out with the ball and shouts through the fence to dan and james " ha i got it u silly buggers" dan and james look up to see steve stood in the doorway when a shadowed face appears behind him, they shout a warning but its too late, the figure grabs him and pulls him back into the house, a few seconds later the ball rolls out of the house splattered in blood. Dan and James muster the courage to enter the house and try to help steve. Apart from the main corridor the house is not at all scary and they find Steve and his brother eating a chip dinner. It turns out the house is his dads house and he pulled him inside for tea.

The twist is, that is was his dad pulling him inside for chip diner, and the ball was covered in ketchup. dan and james get invited to the banquet.

Animatic

The Plot
The plot for my animatic is very simple, basically a bully at school is jumped by one of his victims whose had enough of being bullied and having his dinner money tacken. The victim pulls a knife but in self defence the bully over powers the victim and stabs him. One of the victims friends is passing by and he see's his friends in troouble and fights the bully stabbing him leaving both the bully and the victim dead.