Film Trailer: Logo

This is the title and logo of our film "deranged". I created this using the program photoshop. I thought it would fit in with the genre as the colour scheme is similar to other horror logos. The black connotes darkness, mystery, sinisterness which is reflective of the content of the film. The font i have chosen suits the genre quite well i think as its very simple and its white to connote isolation. its also very simple so that it does not give very much away about the film apart from the genre it is also suggestive that the narrative of the film is simple and easy to understand. I May adapt this in the future but this is what im working on and i feel that it fits the genre well.

Research: Magazine Front Cover

Empire Magazine is a magazine especially for movie reviews, Film news, and previews. The magazine includes quizzes and interviews with film stars. Normally on the covers of the magazine it advertises quite mainstream films, such as the ones that people must go and see and can not miss, all the major blockbusters. Empire reviews a range of genres of film and also does review art films as well but the movies featured on the front cover of the magazine is what the magazine focuses on. This magazine also includes polls on things that are film related so that the readers can have their say.
As on most of these magazines the main characters a placed quite boldly in the centre of the page, this is so people can recognise the actors and associate them with the film that it being advertised. This is what we are thinking of doing with our film cover, placing the main boy in the centre of the page to make him seem menacing, he will also become an icon for the film if he is on the magazine as people will recognise him as being in the film. I really like the front covers , i think they are set out well and are very eye catching and there isn't too much text on the page so that it looks tidy and neat. The colour scheme of the front cover always seems to go with the film that is being featured as for the dark knight one(above) most of the text is green and white, but on the Sherlock Holmes one the text is all in white and red.
This is one of the biggest selling magazine covers and it has been rumoured that some of the most famous filmmakers such as Steven Spielberg, James Cameron and Peter Jackson are readers of the magazine. It is definitely good advertisement of the film as there is such a large audience who read it and therefore maybe attracted to the film.
The font of the word empire is kept the same on all of the magazines but the colour is altered to enhance the genre of the movie as on the dark knight issue the font is illuminated in green , on our magazine front cover it might be a good idea to make the title of the magazine dark red to show that its a horror film that is being advertised. There isn't much text on the cover with the dark knight on it this is because they want people to focus on the statement image. The closeup of the Joker look evil and the audience can immediately tell that he is a bad guy. the title "The Dark Knight" is directly under the Word Empire in a slightly smaller size of font this shows that this film is almost as important as the magazine itself as in the inception front cover and the shrlock holmes front cover the image of the characters block people from seeing letters of the word empire which gives the sense that these films are overpowering as they are really successful.

Our Pitch

Manny and Beth's pitch from Chris Earl on Vimeo.

Pitch: Powerpoint Presentation

This is the PowerPoint we used to present our idea.

At first we explained why we wanted to do the genre we are doing which is horror. We did some audience research by asking people what genre of film they liked the best. the results are shown in the table and the genre that people liked the most was horror. Before doing the audience research we had  already considered doing horror, the reasons for this being that we did a psychological thriller for our AS project and some parts of the camerawork and editing could be applied to a horror film. We decided that we would both be happy with making something that would fit into the horror genre.

We did our research on horror films first before we did the pitch so that we could have an idea of how a horror trailer is put together. I did a lot of research on horror films that are aimed at a younger audience, with a 12 or 15 classification, these trailers are make it very obvious that the film is of the horror genre.

When Manny and me started to come up with a plot i put forward what i had found in my research, in a lot of the trailers that i watched there was a child as the main character who normally got possessed and as a result of this started to do things that were out of the ordinary. We have now thought of having a plot along these lines. Our thoughts so far are that we are going to have  Forrest, an empty room and a graveyard,  the trailer will start off with a flashback to when the child was younger, and it shows the parents have died and he has been left without Any parents. The trailer then will probably fade to black with some text to link the flashback to the present which will follow after the flashback. Then after this the boy will be shown going to the graveyard and this is the place that an event will happen that changes him. The fade to blacks will come in quite quickly and randomly to make it look fast paced. These fade to blacks will have short lines of writing which will create a sense of what happens in the film and convey this to the audience. Then after he has been changed by an evil spirit he turns evil and deranged. Using a child in the film could pose quite a lot of problems as people may have issues with using a child for this sort of role in the film. The film is a film where you follow what is happening to the boy, and are not supposed to be totally scared of him.

The logo for our film is going to be the title, there are two titles which we have come up with but we have not decided which one we are going to use yet, the titles that we are debating are Abandoned and deranged. The design of the logo is going to be the title scratched out slightly. I have started trying out designs using Adobe photoshop and will upload them when i am finished them. The logo is going to have a black background as we have seen on other horror film logos that a lot of them do have colours such as black white and red.

For the magazine front cover, we have not come up with an image for it yet but we are going to go to the setting soon so we can take photos of it, also with the characters that we are using. On a lot of movie magazine front covers there is usually a large image of the character that the audience can recognise and know what movie the character is from.

Manny has designed the production logo and she will probably upload that to her blog.

The poster will be similar to the magazine cover by having a large image of the main character and a short tagline that will get people thinking about the movie. The poster will have some of the setting featured in it i think it would look good if the background was the empty room which features in the flashback of the boys life and the boys face in the foreground to make it look like the boy is staring at the audience, as that would frighten the audience.

Pitch

Mr earl has asked us all to do a pitch for our film trailer or music video. me and manny have been preparing our pitch for the last few days and have prepared a powerpoint which explains what genre we are doing and why we are doing it. We are also revealing what our plot will be to the rest of the class aswell as explaining our ideas for our print product and the logo of the film. 

Both Manny and me have thought of some names that we could call our film, I was thinking of the name "abandoned" manny also came with the ideas "Hell" and "choke/choked". The rough plot that we have come up with so far involves a child that is parentless and he has a ritual if visiting the graveyard, where his parent are buried, every week . one night, at midnight, he goes to the graveyard and an evil spirit rises from the darkness and starts to follow him everywhere. thats as far as we've got with the plot so far and is still a work in progress. I have had a few ideas for the logo and will upload the final product to the blog, i am thinking i would use conventional colours such as black white possibly red as these are common coours that represent a horror film.  

Research: Analysis of "The Orphanage"

From past research there is a theme, the theme being horror films that portray children as being evil or being possessed by evil and where the child is the main character, that i am interested in using in our horror trailer as i think it would be interesting to film as there are a lot of different camera shots that we could use that we haven't used in our AS piece or ever before and also in the editing process we can be creative. I also thought that it could appeal to quite a wide audience compared to other horror films which are give higher certificates as most of the ones that i have done research for have been given a 15 certificate or less for this particular genre including children.

Through personal experience i have discovered that the child characters are the type of characters which freak people out and are, some would say more creepy than some other supernatural characters. This is because the common ideology is that children are though of as innocent and pure, it is repulsing to think of children who are taken by other forces and are corrupted and the actions that they undertake as a result of this. This is why i am thinking of using a child character in the plot, as it can appeal to a wide audience as well as having the full horror effect that will stir peoples feelings and thoughts about children. It may sicken some people to see children portrayed in this way but the true terror of this will drive people into watching a movie like this.

The Orphanage Trailer:

 

The orphanage is a film that was released in 2007 and has a 15 certificate. A summary of what happens is a former orphan who is now married with an adopted child and now lives in an old house which used to be an orphanage and her son is telling her he has invisible friends in the house, She doesn't believe him until he disappears and she starts sensing the 5 other people in the old orphanage.

This trailer is not as clear as others i have watched as the narrative is quite vague, this is because of the series of shots. The voice over reinforces the story and genre but without this i think it would be hard to tell what is happening.

Mise-en-Scene: The setting and props in this trailer resembles those in other trailers i have researched such as "The Others" with the house being dark and gloomy with dozens of lingering shadows, setting the tone for the whole movie instantly as the first shot is an a low angled shot of the house and orphanage by itself, obviously reinforcing where the film is set. The title also gives it away that it is about an orphanage therefore the audience would immediately assume that this shot is of the orphanage as this is the what the film is centered around. I know from the trend I've seen that we need to think a lot about the setting of the trailer as it can give a lot away about the movie and likewise the genre. At this stage i am set on having a few scenes in the dark at least, as i feel that this is quite an important element in a horror movie. At the start of the trailer there are a few scenes which are shot in daylight and these fit with the voice over as the voice over is saying "that everything around her is fading away" and as the trailer progresses the lighting gets darker, there is not as much shots shown that are filmed in daylight. There is also a montage of shots showing doors closing in on her and shutting her this is representing that she is trapped and alone, she also seems more isolated because she is the only character who is featured in the trailer apart from the boy with the mask on. This highlights that they are both important characters in the film. The mask hides his face and is quite a disturbing image as you can see the mask is on the child suggesting that this boy is evil and one of the bad people in the film. there is also quite a powerful shot used of the female character looking like shes underwater, it makes the audience think is she drowning and also what is going on so that the storyline is anticipated by the audience watching the trailer. Her eyes are wide open and it just appear as being quite haunting, also drowning is something that a lot of people are afraid of.
After this there is a series of shots with what looks like a bright green line that appears on a heart monitor, is this indicating that death is involved. I think it is used because it is a very well known symbol that is associated with emergency and danger that it is guaranteed to alarm the audience as most people are afraid of death or at least hospitals.
Also right at the very end there is a very startling close up image of an eye that flashes on and off the screen this appears straight after the main title of the film is on the screen, so that the audience thinks the trailer has finished and is therefore unexpected and may make a few people jump, i think that was quite effective. It is especially startling as its an eye and its something people find gross, its definitely not something you would expect to see.

Progress over the summer:

During this summer i have done some research as part of planning for the final trailer, it has given the basis of what i need to include to meet the criteria of being a horror film,  as well as other elements which we will choose to include depending on the type of plot we base our trailer on. Manny and i still need to be clear on the plot of the trailer which will sort out and plan shortly.

For now i am going to carry on with research as i feel i still need further information about movie trailers and how they are made up. I need to be sure of the type of editing and camerawork that we could use and also how the trailer tells the story well as well as not giving the end away. I also need to do futher research on the ancillary text which will be a front page of a magazine and also an article page about the movie we are planning the trailer for.