Technolgogy We Will Be Using In Our Productions

Apple iMac – After shooting our teaser trailer we would need to edit the video we will be using the I Macs to do this. The iMac is a range of all-in-one Macintosh desktop computers built by Apple. It has been the primary part of Apple's consumer desktop offerings since its introduction in 1998, and has evolved through five distinct forms
 

Final Cut Pro- In The iMac there is a program called Final Cut Pro, Final Cut Pro is a non-linear video editing software developed by Macromedia Inc. and then Apple Inc, we will be using this program to edit our teaser trailer, with the help of such tools as trimming which helps us to cut the video’s and other tools which will help us to have fades in the video which will enable it to run smoothly.

Blogger- Blogger is a blog publishing services that allows private and public users to post blogs with time stamped entries. Blogger is our way of displaying the information which we have collect it allows us to display the research which we have done such as our textual analysis, test shots, and video tutorials.

EOS Canon 550D- The EOS Canon plays one of the biggest parts in our teaser trailer production, this camera will be used to take pictures and film extra pieces of work of us showing our skills. The Quality of the camera is amazing. The 550D has 18.0 mega pixels.  Also Full HD 1080p video recording at 30/25(PAL)/24(NTSC) progressive fps.

Canon 7D – The Canon EOS 7D is an 18.0 effective megapixel APS-C crop CMOS digital single-lens reflex camera made by Canon. Its particularly notable features are its 8.0 frames per second continuous shooting

Diva Lite 400- The Diva-Lite 401 portable soft lights boast the company’s trademark modular fixture designs with full-range dimming, switching and remote control features. Diva-Lite 201 fixtures likewise are portable, versatile units designed for the rigors of run and gun lighting for news or commercial video production.

Vinten Pro 5 Tripod- Is a lightweight camera support system. This piece of hardware to help to balance the camera when filming also helps us to do a different shots such as tilting and panning shots

Examples of Props

Our group has decided to use wooden, old fashioned props because the main character (Eric) will be situated in the basement of his Uncle's house where old furniture lies.

Another prop that will be used is the wooden table; again this is for the same reasons. Old fashioned props work better than more modern props.

We have also decided to use a swinging light bulb. We have decided to use this prop as it creates a darker and depressed atmosphere, which relates to Eric's reclusive nature.



Also, by using tea stained paper, this will create the effect that Eric has been drawing since he was very young but too young to understand his horrifying gift. These tea stained pieces of paper will be used to reflect Eric's old drawings and also plain paper will be used to represent his current drawings that will be seen stuck on the walls of the basement and the plain white paper will also be used for the many drawings Eric will do during the teaser trailer.
 

Lastly, Eric will use a range of pens/ pencils to create his drawings. The most important pen will be the red pen hence the title of the trailer "Red Ink". This particular red pen lets Eric's drawings become a disturbing reality.

                                                     

Update 13-12-11

We have thought more about the concept of our trailer and realized that the idea of just shooting a person drawing in a dark room may be too basic, and may limit the amount of camera angles/shots we could use in the trailer. As a result, we are aiming to add more to the trailer to assure it has the effect we intend it too.

Setting Up, Using The Camera And Tripod

Lysette setting up the tripod and taking into consideration that she has to be careful that her fingers could easily get caught.

At this point Lysette is locking the tripod in the spirit level to ensure the camera is straight and is ready to be used for filming.

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Lysette has finally set up the tripod successfully

And Lysette has set the tracks on the floor 

Moyo and Ali adjusting the tripod, making sure it has been set right and safely  

Ali and Moyo were putting the camera in the right position facing the table that Lysette is sitting at, preparing for a shot.

Moyo doing a close up shot of Ali's eye.

This is on another day of Moyo and Lysette Setting up the tripod

Moyo preparing the camera for a shot.

This shot was a paning and tracking shot from behind Ali

Test Shot of Teaser Trailer Animated

This is a test shot of how our trailer will be like, but has been animated by Ali.

Test shot Edited

Test Shot: Example of Trailer

Above is a video that I edited featuring a variety of different shots filmed with my phone camera that we intend to use for our horror movie teaser trailer. I decided to record this to see what angles would work for the trailer. There were many other shots I had filmed but I only used the angles that I thought worked the best. This helped me to finalize the storyboard, as I was initially confused as to how to place the camera shots/angles.

Test Shot

This was my first shot i had ever tried out. Basically we were in class looking at how shots are taken from different angles to show the same thing but what is happening in the shot is fake. When taking this I had to explain to the actors that the slap is not meant to be real, but i will make a clapping sound with my hands to make it more realistic.

Film Certificate - BBFC

The British Board of Film Certificates is a non-governmental organisation, which is funded by the film industry, and is responsible for the national classification of UK films. The BBFC would rate films, video games, and video/DVD releases based on what is suitable to a certain audience. Subjects that are most commonly considered when deciding on the age rating includes the violent content, the language used, the sexual content, and drug use. The certificates issued by the BBFC are as followed:

U (Universal)  -  All ages, nothing unsuitable for children over 4

PG (Parental Guidance)  -  All ages, some scenes may be unsuitable for under 8s

12  -  This is only for home media since 2002. Can include infrequent drugs, infrequent use of strong language, brief nudity, discreet sexual activity, and moderate violence.

12A  -  This rating is only used for cinema releases and was introduced in 2002. Under 12s are allowed permitted if accompanied with an adult over 18, and tends to contain themes of discrimination, soft drugs, mild swear words, and moderate violence/sexual references.

15  -  Can contain adult themes, hard drugs, strong language, moderate-strong violence/sex references, and mild non-detailed sex activity.

18  -  Hard drugs are generally allowed, and strong violence/sex references along with strong sexual activity is also allowed. Scenes of strong real sex may be permitted if justified by the context.

R18 (Restricted 18)  -  Only showed at licensed cinemas or sex shops. More cuts are demanded in this category than any other category  as it contains stronger sexual and violent scenes.

Our age rating...

We have decided to give our film trailer an 18 certificate, as the trailer will feature scenes of violent nature and hard drug use. Horror movies tend to have the 15 or 18 certificates because of this content, and so we are following this common conventions with our chosen certificate.

The Storyboard for Our Trailer

Treatment

Treatment

We have chosen a working title which we think will suit for the film. The title is ‘Red Ink.’ However we did have other names that we thought could work, therefore there may be a change of the working title during the production and post production of the trailer.

We have also decided on a production team name. The production team name is ‘SLAM Productions.’ ‘SLAM’ acronyms the first letter of our names. When we came up with the name, we all liked it and chose to stick with it.

The format of our teaser trailer will be on film as well as a video. We have decided to do two formats because we would like to make our trailer available on video-streaming websites, such as YouTube.

Our teaser trailer was originally of the slasher genre, but we later found that the story of drawings coming to life is more of a supernatural genre, and so we decided to combine these two sub genres to create a hybrid.

The length of our teaser trailer should be a maximum of roughly 40 seconds. This is a convention that we are following.

The film is about a boy who has a hobby of drawing and this always takes place in a dark room under a spot light. The pictures that he draws seems to come alive and into action. That is what the story is basically about but within our trailer, the boy is going to be sitting in his desk drawing a picture. There will be pictures on the walls that have been previously drawn. He is then drawing a picture, which comes to life. The room becomes empty and a girl walks into the scene. She walks to the table and she picks up the drawing that was left on the table. The drawing is of the girl herself, getting attacked. This comes to life where someone appears from behind her, grabbing her, about to attack her then the scene cuts.

So far, we noticed that people between the ages of 17-24 like slasher horror films and can be proven through our audience research. Therefore we have chosen our target audience to be for the ages of 17-24. We will be finalising this for definite after evaluating on our results of our audience research and receiving more information on why this would be our target audience.

Props that will be used include:

- Costumes
- Killer – Blacked out wearing a hoddie/cape
- Boy – Dark casual clothes/normal looking
- Girl – tank top, jeans; attractive appearance
- Props
- Table – wooden
- Lamp
- Paper
- Knife
- Chair – wooden
- Make up – Blood, cuts
Examples of the props that we will me using have been explained on our blog. This is Just a rough idea of what we will be using. 

Audience Research by Paper

Audience Research

Gender: Male

Age: 23

Interests: Sports, gaming, music, films, social networking.

1.      Do you like horror?

-          Yes.

2.      What horror genre scares you the most?

-          Psychological.

3.      How often do you watch horror films?

-          Once in a while.

4.      What is your favourite horror film?

-          Paranormal Activity.

5.      What would scare you in a horror film?

-          Nothing.

6.      Do you prefer the “unknown” attacking or do you prefer seeing the gore?

-          The gore!

7.      How would you define the horror genre?

-          The blood, killing, terror and violence.

8.      Do you think the music used in horror is more effective or less effective than the actual horrific scenes?

-          Music definitely plays a big part, if there was no music you wouldn’t be able to get into the film and the horror genre would seem pointless.

9.      How would you create a “scary” atmosphere in a horror teaser trailer?

-          Low lighting, creepy music or something like a sudden movement/ action that would startle the viewer.

10.  Do you think horror teaser trailers are scarier than the actual film?

-          Not really, the real horror begins in the film. If the teaser trailer was scarier, it would be giving too much away.



For my audience research, I used a common method of pen and paper. I chose to use this method as I prefer to write down my questions/ answers and then be able to edit them on the paper because I may delete or forget questions I wanted to ask I used Microsoft Word.

Audience Research by Blackberry Messenger

For my audience research I used an instant messenger application called ‘BlackBerry Messenger’ to ask people questions. I used ‘Blackberry Messenger’ as it was my job to cover this application as different members of my team cover other instant message applications and different social networking websites such as ‘MSN Messenger’ and ‘Facebook’. I asked one person a female mainly to get her views on horror films and trailers. After finishing my questionnaire I was able to come to the conclusion that this female in particular likes the genre horror, but the amount of times see watches a horror film is low it came to the figure of once a month, the female feared killings the most in the a horror film. The female also had a good insight into the film and the different aspects of a teaser trailer that attract the audience such as sound, how a scary atmosphere is created. From this research I found that this female likes horror, she may represent some of the females but not all as not a valid as all females are different, some females are terrified of horror and some females enjoy it