Products Before Break

We are leaving our products for a time while we concentrate on other aspects of the course. We discovered last year that building a break into our schedule was beneficial as we were able to reflect on the work we had done to that point but also have new energy and enthusiasm when we returned to the coursework. When you have been working hard on something for a while, you can lose track of what it actually looks like, and we need to see it from a different perspective. This is our review of our products to date:

POSTER

This is the product we most need a break from. We are pleased with a great deal of it but are struggling to find a final layout that we are satisfied with. We are happy with the main image as we think it is simple but strong. We think it will pose a lot of questions for the audience that they will want to watch the film to have answered. Our main issues are:

1. Is all the text in the best places?
2. Have we got the right colour palette? What about the pale yellow?
3. Does coming soon need to be bigger?
4. Is there too mcuh empty space on the left?

MAGAZINE COVER

This is probably progressing more smoothly at the moment although it is further from being finished. However, we are much clearer about what needs to be done and how we might do it:

1. Sleepless teaser text - needs more 'selling' language
2. Smaller images - film titles need to stand out more
3. Teaser text on right needs to be cut down - too 'wordy'
4. Colour palette and font of text needs work
5. Pleased with balance of text and image
6. Pleased with new photo choice
7. Masthead - colour needs adjusting?
8. Background is ok but could it be more relevant to film?

TRAILER

Again, although this still needs work, we are aware of what we need to do:

1. Priority is sound mix
2. Also needs formal elements - ident, coming soon, end credits etc
3. Revoicing of two dialogue moments - caretaker and Rebekah
4. Ending still needs to be sharpened up

Progress with Poster

 

We have been battling with the layout of the text for this poster. It has been difficult to find a composition that totally satisfies us. We have swapped all the key elements around several times without finding a composition that seems quite right. However, we are pleased with the tagline which we think really summarises our film's theme well and also acts as anchorage for the poster image. We also think the Mail review is in keeping with the style of this kind of soundbite, including the pun on the title.

Progress with Mag Cover

MAGAZINE COVER

We discussed taking new shots using the Mac screen for lighting and a closer shot distance in a previous post. Here we are trying to find a clour scheme for the magazine cover which reflects the poster colour palette, where blue is the key colour with red as shocking accent.

We created this blue-ish background on Photoshop as it has both a slightly watery and a dream feel about it but it may well be too dark.

We are choosing between these shots. Again, we are looking for a dream-like feel and we think the contrast between the shadowed face and the lighter side works well. Gabi's left eye is really emphasised here and she looks startled. When an extreme close up is used, we have seen that teh masthead goes in front of the image rather than the more usual behind. However, the overall look is too dark. We are avoiding red, the conventional colour of film magazine mastheads, as we need to use this for our title. We will have to think again about the colour choice here.

We are also not entirely sure this is the right shot to choose. We liked the idea of the shadows to add an eerie feel, but maybe it is too much.

Creating Effect for Dream Sequence

One key decision has been how to ensure the audience are able to clearly distinguish the dream sequence, as there is frequent cross-cutting between this and reality. We needed to create a distinctive look for the dream sequence so that it is easily recognisable. We have done this in a number of ways. Initially, we reduced the speed of the shots slightly to around 87%. This is not slow enough to really feel like slow motion and at times isn't even that noticeable, but it does add a more dream-like feel.

Secondly, the screen shots below showed an effect we created. We copied each dream clip and layered the duplicate on top of the original. We then added two effects to the original - a gaussian blur, which we kept relatively minimal but is still discernible, and a sepia colour overlay to give a sense of the past. Both of these are strong effects which create a look that is too strong. We therefore reduced the opacity of our duplicate clip to allow a reduced amount of each effect to show through and then linked the clips together. We believe this has created a distinctive and effective look for our sequence, hinting at a sense of unreality and also an impression that this happened in the past,

Mixing Tracks to Create Trailer Music

 

When it came to non-diegetic music, we decided to create a track for the trailer using three different copyright free tracks and a combination of drum loops. We are using most of one track for the start where the shots were longer, but we have had to adjust the speed to make this slower and more sinister and also add a very slight echo. 

We are using a combination of faster-paced tracks for most of the second half as the shots themselves are cut quick and we wanted to build up speed and tension as it got closer to the end of the trailer. We have also edited sections of drum loops as we want extra drum beats at moments where there is more danger. We are ending on the sound of drum bang as it synchronised well with our final shot of Lucy opening her eyes and left it on a really tense note. To cut between the different tracks we overlapped them and faded one out whilst fading the other one in to make sure the transition between tracks wasn't too harsh. However, we are still not satisfied with this sound mix and have a lot of further work to do. The screen shot above shows how complex the layering of audio tracks can become.

Progress with Poster

We really liked the idea of the main character trapped between the drowning in the past and the danger of the future, and thought it was effective to use the shot of her turning away from the past to face the unseen danger approaching her. However, we had ruled out the idea of using the shot of the drowning scene as it might just give a little bit too much away. We wanted to hint at the drowning though, so we used a photo of Ellie's face (the young version of our main character, Lucy) and used a photo of a puddle to overlay and make transparent so that there is an impression of drwoning without this being made explicit. We like the connection this creates between the older and younger versions of Lucy and we think this is a subtle hint that will be appreciated more when the poster is reviewed in the light of having seen the film. We also think this will make quite a simple and classy poster. You can see that we have extracted the image of Lucy much more accurately and combined the burn and blur tools to blend her with the background. We have also extracted Ellie's face, resized it and added the overlay of the puddle and reduced its transparency to create a ripple of water over her face. Their startled expressions match well.

We were not sure the colour was effective enough so we added a blue colour overlay and reduced the opacity of the Ellie layer to give her an almost ghost-like effect. We feel this works really well and is creating a distinctive colour palette for our product, which is added to by the bright red of the title. This operates like a kind of visual startle, which fits well with our genre. We have also started to add some of the formal elements such as the required billing block.