Inital Poster designs

The following are posters that we designed. We want the release of the posters to reflect the type of genre the film is and reflect the mystery around the film. We came up with a 'Trainspotting, Blair Witch Project' inspired idea of releasing more then one poster.
We want to start with a poster that doesn't revile much information at all about the film, we then want to move onto releasing a poster that hints more about the film but still doesn't release too much information and then we finally want to release a poster that is more detailed and tells you more about the film. here are the following ideas that we have come up with so far.

We like this design because we feel that it reflects the film well. It is cryptic as the information is limited. The colours are to the conventions of horror film poster with the Reds, Blacks etc. We thought that the colour Red worked well as it hints that the film could involve some form of danger.

This second design rev a little more information about the film however still is quite simple and cryptic. The Exit sign is still in the poster so the audience would see the connection. We have chosen to use a grainy black and white effect because we wanted to make sure it still looked like a Mockumentary poster would and not make it too glossy and 'Hollywood'. We feel that this poster is also believable and fits well with our themes throughout the film.



The final poster reveals more information about the film. It shows the actress and also gives a short description about what the film is about. This would make a good final poster as it is eye catching however you also have to look at the image to work out what is going on. As mentioned before the poster suits the style and themes of the film. The colours suit the common conventions of horror film/ Mockumentary style posters. We included a caption that sounds factual like what is used in most posters of this genre.

Evaluation of our weekend of filming

After filming myself and Laura took time to reflect on what we feel went well and what didn't go as well during out two days of filming at the Cinema.

Things that went well during filming:

• We had full access to most parts of the cinema, including the Projector room. We didn't have to adapt hardly any parts of our storyboard because of this.
• We had control over the lighting of the cinema from the Projector room. This meant that each shot we could adapt our lighting and create the right mood we wanted to convey. We were very fortunate to have this facility. We decided to make the most of this luxury and icorporated flickering lights in to the scene where the fire alarm rings. It really enhanced the mood and made the scene tenser.
• We managed to film all of the shots we needed and stuck to the time frame we were given by the cinema. Therefore we portrayed a good professional image to the cinema workers who were lovely enough to let us film in there to begin with.

Things that could have gone better during filming:

• One of the main issues we had was that the cinema wasn't completely shut off. We didn't realise that the cinema was attached to a Museum next door and the Museums toilets were connected to the cinema. Therefore some of our shots had to be delayed as we constantly had people walking through to use the toilets and there was nothing we could do about it. Some of the staff in the Museum also found it quite irritating as we had to film some shots near their building. I think to have stopped this situation from happening we could have pre-warned the Museum a few days before our filming so that they could have then prepared themselves for what we would be doing. This means that they would have been more aware of everything that was happening and not felt as confused and irritated as to what two young students were doing with a camera. This would then have stopped their distress but also allowed us to get on with our filming more effectively.
• Another issue we had was that due to a certain circumstance we didn't have an actor to play the real, 'Mr Arnold' therefore we were left with a tight amount of time and no actor. Luckily, we resolved the issue by calling our friends granddad and he was willing to play the small part. It was fortunate that he was available and also a very good actor who seemed to fit the part perfectly. This situation could have been avoided if we had a backup actor already on hold. However, it didn't affect the quality of our film or slow us down that much in any way.

After filming updated plan

Here is the updated plan now.

Date	Task	Completed
8th-12th August	Complete Storyboard	YES
12th-16th August	Complete Script	YES
1st-6th September	Complete Film Poster	IN PROGRESS
9th-13th September	Complete Magazine article	CURRENTLY RESEARCHING
14th-15th September	Complete filming	YES
16th-October	Complete editing	IN PROGRESS
November-onwards	Distribute film and evaluation

As you can see we are slightly behind on schedule for the ancillary tasks however we have ideas of what we want to do and we are constantly researching and coming up with ideas for them therefore we are not too worried at the moment as we know we can both research in a lot of depth about these things and as we are organised we know we will get them done to a good standard.

I feel that Myself and Laura are very well organised. I feel that we are at a good stage and I am extremely happy that we managed to complete filming in such a short space of time. I feel that when filming we were constantly thinking on our feet and solving problems as a team effectively,Whilst filming we also took pictures for the poster so we will now be able to review these and work on creating an effective poster.

Lists to Stay Orgainised

So that Myself and Laura stay organised we created the following props list:

Map of Gaol

Hand held camera for Michelle

Prison sign for Geoff to hold for the photograph of him that appears at the end.

We also created a list of the actors and also a location list:
Character/actors:

Student filmmaker - Michelle Aloe

Cinema worker/ Ghost smuggler - Geoff Arnold 

Real cinema worker - Member of staff who works there

Locals who are interviewed - Becky Gliddon /Laura Johnson 

Locations:

Inside Michelle's bedroom for opening scene

Cinema (Inside and outside)

Forest - closing scene 

These lists are important so that we know exactly what we are doing and also so we don't forget anything.

Filming Tomorrow!

This weekend myself and Laura will be filming at the cinema. We hope to get all of the filming done over the weekend(14th and 15th) and we feel confidant that we will as we are well prepared. We sent the script out to the actors so that they had time to get to know the story and learn their lines.
Myself and Laura have prepared our props and shot lists to help us stay organised.
We have the cameras sorted and myself and Laura have been in contact with the cinema over the phone to make sure everything is still ok.
We ran into a problem today as we couldn't get our hands on a hand held video camera we had previously arranged. However Laura managed to sort this as she found someone that is willing to let us borrow his camera.
Myself and Laura had a final phone convocation with the cinema owner who told us that we could use the cinema from 9.30 until 12. As soon as we found out about the times myself, Laura and the rest of the cast have arranged to meet near the cinema at 9.20 so that we are all prepared to start setting up in the cinema at 9.30.

Updated Plan

Date	Task	Completed
8th-12th August	Complete Storyboard	YES
12th-16th August	Complete Script	YES
1st-6th September	Complete Film Poster	IN PROGRESS
9th-13th September	Complete Magazine article
14th-15th September	Complete filming
16th-October	Complete editing
November-onwards	Distribute film and evaluation

Creating a buzz for our film

My film partner Laura has been working on creating a Buzz for our film.
We have successfully begun creating this buzz as Laura has managed to get an article about our film into our Local paper. This is fantastic because the paper has quite a large demographic meaning it is likely to be seen and read by many people.  We have tried to make the film sound as realistic as possible so that people think the film is a true story.
We have been inspired by creating this type of 'True story buzz' by 'The Blair Witch Project' as this type of advertising was extremely effective for the success of the film

Postmodern Style Filming

We aim to film our short film in a post modern inspired way. We aim to film the majority of the film with a handheld video camera that will be used by one of the main characters (The student filmmaker) We will do this as this style of filming is common to the type of films we are aiming to create. The handheld camera helps to convince the audience that they are watching real footage that a real person has filmed and not just a character in a film. This handheld style of filming is inspired by films such as 'The Blair Witch Project', 'Cloverfield', 'Grave Encounters' to name but a few.
We researched into the Blair Witch Project and how they went about creating the style of filming. This is a feature quote that stuck out for me in the article:
 "We didn't want it shot too slick or anything.In the film, they are supposed to be student filmmakers, and we wanted thefootage to look like student footage."

Here is the link to this website:

http://www.creativeplanetnetwork.com/dcp/news/behind-blair-witch-project/44043 

The post modern inspired part our filming comes from us wanting to involve a 'Third Party' by this I mean we aim to use a steady cam. The steady cam will film the characters in the film being filmed.The Television series 'Extras' also partly inspired this style of filming due to the idea of the characters being filmed filming. This is meant to have a 'fly on the wall' type effect as the steady cam is watching the events unfold. The steady cam is never acknowledged or shown it is simply there to film the characters already being filmed by the handheld camera.  We have done this for the following reasons:

1. We want to showcase to the examiner our camera skills, including framing, lighting etc and we felt that through a hand-held cam we wouldn't be able to do this as effectively as we would have liked. Therefore using both types of filming, it will be clear that our hand held footage is deliberately shaky, bad composition and lighting to create a tense, uneasy feel in contrast to the steady cam which offers an easy way to watch the film and demonstrates typical, good quality camera shots. It also gives the viewer a break from the constant uneasy hand held footage that could potentially put off our target audience from watching the film. Essentially our film will have the best of both worlds. 
2. We want the steady cam to add to the tension of the film and we feel that most hand-held cam films either stick with that type of filming and never mix the two. After doing some research into different TV series etc one being 'Supernatural' that have experimented with this style, we found that it actually works extremely well and allows the audience an overall view and insight into what is happening. An objective view, looking in on the situation but also a subjective view from the student filmmaker, building an emotional attachment to the character.