WEEK 22

This week I added my title graphics to my video. A generic convention of film trailers, I done this to help the trailer make sense.

Doing some work outside college hours, I downloaded Adobe After Effects 10 an upgraded version to the one we have at college. From this I learnt a few basic tricks when using Adobe After Effects. Things such as blur, and making the text come out from the black either from left to right or right to left. This was enough for me as I was advised by my tutor and also looking at other horror trailers to keep the title graphics simple.

This is one of the title graphics I used in my trailer.

WEEK 21



This week I went out got some last minute footage to replace some of my original footage. This image is a new scene I got in which I'm using it to replace a clip of a group of friends briefly discussing ghosts and the burnt down school. In this clip I had 2 girls talking about bunking college, and going to the site of the burnt down school. This explains what made the students go there. Even though my 2 main characters do not feature in this clip, I used these 2 girls as the ones who get the boys involved in this adventure. In regards to Todorov's narrative theory these 2 girls can be considered the dispatchers as even though they're meant to go with the guys, they're the ones who send the "heroes" on their "mission".

Here I recorded a scene of a phone in which a text message is being sent to the main characters. This is how the plans of  'going to the burnt down school' get to the boys. I decided to get the message across via text message, as this is a stereotypical view of the way teenagers communicate. Also the phone which was being used to send the text message is a Blackberry. Nowadays a lot of young people tend to own Blackberries so incorporating this trend into my trailer relates to my target audience.

In this additional scene I recorded my protagonist Calvin on the phone. Appearing to be in distress, I made it look as if Calvin was really worried. The call he received was about his friend Marlon, who went to the burnt down school alone and no one has heard from him since. I used a medium close up to capture his facial expressions whilst speaking to whoever's on the line.

Here's an image of my production company. I done this to reinforce the professionalism of my teaser trailer. I created this in Adobe Photoshop.

I also got my final choice for my soundtrack; in which I used 'Horror Soundtrack - Charlie Clouser - Saw 2 - Don't Forget The Rules' found on youtube.com

I particuarly like this soundtrack because of the shift in sound during the music and it had an eary feel which made my horror trailer more realistic and spooky, conveying generic conventions of my genre

WEEK 20

This week I designed my proper magazine cover.
The pictures of the two boys are 2 main characters in my film. I tried to go for a stereotypical look of a student when taking the pictures. By stereotypical look, I mean someone in casual clothing with like a bag over their shoulder – a school bag, also the headphones around his neck go with the image. With the image on the right (Calvin Demba) I played around with the tools in Photoshop including the smudge tool, to give him a more troubled look on his face, this was done to increase the tension. With the image on the left (Marlon Sr. Douglin) I decided to cut out the majority of his body on the right side as I positioned him to appear behind Calvin on the actual magazine cover. I decided to make Marlon look to the side when taking the photo, as he looks like a ‘lookout’ for his friend Calvin and as these 2 along with others get in trouble they need all the help they can get.

For the background I used a blackboard with "I will not disturb the dead" written on it. This was made by simply getting a picture of a blackboard, finding a font that looks like chalk and then writing the text onto it. I made the text look as if someone had to write lines. I came to this decision as sometimes in schools when someone gets in trouble one way of punishing them is by making them write lines. They’d have to repeatedly write out something they should not do, in this case the lines read ‘I will not disturb the dead’, reflecting the plot of the story; in which, the protagonists go somewhere where they shouldn’t go to a certain place as it’s a site of where a class of students died in 1986 (hence the name), this causes the ghosts of the dead to react. I also added little images of bloody hand prints across the board. This represents the students trying to break away from the ghosts as they’re being “tortured”. The hand prints on the board show the students regret “disturbing the dead”.

For the grungy, dirty looking effect on the main image and background I found a picture of a piece of old paper and placed it over the image, and then set the blending mode to 'Multiply'. I done this to make the image seem more dark and dirty, as the genre is horror these are generic conventions. Giving the whole image this sort of grungy dirty effect it takes away this sense of innocence, their innocence of youth is jeopardised when they break the rules, however this may be a simple mistake they make whilst young, something they can learn from if they do conquer this paranormal encounter.
There is also a subtle light source coming from the left side of the image which was created by using a soft white brush, and then using Gaussian blur to spread the light around.

To get the worn out effect on the title of the film "Class Of '86" I first typed it out normally, rasterized the type, then started rubbing out areas of it to make it look old.

The "magazine of the year" stamp near the top right corner was made by me, using shapes and text.
I got the picture of a barcode off the internet and added it to my magazine for realism.

The rest of the graphics on the magazine are all shapes, text and screenshots of movies, found on the internet.

For the masthead I used a font known as ‘Devil Breeze’. I liked this font as it seemed modern and can appeal to fans of films of all genres. As it does not look like a font for a specific film type, it can be seen as a broad-spectrum font. It also appeared perfect for me to use as a masthead the way it looks across the top of the magazine.

Here are a list of the fonts I used

Devil Breeze - Masthead

Arial

Arial Black

Arial Narrow

Calibri

Trajan Pro


Impact

Garamond



WEEK 19

Here is my first draft magazine. I didn’t think any of the photos I previously took were suitable enough for a magazine cover, so I used this image of Iron Man as a foundation for my magazine cover.



As you can see I got rid of the Iron Man text on the image and the majority of the left side so the main image could go on my front cover. I then flipped the image horizontally as it looks better.

 For the masthead I used a font known as ‘Devil Breeze’. I liked this font as it seemed modern and can appeal to fans of films of all genres. As it does not look like a font for a specific film type, it can be seen as a broad-spectrum font. It also appeared perfect for me to use as a masthead the way it looks across the top of the magazine. I added a coverline regarding a new film coming out. I also put a list of films due to be released, telling the consumers ‘New movies you need to know about’. As this is a common feature on film magazines I decided to put this there. This seemed to be a good feature, as if the customers weren’t interested in the main cover image (main film), the list of other films may persuade them to buy it – as there may be a film in that least they’re interested in.

I decided to advertise a ‘free giant Iron Man poster inside’ as my draft magazine’s main feature is Iron Man, however when I do come round to incorporating my own images on to the cover I’ll leave the advertisement.

I added a barcode to the magazine, along with the issue number, the date, and an official website for the magazine for realism.