I researched many different Film Magazine front covers and realised that a lot of magazines, such as Total Film and Empire, used the same picture from their most publicised poster. I have decided to follow this trend. As I did with my promotional film poster I have made a mock-up of the basic design on my film magazine cover. Again the mock-up plan has changed slightly from my final magazine front cover.

Movie Poster

For my movie poster I first created a mock up to help show the basic design my movie was going to take. However since making the mock-up poster I have done alot more secondary research of film posters, so there are a few changes between the mock-up and the final draft of my movie poster. 

Venue Release Forms

When filming our trailer for the majority of the scenes we need specific permission from land owners to use their land for filming. The scene settings of our trailer which required permission to film are:

The Graveyard
The House Owner
Costa Coffee

For some of our scenes we did not have to get permission to film, these locations were as following:
The Alley Way
Maghull Train Station

To double check it was indeed okay for us to film in the train station we asked the merseyrail attendant and duty and he confirmed that it was.

Graveyard

A member of our group e-mailed the reverend of St Andrew's Church to ask if we could use the graveyard on the church land. The e-mail we sent the reply we got can be seen below:



House Owner

Fortunate enough for our group we were able to use one of our own houses to film part of our trailer, therefore we simply asked the parents of the person in our group and verbally got consent to film in their house.

Costume List

Our target market for our trailer is older teenagers and young adults. Something as simple as characters costumes can define what type of person they are, understanding how important costumes are we took time and cosideration deciding them. We made the costumes casual and in fashion for the modern day teenager/young adult. We also thought out our whole film to make more sense of what costumes would be used in the same shots of our trailer.

Venue List and Risk Assesments

St Andrews Church (Maghull)
Train Station (Maghull)
Costa Coffee (Ormskirk)
Country Lane (Maghull)
House

The locations above were perfect for the mis en scene needed to film our trailer. Our trailer is for a scary movie so we thought very carefully about lighting and what time of day to film. St Andrews Church gave us the perfect setting for eerie dark long establishing shots to fit in with the genre of our film.

For risk assessments we made sure that no one could be harmed or hurt whilst filming. When filming in the graveyard we made sure that all branches and twigs were moved out of the way to make sure no one tripped over. All so when filming in Costa Coffee a knife was used. We made sure that the first knife used (which fell off the table) was blunt so it caused no damage; we then swapped the knife for a sharper one. A lot of the camera angles we used were high shots therefore we had to make sure the platform we used to rest the video camera on was secure and safe.

St Andrews Church Graveyard

Cafe

House 

Country Lane

Filming Log

This is a copy of our filming log. As you can see there are some significant changes from out production schedule. When coming to film our trailer it became apparent that members of our group could not be present on some days, so we re-scheduled the days and our jobs within the days of filming.

Production Log

My group consisted of Rachel Slater, Lauren Talbolt, Sam Higham and myself, Lauren O'Connor. This helps us to decide who will execute which job whilist filming are trailer. We have split the jobs fairly amongst the group. We have also included a timetable of what we will film on what days and times.



Actors

Victoria Francis

Hannah Hobson

Props

Below are pictures of props we used for our film trailer:

Knife

Gravestones

Key

Mirror

Photograph



Video Camera

Torch

Telephone 

Cabinet and Draw

Coffee cup and plate



Shower Curtain

Story Board

Below is pictures of the story boad we drew up for our trailer. Each picture reresents a scene in our trailer and next to the pictures we described what camera angles would fit best with our shots. A storyboard is exetremey important when making a short film/trailer. Out storyboard establishes framing, provides blocking and focus information, plans actor movements and action, plans camera movements and demonstrates editing possibilities. Although a storyboard helps us decided what to film and what would look best, whilist filming we did stray from the orginal plan to imporve our trailer.

Film Trailer Questionnaire

For primary research into film trailer I have created a questionnaire for people to answer.
Please click here to view it.

The Sixth Sense poster analysis

                    

The three posters above are all for the film The Sixth Sense. The first think which is noticeable is how similar these poster are to one another, gives the film almost a house design - like a magazine does with their title. All three posters are very simple yet effective all using very bold black, orange and white colours. This simplicity conveys a typical stereotype of a horror film which is effectively simple and bold.

 The picture of Bruce Willis on the left and right poster is the same. The facts that Willis is looking to the side and not at the camera makes the image seem threatening. The audience is led to believe that he is looking at something which they cannot see which adds to the darkness and mystery of psychological horror. The picture of Willis' face is highlighted in a bright colour which could indicate that there is hope for this character from the darkness that surrounds him. It is also clear that his features are quite rugged which is naturally associated with strength, as well as him being male.

How Willis is portrayed in this poster can be contrasted in the way that the other character in this film, Cole is portrayed. In the left and centre posters it is clear that Cole is a young boy and from the six behind the outlining of the number 6 gives a clue that Cole is the one with the sixth sense. In the same two posters the picture of Cole is filled with darkness which represents how he lives his life. However the bright number 6 which is behind Cole acts as a silver lining, to show that there may be help and hope for Cole yet. The right hand-side poster shows Cole in the same lighting as Willis. However you can clearly see almost a smoke around Cole which becomes that it is his breath. As told in the trailer Cole states that when a ghost is around it becomes cold, this maybe a clue to the twist and plot of the whole film, as well as adding tension to the audience.

The text in the three posters above is very effective to the film. The stars name Bruce Willis is on all three posters, this shows the importance of Willis' name to the film and attracting the right target audience. The left poster uses text which could be used as the films slogan: "Not every gift is a blessing". This ambiguous bold statement adds further confusion to the audience as the sentence is self-contradictory. The centre poster also names the five other senses which the majority of people possess to make the link more noticeable with the sixth sense.

Another thing I also noticed about the lighting of right hand-side poster is the streaming light from the right hand corner of the poster. This light seems to represent the light from heaven, from another world. The fact that Cole is closer to this light gives an idea that Cole is in close contact with another world than Willis.

Sixth Sense Trailer

 

The Sixth Sense is a 1999 film written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan. The film follows the story of Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis) a psychologist who receives an award and on the same night is visited by an un-satisfied ex-patient. A year after this encounter Crowe is assigned to a young boy called Cole who seems to be suffering from the same problem as his former ex-patient. Much to the dismay of his wife Crowe begins to spend a lot of time with Cole to try and understand his condition, it soon becomes apparent that Crowe might be Cole's only hope, but what is unrealised is that Cole is also Crowe's only hope.

The Sixth Sense trailer begins with a state of equilibrium, as we get the idea of normal busy city life was an unfortunate incident of a car accident has taken place. This is made clear by an establishing shot of the road zooming out; with diegetic speech from the character Cole talking to his mum explaining what has happened. However once Cole says "Standing next to my window" all  diegetic music stops and the trailer takes a more sinister turn with an eerie soundtrack, which builds tension making the audience drawn in.

The next scene is of a red balloon rising up towards a light. This certain clip is open to ambiguous interpretations. The red balloon can be seen as a lead for Cole towards something from another world. However the balloon can also be a representation of a spirit going up towards the light of heaven. The fact that the clip cuts before the balloon has reached the light gives the idea that these spirits have not yet entered the next world but trapped in this.

There are also a lot of shadows throughout the trailer. This represents the connection between Cole and his mother. Throughout the trailer there are clues given that Cole has an isolated relationship, he remains in the shadows to not draw attention to his mother: "because she doesn’t look at me the way everybody else does and i don't want her to know."

The trailer uses a lot of short clips and cut shots to add to the excitement and fear of the trailer. The clips are connected by very quick fade in fade out shots of black - this help relates to a heart beating fast. Cole is introduced by a lot of high angle shots. This gives the audience the idea that Cole is vulnerable in this movie and fraught with danger. The idea of a child being in danger is typical of a horror film and in particular a Psychological horror. There is also a lot of quick zooms in and zooming out of camera angles, not only to add to the fast pace of the trailer but to also emphasize the idea of "falling down really fast".

There is hardly any text used in the trailer but the basic story is told by Cole to audience as clips of audio from the film are being used as a voice over. The only text used in the film is the name of the main actor "Bruce Willis" and the name of the actual film "Sixth Sense". It is clear from the trailer that this film is a psychological horror; however it is typical of psychological horror to have a twist to the story. The fact that we are told in the trailer that Cole is the boy who possesses the sixth sense and can see dead people, tells the audience that there is another more surprising eerie twist to come.

The colour red is very important in this trailer. Red is usually linked with danger therefore Shyamalan intentionally absents this colour from most of the film; instead the colour is used in isolated shots. As you can see in the trailer the colour red is used for the colour of the balloon, carpet, Cole's sweater, the tent and Cole's mother's hair and sweater. The majority of the colours in the film seemed to be washed out and dim to represent the darkness and evilness of the film.

Our Chosen Genre

As a group we have decided to base our coursework on a psychological horror. We will make a trailer, poster and front cover in relationship to the psychological horror genre.

Psychological horrors rely on characters fears, guilt, beliefs, eerie sound effects, relevant music and emotional instability to build tension and further the plot. Psychological horror tends to be subtle compared to traditional horror and typically contains less physical harm, as it works mainly on the factors of mentally affecting the audience rather than the display of graphic imagery. In a psychological horror the essential element is to frighten the audience mentally, whereas this is not the case in thrillers.

Examples of psychological horror film are as following:

1408

The Blair Witch Project

The Sixth Sense

The Unborn

The Others

Gothika

The Shinning

Paranormal Activity.

Inception Magazine Front Cover Analysis

Both Total Film and Empire magazines are established critics of upcoming new films, as can be seen above, both institutions have done special editions of their magazines for Inception. Equally the magazines have changed their usual house style of their magazines to fit the conventions of architecture. The magazines both focus on washed-out colours contrasted with a striking red, which is associated with danger. DiCaprio is wearing dark colours which emphasize an element of the evil.  The images of DiCaprio have been given a back-lighting which casts an eerie glow around the washed out colours. This gives the idea of a light at the end of a tunnel, as though there is still some hope for DiCaprio in this film.

However there are contrasts within the two magazine covers. The Empire magazine cover uses the puffs to give a tunnel-like image and has given a birds-eye view of a city. This back image gives an idea of a fast-paced movie which has quite confused surroundings. The Total Film magazine cover also uses a bird-eye view of a city, but only for the title changing the house style of the magazine. The background image is actually of a street and DiCaprio standing in the middle of it. The picture is taken from a low angled shot to make DiCaprio seem in control of the situation.

Introduction to Film Trailers

The purpose of a film teaser trailer is to advertise the film, usually by highlighting the best bits of the film in the trailer, so more of the target audience want to see the film. The first ever trailer was shown in the U.S.A in November 1913. The trailer was produced by Nils Granlund for the short film The Pleasure Seekers.  In the early 20th century film trailers tended to be in black and white, have very little dialogue, often augmented by large, descriptive text and have non-diegetic sound an example of a very early film trailer can be seen below:

Right up until the late 1950’s trailers were mostly created by National Screen Service. However in the 1960s the face of cinema trailers changed. Slow-paced, calmer trailers were replaced with Text-less, montage trailers and quick-editing. In 1964, Andrew J. Kuehn distributed his independently-produced trailer for Night of the Iguana using stark, high-contrast photography, fast-paced editing and a provocative narration by a young James Earl Jones. His format was so successful; he began producing this new form of trailer with partner Dan Davis:

Inception Trailer analysis

From first viewing of the Inception movie trailer above it is clear what genre it fits into. There is a mixture of slow and fast paced scenes to emphasize the thriller as the genre of the film, whereas the pictures themselves makes it clear it is also a sci-fi. The voice over at the beginning of the film with the mysterious music helps explain the very basic plot of the film. However only they very basics of the film are explained, this adds to the idea that the film is mysterious and confusing.

An indefinite soundtrack is used throughout the trailer to link the film with this music. I realised that when watching this teaser trailer that the soundtrack of Inception is somewhat similar in parts to that of the Dark Knights. This may be to subconsciously allow the audience to link the two movies together as they have the same director (Christopher Nolan). The voiceover in the trailer is actually taken from the film itself and is the voice of the main star, Leonardo DiCaprio. The director has not used an actual voice over because they do not want the film to be fully explained, the idea of inception itself is confusing and the trailer being confusing links to this idea.

The trailer begins with logos of Warner Brothers, Legendary Picture and Syncopy, with Warner Brothers logo taking dominance. As the picture does an aerial zoom of all three logos it becomes apparent that they are all made up of buildings from a city. This makes the three logos unique to this film but also still recognisable as their own brand and also emphasises the idea of a city-like maze. The trailer is then followed by an establishing shot of the lead character (DiCaprio) on a beach, this shot is establishing because it is inside a dream where the majority of the film takes place. The word "Security" is linked with a picture of a gun; this further distinguishes the idea of a thriller based movie with this trailer, whereas the following sentence "Subconscious Security" links the film also with the sci-fi genre.

 

The two images above show how the director is advertised in the teaser trailer. These two images are shown at the beginning of the trailer to grab the attention of those people who are a fan of Nolan's work or of the film The Dark Knight. Both images are introduced with a cut scene and paired with sharp loud music to add to the intensity of the film and the trailer and both zoom in to the letters.

Physics itself even seems to be defied in the film in a number of ways through the use of gravity:

The two pictures above show how even the idea of gravity is questioned in the film. This adds the confusion on a sci-fi action film. The picture on the right is in particular significant as the city is being lifted up as though the buildings are a wave, this links to another important scene in the film when DiCaprio is lying in the sea with waves going past, a clip of this scene can be seen at the beginning on this trailer, whereas the picture on the right gives an idea of unstable properties and world.

Architecture is further expressed through the words "YOUR MIND" and "IS THE SCENE OF THE CRIME" which are both presented on a black background in a cut shot towards the end of the teaser trailer.  As the shot zooms out the wording follows going past half-visible buildings.

The action in the trailer becomes more intense as it continues. There are quicker paced cuts used, with more action and a contrast of water and fire.  However the pace of the trailer begins to slow again and shows the real danger of Inception and the human mind as Nolan tried to express how the human mind can be the most dangerous weapon of all. 

The title "Inception" again is of an architectural nature. The first font of the trailer, as I have mentioned above, is that of Warner Brothers, Legendary Pictures and Syncopy logos which were made up of buildings. The fact that the first and last font in the trailer was linked to building construction shows the importance of architecture in the film.

The ending scene of the trailer shows mild comedy which adds an almost sinister twist to a movie which is presented as a serious sci-fi action thriller. This adds further confusion to the audience who is watching the trailer and this confusion links the Inception's story line.

Poster Analysis #1: Inception

Inception is a 2010 American thriller sci-fi action film written and produced by Christopher Nolan, starring Leonardo Dicaprio, Ken Watanabe and Michael Caine. The film characters the journey of a thief, Dom Cob (DiCaprio) who extracts information from the subconscious mind of his victims while they dream, who is offered a chance to regain his old life in exchange for one last job: performing inception, the planting of an idea into the mind of his client's competitor. With help of Nolan’s good reputation, Inception was able to secure a $100 million advertising expenditure by and Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures.

There are persistent themes in all the film marketing: Leonardo DiCaprio being the most famous actor in the film is the main face of all three of these posters; the idea of a confused agricultural world, and the logo text "inception".

All three posters are leaked of colour giving neutral and dull grey, blue and white colours, which are highly contrasted with the bold red colour of the text. The theme of confused agriculture emphasises the idea of being trapped in a world that none of the characters are familiar or comfortable with. The tall buildings add to this idea and almost seem intimidating. Although all three pictures are highly edited, it is clear that DiCaprio is a rugged male character, which is naturally associated with strength.

The Tagline of "Your mind is the scene of the crime" is in itself mysterious. This effect is used in thriller movies to give an indication of a film which will stretch the human mind as to how much you can really trust even your own thoughts.

The image on all three of the pictures has been given the back-lighting effect which casts a comforting glow around the dark glum architecture. This contrast of colours gives an idea of a "light at the end of a tunnel", as though the characters are looking for a way to escape the world they have created.

All three posters also include information about the director of the film: "From the director of the Dark Knight". This is to draw the audience’s attention to this film from fans of The Dark Knight.

From further research of Warner Brothers distributing I have discovered that there are certain conventions that are continued throughout their advertisement campaign. I found that a poster from the film "Matrix" has a striking resemblance to one of the Inception posters:

In both posters the characters are surrounded by tall buildings in a New York like city. The characters are emphasised by a vertical feature behind them. The Matrix poster uses the idea of a bright light whereas Inception uses the idea of road to add to the idea of a confused architecture.

The inception poster above shows intextuality (when something looks out of place) through water. This again adds to the idea of a confused world which cannot be explained. The above three posters come from film Dark Knight, Inception and Watchmen. The Dark Knight and Inception are both directed by Christopher Nolan and have extremely similar posters; this is mainly down to the Auteur Theory.  Auteur Theory suggests that the best films will bear their maker’s ‘signature’. This may manifest itself as the stamp of his or her individual personality or perhaps even focus on recurring themes within the body of work. Nolan clearly uses the idea of a skyscraper city and one of the main characters walking away from the picture being taken. All three posters above have been advertised by Warner Brothers Productions. The "Watchmen" poster uses very similar conventions to that of the Dark Knight and Inception posters, the tall Skyscrapers and washed out colours appear in all three posters.