Trailer Feedback

Once we finished our trailer we got people to give us feedback. Overall the feedback was good and our editing of sound was complimented the most. People also said that they liked our variety of shots and our production logo showed what genre it was. We were happy with the feedback we got.

Filming Schedule

This is our filming schedule for our trailer 'Take Your Soul'. In the schedule it shows the locations, scenes, equipment needed and people needed. We followed this well when filming our trailer and helped us to be more organised and to know which scene we were filming on which day, and what equipment and people we would need so we could tell any actors in advance to make sure they were definitely available to prevent interruptions. Because we followed our filming schedule correctly and wisely, we were able to film all our scenes to the best of our ability and quite promptly because we knew exactly what to do.

Editing: Voiceovers

We decided to add voiceovers to our trailer as we thought this is quite common with horror. The first voiceover says 'I remember when everything was normal....before I discovered the house!'

We split the first voiceover, the first part 'I remember when everything was normal...' plays when Ella (Laura) looking at the house, which is what is shown in the picture on the left. We thought it was a good idea to have the first part of the voiceover here so that it helps set the scene.

The second part, 'before I discovered the house!' is played when Ella is going into the house.

We thought it was a good idea to split the voiceover clip so it creates mystery and also shows that the house is significant to the film. We made sure that this voiceover is faded in and out so that it would add a scary effect to it.  

We used another voiceover when Ella is at the train station, we decided to put a voiceover here as we thought that the shots were quite creepy and with a voiceover saying 'leave me alone, leave me alone, leave me alone' getting louder could create a more scary scene.

After the shot above we show that Laura has disappeared which with this voiceover show Laura is trying to run away from what is following her.
On this voiceover we faded in the voice so thought it emphasises Faye's voice getting louder.

Editing: Transitions and Titles

When creating our trailer, we knew that a lot of trailers, not just horror trailers in general, contained transitions with different text on them, possibly explaining certain parts of the plot or just building up the tension in general. Below are some examples of this from the films 'Insidious', 'Orphan', 'Sinister' and 'The Possession': 

We decided to include this in our trailer as we wanted to achieve the tension build up and give the audience a bit more of an idea of what our film is about. Also, to give the trailer a bit of a variety rather than just having lots of different shots. Below is a screenshot of what our transitions and texts look like during the post production of our trailer. We didn't want to make the texts too short in case the viewer would be unable to read what it said and therefore, be confused. However, we didn't want to make them too long either in case it got boring and the tension build up decreased because of the length of time taken to move to the next shot in our trailer.

Below is what our text looks like in our trailer. We wanted our font to be quite simple, and not too over the top because we believe that sometimes, less is more and having a serif font gave it a sort of 'old-fashioned' effect which makes it look more spooky. We also noticed that a lot of trailers have serif fonts on their texts too and so we were influenced by this. We tested out sans serif fonts too just so we could get an idea and a variety of what font to use, but we decided that a serif font definitely looked better and so decided to use this. We also decided to have the background black and the font white. Although this is quite simple, we wanted it to contrast well and to not be too over the top. Again, we agreed that less is more and thought that if the background and font colour is simple, we could add effects to the text so it didn't look too over the top but wasn't boring either.

The font we finally decided to use was 'Trajan Pro'. We really liked this font as it was all in capital letters which we think stand out more and look more bold and dramatic. We also think the font linked really well with our chosen genre for our trailer and looked really spooky. We decided the font size should be 104 because we felt this was big enough to read but not massive so it looked really out of place. We worked hard to make sure the text was exactly in the middle of the screen and it all blended really nicely by adjusting the line spacing, tracking and baseline.

We then thought about what effects we could put on our trailer. Again, we wanted them to be simple but look really effective and to make sure they related to our chosen genre of Horror. Also, we didn't want to add the same effects to our text shots that we added to our title because we thought that, although it would go well, it would look really boring and we wanted it to look different.
We added a 'Fade to colour' transition onto our text. This quickly fades the previous shot into a black screen where our text then appears. We really like this as we felt it looked really effective and dramatic and would keep the audience wondering what's happening next.

Finally, we added the effect 'Subway Shadow' to the text. This made the text flash and gave a sort of 'flickering light' effect which we thought was really effective and looked spooky which links to our chosen genre.

Problems when Filming

When filming, we encountered a small amount of problems which were easily resolvable however, still existed.

1. When filming the bedroom scene, because we were filming during the lesson it was broad daylight. However, we wanted Ella to be sleeping and therefore it should've been dark. We found that when we filmed shots from a particular angle, you could see through gaps in Faye's blind that it was daylight outside. We felt that, although this was quite a minor problem, it was still quite annoying a could look slightly unrealistic if our main character was sleeping in daylight. To overcome this, we tried to close the gaps in Faye's blind as much as possible so little or hardly daylight was shining through. We also changed a few of the camera angles we had originally planned so that you could not see the blind/light in the shot.
2. When we were filming the cupboard under the stairs scene, we found that there was a lot of background noise e.g. radio, TV, people talking etc. We didn't want to have this in our shot as it sounds unprofessional and  can be easily resolved so we just made sure that the TV and radio were turned off and that there was no one speaking in the background while we were recording our shots.
3. Next, when filming the park scene there were a few problems that we had. Firstly, the sun was shining quite a lot and so we had the problem of shadows on the ground when filming the shots of Ella on the swings. We thought this was quite annoying because we had to change and film Ella in-front of the sun rather than behind it so, although you couldn't see my shadow anymore, Ella looked quite dark on the camera. To overcome this problem, we placed the camera at the best angle possible so that most of the sun was positioned behind trees and so Ella didn't look so dark on the camera. We also improved the brightness/contrast on Final Cut Pro when going through the editing process. And secondly when filming in the park, there were building works happening awfully close to where we wear filming and so these were quite loud which was quite frustrating as you are able to hear them on the filming when we came to editing. To overcome this problem, we used the background noises tool on Final Cut Pro which removes all the irrelevant background sounds and leaves us with just the sounds we wanted!
4. Another problem we had was when we were filming the bathroom scene in Laura's house. We wanted a few of the shots to show Laura's reflection in the mirror rather than filming her actual face with the camera. However, we found that a lot of the positions we put the camera in showed a small bit of either Faye filming it or the camera itself in the reflection of the mirror. We really wanted to have this shot because we thought it was a really good idea and had seen it done in other films we have watched e.g. The Possession. So, we re positioned the camera and changed the angle of it slightly and managed to find a place to position  it so that you could clearly see Laura's face in the mirror and were unable to see Faye recording it or the camera itself. When we watched this shot on the apple mac we were really happy with the outcome and decided that the re-positioned camera looked better than the original position anyway.

Editing: Sound Effects And Lighting

We have started to edit our trailer, on this post we show you what we have done to edit the sound and lighting.
We knew that we were going to have a variety of different sounds in our trailer because we know sound adds to the intensity and build up of the film it's advertising, especially in a horror film. A lot of the sound used in our trailer is already heard when we were filming, but some of the sounds and/or sound effects were added on afterwards in case the recorded sound wasn't loud enough, not what we wanted etc. 

When editing our trailer we have taken into consideration that the sound needed to be edited, either we add an effect or we fade in/out the sound. In the picture above it shows that we have been fading in and out the sound. Fading in and out a sound creates tension when watching a trailer and gives it more of an effect, rather than just having a sound entering and leaving very quickly which personally we think sounds quite rushed and strange when it's put over a scene.

We also found that some of the shots, especially the ones filmed in 'Ella's' bedroom, were slightly darker than others or in general too dark. We thought that all of the shots obviously should have the same brightness/contrast from whatever angle because it would look a bit strange and unprofessional if one shot was brighter than the other. To fix this problem, we used the 'Exposure' tool on Final Cut Pro to increase the light intensity and contrast of the different shots we filmed. We highlighted certain areas of the shots that we think would, in real life, be darker than other areas and balanced the brightness so that all the shots were the same and not brighter than each other.

In the screen shot above, you can see how we edited the brightness/contrast of a shot to make sure that the 

light intensity's were balanced in every one. We decreased the Shadows by -2%, making the image look slightly darker in places and therefore, creating a fear and making the scene more tense and spooky. We then increased the Midtones of the shot by 23%, making the colour of the shot more visible and improving the quality of the image. Finally, we increased the Highlights by 17%. By doing this, it highlighted the main objects in the shot, in this case it would be Ella and the cupboard. This gave an idea to the viewer of what could happen in this scene and what they should be focusing on when watching it. 

Filming

We have started to film our trailer and so far its going well. When filming we have decided to add extra shots to make our project look more like a trailer. Before and during our filming we have been looking at Horror trailers to influence us on what our shots should look like. When looking at the Horror trailers we realised that we needed more quick shots as most horror films only have a few long takes and a variety of short takes.

Film Poster Edits

When making our film poster we had to use a variety of edits on Photoshop, on this post I show what we used and what the effect was.

To start with, we made the background of our poster canvas black.
We then uploaded the photo of Laura, who will be playing 'Ella', after picking out which photo we thought was best out of all the ones we took. We changed the brightness to make it darker so that it faded more into the background this made it look scary/creepy as my black dress was now not seen and just my white collar was. We changed the brightness quite a few times so that the picture wasn't too dark and you could hardly see any features. We also changed the contrast but only slightly so that the picture was a bit darker and so made Laura look more evil. As you can see in the picture above we edited the brightness/contrast a few times.

We also used colour balance, we first we were just testing out what other edits we could use to emphasise Laura being possessed so looked at the colour balance and slightly changed it to cyan. It gave off a darker effect which we liked we also changed the colour to yellow slightly this made the picture a bit lighter.

When adding the smoke we thought it would be a good effect to have in the background as without it we thought the poster looked quite bare and boring. We searched for normal smoke and added it to the background, we then changed the fill. By changing the fill it made the smoke more transparent and it blended into the background. After adding the normal smoke we still thought that the poster needed more so we came up with the idea to add something in the smoke like the skulls. We then searched for skulls that looked like smoke we added a few of these and changed the fill just like the normal smoke so that they blended in to the smoke as well as the background. Once we finished editing the smoke we thought that the poster looked more spooky as it looked as if there were 'souls' behind Laura, which relates to our title 'Take Your Soul'.

 Each layer of smoke had a different fill or opacity so that it had the effect of some being more faded and others more bold.

It is important that we changed the opacity or/and fill so that the smoke wasn't too bold and not faded into the black background.

We decided to changed the poster to a setting called 'Luminosity' this made everything darker and more creepy. We looked at other settings but some made no effect or change, Luminosity was the most effective.

We decided that we wanted Laura's eyes to be blacked out, we managed to achieve this using the paint brush tool on Photoshop. It was very easy to do and it gave a more possessed look which is what we were going for.

In the photo above it shows options that we could use to edit our poster, we changed the brightness, contrast and colour balance.



Take Your Soul Poster

When creating our poster, we had a very exact idea of what we wanted to do. We knew that we wanted the background to be black as most horror film posters have black backgrounds and so we wanted to relate to this genre. We also knew that we wanted it to be quite simple and spooky, but at the same time appear quite complex and have a big impact on the viewers.
We wanted 'Ella', the main character in our film, to be on the front of our poster. We wanted to black out her eyes because we had previously seen this in horror films and other horror posters and thought it looked really effective and gave an impression of possessiveness and like she was being taken over.
Next, we wanted to have the 'demons' in the background to look almost like they were 'coming after' Ella, followed by lots of smoke/mist to add and extra spooky and scary effect.
Finally, we wanted to make the poster really realistic and so added the essential aspects e.g. title, credits, website, 'coming soon'.