Editing and touch ups of our trailer

In recent days, I have been editing some of the work me and Imogen have been working on. As we plan to complete an Empire magazine cover, we need to use there title, however, as we are doing a horror film, we are editing the text to make it look abit more frightening. Empire original text is already deep red and therefore we do not tend to alter it as of its strong connotations with blood. the text is all in capitals and very bold and eye catching as it main purpose is to attract someone attention as they are searching for magazines.

I have found a few Empire magazine covers, for example, this special collectors edition Empire, is showing some of the greatest horror films ever made. Even from a single glimpse the audience can tell that is is aimed at the horror generation. "THE SHINING" takes up the centre image and looks so threatening and obscene. the smaller images below include films such as Halloween, NightMare on Elm Street, The Texas Chainsaw Masacree and Frankenstein. All rated at 18+ mainly because of psychological horror and gore/ bloody violence. Our trailer is a psychological horror that doesn't contain any bloody violence. it is more about trying to scare the audience about the fact that our characters are being stalked in a forest by the someone that is dead.

Our Magazine Cover

We are currently changing the picture on our Empire front cover. At first, we had a picture of Emma and Liam, facing the camera and it quite clearly showed that they knew the camera was there. This lack ecological validity as it takes the realistic factor away and clearly shows them being actors instead of real characters. So, we decided to choose a more realistic shot from our movie and we choose a shot from behind Liam and Emma walking into the deepest part of the forest. The fact that we cannot see their faces makes them seem more mysterious and unidentifiable. It also gives the impression that “Ruby” (the girl in our myth), will kill anyone regardless of who they are.

Research into print products

Many modern day horror films have seemed to stray away from the typical black and white setting and them to prefer the tinted image more. For example, "The Orphanage" and "The Unborn" ( both shown below), both have had their images tinted to a more dark and bluely colour. The blue tint is very effective as the film is called The Unborn and the blue symbolises a lack of oxygen that the character has had, which is relevant to the title. Also, in both of these images, there is only one main lone character. This tells the audience straight away that they are the focus of the film and the fact that they are standing alone makes them seem even more haunting and someone will recognise straight away that these films are in the horror genre just by a simple image.

All of our clips are now in the correct order and to cut to the appropriated length. We are now just mainly using editing tools such as dips to black and fade out. the problem i thought our trailer had, was that it looked quite similar to our AS project, in that it looked more like an opening compared to a trailer. At this moment in time, I am searching for Empire Magazine articles to copy there title for our print front cover project and also to get some inspiration to make our magazine cover look even better. I got inspiration from the two images above, however, in our film, both of the characters are of similar importance, even though they play very different roles and have different personalities that are portrayed in the film. Another point i also discovered from further research is that the setting in many horror print products seem to be irrelevant compared to the characters. Even though the setting the characters are in, are less important compared to the characters in these pictures, both of the backgrounds still have a haunting image, for example, the first one, looks like a empty, emotionless room and The Unborn picture, is in a uninhibited setting. A problem we came across while filming was that as we knew from the start the cameras didn't pick up on light very well, so we arrived early and decided to be safe by filming the majority of it in day light as the sun was setting. We plan to use a tint as it doesn't create a very scary image when everything in your setting is clearly visible and we want our film to have a lot of mystery about the killer. Also, relating back to The Unborn, the lack of oxygen is very relevant in our film, considering our myth, is about a young girl who was trapped down a mine and it also relates back to our blue tent which was used in the film to represent this.

This it the final art work we decided on

We thought this poster had a much dark tone, however, the font, we knew we were going to have that from the start as it perfectly reflected the idea of blood and gore for our horror film. also, as Liam is our main character, it shows right from the beginning that he will be the focus of the film. as he has very pale skin it makes him stand out even more from the dark environment, like he is not meant to be there and he doesn't fit in. the red font, was made from an online site and i typed in our film name and alters the different letters angles and sizes. for example, we wanted the "S" at the end of the title, to be very blurred and indistinctive, whereas the "R" at the beginning is the clearest and the largest. however, most film posters that i have researched tend to have to title in the centre of the posters, however as Liam is the centre of our poster, we made the text lie under the body to make it look abit more sinister. also, as Liam is covered by a fallen branch and is lying on a floor of leaves straight away gives the impression to the audience that he is in the woods and also helps to sell our setting to the audience before they even see it. the lack of colour in the background draws the main focus to the striking text and victim.

Improving our video with extra footage and removing clips

As our draft decline is quickly approaching, me and Immy had been removing certain clips that don’t quite make our movie scary or tense enough. However, we have also added some extra footage we didn’t think we need that actually turned out much better.  Some certain clips were very slow paced compared to the “fast dramatic pace” what we previously wanted. As we are using a voice over and now have a better range of music that we can access, we know that our A2 has a much better change of standing out compared to others.

At the start of our project, we were planning to use a red tent but we thought that the colour red could be too obvious and too alike other previous horror films. Also, blue stood out much better in the gloomy woods and it also stood out much better with the cameras, as they don’t pick up footage in a dark environment very well. However, blue symbolism also has some negative associations due to the connection between lack of oxygen and blue skin colour. This is perfect for our media work as our myth is that a girl became trapped down a mine.

from the picture above, we came up with acouple of designs. We tried a different range of both fonts and textured layers to see which suited our film better. nither of the 3 pictures above where the one we choose, however, the one we did choose, has a more dark tone.