Film Cover Design Research

We researched and looked at different horror film dvd covers and decided to use the aspects we likes about them and apply them to our own cover idea.

 The way the writing is arranged around the photos and nothing overlaps means it's not too intense and difficult to read. Also the eye of the bird stands out as it is the only part in colour. This suggests that the danger comes from the birds and links to the title.

 It's very simple and made of geometric shapes and block colours which makes it stand out more. However. none of the lines are level, which, like a handheld camera in filming, would suggest a panicked situation and fear. The blacks and reds are typical of a horror film.

The typography is easy to read and is cleverly used combined with the background image. The O merges into the eye but also has a foggy silhouette of a man. Also, none of the lines are definitive, but smudged and blurred. This adds intrigue and links to the title imagery of a hollow man.

The face fades into the background, giving it an mysterious effect. The lighting is very intense on the face. The use of two screaming mouths as eyes initially makes the face look alien, unnatural or supernatural and also shows the fear in the film. The smile on their face also suggests metal instability and makes you want to find out what they do.

 The spotlight effect on the central image and the black background focuses your eye on it. The darkness also adds mystery. The subject is hard to make out as they are sat down with their back to the camera. Also, the picture is out of context and this adds to the Primacy effect and makes the audience want to watch the film.

 The eyes of the girl on the cover stares out directly at you. This draws the audience in as it directly addresses you. Also her lack of a mouth provides the feeling of helplessness and adds intrigue. The figures at the bottom of the cover are hard to identify and they're anonymity adds interest to the film.

 The key is symbolic and connotes a relationship between the key and the plot, making us want to find out the connection. It also uses a combination of mundane pictures (hotel room) and darker, expected pictures (dark front cover).

 The shattered effect on the face symbolises death and quickly provides the audience with a visual portrayal of the genre. This is also shown but the bottom half of the face being a skull. There is a black void behind the glass, which the skull is coming out of or going into. This links to the connotations of death.

 The silhouette of the people shows their pain and the glass door signifies being trapped. The glass used is similar to that of labs or hospitals, which suggests experimentation or misuse of power.

The monochromatic colour scheme gives it a vintage, classic effect, but also shows the atmosphere of the story. The man on the front is clearly panicked and trying to get away from something. The figures in the background suggest that he is trapped.

The girl in the foreground shows helplessness but the face in the background shows the intensity of the situation portrayed. Also the lighting used, which  is dark and tinted sepia, adds to the atmosphere of the film.









On our cover we will use a combination of desirable aspects of these cover designs, and merging them into one super rad cover. We will use a ghostly effect on a human face and push our colour scheme towards the ones on these covers. We will use black, white and red as these are the most popular colours used.
This is an example of how we are planning to show the face:

We made this by photocopying our face in black and white.

BBFC Classification

The British Board of Film Classification decides what rating a film is, from U to R18, based on the content of the film. We will rate our film as a 15 as it contains mild gore and threat and easily accessible weapons are used.

Production and Distribution

To help us decide on what we want our production company to be like and to make it seem more professional we have researched current major film production companies:

These are major film company logos. They follow a basic pattern of a clear, simple title and epic backgrounds. This focuses the attention onto the company name. They generally use geometric shapes such as circles. 

Here is our main idea for a logo for our production company idea based on our research:

Our logo takes the idea of having a clear company name and the design idea of Metro Goldwyn Mayor and Summit Entertainment as they have plain backgrounds.

The production of our film is a fairly low budget as the equipment and software used is fairly basic and cheap.

Most films are distributed through cinema screenings,  DVD, Blu-ray, VHS and VCD or downloading/streaming from the internet. They would normally be advertised through media such as posters, magazines, newspaper articles, trailers on the internet and television.

Storyboard

This is our storyboard of our film opening. Camera movements are indicated by red arrows. Actor movements are indicated by blue arrows.

THE preliminary project

And………here it is:

This is really bad quality and we're not sure why. The quality was quite good when we made it :/ As it's  only our preliminary and we don't get marks for it anyway we thought it didn't matter all that much. It also varied a bit from the outline.

Development of Preliminary

From the basic outline, we knew we needed someone walking down a corridor, going through a door and talking to someone.
As we are doing a horror/ thriller for our finished product. we thought it would be best to do a similar genre for our preliminary. This would allow us to experiment with shots and other techniques used in filming to convey the atmospheric feelings of tension and suspense.

Instead of walking down a corridor, the character is walking home, although she does walk down her corridor inside the house. Going through the door could either be through the front door or her bedroom door and instead of talking, we felt a single, scream would be more appropriate.
We filmed at dusk/night because this would create the necessary atmosphere and lighting. We thought this was vital to the mise en scene of our preliminary.

We chose Kerry Pike to be the victim as she appears vulnerable and represents the classic stereotype.
Our murderer does not appear in the filming, which provides a mysterious, ominous atmosphere, coupled with the diagetic heavy breathing. We thought that to convincingly not show the murderer, we needed to use a handheld camera, to portray the murderer's point of view.

Preliminary plan summary

In our preliminary project, we will follow the outline closely (someone walks down a corridor, through a door and talks to someone). We will film it at Hannah's house because there are multiple set options. We would also have a range of actors to choose from.
The story for our preliminary is that a girl comes home from [school?] and is being stalked by a murderous murderer. She goes into her house and into her room. As she closes the door we hear her scream. This is where it will end.

Film opening research

We studied and made notes on a variety of different film openings to see what aspects of them we want in ours. This would help us appeal to our target audience.

In the opening of Australia, there is voice-over narration to give background to the main characters and story and show life through his eyes. It also positions us on his side and we automatically dislike the antagonist even though we haven't met  him yet, through the murder of Maitland Ashley. In addition, as this happens right at the beginning, it adds intrigue to the storyline as his killer is unknown.
All music in this opening is non-diegetic and adds atmosphere. All other sound is diegetic except the voice-over narration.

In the opening of this film, it immediately dives into the action, which makes us anticipate the rest of the film and adds intrigue, as we don't know what happens to the characters. However, it is similar to the other two films. This makes the storyline predictable as the story unravels. On the other hand, there are some twists which make it interesting.
The use of non-diegetic music adds suspense and alerts the viewer to the fact something is about to happen.

 In the opening of One Missed Call, the camera is tracking along where we view a derelict wall and

dark windows and the non-diegetic music is ominous which created suspense and as it slows down and zooms in on one of the windows so we expect something to make us jump so we automatically feel nervous and after the scream it cuts to the next scene which is action packed, and we are forced to relate the opening scene to this scene thus we want to understand more about the story line and make sense of it so we want to watch more.

In the opening of this film, we are immediately introduced to the main character. We are also positioned with him as he is injured. As the opening continues, we are drawn more and more to this character as he continues in his plight to keep his leg. The music also adds to this as it builds atmosphere. It is non-diegetic and reflects the emotions in this opening.

Questionnaire results analysis

We have gathered the results from our questionnaire and put them into graphs in order to make analysis and evaluation easier:

Everyone said that they would pay an average around £10 for a new film. A few people said the would spend up to £15.

In the openings of films, our audience said they looked for the Primacy effect, action, good music and an introduction to the main characters. They also thought it was important to have a good plot,  realistic characters and a suitable location.

Our most popular film openings from our audience were Star Trek, Cabin in the Woods, Skyfall and Goodfellas. As most of these are Action/Adventure we would base our film on this. However this would be hard to do with our budget and time limit. We will, therefore, do a Thriller instead as it also includes the main features our audience thought important.

Questionnaire

We have made a questionnaire to gather information about our audiences media consumption habits to determine what sort of target audience we are aiming our film opening project at. This is our questionnaire:

We are planning to distribute it around our school amongst the teachers and students by emailing a variety of age groups plus printing of a few to hand out to people. We will use the filled questionnaires to gather a range of information from throughout the year groups, then use it to plan our project and expand on our knowledge of our target audience.      

Introduction

Welcome to our epic blog of awesomeness!! We've never had a blog before but apparently we need one so here we are....... THIS IS SOOOO EXCITING!!! :D  We will take you on an adventure through our media studies work...i know, exciting right!? Here we shall post all our super rad developments to our project. WICKED TIGHT MAN!





The deadline for the research, planning and finished film opening is 18th January. We have carefully looked at and planned our time management for this project but we are fairly reliant on the weather as it could affect our filming schedule.