Here I have used the curve colour tool to experiment the effects of different colours, Eventually I opted for the black and white look because I felt it look more darker and dingy.
I tried two different methods from watching YouTube tutorials to aggregate the characters eyes and got two very different outcomes Method 1
This is the first technique I used, here I took the photo layer before turning the photo black and white, and the black and white photo layer on top of it.
Then I used the rubber tool on the eyes so that I could choose what part of the colour came through, here is the result:
I discovered a more subtle but effective effect of adding a fresh colour to the eyes
Reflection
I opted for the 2nd option for my rough cut despite not standing off the page as much as the 1st. This is because initially when I did the 1st method Emily looked evil and sinister not the look I want for a victim. However the first method did come in handy on the antagonist though this is more difficult to see because his identity/eyes are more hidden by his hood and the lighting.
Anyway I believe that was the case because I didn't line up the layers properly, the unbalance of the layers created the freaky look. For my final product I tried the 1st method again because I wanted the eyes to be more eye-catching and I rectified that mistake by starting again and duplicating the layers this time and not doing it manually, the result is above.
Here are the test shots before we began the shots here we were shinning a light on the background because I chose to take my shots in the dark because of the horror genre and using lights created shadows connoting mystery and uneasiness of what's lurking in the shots and trying to hook the photography equipment so that when I take the shot the lights flash. At first we had trouble trying to create enough lights and the characters were not showing up properly so we had to try a bit of trial and error in order to get the best lightening for the shots.
Here are my favourite images which I may use for my products
The park is a public place so there is no need to gain permission. However I have been told you must ask for permission to film at train stations despite them being public places. Therefore I will have to contact Hambleton, our local council or ask staff on the day.
I was quite nervous filming for the first time as I never did moving image last year or previously. But as soon as I sorted the equipment out I became more confident. I was very happy with the first footage.
My cast was vey co-operative and throwing in their own ideas and coping well with the miserable english weather. Emily drove me and Tim straight from college and we filmed for about an hour and half continuously by that time it had got dark.
I was disappointed I couldn't film in the dark as it would not of shown up on the camera without strong light anyway as well as safety aspects. Although the cold the weather worked in our favour the grey skies created a dark atmosphere whilst maintaining a strong picture.
We first filmed at the train station but there were no staff around or on the platform and it was relatively quiet which was also important for my trailer so we assumed they would of consented to us filming.
We listened out for announcements and looked at the timetable to plan our shots. At one point we had tim on the other side of the platform and shouted directions to him to disappear after a train had past whist filming over the shoulder of Emily.
We filmed for about an hour in the park pushing swings to create the sense the park is possessed and we finished of by running about to keep warm creating handheld shots of chases.
My sister's friend at school kindly agreed to let me film the rats and mice that live on her farm after my sister asked her at school. I was very pleased because was a key part in my storyboards and a key convention in the Pied Piper being a que for audience to expect and gain pleasure from my film after the familiarities with fairy-tale.
My sister's friend has become unavailable so I rang my aunty who lives out in the country, she didn't know of any rats. But she suggested I ring the council and ask them if there any infestations anyway as they will know best or even a rat infestation team
Trying to find rats had proved more difficult than I thought. The problem as soon as rats are discovered people don't tend to keep them; the rats are eliminated immediently. I may have to give up my search of finding rats.
The morning after I completed my filming with my cast, I missed the bus so as I still had the camera so I thought I would make the most the time having the camera and out I went to Applegarth graveyard before getting the train to college. I took some shots of the church tower and pans of tomb stones as well as stone statues which my peers said were 'creepy' so I was happy with the footage I had captured. The graveyards connote death and I will use quick shots of the statues to spook the audience; the church tower was in my storyboard and I still plan to use it as an introduction with the sfx of church bells in sychronous sound
I will do qualitative questionnaires, photo booths and post my rough cuts on social networking site like Facebook of which my friends/followers are predominately in my target audience of .... This is in order to get feedback from the target audience to be of the film to improve my rough cut. This will help me see if my products truly represents the horror genre, what my audience dislikes and likes to maximise the professionalism and effectiveness of my final products.
Magazine Questions
What attracts you to this magazine cover and why?
What genre do you believe this film magazine is focusing on and what are your reasons for your beliefs?
What is your initial response to the layout of the cover?
Is this cover engaging do you think the text/content amount is sufficient or would you prefer more or less text/content on the cover?
Do you think the fonts and colour are appropriate for the genre of the featuring film and why?
How would you improve this magazine cover?
Poster Questions
If you walked past this poster in the street or a billboard for example, would it catch your eye and why?
Is the genre of the film clear? Please explain?
What are your opinions of the fonts and colours used on this poster?
How would you improve this poster?
Are there signs of consistency/continuity between the magazine and the poster please explain?
The shot of my victim and antagonist walking/running down the alley because by the time we started filming handheld shots it had gone dark and the feet of the characters are unclear. I would need to filming earlier
May need to redo the shots of the phone conversation because the police sirens which where were going off naturally out our control are too loud in the recording. Also forgot to take the close ups of the film when answering and ending the call. I would need to take the shot with no interfering sounds like train announcements.
I might redo the shot where the antagonist walks behind the fence behind the victim because it appears she would she the antagonist because of the angles she is looking I would need her to look around the camera rather than over her shoulder and behind.
I am going to add shots of rats scurrying around at a later date
To plan for my photo shoot I made a montage of existing images on publisher as inspiration.
The products below are the type of poses I wish my models to create for the shoot. The photos I collected are close up of victims and protagonists faces I chose this pose as I think it is effective, professional and very achievable.
I did not chose to have fire burning or ghosts circling the victim because it would not be possible to create these shots in the studio in college.I believe the simplicity of these posters are more effective and revealing emotions through close ups is more powerful. I will show these photos to my models to guide to creating similar poses.
I believe it is quite important I have plan of the shots I want before going into the studio. Therefore I know exactly what I am doing and I can get plenty of effective and relevant shots, so hopefully the thought into the shoot will be reflected in my final products as the image is the most important element of the poster and magazine cover.
My budget is very low and I want to keep my trailer as simple as possible so that it looks professional so I have only cast 2 people the victim (Emily) and the antagonist (The Piper) This creates a sense of isolation for Emily and signifies all the other have been either possessed by the Pied Piper or murdered.
This is Emily she will be playing the victim in my film planned to film on the 12th October and appear on the poster of the movie photo shoot planned to take place on Monday 14th October
This is Tim he will be playing the antagonist in my film planned to film on the 12th October and appear on the magazine cover with the photo shoot planned to take place on Monday 14th October
Here I downloaded an app called doddle pro off the apple app store to create a more professional call sheet. It allowed me to take my friends information which was already stored in my phones contacts which made the process very convenient.
As well as that by typing in locations Doodle provided a map for them and the weather forecast for the time of the shoot. Doddle pro also gave me the option to email the call sheet to everyone associated with the project.
When I first used after effects on the Friday I was completely lost. At the weekend I watched tutorials on after effects so I could get the basic jist on how to use the programme. I also sampled examples of after effects on video co-pilot for inspiration for my trailer.
I searched tutorials in YouTube however most of them were far too long. So I watched a video put onto our media of a tutorials by a guy called Parker
So I click on the link to watch it on YouTube, found his channel, subscribed and watched more of his videos because they were much more snappy than the ones I had found previously and was much more easier to watch.
The 3 videos I watched were:
on the basics
key frames
and animating text
On Monday morning I began to use after effects more confidentially I followed videos on video co-pilot to guide me. I first looked at a tutorial called Jumpy text. This showed how me as it says on the tin, make the text jump off and around the page. I wasn't really interested about the text flying all over the lace, what I was interested about the flare flashing which I though created a sense of peril and uneasiness. The flying around of the text didn't really represent the horror genre.
I found creating this effect way more simpler than the others I looked at and producing the effect took me just over half an hour . I made this effective by firstly inserting the text and creating a 3d effect by turning on the 3d effect alternating the layer and duplicating it.
To make the flare animate I created an adjustment layer and I then brought more life to the flare by using colour correction manipulating the brightness using curves. Next I clicked on the layer and put the opacity to 50 per cent, clicked the stop watch icon and type in wiggle (5,50) in other word the flare will move 5x a second thus bringing it to life.
The first flare animation I made was a blue one and it didn't really look as intimating or creepy as I had hoped so I tried it with a red flare image this looked much better as red signifies danger and the red connotes the Pied piper as he is seen to wear red historical as I found in my research so I wanted to continue that theme into after effects.
THE Glass
This effect was much more demanding and longer than the flare; I had a real hard time tying to ge the text to stick to the icy texture and had to go back through the tutorial multiple times.
I typed in the text and added a animated blurred effect and enabled 3d properties, by adjusting the off set I made sure that one character blurred at a time. I then manipulated other settings such as the timing in which the text blurs in the sequence.
Here I am adding 3d layers to give the image more depth I added a black solid background first to the bottom layer to make it really dark then added light blue solids with the circle tool on the layers below ice map and the ice diffuse layer but above the text and adjusted the sizes to create light areas and feathered it out I continued to do this till I was happy with the effect.
Here I am making my final adjustments to the production title and I am very close to finishing; I am here trying to make the text clear again. I did this quite easily by duplicating the text and toning down the settings on the displacement map, scrolling the settings really low and putting the blurriness back to 0. I also lowered the opacity and changed the transfer mode to overlay. I finally went on to change the name to cryogenic productions to make it my own.
Reflection
I have learnt loads since using after effects and I felt I have created some very cool inter title that will separate my film from others. Although very complicated for amateurs like myself I find after effects really exciting and I would defiantly use it again. The tutorials on video co-pilot were also really helpful and I would recommend any beginners or pros to it
I went on freesfx.co.uk and downloaded some sounds for my trailer
First I had to make an account to downloads the SFXs which was free to sign up
I then searched horror and downloaded sounds that I believed would be effective for my trailer; I also searched other sounds relevant to my trailer such as church bells
The files appeared in my downloads which I transferred to a folder and dropped them into iTunes so I could listen to them and rename the files from there I organised and narrow down my favourites.
I like this logo of the hand signifying the undead and supernatural. An idea would be to take something like this and animate it on adobe after effects and have the arm of a zombie burst from the ground and the text appearing dramatically or crumbling like rubble
Another option is to have smoke going across the screen and revealing the text. Although this would be pretty challenging I have seen it done on You tube and I could follow the tutorials and play around on after effects to create mine. This effect would signify the mystery and bleak outlook of the victim going into the trailer.
For a production logo I could take an image of some wind up teeth and have them chattering with asynchronous sound by taking/getting multiple images putting them together and speeding it up.
This could be a great logo I could animate the door to slowly creak open/closed with the text fading in at the bottom. I belive I could do something similar to the Light curve logo by having a strike of lighting across the screen producing the name of my production.
I also like this logo, I could have the traditional film reel spinning out of control to signify the chaos of the film. I think the logo for the red hour films is great I could get or create a picture of a Harlequin or a jouster as this ties in perfectly with the traditional pied piper and add a cackling laugh to generate fear.
Other ideas I have on after effects is to have blood dripping onto the text or to have something been smashed like cracked glass to connote destruction and pain.
Here is a spider diagram of ideas for a name of my productions they are based on words you'd associate with horror.
I went on dafont.com which I used last year in search of effective and appropriate fonts to download and use in my products.
I like this font as the style is almost like the classic news times roman. This font to me connotes medieval when the pied piper was original a signifies that it is an old legend. The smudges on it give that classic a font a dark effect and reflect the horror convention whilst being easy to read. This font I think would look best on the inter titles of my trailer although I could use it for the title of my film.
This font is clearly connotes the horror genre. I love this font because it is really big and bold and the dripping effective is really cool because it hints at the blood of victims or gunge; something unpleasant basically. However this font can be guilty of being childish as you can picture it being used in an episode of Scooby doo. Therefore I will not use it in my trailer or for the font of the title of the film. As seen in my flat plans it looks a lot like the sell line at the top of my magazine so this font would be ideal for that purpose.
This is the type of font I would like to use for my mastheads and sell lines although the font may be seen as quite boring so I am likely to use it for my sell lines. The benefits of this fonts are because the sell lines are going to smaller this font will still be so clear and bold making it the most professional font and professional for the job. Another advantage is it will not take the emphasis of the mast head whilst still having an engaging element.
An effect like these on bold text could work for my mast heads. Whilst being easy to read the edgy font suggests the antagonist is slowly destroying everything in the film the font also makes the product look more scary and exciting.
I like this font because it is bold, sharp and really stands out. I love how some of the font has been scratched because it really connotes the torment and suffering of the victim in a horror.
Here are a few fonts from existing horror movies to compare with my choices:
This font carries the same elements as the fonts I have chosen it is bold and strong whilst the eroded look on the text connotes the grittiness of a horror. I love the replacement of the A in dead to a zombie's hand. This is something I could possibly do myself I have already planned to make the P's sharper in pied piper to look like blades but an alternative could be to instead of using a hand I could use the shadow of a rat in one of the letters although I don't know how effective that would be.
