Location Scouting:

At the weekend, I went up to London to look for locations where we could film scenes for our teaser trailer. In particular I was looking for places where our homeless teenager would be living and ideas for establishing shots/time lapse shots. Our teacher had recommended that we look round Waterloo Station so I went to look around there,

Homeless Locations:

 This is a shot underneath a bridge by Waterloo, I liked the bin in shot and thought it was quite typical of where a homeless person might sit. I also liked the lighting how the darkness of the tunnel contrasts with the bright light at the end.

This is Leake Street, which runs under Waterloo station, it's an authorised graffiti area and I could really imagine our impressionable homeless teenager sitting here watching the graffiti artists. Again from the angle that I took this shot, I like how the light on the floor gets darker the further in you go and gives it a sinister feeling.

The shot of these bins was just to show an ideal location for our homeless teenager to be seated, especially with the accidental mise-en-scene of the cardboard box which is where she could be sitting in.

This is a shot of the street, which is covered in graffiti, as we are planning to have other people/members of the public walk past this would be a good place for them to walk down and see the girl sitting at the end,

This is of an area beneath a bridge, on the bank of the River Thames, as you can see there is an actual homeless person already sitting up against the wall which is why it struck me as a good place because it seems realistic, however I don't think it would be as effective on camera.

Time Lapse Ideas:

 This shot was taken from the top of the stairs at Stratford after crossing the bridge from Westfield. I liked the idea of the people going up and down the stairs and also the buses moving in the upper right of the frame.

 I thought it might be busy by the river, so I took a high angle shot, looking down on the people but as you can't see that much of the Thames I don't think it would be as effective as I imagined.

This was a similar idea as I thought getting well-known attractions like the London Eye, Big Ben and Houses of Parliament would help give the audience a clearer shot of where the film is set, as well as the London Eye moving round would be a good effect.

 One of our original ideas was to have an establishing shot of trains, which could be used for a time lapse if there were enough lines. I tried to find a good place in Waterloo but I feel like the colours are too grey and you wouldn't be able to see enough of the trains.





The next two shots would be my chosen ideas for a time lapse - a train station. However as there are certain laws and issues of security with filming in a very public place, it might be very difficult to shoot the time lapse here. These were taken in Waterloo Station and I did particularly like the framing of this shot as all the people below will be moving and also the train boards will be flickering slightly. Also if the camera was a bit closer to the big clock then the hands of the clock would move round as well.

The location of the camera is also good as it is situated close to the edge of the balcony - this means we can get a high angle shot and there won't be people walking in front of the camera taking up most of the shot for large periods of time. I think, for a time lapse especially, the number of people in the shot is important and I feel filming in a public space will highlight the business of London which we are trying to put across.

Overall I think the trip to London was successful, I think it would be brilliant if we could film the shots of our homeless girl in Leake Street and maybe some shots of our killer along the road under the bridge by Waterloo Station. However for the time lapse I think it might be a bit impratical and risky to film the time lapse in the station itself so I think we should look into doing more shots along by the river.

Creating bruises

For our film trailer our killer is going to be obsessed with homeless girls so we want him to have a book with all pictures of the girls the girls that he has already killed. This will reveal to the audience his obsessive nature. For this we wanted Polaroid pictures and I had the task of making our models look homeless. I took inspiration from this video which shows you how to create a black eye with make up that I had access to.  



I then tried to replicate this on our models by using eyeshadow and I also made their hands look dirty to make it as realistic as possible. 

I layered different colour eyeshadow on top of each other a purpl-ey brown colour at the centre surrounded by yellow so that it looked very swollen. I also concentrated the  colour in one area so that there was a visible point of impact. I also put some brown around the nail bed and knuckles to make it look dirtier. 

This is one the finished bruises. I used the same technique on the hand on Gemmas face but I concentrated the colour in the inner corner of the eye/nose to make it look real. I think that this pared with a slightly dirty face looks quite effective.

 

For this I concentrated more red on the knuckles so that it looked like they were sore from being in a fight. 

For this I just concentrated more brown around the hairline and nose and a little bit under the eyes which made the face look very dirty and made Hayley look quite tired. 

This is another example of the same technique used for the bruising of the hand/face.

Evaluation of Recording Voice-over:

Today (Monday 22nd September) we went to the recording studio around 2 o'clock to record an audio clip, which we plan to use in our trailer. One of our main ideas is to have a news reader reporting on the case and to have it playing on the radio with our killer listening to it. We enlisted the help of some of our friends, one of which has a good natural diction and accent and the other with a good knowledge of music programs and experience with the recording studio.











Our friend Emily went into the booth in preparation for recording, however we had a few technical problems, either with the headphones, the microphones or the computer itself. Luckily we managed to sort it out and we could start recording. We wanted a few phrases, that would sound like a breaking news segment so they wouldn't go into too much detail but just enough to give the audience hints about the plot.

"There has been a development in the ongoing case involving the murder of homeless teenagers within the suburbs of London. So far there have been a total of 8 deaths in the past 8 years. Scotland Yard has been following the case, three suspects have been identified, but no arrests have been made."

This is the 'script' for the initial voice-over that we are going with although it may be altered slightly, for example we found an effect on Logic where it made the voice sound more like it was coming from a radio or television. However, apart from the technical issues, I think we are more confident in using the recording studio to create voice-overs and the afternoon was successful in helping us progress with our final piece.

The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo Deconstruction : Sound

The sound in the girl with the dragon tattoo trailer consists of mainly non-diegetic music with a very defining drum beat through out.

The drum beat is a key element of the trailer's sound as when the drum beat sounds a straight cut between different shots happens and so allows the images to change at the sound of the drum beat. 

Throughout the trailer the soundtrack of non-diegetic music and vocals intensifies contrapuntally alongside the images shown and slows down when the cuts between frames slow down as well, this adds to the effect the images have on the audience as alongside the music and sound the piece on a whole is very intense. 

At one point in the film trailer the non-diegetic sound almost stops completely. This is the point where the camera is framed on screen and takes a picture of the subject in front of it, this shows to the audience that this part of the trailer must be important and makes them focus on the frame more so than some of the other less defining ones and this is emphasized by the slowing and dulling of the soundtrack.

The drum beat also incorporates the credits and titles shown at the end of the trailer. The drum beat gets slightly louder as these appear making the audience pay more attention to them as they are telling the audience something about the film itself.

'The Snowman' Inspirations

Recently I read 'The Snowman' by Jo Nesbo and it gave me some ideas and inspiration for our own film. The genre is considered crime fiction as the main focus is on the detective, Harry Hole rather than the serial killer as he tries to solve the murders. However the book does contain some psychological elements and also contains horror aspects, which would be useful for us to consider.
The book is set in Norway, 2004 but contains flashbacks to give the reader hints about the killer, who is only revealed towards the ending, after a series of misleading red herrings. Harry Hole is investigating the recent murders of women in Oslo and as he begins to look for a link between cases, he realises each woman is married with children and a snowman appearing at each murder scene.
As he looks back through previous cases going back years, he knows he is on the case of Norway's first serial killer. The fact that most of the victims vanish after the first snowfall of winter is also intriguing to Hole and he discovers more women who have disappeared or murdered in a similar fashion.
The team suspect that paternity issues might be a motive for the murders and they realise all of the victims' children have different fathers to who they think. Gradually they get closer to the real killer...


The reason this book inspired me was the different paths it led the reader down, only for them to realise it was a dead end and have to go back to the start to try and work out who the killer is. In a trailer, we probably wouldn't be able to show that as well but I like the idea that the killer wouldn't be obvious to add a bit of mystery. I also like the idea of something deliberately being left at the murder scene, just to toy with the police and show that they are actually in control.
Another thing I liked was the link between cases as I feel there needs to be a motive for the murders, especially with a serial killer. In our trailer, we are hoping to use the idea of homelessness as a motive, with our serial killer murdering a number of homeless teenagers, set in London.

Warner Bros. Production Company Research:

I was asked to research Warner Bros. Production Company to see if they would be suitable to produce and distribute our film.

Warner Bros. Production Company is an American producer of film, television, and music entertainment and they produce and distribute a wide-ranging state of some 18-22 films each year.

It is the world's largest film and television studio, in 2009, Warner Bros. became the first studio to gross more than $ billion domestically in a single year.

In 2013, Warner Bros. Pictures grossed an industry-leading $5.038 billion in global box office to take the number one positions in domestic, international and worldwide box office. The year marker the first time the Studio surpassed the $5 billion mark and only the second time that deat has been achieved by any studio in Hollywood.

The company's vast library, one of the most prestigious and valubale in the world, consists of more than 61,000 hours of programming, including nearly 6,500 feature films and 3,000 television programs comprised of tens of thousands of individual episodes.

Warner Bros. is responsible for the Harry Potter film series, the highest grossing film series of all time, it is also responsible for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2 as Warner Bros.' highest grossing movie ever.

Some of the more recent films that Warner Bros. Pictures have produced which have elements that could inspire us are below.

I picked Inception, as we are thinking of doing a psychological thriller/horror, the plot of Inception is quite complex involving multiple layers in dreams and I imagine our killer to have a similar mind as the main character Dom (Leonardo DiCaprio).

I also thought I would mention the Sherlock Holmes films (and similarly the BBC Sherlock TV series), Sherlock Holmes is a famous detective with a quick-witted mind. I think our serial killer will have a very sharp mind and in a way he will be one step ahead of the police and predict their next move. We've also discussed the idea that he might have OCD or something similar and I imagine is mind to be really organised and on top of things, again similar to Sherlock Holmes.

Camera Angles and Shots.

Camera Work.

Megan: 

We chose this location for a shot as the low angle or where the camera is almost level with the ground alongside the narrow path way creates a illusion that the path is getting narrower almost making it claustrophobic and as if the person is being swallowed up by their surroundings. 

For the second shot we chose this location due to the natural lighting framing part of the shot and the door frame from the sky light. the darkness surrounding the light also give the shot a mysterious and enigmatic atmosphere to the picture as something could be hiding in the shadows.

Hayley:

For this shot, we liked the idea of using the metal fence as a frame, originally it was of a green bush like you can see in the bottom left, but then we noticed the motorway in between and how you can see quite far away in the distance. We also liked the different layers involved in the picture; the fence in the foreground, the garden, the houses, the road (although I think we just missed a car), and the fields and trees in the very background. 

Alice:

For the next picture, we liked the idea of the stairs spiralling downwards and gradually getting smaller, it would have been better f there were stair as it would look more effective. We chose to have a person in it to give the shot depth and make the shot more realistic. The colours also make it look quite old and mundane. 

Genre Investigation: Slasher

I decided to do an genre investigation into slasher as I created a two minute film opening of a slasher film last year.

I looked at the conventions of a slasher film;

• contain a lot of gory, bloody scenes
• numerous deaths
• underlining back story provides a motive for the murders - sometimes revenge
• main victim usually survives till the end
• at least one person killed on screen
• usually rated at least 15
• the female is less attractive/virgin/sensible/innocent usually survives
• the stereotypical 'popular' girl and guy are killed
• creepy, slow build up to deaths
• villain has physical deformity and/or mental issues
• villain never runs - doesn't need to as they are in control and will definitely complete the murder
• quick camera angles during death
• unhappy or intriguing endings
• usually set in remote areas - not urban
• immediate death/gory scene or quick build up at the very beginning
• villain's identity is often unknown/hidden by either a mask or lighting/camera techniques
• villain often has a signature murder weapon 
• generally darker lighting throughout film, not usually bright and happy

Well known slasher films/series:

• Saw 
• Scream 
• Friday the 13th  
• Texas Chainsaw Massacre
• Final Destination

Location scouting

We want our film trailer to be a psychological thriller with elements or urban drama incorporated so I looked at possible filming locations. 

This could be a good establishing shot as we are planning to have a time lapse and the trains going past could be quite effective.

We want to have a homeless girl as our protagonist/victim and this could be a location for her to be in. 

The lighting could also be quite effective if we did it at dusk so that the tunnel would look even more dingy that it already is. 

Inspirations

I am inspired by some of the cinematography and the use of text in the Sherlock episodes, the shots are beautiful and very imaginative. The way text is used in Sherlock is inspiring as it the first professional way that I have seen in a film or TV program to easily show messages between a number of people. The way that Sherlock used text in this shot was very effective as you could easily understand which characters were texting each other and it also looked very clean and professional. 

I am also inspired by films with narratives that are very powerful such as the film Side Effects. I found this inspirational as it was the first psychological thriller that I had seen and the the acting was superb and the ending had a twist that I did not anticipate. There was also dreamlike editing used in the film which I would like to replicate. 

Stop Motion Writing

When coming up with ideas and looking at other film trailers we saw that we would need to include shots which would display writing such as tag lines and actors' names. One idea that we had as a group was to use newspaper clipping and stop motion animation to create these shots.

To do this I took the letters that I needed out of a newspaper and started to place them on a black piece of card. I found it easier to place the letters where they would end up and then moved them outwards so that I knew where they would finish and as I moved them outwards I was able to make it look more professional rather than the letters being in completely different place than what they should be and jumping to their end positions.




Whilst doing this I was worried that the flash on my camera may make the letters blurred but it actually gave a nice softened lighting to the shot and worked out to my advantage.

Overall I believe this method was quite successful and may be able to be used in our final product.

Inspirations.

For myself my inspiration comes from locations that I see and can then imagine the different shots and camera movements which would be effective. The locations that I see also inspire me to think of different narratives that would work well within these locations. Locations which are very vast and simple inspire me as I can make a lot with a little and also areas that are built up such as urban areas like London make me think up different camera angles which would be effective and different by utilizing the surrounding area and infrastructure.

All of these locations that are close to my home inspire me as they all incorporate elements of both rural and urban settings. The angles and shots that could be used with these locations would be very unique and effective on the audience.

This location and camera angle also brings in the urban and rural elements to the frame and also makes the shot seem claustrophobic.

The lighting in this shot inspires me as the tunnel is lite up by the lighting placed within it and if it were to be completely pitch black outside it would have a very eerie effect on the location.

Website Deconstruction:

Similar to our film poster deconstructions, we also looked at websites for inspiration when creating our own.

• Suitability for genre and target audience
• User-friendly
• Interactive
• Typography – colour schemes
• Placement
• Choice of content – list what is on the screen, links
• Not allowed to scroll – one main section

Insidious Chapter 2

http://www.insidious2-movie.net/site/

• Suitability for genre and target audience - Horror – red white black - Creepy looking house etc
• User-friendly – clear links to sections at top and main picture in the middle
• Interactive - Sound, ticking clock,  - Short clip from movie at beginning
• Typography – colour schemes – black white and red – the ‘si’ is in red whereas the rest is in white – simple font
• Placement – main description/review in centre of pages on red background – title and page links at the top – social media and production companies at the bottom – background image is shots of house
• Choice of content – list what is on the screen, - ‘about’ ‘cast & filmmakers’ ‘photos’ ‘videos’ ‘downloads’ ‘game’ – mute option – main title and tagline – plot description which includes cast – follow us on twitter and facebook- share on facebook and twitter – use #insidious – production company logos
• Only one page

Oculus

http://www.oculus2014.com/

• Suitability for genre and target audience – neutral colours, nothing bright – supernatural/possession – crossover effect between two images (faded) 
• User-friendly – different sections with links, social media links
• Interactive – images changes
• Typography – colour schemes – neutral and dark, bright red #hastag – modern culture
• Placement – huge image as background, name bottom center, social media, bottom left, page links at the top, review right top hand corner
• Choice of content – list what is on the screen, links – ‘trailer’ ‘ cast’ ‘tumblr’ ‘poster’ ‘see your evil’ – social media links – facebook, twitter tumblr instsgram, share button, red hastag, picture from film as background, review – name and subtitle, previous films by pc – options to get tickets to see it 
• All on one screen 

Final Destination 5

• Suitability for genre and target audience – skull with nails, clearly horror, skull broken/shattered, teenagers and above
• User-friendly – loading as a percentage on empty screen 
• Interactive – images move, depending on the angle, shattered bone
• Typography – colour schemes - dark and light contrasting, dark background, brighter skull, red font colour and brightness of Walmart and best buy etc, - 5 is bigger font with sharp end , horror - 
• Placement – skull image on left of scree, film name top right, trailer right middle - 
• Choice of content – list what is on the screen, links – trailer – dvd info – social media - 
• Not allowed to scroll – one main section
• Second part , have to click ‘enter site’ image moves (at an angle depending on the location of mouse) 
• Have to hover over menu to get the links to come up
• ‘home’ ‘about’ ‘ special features’ ‘videos’ ‘photos’ ‘downloads’ ‘newsletter’ 
• Black and white with red of menu headings, dvd info also
• Name at bottom of page

Dead Footage

• Clear genre – zombie hands, age rating means 15+ 
• User-friendly
• Interactive
• Use of low battery sign for title (relates to poster)
• Black white and red – shows a horror film with gore
• Social media – Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, YouTube
• Placement
• Title at the top with the zombie hands coming from the side, ‘tv’ trailer with credits at the bottom and social media links
• Choice of content – list what is on the screen, links
• Film title at top, reviews and star ratings, social media links, film credits. Trailer inside a TV, links to different pages, production company and age rating

Akeldama

• Suitability for genre and target audience – realism drama? Sci fi thriller? 
• User-friendly – easy to clickon linsk at bottom
• Interactive - Picture changes to one of each player – trailer starts on entrance to page
• Typography – colour schemes
• Placement
• Choice of content – list what is on the screen, links – star reviews and comments
• Not allowed to scroll – one main section