Film Trailer Overview

Title- Decorum 2, A Dead Mans Grasp.

Age Certificate- 15, this is the ideal for our film.

Genre- This is in the Thriller Genre.

Trailer Band- The trailer is going to be classified as Red band, this is because there is a very strong theme of violence, sexual references and graphic language.

Plot Overview- Two teenagers plan to go to an abandoned farm where a murderer used to stay for their school project. When one arrives the other is missing. It is presumed the boy is dead but his friend doesn't believe that, despite everyone else thinking that (connoted from missing poster in puddle).

Film Institution- We have gone with 'Lionsgate' which supports independent films. We have also gone with 'MARV' and our own personal company, 'Vector Productions'.

Tagline- "When deaths clock is ticking, time becomes the enemy".

Storyboard

Throughout making our film trailer we went through loads of different storyboards and different film ideas. Below is the final storyboards which Isaac drew up and wrote the directions onto.The last storyboard was B-Roll ideas which I was thinking about.

(From left to right):

1. Introduction Company Logos: 

'Vector Productions' - our own, fictional company, reinforcing how this is an independent film 

'Lionsgate' - a more popular, profitable independent company, known for producing good films.

'Marv Films' - known for releasing high standard films (including thrillers such as 'Kingsman').

2. A car pulls into frame on a farm. It is bright, daytime.

Off-screen dialogue of two people discussing the arrest of an infamous serial killer. J-Cut. Close up.

3. Two students discuss filming at an abandoned hideout of the serial killer. Two shot, medium shot.

4. Steve stands outside of the barn waiting for Max. He holds his phone, looking at the time. Wide shot.

Steve's character is isolated on the right hand side of the frame.

5. Close up shot, zoom out to mid shot. Steve stares through opening of barn door but is scared away by something inside.

6. Wide shot - Silhouetted murderer opens barn doors. Time has clearly passed, since it is late afternoon outside.

7. Close up of murderer's legs. The murderer slowly approaches his victim, Max. He walks slowly, but purposefully. Camera tracks his movements.

8. POV - The murderer comes towards Max, punching him in the face and sending him collapsing to the ground.

9. POV - Max is being dragged away by the murderer. He reaches for a metal pole. The murderer realises this, drops him, and turns to face Max.

1. POV - the murderer leans close towards Max. His face is smeared with blood, inferring the torture Max has supposedly endured. Cut to black.

(From left to right):
1. Close up of a wheel of an abandoned bicycle. In the background, somebody is sprinting away, having just dropped the bike. Deep focus. Camera pans upwards. Afternoon.
2. A man steps into frame from the left. His stance is aggressive and firm. Between his legs stands opposite him his opponent, hooded and also prepared for combat.
Static medium deep focus shot.
3. A missing poster of Max's disappearance lies face up in a puddle. A passing pedestrian walks through the puddle, sinking the poster further into the water. High angle shot.
4. Someone lights police documents with a cigarette lighter to remove evidence. Close up shot.
5. High angle, medium shot of lines of drugs on the table.
6. The word 'Decorum' is ominously seen on a wall, written in blood. (Could be at crime scene?)
7. Close up of a person's face.

Uses and Gratification Theory

Uses and Gratifications theory as developed by Bulmer and Katz suggests that media users play an active role in choosing and using the media. Bulmer and Katz believed that the user seeks out the media source that best fulfils their needs.

The uses and gratifications theory assumes the audience chooses what it wants to watch for five different reasons.

Information and Education – the viewer wants to acquire information, knowledge and understanding by watching programmes like The News or Documentaries.

Entertainment – Viewers watch programmes for enjoyment.

Personal Identity - Viewers can recognise a person or product, role models that reflect similar values to themselves and mimic or copy some of their characteristics.

Integration and social interaction – the ability for media products to produce a topic of conversation between people. For example who is the best contestant on The X-factor who which was the best goal shown on Match of the day.

Escapism – Computer games and action films let viewers escape their real lives and imagine themselves in those situations

Title Cards

To lengthen out our trailer and make it look as alike to a real trailer we decided to add title cards. Title cards are really good to interest the audience into watching the trailer, as the reviews may inspire them for example "5 STAR "Best film of 2017, the Guardian" or something similar to that. Also it can tell the audience their favourite actor is in the film, in case none of us are recognised actors so we are just adding them for effect. Below is a list of title cards we are thinking of including in our film trailer.


These are the title cards Isaac came up with which we could use:
"From the Director of DECORUM"
"This Summer"
"When Death's Clock is Ticking"
"Time Becomes the Enemy"
"Dylan Peach"
"Jak Main"
"Isaac O'Brien"
"Decorum: A Dead Man's Grasp. Experience it in IMAX. In cinemas September 21st 2018"

For the title cards, I believed just black and white title cards would look stale in our film trailer. I asked Jak what I should do and he suggested doing titles like The Walking Dead. This was a really good idea.

Magazine Cover

Four one of our ancillary tasks we had to create a film magazine cover.

We went on a photoshoot to get the best photo of Isaac as the cover. We believed he would look best on the cover as me and Jak are on the film poster. I got Isaac to look directly into the lens, this is what you typically see in these magazine covers. The background is just a stock image of clouds with some curve adjustments, which overall looks good and fits with the theme of the magazine and the film in general.

Colour-wise I decided to go with a 'dark orange' theme. This compliments the picture and the film very well as it s a dark movie. This is typically seen in Empire magazines, where the originally red title gets changed to a different colour to support the film. This also applies to the puff at the bottom about the 'Hitchcock Special!'.

One small element which may be unnoticed is that Isaac's head covers the 'P' in the Empire text. This is seen a lot in Empire magazine covers.

To appeal to all audiences we added elements of the magazine such as 'the Hitchcock special' for the older more 'critic' readers, and 'on set with ready player one, etc..'.

In the bottom right corner of the poster you can read 'issue 182'. This is not typical for Empire magazine covers, however I felt like the corner was looked empty without it. This way it challenges the conventions of the magazine cover.

The descriptions on the right hand side of the poster, talking about Decorum and how it has "More Violence, More Suspense, More Thrills". This is to draw people into reading and consequently watching our film. By adding red text it pops in the magazine.

The typeface I used on "Decorum, a Dead Man's Grasp" is a very bold one. This is to make the title stand out so people are interested in this new film.

Shot List

Jak created a shot list in which i used to help edit the trailer.

Equipment/Props/Software used

Equipment

Canon 1200D
This was the primary camera we used to film with. It was useful because it is a DSLR meaning that we can exchange different lens and focus easier.
Canon 700D

Later during the filming process, we upgraded cameras to the Canon 700D. This DSLR has a microphone jack.

RodeGO Mic

This microphone was vital to making a proffesional film trailer as the in-built microphones in cameras are not very good.

Tripod

We used a generic cheap tripod to make sure the shots were stable.

Glidecam

For some of the shots we used a glidecam. Glidecam's are really good for showing movement but with little shake or stutter.

Props

Butchers Apron

To make the trailer believable as possible we each brought props to use. Jak bought a butchers apron for him to wear as the antagonist in the trailer. We wanted a butchers apron because it fits with the horror film, similar to how you see mad scientists like this one in the 2005 film "Hostel".

Fake Blood

We didn't want to use any tomato ketchup or anything similar as we wanted to make the film trailer look as good as possible. I purchased some fake blood off amazon which worked amazing. It looked really realistic and also dried like real blood and stained like real blood which added to the overall effect.

Missing Poster

Isaac made a missing poster for himself. This was used in the film trailer to connote that people have stopped looking for him, as the poster is dated and on the floor in a puddle.

Software

Premiere Pro CC 2017
Premiere Pro is the program I used to edit the short film on. This is one of the indusrty-standard editing softwares.

Photoshop CC 2017

Photoshop was used to create all the graphics such as the film poster and the magazine cover.

Soundtracks

For our trailer the most difficult part was finding a soundtrack which worked really well in correlation with the video footage. Luckily enough I found some music which would work well in our trailer.

The first was this horror music i found off youtube. This was good because it had lots of "hits" in it which was good to sync the edits to. This was used in the Barn scene because it is really tense and dramatic.

The second piece of music we found for the soundtrack was a song I found called "The Way" by Zack Hemsey. This track was perfect for a film trailer, it is dramatic, full of "thuds" or "hits" and generally really good.

One probelm that we faced was the idea that our video was going to get a copyright strike if we uploaded our trailer, with a licensed song in it. However this was really quickly overcome as Jak emailed the artist Zack Hemesy, whom gave us permission to use the music in our trailer, as long as it is not for commercial use. Below is the said email for clarification purposes.

Finished Film Poster

After all the planning and feedback, this is the final  poster I made for the film trailer.








































Changes from first draft:

First obvious change is that the orientation has changed. After feedback which I talked about in my previous Ancillary blog post, i changed the poster to portrait. Overall I believe it looks a lot better than before.

Secondly i changed the text at the top. I changed the typeface and also changed the colour of the word "death's" to red. I think this was a good change as red is a symbolic word for death, therefore working well with the title.

I added the two apostrophes where needed in the poster as it was talked about and noticed a lot in the the feedback (see previous blog post on the poster).

Because my hand was kind of "jumping out of the scene" I edited Jak's head so it looked like it was coming out of the scene. This worked really well as it makes the picture of myself look like it was made to look like I'm reaching out of the picture, similarily to how they layer photos on film magazines such as Empire.

Finally one of the most potent changes is the fact I added another scene from our film trailer onto the poster. This is of Jak covered in blood. If you hadn't noticed I deliberately lined up the sides of Jak with the sides of my head so it looked really clean and in proportion.

Script

As part of our planning. Isaac made a script for our film Trailer. 

We all had different ideas and we went through multiple re-drafts of making scripts, however we got some feedback from a recently graduated film student who has done paid work in the film industry making scripts. This was incredibly useful as he gave us a lot of constructive criticism on our script and how to make it like a proper 'film industry standard' script. This included how to introduce a character into a scene and how you have to give a trait for the character so the actor knows how to play this character. We were taught how to write the script as if we were giving it to a group of people with no idea and for them to be able to create the film trailer we wanted.

As for the methods we used to create the Script, we decided to use a website recommended by the said film student called 'Celtex' (click this if you want to see the website). This was really useful to write a script with as not only was it easy to use, free and filled with all the tools needed, you could also forward a link to the script through an email, message etc, to other members of the group so they could link up their account and collaborate on the script.

One problem we faced was creating some effective dialogue for our script. Jak and I helped Isaac with creating some natural dialogue for the script, however we established that dialogue wasn't going to be a main emphasis in the trailer and we were going to make it as small as possible.I believe one of the drawbacks would be using heavy dialogue in the trailer as we were not professional actors, so we decided to only use dialogue when was necessary for conveying the plot in the film trailer.

Here below is some screenshots of what our script looked like: