A2 - Evaluation

Above is the specification's categories for the evaluation of my product, which I have chosen to record as a video.

A2 - The Finished Trailer

A2 - The Finished Magazine Front Cover

A2 - The Finished Poster

This is my finished movie poster.

A2 - Making a Magazine Front Cover

The first thing I did after designing the flat plans was to take photos of my actor in full costume, in a variety of poses. Based on my work on the common conventions of magazine front covers, I knew that magazines tend to have fairly plain and simplistic backgrounds. Unlike in my poster, I chose to use Photoshop to make the magazine front cover.

The above screenshot shows my magazine mid-way through my work on it. At this point, I had designed the magazine name, headline and strapline. I made sure to match the colour of some of the text with the colour of the character's glasses, to increase continuity within the product.

This is the font I chose to use for the magazine's name. I also decided to place the issue number, date and price inside the bottom of the two borders around the text, as a stylistic choice.

A2 - Making a Poster

In terms of actually designing the poster, I started by going out and taking multiple photos. Some of these photos were of locations, and others were of the characters in costume in various poses. I chose to use several different photos on the poster, drawing on ideas from action film posters. The killer, wearing one of the costumes from the film, features in one of the photos I will use, and I will crop out the background of this picture to get a different background. Another picture is of a cross-shaped gravestone, to convey further the idea of remembering the dead on Remembrance Day.

As can be seen in the above progress picture, I chose to use Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo XI to make my poster. Paint Shop Pro is similar in many ways to Photoshop, but it allows a greater level of detail, allowing me to make my poster look even more professional.

The font I chose to use on the poster was Morpheus, downloaded from freeurbanfonts.com. This font looks sophisticated and mysterious, the atmosphere I wanted to create. In addition, I chose to use this font for the headline of my magazine front cover, and therefore adds continuity, making it look as though the poster and front cover are part of the same promotion campaign.

A2 - Original Images

This is the original image I used for my magazine front cover. It features the killer, wearing a ghillie suit, camouflage, a face scarf and mirrored sunglasses in order to conceal his identity. He has his arms crossed in an intimidating pose, suitable for the villain of the film.

This is the original image for my poster, which again features the killer in his ghillie suit disguise. This shot is a close-up of his face from an angle, which draws interest. While not suitable for the magazine front cover, which has the convention of the character staring forwards, it is perfectly suitable for the poster.

A2 - Magazine Front Cover - Planning

The second ancillary task I chose to carry out was the construction of a magazine front cover promoting my film. Shown below are my flat plans of the magazine front cover.

(Insert flat plans here)

I also carried out another survey on SurveyMonkey to determine the style that my target audience wanted to see, mainly with regards to the overall layout of the front cover. I offered them a variety of different style models that I could base my magazine on, including Empire and Total Film.

A2 - Poster - Planning

One of my two chosen ancillary tasks is to design a poster, and in order to do this I carried out several types of preparation. One of these was to design a series of flat plans, in order for me to get an initial idea as to what the layout of the poster will be.

(insert screenshots of flat plans here)

Another was to create a survey on SurveyMonkey, which would allow me to generate audience feedback and use this to make a poster that the target audience will like.

This SurveyMonkey was a shorter one than the survey I created for my main task, but I shared it again on Facebook and Twitter. The majority of my responses were from 15-19 year olds, and evenly spread between males and females. Most of my participants felt that their favourite poster styles were more detailed, as opposed to the simplistic style that the majority of horror posters seem to have.

A2 - Shot List

Throughout the filming of my trailer, I took care to make sure I was including a wide variety of shots. Some of the shots I included were close-ups, establishing shots, POV shots and medium shots.

Close-ups are used to show the audience greater detail, particularly to show facial expressions. In my trailer, some of the close-ups used focus on the faces of the characters, and some of the weapons lying on the killer's trailer.

Establishing shots are generally rather wide and sweeping, and their purpose is to give the viewer an idea of the landscape/environment surrounding the scene.

POV (Point-of-view) shots are, as the name suggests, showing the scene from the perspective of one of the characters. One of the most noticeable POV shots featured in my trailer shows the killer standing over his victim (played by me), pointing a gun at the camera.

Medium shots are more common throughout trailers, being the most common way of showing the scene. While there is normally a 180-degree rule, so that the scene can entirely be seen from one side, we have somewhat challenged this rule in some of our footage.

A2 - Editing the Footage on Final Cut Pro

As part of the creation of the trailer, we had to edit it on the program Final Cut Pro. The first step we did was to organise the footage we have into a number of different folders so that we could edit into specific scenes.

By organising the clips into specific scenes,
we made editing them easier.

After we organised the scenes, we went on to edit specific sections each. One of the scenes I was in charge of is when Alex's character opens the coal shed and spots a blood-stained axe on the floor.

The first step was to render all of the footage into the same settings, using iMovie. By doing this, we placed all of our work in the best possible settings, AppleProRes422. As everything is in the same settings, it makes it all easier to edit and cuts down on the time needed to render everything.

Part of my edit of the coal shed scene

After exporting it in the new setting, I placed it into Final Cut Pro. My first step was to seperate each shot again, and match it all up in terms of continuity. This allowed me to see everything occurring at the same time, enabling me to switch between different shots for the same scene.

A2 - Flat Plans

Above is the flat plan of my magazine front cover.

This is the flat plan of my magazine.

A2 - Storyboard

Above is a storyboard of our film trailer made by Chris, using 20 frames to show it. While a couple of these scenes have been re-ordered in the actual trailer, the majority are in the same place.

A2 - Budgeting

Because we had access to the equipment belonging to our school's media department, the cost of our film was greatly reduced. However, there were some things that did cost money for us to access.

The Airsoft guns we used cost £500 to buy, however Alex had bought them himself because he takes part in it anyway.

While we borrowed some of our costumes from the school's drama department, we had to bring our own for most of the footage. These costumes cost £50 to buy.

In terms of petrol money, it cost £45 to transport all of us and our equipment to each of the locations for filming and then get us back again.

We also had to purchase other props to create effects, including fake blood and the liver. Overall, the additional props cost roughly £15.

A2 - Representation

The main area of representation featured in our trailer is that of youth. One section of youth representation, as suggested by Hebdige, suggests that youth are seen as possessing the dual identities of fun and trouble. This is evident in the plot of the overall film, as the group of teenagers are going on a road trip, which represents the fun side of youth. Afterwards, they could be considered to be causing trouble by trespassing into a stranger's house, even if they have a valid reason to do so.

Another idea of youth has been subverted in our production. The theory that youth are misportrayed because the producers are not youth, as suggested by Medhurst with the quote "they are awful because they are not like us", is not true for our production. As we would be classified as youth, we are able to portray youth more accurately and fairly than other producers do.

A2 - Filming

In the course of one day, 11 November 2012, we spent approximately six hours filming scenes for usage in the trailer. During the filming, we decided to change the plot of our film from a zombie horror film to a horror film where the villain is a psychopathic killer. This change was primarily due to the fact that we had very little experience with creating the appearance of a zombie, either by using liquid latex or by using special effects, and therefore it was much easier and more effective to change the plot somewhat.

In addition to this, we also went for a night-time shoot to get an action scene of the characters fleeing in the dark. This shoot was on 9 February 2013, and lasted for roughly 1 hour. However, we did not get enough footage before it became too dark to film, so we organised another night shoot on 2 March 2013. Alex also shot some footage using a GoPro camera at a game of Airsoft, which could be used as footage from the killer's POV.

A2 - Soundscape - GarageBand

As part of my work for the group, I helped to create a soundscape on GarageBand for our trailer. I included various aspects of mood-generating sounds to create a dark-sounding soundscape. Amongst other things, there is a dark-sounding growl, the sounds of stormy weather, and rock-style music.

Despite the fact that the majority of the work I did on the soundscape was before we changed our plot idea to be more focused on a single serial killer than a horde of zombies, it still sounds mostly appropriate for the film. However, we have gone back and edited the soundscape created to make it sound more fitting for the film.

A2 - Crew List

Over the filming of our trailer, all of our group took different roles for the filming at each shoot.

At our first shoot:
Camera - Josh, Alex, Kieran.
Sound - Alex, Chris, Kieran.
Director - decisions made by the group.
Actors - All.

At our second shoot:
Camera - Josh, Alex.
Sound - Alex.
Director - Josh.
Actors - Kieran, Chris.

At our third shoot:
Camera - Alex, Josh.
Sound - Kieran.
Director - Josh.
Actor - Chris.

A2 - Casting

Jon Favreau acts in films that he also
directs - an action we have also taken.

When it came to casting for our film, we decided to follow in the footsteps of the likes of Jon Favreau (Iron Man), Ben Stiller (Tropic Thunder), Mark Gatiss (Sherlock), Ben Affleck (Argo) and Simon Pegg (Shaun of the Dead), who act in films that they have written or directed. It was simpler for us to act in the film for several reasons. One was that we had all established a clear idea of the behaviours and mannerisms of the characters, and it was simpler to have us portray the characters we already knew well than have others learn about the characters. In addition, working as a group means that we have enough people to portray each character. Another reason was because it saved us the time it would have taken to find actors to star in the film, enabling us to spend more time planning and designing the other aspects of the film.

Left to right: Alex Burnhill, Josh Warner and me (Kieran Golding). We all star in the film, as well as Chris Doyle (not pictured).

A2 - Costume and Prop Ideas

For our costumes, we had very few strict ideas. We wanted each member of the group to be wearing a poppy, because our filming was done on Remembrance Day and it was thematic. We also wanted our killer to be disguised in some way, so we looked into a variety of different masks and scarves to hide the face.

Alex and I demonstrating two of our original costume ideas.

One of the designs we considered was using a ghillie suit-style costume, so he was walking around wearing very realistic camouflage. One of the main issues with this, however, was going to be the acquisition or creation of a ghillie suit. We did manage to obtain one in the end, as Alex has one that is used for Airsoft. However, we did not have the killer wear the ghillie suit, due to concerns with filming it. We instead placed part of the ghillie suit in the indoors set, so it still featured in the footage.

Another costume design we considered was the use of a gas mask to hide the face. Again, we thought there may be issues with finding a gas mask that was safe to wear. We did find one to borrow from the school's drama props, which the killer did wear in the footage. We also placed it in the indoors set, so that it could be filmed close up before the killer donned it for the action scenes.

Because we returned the gas mask and it was borrowed by another person when we needed to go back and shoot our night footage, we decided to instead use a balaclava or a face mask of some sort. In the dark it will be more difficult to make out the killer anyway, so people may not be able to tell if he is wearing a gas mask or a different style of mask.

We also wanted to focus on the idea that the killer may have a connection to the military subtextually, to suggest a reason as to how and why he has several guns lying around his property. To create this, we used an Airsoft outfit that looked like genuine military wear.

For the guns seen in the trailer, we used realistic-looking Airsoft guns. These were provided by Alex in order to make our killer seem like more of a threat than he would if he was carrying only a knife or was unarmed. By having multiple guns, it also allowed us to play about with other ideas, including having a scene where the group take some of the other guns from the house and use them against the killer. However, despite filming this scene, we cut it from the trailer because it felt out-of-place, even if it was the logical thing for the characters to do. We wanted the killer to stand out because he was the only one using guns, and therefore he posed more of a threat to the characters. If we were to make the trailer into a full film, we may have used those scenes in the footage, but we chose not to for the trailer.

In addition, both kitchen knives and a wood-cutting axe were also already at the location we filmed, so we included them as well. We also purchased several packets of liver, which we placed around the location to create more horrific images, as it was unclear from a cursory glance what type of meat it was and therefore was creepy-looking and would convey horror to the audience, implying that the killer has killed humans before.