Poster Research - Fish Tank [Keelan]

The second poster that I have researched is 'Fish Tank', which was released in 2009.

Poster Research - The Disappearance of Alice Creed [Keelan]

For the Poster research we have to do research into film posters that fall into the category of film that we are making (British, independent and low budget). As a group we have to research into 12 film posters, working out to having a task of 4 each. In these posts we will have to discuss things such as the graphics, layout and conventions of the posters. As well as that we will also have to discuss how the poster applies the five main concepts.

My first piece of research into this is of the film poster 'The Disappearance of Alice Creed', this was released in 2009.

Previous post updates - Elliott

I've just finished editing and uploading the 'Behind the Scenes' video from the first day of filming as well as redoing my part of the group animatic commentary and adding some more research on short film research.

• Behind the Scenes video and risk assessment post
• Animatic Commentary
• Research posts

In preperation for making my group's movie poster, which will require a website on it, I have also created the redirect http://tinyurl.com/HighStakesfilm that will link to the group blog when visited. This will make the poster far more professional than if the website, either didn't work or was a blogspot site.

Credit Mock-up - Elliott

Here is a mock-up I have made for the end credits and title card sequence for our short film. It isn't the final idea yet but, as well as helping me get back into editing, it helps give an idea of what the credits may look like.



The awful drawings do seem to go well with the opening to Se7en,
so that's something.

Unfortunately, to help better tie in the film with the promotional poster I want to use the same photos of our actors in each. This means that until my group gets together to make the assets, I have had to bust out my 'mad-1' art skills and use some weird/creepy drawings as placeholders. They would probably fit right into some horror film about a mentally-challenged artist, but don't quite cut it for our film.

Although the use of my art degree was nice it did make it quite hard to gauge what the final piece would look like, despite finding the mock-up very useful for developing ideas. It also helped me to find 'bugs' such as this insanely annoying one that made the whole video jump around like a Jack Russel on meth.


There was no cause or reason for this glitch out and the only solution was to move to a different editing software and start all over again (First problem I have ever had with Sony Vegas 11.)

The audio can be found here and is from a very small Youtuber I know who does not mind anyone using his music yet produces some very good stuff. I picked it because, with some alteration, it started to sound like the music that is often used for the credits in recent action movies (the new Die Hard in particular) and because the somber start seems to compliment the ending shots of our film.

The black on white credits will also lend a great effect to the piece, contrasting it to the many that use the standard white on black slow crawl. When looking for a good credit font I also received some great advice about this from a VFX expert on one of the better film-making websites saying:

If white is to be seen over a large area, like a white background instead of a black background, or a large dominent shape is white, then bring it all the way down to around 75%. Yes, indeed, the big "white" bar on NTSC color bars is actually only 75%! 75% looks slightly gray on a computer screen, but quite pleasing (not blaring) on a video or film screen, when it is the dominant color.  

 I was unsure about this at first because the off-white colour looks pretty bad on a laptop screen but after watching back on a TV it turned out to be great advice, the brightness is not as annoying or uncomfortable as with a large amount of pure-white light and that way makes the credits much easier to read.

Thanks to Red Giant for their Unmult plugin which I used excessively when making this.

VFX Breakdown #3 Graphic-Match transitions - Elliott

This is a very rough test of a technique which would be useful in the final project (in eye-destroying quality as I was in a rush for college), which allows me to emphasise a transition between two scenes or locations in a very cool way like in several blockbuster shows. (Sherlock is a great example as they are a fan of this transition)

The first shot is a great example of what can be done with the very same effect I used.

The bed transition though (as seen here) requires a rather higher budget

The yellow shape in this picture is the mask I animated

To make this effect I filmed both shots (kitchen and bedroom) with an identical left-right panning motion and tried to make the colours of both doors match as closely as possible. Unfortunately this was hard to do due to lacking a thousand pound camera tracking kit (meaning I had to shoot by hand) and the different lighting in each area.

To combat the lighting difference I had to use my least favourite form of editing (because I'm terrible at it) - Colour Correction. I did this in After Effects 6 (a great program which I have got since last year's thriller opening) and adjusted the hues and hightone colours of both shots to match in the middle.

It's a graphic match. ahahaha no.

To make the effect I used a mask and keyframed it to move with the edge of the bedroom door, then feathered the hell out of it to make the edge between the footage less noticeable.

I then used slow-motion and time-stretching to make the kitchen shot move at a slower speed, all within AE, This was particularly challenging and made the editing take much longer than it otherwise would have but, luckily, I don't think I will have to do this with the other graphic transitions me and my group have filmed.

Filming Diary #3 [Keelan]

During our filming at Location 2, we had to be very careful to not break anything or trip on any wires such as the wire for the red head lights.

To prepare for filming, we had to move several pieces of furniture out of the way, such as a sofa, a large wall painting and several other items. 

(Shot of mid-filming)

(The smoke machine)

-As seen in the picture, we used a smoke machine to create an atmosphere of a room in which there had been heavy smoking going on.

-When using the smoke machine it did become very hot after a prolonged period of time, therefore we placed it on a pair of heavy duty fireproof gloves to prevent the carpet being burnt of damaged. We also used gloves to move it when needed and was very careful when near it to prevent any damage to a member of the group.

(Overhead shot of recording freehand)

-As well as using the tripod to film, we recorded parts of it freehand to gain some angles that we would not be able to obtain that easily using a tripod.


This evening of shooting our film was rather a long one as we started at around 9pm, and finished just past midnight. The reason for this is because we needed there to be no natural light at all, allowing us to communicate to the audience that it is clearly the night time.

James Bond Casino Royale Final Poker Scene - Ziaul

This is the exact scene we want to emulate during our film but shorter obviously. We want to emulate this in the sense of the tense atmosphere and the really high stakes that make this scene so tense. Our scene will have smoke surrounding the table and room with a light lingering above them and the table. It adds a more sinister effect to the scene.