Magazine

In this blog post we have our groups final piece for the magazine.
This magazine is a way of advertising our movie, getting a hype around the movie and make people want to go and see the movie - all because it is being spoken about on the front page of a horror magazine.

This product we be sold in shops, supermarkets etc and helps to get our movie 'A Beautiful Nightmare' out in the open and introduces it to a wider audience.

Magazine pictures; before manipulation

In this post, here, we have the pictures that'll be used in the production of our movie magazine.
This is too show you how the pictures looked way before we began to edit/manipulate them.

These shall be the three images that you'll see on the final poster image.

Meeting 20/02/12: Magazine & Poster ideas

As with anything you do, in any walk of life, you have to plan out the ways in which you're going to achieve this objective. Take, for example, architecture - the builders don't just make a new rail station etc just of the top of their head, they plan it out over months of preparation.

This is no different from what we've done in our Media work - only noticeable difference being the fact that we're not planning on building a train station or have months in order to plan it out.

So during our Monday lesson time we all met up and decided to make some detailed drafts on ways in which are magazine and poster will look, respectively.

In the next few posts you're about to see our plans (drafts) for these productions and as we're fast reaching our coursework deadline to hand them in we're hoping these drafts are of a great use - in order to secure us those top marks in our magazine and poster and hope this planning helped to make them, both, look as good as can be.

Total number of takes

As with any filming there are always going to be a number of 'takes' to ensure that that the filming is done correctly.

Even the top level of film-makers get it wrong and so a way to make sure the shots are done correctly they'll take a number of them.

This is no different from what we done.

So on the first day of filming we had a total number of '40' shots taken. Some of them were great, some were poor, but they were all important to help us achieve the best final shots we could have.

Highlighting all the clips used in order to find out how many were filmed

Now on the second day of filming we were working on a much tighter schedule, due to time and the fact that we were in College so people might of needed the classroom we were in. But nevertheless we still managed to capture 20 shots, in total.

Using the same technique to find out how many shots were filmed, in total

Planning Schedule: part 2

As we decided we were going to film on two seperate days it meant we'd need to make a total of 'two' planning schedules.

What we will shoot:
The 2nd day of filming took place on 07/02/12. This took place at 10:40am, onwards.

Camera shots:
A total of 4 shots would have to be filmed on this day. These 4 shots would be used to film the middle part of our trailer.

Crew on set:
Again, there was a total of 4 members of the crew on set. These 4 members being everyone involved in the group; Harry, Jouvan, Adeola and Elizabeth.

Cast required for scenes:
The difference today was the fact that we'd need a total number of 2 cast for one of the scenes we were filming. So again two cast required but there was the need for 2 members of the cast, in one scene.

Equipment needed:
We would need a towel to go in our victims mouth, a rope to be tied around her body and fake weapon to be shown being aimed at the victims face.

Towel around victims mouth

The rope used

The weapon used

Planning Schedule

What will we shoot:
The 1st day of shooting took place on 28/01/12. This took place around 3 o'clock, onwards.

Camera shots:
7 shots of filming took place on this day. With us achieving to shot the 1st couple scences and the very last scene.

Crew on set:
There was a total of 4 members of the crew on set. These 4 members being everyone involved in the group; Harry, Jouvan, Adeola and Elizabeth.

Cast required for scenes:
In all the shots filmed today we only needed only member of the group for each scene. So 1 member for each scene but a total number of cast needed was 2.

Equipment needed:
Only equipment needed was the bed used for our victim to lay in and one simple black glove

bed our victim laid in

the actual glove used

Meeting 16/02/12: Continued

After having the discussion between Harry and Jouvan, on which font was better, they both decided it would be better to also get the other group members opinions on the matter.

So by using Blackberry messenger again, Jouvan put the picture up of both the fonts and asked, as a poll, which font worked best and why.

Meeting 16/02/12

Rather than the usual normal meetings, this meeting was entirely different. It was different in the sense of ways of having the meeting and who was, infact, involved within this meeting.

First of this meeting only involved our creative members of the group - Jouvan and Harry - as they were the one's who'd be decideding upon the final font, that would be used in the movies title.

Secondly, as we're all on half-term, meeting would be a bit more different so instead of meeting face to face Harry and Jouvan shared a chat on the network application 'BlackBerry messenger' to have a conversation and hopefully lead to a final decision upon which font would be used for the title.

They shared the picture, below, between each other and decided which font was best and had more of a horror-feel to it. Expect to find out which font they decided upon when you see our final poster and magazine.

Part 2 of Filming: Getting everything in place

As our group decided to sort our filming into two seperate days we decided we can take pictures from both days of us getting ready/preparing to film the last part of our movie trailer.

The pictures below are just to show us getting everything in place and making sure our actor was dressed and had make-up on the right way in order to film.

Elizabeth applying make-up upon Adeola, before final shot

Elizabeth directing

Jouvan setting up the tripod, in order to film

Applying the final bits of make-up

Now dressing Adeola to look like the 'victim' she portrays

The rope used for our filming

Storyboard

Testing outro: Credits

An important part of any film or trailer is the credits. These give people recognition for any effort they've put into a film and also lets the audience know what production groups were part of the making stage of the film and who the film was written by etc. This made it clear to us that our production team will need to add credits to the end of our film so are audience knows who was involved in the making of it and gives the people, involved, credit where it's due. Below is the picture of what our credits will look like, once it's at the end of our trailer.

Testing intro: Alternatives

Just so our introduction isn't one dimensional, Harry also tried out a different possible introduction to see how that would turn out instead. Below is the result:

Testing intro: Green screen used

As with every trailer there has to be an intro to it.
So as a test, group member Harry decided to try out a video possibly for the start of our teaser trailer.
Please note that this is only a 'test' right now and is not defiantly going to be our final introduction to our trailer.

Green screen

From the majority of teaser trailers you see there is usual a 'green screen' at the very beginning of the clip like the one below.

This screen is done to quickly, at a glance, tell the audience/viewers who can view the movie and who has in fact rated the movie at the certificate it has been given.

Our group all decided we would like to use this 'green screen' to give our teaser trailer more of a 'real' feel. But upon looking into this we soon gathered some restrictions in us using this 'green screen'. One of these restrictions is the fact that copy right stops use from using it as we're using someone elses work and do not have the right to use it.

Because of this we all rallied together and decided that to get around this problem we would instead make a 'green screen' ourselves.

There were a variety of steps involved in the making of this but it took no longer than 20 minutes to make and so wasn't time consuming.

First step: Choosing the right tone of green
To make the screen like authentic our group member Harry tried out a variety of 'greens' to use as the background colour. I decided this tone of green was the best I could get and so the colour we choose was #007c00 on Photoshop.

Second step: The following preview
The next step was to begin writing text upon the green screen. As a separate layer, named 'text', I began to write "the following preview has been approved for" and used totally white colouring.

Third step: All Audiences
Next part of the text was to write "All Audiences" this was done to let the audience know who the film is intended for. Notice how this part is done in totally bold - so it stands out and people can quickly gather information quickly.

Fourth step: Slasher Inc
Giving a twist on the usual text of 'by the motion picture association of America, Inc' I decided to put the exact same writing, except to change the 'America, Inc' part too 'Slasher Inc'. This helps to promote our own Media production team and gain it a wider spread attention from movie-goers.

Fifth step: Websites
This step is done to put two web links up, where people can voice any problems they have with the certificate of the film. Again I changed the www.mpaa.org to www.slasherinc.com to further promote our production team - so our movies can be viewed by an larger audience and our audience can voice any concerns they have.

Sixth step: Changing font
From viewing previous pictures you can see that the font I used looked nothing like the font used in the actually official green screen. So this is where I decided to go back and change the font from 'Helvetica Heavy' to plain out simple 'Arial'. Although this can be seen as too simplistic I feel as if it works better and gives it a more sophisticated look. Notice how I also changed 'PREVIEW' and 'ALL AUDIENCES' from bold to no bold but just made their specific font size bigger, to make it stand out more from the other text.

Seventh step: Testing out drop shadows
In the original green screen you see a black shadow on the back of the text. I sought to achieve this in my text and so to do this I simply added a drop shadow to any text, I wanted, and simply tweaked it to whatever looked best.

Eighth step: Adding more shadows
I liked the effect the shadow was giving off and so proceed to add shadows to more of my text

Ninth step: Adding more and more shadows!
As the above step I decided it were best to just add this effect to every bit of text upon the green screen and you can see I have done this by looking at my layers column.

Finished: The finished article

Movie title font

One we had come up with the title of 'A Beautiful Nightmare' for our movie we had to think of a way in making it iconic. As if with many movies they all have their own movie title and the majority of them have their own font used to make the movie stand out and make an audience realize right away that that font belongs to that particular movie.

Font 1:

Part 1 of Filming: Importance of getting lighting correct

From our video below you can see just how important it is too get lighting correct.
Because if you don't then you could film the most amazing shot, in the world, but no one will be able to see it unless lightnings done properly. This shot just emphasis' the importance upon lighting as our scene was now way too dark to even begin to see what we were filming.

Part 1 of Filming: Test shots

To get a rough idea on how we could plan out the ending of our teaser trailer, we decided to use Jouvan as a victim and see how effective it would be were he to be pulled pack randomly - without an antagonist in sight. Here are the results of those test shots

Test Shots from filming final scenes

When we got to Jouvan's house we all had an idea that the filming would run smoothly and we would be finished in an hour or two. However, this turned out to not be the case. Filming turned out to be much harder than we intended and because of this we spend, the majority, of the time actually discussing how we shall plan out our shots and in what ways we can make them effective and ultimately work.

The first video on this post was spent working out how we can get Jouvan in our shot, for our scene, but without him being seen. Such were the things we were discussing that it even led to one of our group members asking 'is this scary?'.

The next video is a continuation of our conversation from the original video and in this video we're discussing what we shall actually do when it comes to the actual shot and we're just basically testing out to see if it'll work.

Part 1 of Filming: Props

During our days filming we had to use a variety of props. This props used were;

Lights: Lights play a major part, in filming, as without them we would not be able to give enough lighting to even be able to see the shots being filmed. Because of this we used little, small handheld lights (as shown below by group member Elizabeth) that were powerful enough to make adequate amount of light but small enough for our crew to easily hold in our hands and use.

Elizabeth holding the light

Gloves: The glove plays an important role in the teaser trailer, but you'll have to watch the final release to find out why.

Elizabeth holding up the glove in question

Bed: This plays an important role in the whole entire story of our movie as this is where our victim is most likely to be situated during the whole sequence of events

The bed our victim Isabel will be in

Chair: Used for a killing scene

Part 1 of Filming

Our first part of our filming has taken place!
In this we got some very important scenes, from our trailer, done. Some of these scenes were the first part and last scene - meaning all we have to do now is film the middle part of our trailer and then finally bring it all together in the editing stage.

As part of our day together we also decided to take some pictures to show us setting up such things as lighting to take place in our movie and took some images of the equipment we're using today.

Harry testing our the handheld light

Jouvan and Adeola setting up the tripod stand

Once the stand was up, we had to adjust it accordingly to what we had to film

Harry testing out the position of the tripod

Adeola giving the 'thumbs-up' to show she is ready to film

Adeola waiting as the rest of the crew set-up the scene

Harry and Elizabeth showcasing the chair that will be used