Film Poster Draft - Ziaul

This is my poster for our film. This is not going to be the background picture because we haven't shot a legit photo as of yet. However we want a similar style photo for the actual poster in my opinion. The block production is random as well because we don't know all the music we have in our film. I chose to have just me as the poster background and the only name because I am the main character and the film is based on my character. I opted for this style mainly due to the fact of it being a dark scene, it is quite mysterious and can't see the man's face. I opted against using quotes and ratings for this poster. I used Paint.Net for this poster.

This was the movie poster before it got edited. I didn't know how to get rid of the random huge sign that took up most of the photo but fortunately Elliott helped me as he knew how to edit it out and this made a better, more improved poster because of it.

Conventions of Little White Lies (technical detail included) - Ziaul

Doc size: Height - 245 mm
                Width - 195mm

Each column is 52.4mm

Picture is anything within the film unaltered. It can be any realistic size the writer or whoever puts in the Little White Lies wants it to be.

Title: Century Gothic.

Film review research : - Elliott

Who is the target audience - Ziaul and Elliott

Ziaul

Little White Lies is for mature more upper class or educated people. The slick sophisticated design shows it might be for middle/upper class. In comparison to the more bold and loud design of Empire, which is for more average film watchers and less enthusiastic critics. It always writes about films some people never hear about, independent films, these are films which cannot afford to put themselves of cinemas. There are always in depth analysis and knowledge about the film.

This photo represents a LWL survey carried out for the general public to see who reads LWL and who don't read it as much. As you can tell males aged 25-25 are the people who seem to read the magazine the post compared to other age groups.

Elliott

The above infographic is very helpful in determining which classes of people read the magazine, especially the statistic that states exactly half of their sample readership earns over 20k a year (a high percentage compared to many other types of magazine) this would suggest- in theory- that a large chunk of LWL's readership is of an upper class, and this influences the type of vocabulary that would be used in writing my film review: for example saying 'vernacular' instead of 'vocabulary'. To this end it's been pretty much decided for me that I will be the one writing the actual text for the film review, because I write far too posh-ly at the best of times.

The 'Little White Lies' media pack (something given to potential writers/ contributors to help them match the magazines style) also helped by showing that LWL's primary means of UK distribution is in WHsmith's. This means that when writing the review no vulgar or controversial language/ideals can be used as this would violate the type of magazine genre that WHsmith stocks and would probably lead to the mag being unstocked. This would not be such a problem if LWL was primarily sold over the internet or through other distribution methods.

Conversely LWL is also part of the brilliant London art scene so it's very important to write in a way that doesn't alienate any potential readers who may be looking for a way to get entry-level access into the industry, and may not know lots of filming terminology/ conventions. Another important aspect of this scene is the young film-makers who come to participate in London's film screenings and festivals, who would appreciate a more detailed review on many of the films that would be showing on that day.

London Film Festival shows many of the best short films

Film review for little white lies

Film poster idea draft - Elliott

click to enlarge

My draft idea for the short film's movie poster, Showing some of the industry conventions. Because we have not yet taken high quality photos of our actors I instead used public domain images that were very similar to what the final pictures will look like. I could have used screenshots from the video footage but that would have involved rotoscoping (tracing) out each character and would have taken far to much time compared to the stock pics which show the idea just as well.

I have also not set up the billing block because I do not have all the details (such as music used or production company name) and rewriting it will be very easy when I do, thanks to the template produced by Video Copilot (they also do great AE plug-ins.)

As a base start for the poster- and, crucially, to get the correct poster dimensions- I started with this film poster for The Dark Knight. Hopefully there is not any visible influence from this in the completed draft. One poster I have taken influence from, however is the simple black on white text style from 'Submarine' which was one of the film posters I analysed for research. Unfortunately because this is a full length film and mine is not, I could not think of as many applicable review companies as Richard Ayoade's poster had (having 4 star reviews and one quote is, I think, the optimal amount for this poster idea) leaving an under-utilization of dead space at the top of my poster.

This was the guide I used, and which turned out to be very annoying to make. The lines helped in making sure that all components of the poster were justified correctly and that all text remained within the crucial 'safe zone' which can be cut off by printing/framing. The red guidelines show the side margins and the first split of the poster (into horizontal thirds.) This way I can keep all reviews in the top third and titling/billing block etc. in the bottom third. The purple and green guides help insure the reviews are central by cutting the review section into quarters. 

James Bond Casino Royale - Ziaul

This is the main poster of James Bonds Casino Royale. As you can tell their are two images but the more visible one is Daniel Craig. This is because he is the main character but also Daniel Craig attracts a fan base, many people watch James Bond because of him. The main audience is for males of the age of 12-15, it is an action/ thriller film which you would associate with this age group and gender. However this movie poster might attract females as well as most might see him as eye candy. The second main photo is that of a transparent female with smaller images within it. The women and the smaller images are what this film is all about but fitted it the transparent women because no more room wanted to be taken up. The background is a grey colour which means that all the other colours on it are quite visible including the title. The other most visible text is the date of release too show the audience when the film is coming out. Physiologically it is smart as people who read it will go to watch it mainly as it's second most visible text on the poster.
There is a lot of dead space in the top left which is not used by any images or other designs.. some may say it is a poor poster because of so much dead space in the corner.

#selfie #workinghard

 

This is to show our great teamwork whilst editing.

Poster Research (Awaydays) - Elliott

This movie wasn't super great but it has Stephen Graham from Snatch in it so all good

This poster features 6 different images of the main and secondary characters from the film composited into the top two-thirds of the poster with almost all of the text contained to the bottom third.

I actually think this is a terrible movie poster because of the huge amount of dead space and the way that the images look like they've been print-screened off the actual film footage (very bad job of cutting them from the background) the use of masses of bright yellow to give some impact is also a very cheap design choice.

Poster Research (Submarine) - Elliott

sick film bro

To match the type of film I am producing I have chosen to analyse the film posters of small or independent British films. Ideally I would examine the features of other short films, however in the industry it is very uncommon for films that aren't feature length to produce a poster.

Unusually for a small film the very top object on the poster is the names of actors. This is irregular because actors in this film type are usually little-known and therefore will not have a following that will see movies just because they are in it, This is especially true with the actors in this film who were uknowns cast in their first film roles.

"you Ayo-what mate?"

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.