Retouching the image

Well, once we had picked the best shot we took it in to Adobe Photoshop and we retouched it to make it look more dynamic. We edged the dark further in to the face and we cleaned up a few things: made the eyes whiter, lost some of the stray hair, put more colour in to the hand, and so on.

We blended the shadows around the face in to a solid black and resized the whole image so that the face would sit well within the poster format.

Then I found some great and wierd glasses in a picture on the web and I cut out the glasses from the rest of the picture and scaled them to fit Lima's face. I then just slightly blurred them to make them look like they were really in the original picture.

Just a few extra tweaks to get all the colours looking good and to add a filter or two and we were there - some hours later!!!

Very happy with the result though.

Here is a picture of Lima after retouching and before the glasses and one with the glasses on.

New Photos for the new poster design

Well, we have come up with a new idea for the main image for the poster. We needed to take a picture specially for it.

This lunch break we headed out with the Kodak.

To take a photo we were absolutely sure that wanted to use for our poster we took a range of shots to make sure we happy with one.

A change in direction

There is no easy way to say this ... people don't really like the poster image as much as we do, and the trailer could probably do with a bit more work too.

The main comments we got about the poster were:

• Not polished enough. It needs to be laid out more carefully, with more thought about where the elements all sit.
• We need to get all the elements on the poster that should be there: we kinda knew that one.
• Maybe it should be portrait rather than landscape
• We should try and find a better central image

Not much to change there then!!!!

As for the trailer, well the main comments were these:

• Needs to have better endframes to bring home the message loud and clear
• Can't really read the star's names
• Maybe there should be some more captions to promote the movie: ratings from newspapers and magazines, for example
• A bit tighter editing

And if we change the main picture on the poster we will need to make it all tie in together somehow.

Not much time left to complete the project now, with the deadline coming up quick, so we got to get a move on. I guess the good news is that, apart from research we haven't done too much work on the magazine cover yet, so we won't have change that so much. We want to base it on the poster so we will get that right first.

Flat planning our poster: Step Five

We decided it made sense to do the poster first, before the magazine cover. So we worked on that quite a bit.

Using the research we had come up with a list of things we had to have on the poster. Our list went like this:

Main Image (we will use a shot from the trailer footage)

Movie Title: Attack of the Nerds

Stars (that would be us)

Credits: producers, director, all that stuff

Rating symbol: 15

Logos and certificates: Filmworks, Dolby, etc.

The Launch date: when the  movie was coming out

Strapline: 4 eyes are better than 2

The production company: Burghley Entertainment

We wanted to keep the poster very clean and clear of clutter so we tried to include everything you should have but no more.

Here is what we cam up with.

Of course, we want to go and show it to people and get some feedback - so it probably isn't finished yet. We need to get some more of the elements on too, but overall a pretty good start.

Researching the Magazine Cover

Today we did a bit of research on the magazine cover.

We went to a large newsagents and looked at a whole load of Film and DVD magazines. We even bought one so we could refer to it.

We also looked on the web for specific horror movie film magazines here is an example of one.

We realised that the featured movie was generally used as the basis for the whole cover.

We also made a list of other things we would need on the cover:

• Magazine Title: we have gone for FILM EXPRESS
• Price
• Barcode
• Issue Date
• Issue Number
• List of movies included in this issue
• Special features in this issue
• Mentioning stars was a common theme too

Need to get the poster finished first though.

Researching the Poster: Step Four

We used Google images to look at some examples of horror movie posters and to analyse what conventions they use. Here are some examples of the posters we looked at:

1. The Eye
   
2. One Missed Call 
   
3. Rocky Horror Show 
   
4. The Mist 
   
5. Friday The 13th 

These were very inspiring and gave us lots to think and discuss about. We knew the main image was very important, it had to be shocking and eye catching.

Editing the trailer

Wow, editing is pretty tricky. there is a lot to get your head around.

You have to pick the bits of footage you want and then decide on exactly which bits from that footage you are going to use. You have to pick your starting image and your end frames.

Then you have to think about the sound track. What music are we going to use? When will we have dialogue and when not? Should a voiceover be included?

Anyway we did a pretty good job. Thank heavens for iMovie - it's a great bit of software.

Here is the end result of today's work.


Of course we want to show it to a few people and get some feedback so it isn't finished just yet.

Shooting the Trailer: Step Three

Today was the day of the shoot and we brought in a load of props and costumes. We decided that the mise-en-scene is an important part of expressing character. We used a wig, glasses, tie and blazer for the nerd costume and for that chav-tastic girl look heavy makeup, big hoop earings, slick back hair, tracksuit trouser's.

Props and costume list

• Wig
• Glasses
• Hoop Earings
• Make-up
• Tie
• Blazer

Designing a shooting schedule was very useful in the planning for the shooting of the teaser trailer. We filmed our interview's first as it was the easiest to film because it was in the drama studio. This introduces the character's straight away to the audience. The audience is given some information but must use some of their own imagination to develop the characters and what might what happen in the film.

We then found an outside location that suited the atmosphere we wanted: dingy, dark, woodland area.

We then set out to finish the rest of the filming that day. We filmed about 10 minutes of footage overall using a range of shot lengths and type. We filmed most of the shots twice to capture exactly what we wanted. We also used different levels as well by using an upper level of a tree to film from almost birds eye view.

The shoot was great fun and I hope that we got all shots that we need. We looked through the rushes a couple of times and we think we are good to go for the edit.

The Shooting Schedule

Now we have done our storyboard we can make up the shooting schedule, so we can be organised about filming and get all the shots we need. Here it is:

1st shot: Interview of nerd (Alfie), displaying his character traits. (mid shot)
2nd shot: Interview of Megan not doing the work and you can hear Alfie getting annoyed (mid shot)
3rd shot: Interview with Leela bullying Alfie (Mid shot/zoomed in and out)
4th shot: Leela and Megan running away through tree's (long shot)
5th shot: Leela and Megan's feet running through leaves and grass (close up)
6th shot: Close up of Leela looking scared
7th shot: Close up of Megan dead
8th shot: Mid shot then zoomed in of Leela dead on the floor
9th shot: Long shot of the killer walking towards megan against a wall
10th shot: Long shot of the killer walking away from Megan dead on the floor
11th shot: Shot of Leela running around a corner then falling over
12th shot: Alfie the killer walks towards Leela very slowly wielding a weapon (Mid shot/Long shot)
13th shot: Close up of killer with weapon looking crazed
14th shot: Leela and Megan running through the woods (long shot)
15th shot: Killer walking through the woods after the two girls (long shot)

Just got to shoot it now!

Title Decisions

Here we decided to create multiple titles to see what would have the most affect from our audience feedback. We talked about each font and the different effects that the font and it's colour have.

However, we did not feel that any of these would the effect we want. We did choose another font from the website Da Font to find the most appropriate text.

The Storyboard

Today we put together a storyboard for the trailer. Unfortunately we did it on paper and I don't have a digital copy so I can't show it to you.

It took us a while to put it together. This is all quite new to us.

Designing the Title and strapline

Having looked at a number of existing horror movie title designs, we needed to pick a good typeface.

We went on to the DaFont website and had a good search around.

We obviously wanted something 'scary' for the main title. Eventually we found one we really liked:  Cold Night for Alligators (Regular).

We had also decided to use one of our other possible titles, 4 eyes are better than 2, for a strapline. So we needed a font for that too.

We used the Alligators font for the numbers: 4 and 2; but we wanted something else, still a bit 'horror-ish', for the rest: we chose Nightmare 5. We kinda like it.

Here is a picture of them.

Design Research for the Movie Title

How the title of a movie is designed is very important. It is one of the key design factors behind a marketing campaign. 

To choose a design for the title we looked at other slasher horror title's and analysed them.

We realised that the text was usually always bold and stood a out from the page having an impact on the audience. We wanted to try to recreate that in our title.

I will write a blog later about how we do that.

Deciding on the title for the movie

Well, we have our synopsis. So now we need to come up with a name for the movie.


We started by writing out all our ideas on a long list. We then narrowed it down to the following choices:

•  Nerd Killer
•  Revenge Of The Nerd
•  Four Eyes Are Better Than Two
•  Attack Of The Nerd
•  Geek Attack
•  Beware Of The Geek
•  Greedy Geeky

In the end we went with Attack Of The Nerd.

Deciding on narrative and name: Step Two

Using the results of our research and the questionnaire we started the task of deciding on a story line for our movie.

This is what we came up with:

A group of A-level media students are filming their coursework together in a small group.

The group is in disagreement in what should be done and by by whom. This is because the only one person (Alfie) in the group who cares about his education and therefore his media grade too. The other members of the group (Megan and Leela) could not care less about the coursework or Alfie’s feelings.

As Alfie is bullied by these amoral teens he is pressurised to do terrible things. Alfie becomes more and more frustrated and panicked about what to do as he can see his A grade slipping away.

Alfie decides to make his own trailer. Alfie has become completely psychotic by now and has confused fiction with reality. He chases Megan and Leema through the trees at night and kills Megan horribly slashing her multiple times with his mum's bread knife. The tension mounts as he then hunts down Leema and we watch Alfie getting madder and madder as he slowly traps Leema - with the same horrible result.

The movie is set in a modern day school during the day and in the park at nightfall, which will allow us to create a good balance between realism and a good atmosphere for the intense scary situations.

So, we have a slasher movie with teen thrown in. Plus we have the Nerd aspect to provide some wry humour (nothing slapstick). The story has a "play within a play" feel to it as the audience watch a film of a film with the line between the one and the other becoming increasingly blurred. What is real and what is not? And the main character is a male. It all seems to fit with our research.

Now we need a title, a storyboard and a shooting schedule before we can start shooting.

Progress this week

Wow - another week gone by. This week we focussed on doing our research and the questionnaire, so we can put a narrative for the movie together.

We also did a little work on the flatplans for the poster and magazine cover. Just planning out what we need to do and how we would go about it.

Questionnaire, Results and Conclusions

We wanted to try and find out what our target audience might want to see most so we could make sure that our work was as effective as possible.

First we created a questionnaire, then we went out and asked 25 people the questions.

We took their answers and put the results into a spreadsheet and then we analysed the results. We made a series of pie charts up to help us see the findings more clearly.

You can see what we did using the 3 links above.

In a nutshell though, here is what we found:

• Of the 25 people we asked only 20 went to the movies at all or went and liked horror. We didn't ask them anymore questions.
• Of the 20 left only 16 met our target age criteria: aged between 15 and 30.
• Of those 16:
• 38% preferred slasher horror, 25% preferred horror comedy and 19% preferred teen horror
• 94% preferred a male killer and 81% thought that the gender probably or definitely mattered
• 31% thought the title was important and 50% thought it was quite important
• 38% were most influenced to go to a movie by the trailer, 37% by a magazine article and 25% by a poster

Conclusions

For us the implications of the results were clear:

• We should make a slasher horror movie with some teen and comedy component if possible
• The killer should be male
• We needed a good title
• All 3 marketing channels were important, but we had to do a good job with the trailer

Nothing really unexpected here but at least we have the data to back us up.