Photography Session

One of the activities that we decided to do for our project was a photography session. This session was done because be required a set of different pictures for usage in our film posters and magazine covers. We had to take pictures of the models in a range of different poses so that we would have enough images to each be able to use a different one for our projects. In addition to this, taking a lot of photos would give us a greater selection of images to choose from. The more photos there were to choose from, the greater the chances of us producing a high quality product were.

In the photography session we used two separate models, Tom Nelson and Joseph Inns. These were the two main characters in the film trailer and were therefore the most appropriate people to use. We had a limited amount of resources and space to use for this photoshoot as we decided to do it at school. The area in which we did this was an empty classroom. We cleared a section of the classroom and covered a window with a white sheet. This was done so as to provide us with a blank background. A blank background would allow us to easily be able to replace it with other graphics such as picture of the locations that we filmed at. The window allowed a nice amount of natural lighting into the room, as well as this we had a large bright light that we borrowed from the school’s photography department.

Below is an image of the set up that we used and a diagram of how it was put together:

Camera Technique Research

In preparation for the task of creating a film trailer I decided to investigate and compare how three different types of videos filmed their products. For this I compared a film trailer, television advert for a product and a music video to each other and reviewed a variety of their different aspects. I chose to focus on their movement; angles and shots; focus; amount of cameras used and their formats. I believe that doing this has given me a more advanced idea of how I could shoot my own film trailer as well as potentially using codes and conventions from other types of videos.

The three videos I compared were:

The Guardians of the Galaxy trailer:

The Cadburys Gorilla Advert:

Feed Me & Crystal Fighters - Love Is All I Got music video:

Camera Techniques	Film: Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) - Trailer	Advert: Cadburys Gorilla Advert (2007)	Music Video: Feed Me & Crystal Fighters – Love Is All I Got (2012)
Movement	As this is a full-length action movie the majority of camera movements are used (panning, crabbing, tracking, peds, tilting and zoom). There is a contrast between the smooth and relatively slow motion of the shots that do not contain action scenes and the action scenes. The action scenes use very fast movement and a mixture of handheld cameras and cameras which that are not. There is significantly more variety of movements shown in this movie and trailer then there is in the Cadburys advert and the Love Is All I Got music video.	The advert primarily uses the dolly camera method as well as a range of panning and tracking. The movement starts off slow at the start because the music is calm. However the motion speeds cut dramatically when the drum solo occurs and the pacing of the music increases. In addition to this the camera work is rather shaky, therefore it may have been recorded via a handheld method. The movement in the advert is far less varied than the movement shown in the guardians of the galaxy trailer and the music video. However this is intentional and gives a more realistic and ‘homemade’ feel to it.	The music video primarily makes use of tracking and zooming. The motion is very smooth and it does not appear that the camera is a handheld one. There are a large amount of movement types such as panning, crabbing, tracking, zooming and tilting used in this video. It appears to be of a high quality but is clearly less professional then the movement shown in the guardians of the galaxy trailer. However it makes better use of the movement then the Cadburys advert does.
Angles and Shots	The trailer shows a montage of different angles and shots. However the most used type shot appeared to be a medium close up taken at eye level. Due to the length of the full movie it is very likely to include a majority of the possible angles and shots. In the trailer I noticed low angles, high angles, eye-level shots, bird’s eye views and examples of long shots, medium shots and close ups.	At the beginning of the video, close ups and medium close ups are primarily used. This is done so as to hide the drum kit from view. These shots range from low angles to high angles and eye-level shots. When the drum solo begins, medium and medium long shots shots are used in addition to a selection of close up cuts.	This music video used a range of angles and shots. It is able to explore them to a greater degree than the Cadburys advert as it does not limit itself to using a single camera and is set in a more open location then it.
Focus	A selection of different focuses are used (both shallow depth of fields and deep depths of field).	A shallow depth of field is used for the close up scenes of the gorilla. However, when it zooms out to reveal the drum kit it is changed to a deep depth of field thus showing everything in the scene.	Both shallow and deep depths of field are used in the music video.
Multiple Cameras	Since this is a trailer for a highly expensive movie many cameras have been used. There any many instances in which these are displayed. Multiple cameras are used to display a variety of different angles and movement times throughout the scenes. It makes best use of the multiple cameras and does it with a relative amount of subtlety.	The scene appears to have only been shot with one camera that pans around the area. I am led to believe this because the area appears to be too small to use multiple cameras without capturing the other cameras in the shot. I believe that they would have simply taken multiple takes so as to allow for the cuts. A similar method was used in the new movie ’12 Years a Slave’.	I believe that there were multiple cameras used for this music video as there are certain scenes such as the party scene in which the switch between the locations is seamless. Also many cuts are used.
Format (what camera may have been used)	The movie is still to be released, it had a large budget and would have therefore used top quality equipment such as the Sony PXW-Z100. It is the production with the largest budget and therefore would have been able to afford more expensive gear than the Cadburys advert and music video.	Since it is an advert for a well-known company I would think that an expensive camera was used. A camera they could have used is the Sony PMW-500. This is because it is a highly expensive camera that is used for professional situations and was available in 2007, when the advert was produced.	The music video is filmed exceptionally well. However I do not believe that the equipment available wouldn’t have been as expensive as that used in the Cadburys advert or the Guardians of the Galaxy trailer. I am led to believe that they would have used a medium priced video camera such as the Panasonic HDC-MDH1 PAL Camcorder due to budget restrictions.

Film Script

Due to the nature of our film we opted for the usage of narration entirely instead of using character dialogue within the actual video footage. One of the major positive aspects of this was that it allowed us to get a crisper and nicer sounding set of audio as we were able to use microphones instead of talking straight into the video camera. The sound was therefore vastly improved as it eliminated most of the background noise that we would have otherwise had to face.


Script:


Rory Macbride (Intro) - I was involved with some bad people. And one game, a fixed game, was where it all went downhill.

Rory Macbride - Sometimes it just takes a few phone calls and all your problems are gone, just like that.

Jason Dyer - I don’t care who they are or where they are. You give me their locations and I’ll find them.

Rory Macbride - So I wrote a list and gave it to the only person I knew who could deal with the problem. Jason Dyer!

Jason Dyer (Credits) - The world’s a dangerous place to live in, you’ve got to constantly be looking over your shoulder.

Below you can listen to the script being read by computer generated voices:

 Here is a picture of what the script looked like when it was printed off. We used this sheet for reference when the lines were being recorded.

Below is an image of Joseph Inns reading through the script. He was one of the main voice talents in our trailer.

Font Selection

One of the main designing aspects of the project was deciding which font should be used for the logo of the film. The font would go on to be used in the poster, film trailer and possibly even the magazine cover. To decide what font was to be chosen I selected ten different fonts that would be appropriate. I then showed these fonts to the various group members to get their opinions on them. We after the discussion we decided to choose the font titled ‘Bank Gothic’. This font was selected primarily because it was smart and seemed as though it would fit nicely onto a range of different promotional film products. In addition to this it was similar to fonts from other successful action and crime movies such as Hot Fuzz, Django unchained, the Bourne identity and In Time. The other fonts in the list had various undesirable qualities. Font 2 seemed too tribal; fonts 6 and 7 portrait the wrong message as they didn’t seem serious enough and font 8 and 9 were too difficult to read. Fonts 3, 4, 5 and 10 were all good enough to be chosen but font 1 was the favourite of all the members of our group.

Magazine Cover Inspiration

One of the tasks of creating a promotional package for a new film was to create a front cover for a film magazine. To achieve this I had to look at a selection of different film magazines as that I would be able to use an existing magazine as the basis for my work and to make use of their codes and conventions. I decided to look at ‘Empire’, ‘Total Film’ and ‘Little White Lies’ for this. Below are a selection of different film magazine covers and my opinions on them:

This is the first magazine cover that I looked at. I liked the strong logo that ‘Empire’ used and their decision to have text both in front and behind their model (which is Wolverine). It seems as though the style would be easy to replicate due to the simplicity of the image and the masses of basic text that are present. Unfortunately I did not like their decision to have such a large amount of text present on their front cover and have therefore decided to use a different magazine for my magazine cover.

The second magazine cover that I looked at was one for ‘Total Film’. This was possibly my least favorite design due to the amount of text and images that cluttered the front page. On a positive note, it contained most of the conventions of a standard magazine cover. However I think that the style would be very difficult to replicate and would end up looking dreadful if I were to base my magazine cover on this type of design. In addition to this, it would be hard to find images for other films such as the ones that they are promoting on this issue of the magazine.

The third magazine cover that I looked at was one for ‘Little White Lies’. This magazine defies most conventions of common film magazine via its choice to use only their logo, main image, title and occasionally a small amount of additional cover lines. This results in a very simplistic style of magazine cover. This simplicity would make it very easy to replicate the style of a ‘Little White Lies’ magazine cover. However their covers are highly stylised, this would add difficulty to creating a magazine cover of this type but at the same time would give me a high level of creative freedom.

This next magazine cover is another from ‘Little White Lies’. Unlike the previous cover it has a set of cover lines. In addition to this it had a different art style to the previous magazine.

This version of ‘Little White Lies’ features a different logo to the other copies. The logo’s text takes up more space and it looks a lot stronger than the other type of logo that they use.

This copy of ‘Little White Lies’ shows yet another art style that they used.

In conclusion, I have decided that I shall be creating a magazine cover for a ‘Little White Lies’ magazine. I liked their cover design the most due to its simplicity, stylized graphics and the amount of creative freedom that I would be allowed if chose to design a cover for their magazine.

Poster Inspiration

In preparation for the creation of my film poster I decided to take a look at a range of existing film posters. This was done so as to allow me to see a range of different types of posters so as to inspire me and to give me an understanding of the general conventions of a movie poster.

1: The Dark Knight:

The first poster was for the Dark Knight. This is a very basic poster and only contains a limited amount of text due to the focus on the main image and the logo of Batman. I am unlikely to have such a small model for my main character as I do not feel that I have a background strong enough to carry the image, as is the case in this poster. One of the other interesting features of this poster was the selection of credits at the bottom. These are included because it is a theatrical poster; I shall not be including these in my poster as I intend to create a teaser poster.

2: Rise Of The Guardians:

This is a teaser poster for Rise of The Guardians. It has large bold writing and the primary focus is on the character Jack Frost. To emphasise his importance they have used a simple background so that the attention shall be drawn to the character. At the top of the poster is a simple statement which says “Jack Frost is more than a myth”, this helps with drawing attention to the film and provides a mild insight into what it is about.

3: Orphan:

This teaser poster for Orphan features a strong image of a child staring directly towards the camera. The expression of the character hints that the character is sinister. This is then supported by the line “There’s something wrong with Esther” thus telling audiences that it is indeed a horror movie. The message is supported by the dull background of the poster.

4: Drive

This theatrical poster for drive is simple yet very effective. The character’s thuggish appearance symbolizes the genre of the film and the city setting tells the audiences what sort of location it is primarily set in. There is an emphasis on the name of the primary actor ‘Ryan Gosling’ thus attracting people that are fans of the actor. The positive message at the top of the page is used to spark an interest with people as it certifies that other people consider it to be a good movie.

Final Pieces

Film Trailer:

Film Poster:

Magazine Cover: