Evaluation Question 2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary task?

Iconic Batman logo

We wanted our trailer and our ancillary products to link together in some way and have a common theme which would be instantly recognizable to an audience, for example they could look at the plain image of the clown and immediately know that it was for the film ‘Coulrophobia’. This has been done for films such as ‘The Dark Knight’, where the bat symbol is an iconic image that is recognizable throughout the world. 

Therefore, we chose the photo of the extreme close up of the clown mask as the image that would be iconic and instantly identifiable. 

Image of the clown mask

This also links to the other movie posters from the slasher and horror genre, which often have the killers mask, for example Scream 4 and Smiley. We felt that this particular image of the clown was good as it would fill most of the page of our poster and most of the screen for our website and would be a memorable image. 


Scream 4

Smiley

Screenshot from the trailer

Although, the image of the clown mask is one that we took on a photoshoot for our poster and website, there is a very similar extreme close up shot at the end of our trailer. We think that our poster is simplistic and so easier for the audience to remember as the image of the clown stands out and is the main feature. Additionally, we feel that our poster does not reveal anything about what actually happens in the film, apart from that it involves a clown. This is good when paired with our trailer as the trailer gives slightly more away than the poster. 



Our poster and website are almost exactly the same, creating a strong link between the two, and therefore, again, making them more memorable. 

Final website

Final poster

The website does not reveal much of the narrative of the film, but has the trailer embedded into it, so that the viewer of the website can watch it. The trailer is on autoplay so that as soon as the page loads the trailer starts playing, making sure that they are aware of the trailer and gives them more information on the actual narrative of the film.

Another feature that links our trailer and ancillary tasks together, is the font. We spent a long time finding and deciding on the right font and eventually chose Extrakrebel 1987. We felt that this font was right for our film as it has creepy feel to it and fits well with the theme. Additionally, we think that it fits well as the clown stalks his victims before he kills them, and the x’s through the o’s could symbolize the killer crossing them off his list as he murders them. 

Font we chose

The trailer and both the poster and website are fairly dark, adding to the horror genre. Low-key lighting is common in horror films and promotional packages, such as The Woman In Black and Mama (see below), and we think that we have used this well and to our advantage, to convey the horror genre but also to create mystery around the clown character. It also links to the theme of adolescence as we have used a strobe light in our trailer to create the party scene but this links back to the horror genre as, although the characters look as though they are having a good time, you do not know what will appear after the screen flashes back up from being black. We played on this in our trailer by making the clown face appear in an extreme close up at the end, which appears at the same time as a crescendo in the music.



Mama website

Mama poster

The Woman in Black poster



The Woman in Black website


The combination of our main product and ancillary tasks are effective as they all feature the same, recognizable image of the clown mask, which the audience would instantly recognize from the film ‘Coulrophobia’. We also managed to keep the same style throughout, by using the same fonts and images, creating a common theme between them all. The trailer and ancillary tasks reflect the genre of our film well, making the audience members aware of the genre and therefore making it more effective. 

Problems we ran into aka. technology sucks

We ran into a few problems while editing together our trailer and making the website and poster. These problems that we ran into were mainly down to the technology we were using (hence the title).

The first problem we ran into while editing together the trailer was that the clown did not stand out enough in the shot of him standing next to the tree while one of the female characters is driving away. We had previously color edited this shot to make it darker and more mysterious. However, we felt that the clown did not stand out and was not noticeable enough. To fix this problem we decided to color edit the footage so that the clown was in full color but the rest of the shot was darkened. As we were not editing on Final Cut Pro, we found a way of doing this on Photoshop [see previous post]. 
The first problem we ran into with this was that it took us a while to change the colors on each individual layer (there were 168). Once you had saved the project once, you could no longer use the history tool to change the color of the clown. As we were color editing in hour slots, we ran into some problems with this. 
The second problem was that once we had finished editing the colors, we couldn't export it back into a moving image. 
Therefore, we couldn't use this. To fix this we edited the color on iMovie, to create a darker image, but used Ken Burns to zoom in on the clown. 

The second problem that we faced involved the website. At school we were creating the website on a widescreen Mac. This was fine for viewing the website on that particular computer. However, when changing the website at home or on another regular PC, the website did not fit onto the screen. 
To solve this problem, we changed the website so that it fit on a regular sized computer screen.

The final problem that has occurred (and still isn't solved) is one that involves the poster. As we made the poster at home, we had the font downloaded at home but not at school. The printer at home does not print A3, like we need it to be printed, we have to print it at school. However, whenever the poster is sent to school, whether it be through email or on a memory stick, the font does not work and the poster does not work how it should. 

We have come up with a temporary solution to this, as we had a photo of the poster that was sent through Twitter that we printed in an A3 size. However, this lowered the quality of the photo as it became slightly pixelated. 
Another method that we are going to try is to print the poster in an A4 size at home and then try to blow it up to an A3 size at school. Hopefully this should work.

The Process of Making Our Poster

To start with we took a screenshot from our trailer, as many big films use a scene from the movie as a poster, to put the audience members in the middle of a scene and create tension. We decided to use the screenshot of the clown at the end of the trailer, as we thought that this would be a good, memorable image to use.

However, we decided that the quality of this image was not great and could be better. We also felt that we could take a better photograph of the clowns face, as this one was not greatly positioned for a poster or website.

We when did a photoshoot with the clown costume and mask. We took various shots of the clown mask in different positions and with varied lighting. Below are a few shots from this photoshoot. 

A particular photo that we liked and thought would work well for our poster is this one: 

We liked the lighting on this photo and achieved this by turning all the lights of in the room but a lamp on the left side of the face. We covered the lamp to make the lighting dimmer and not so harsh.

We then edited this photo on the website pixlr.com. The one effect that we particularly liked on the photo was one called 'polak'.

Once we were happy with the effect on the photo, we used Word to create the poster. We inserted the photo onto a blank word document that was set on landscape. We used a landscape orientation as we thought that with this photo it would give us more room to put the title and other information on at the side.

We then changed the background color to black so that it would blend in with the photo and you would be unable to tell where the photo finished and the paper began. We decided to do this as if we stretched the photo to fit the page, the photo would have become pixelated and the quality would have dropped.

We then added the film title and the tagline 'n. an extreme or irrational fear of clowns' in the font that we had picked out, Extrakrebel 1987.

After this, we added the billing block and the certificate rating to the bottom of the poster. We made sure that the billing block was as central to the page as we could make it, with the film rating at the side. Additionally, we made sure that the billing block did not take up much of the page, as it is not as important as the rest of the poster.

Finally, we added the release of the film. We decided to put this in a different color to the rest of the information on the poster so that the audience was drawn to it and they know when the film is 'coming soon'. However, because using a different color would distract from the rest of the poster a little bit, we made this font smaller than the main title and the tagline, so not to draw too much attention away from them.

Overall, we are happy with how are final poster looks and think that it would effective in drawing an audience into our film.

The final poster:

Poster Draft #2

Although we like the initial draft of our poster, we decided to make a second for some other ideas that we had. 

For this poster, we took the idea of using a shot from the film as our poster, which immediately puts the viewer in the middle of a scene and creates tension. This has been done for many famous films, such as Inception. 
We used the same font for the poster as we have done for the trailer and the website, which links them altogether, and creates a strong theme between them all. 

For the poster, we put the names of the three main actors at the top. This draws viewers in, as they may have seen them in something else and enjoyed it and want to watch this film (although our actors are not professional actors). This is usually done in big Hollywood blockbusters such as Les Misérables and The Aviator. 




However, there are some issues with this poster:

1. Because this is a screenshot from the trailer, the image is not as good quality as it could have been if we had taken a photograph while we were filming. Although, we think that it is quite good, as the image gets larger, it becomes more pixelated and the quality drops.
2. The 15 certificate as a black border around the edge which we could not get rid of, and neither could we find a version that did not have a background. Still, we don't think that it is too noticeable. 
3. We also thought that is poster gave a bit too much away about the film. We think that the other poster created more curiosity from the audience as it gave less away.

Billing Block

To make a professional looking movie poster, it needs to have a billing block. All film posters have a billing block, which consists of the names and titles of important actors/actresses, crew members and other people involved in the production of the film.
It also includes logos from production companies and the film rating. 

Below are a few images of billing blocks

Twilight (2008)

The Hangover (2009)

The Dark Knight (2008)

A couple of popular fonts for billing blocks are

Bee

Univers 39 Thin Ultra Condensed

Tall Skinny Condensed

Triple Condensed Gothic








As you can see from the pictures, all the fonts are fairly similar, tall and "skinny". Unfortunately, you have to purchase the fonts and they are quite expensive so we tried to look for a font that was similar to these.

Poster Drafts

 

These are our first drafts for our movie poster. We used the photo that is our blog background and for our website background. We think that this links them altogether and would make the audience aware that they're all from the same film. We also think that the mask would be iconic and people would hopefully associate the clown mask with our film.

The posters below are looking at the font that we may use. All the fonts below came from the site dafont.com

 

 

For this poster we used the font Extrakrebel 1987. We think that this font fits well with the theme of our film, as it looks quite creepy and we think that the crosses through the 'O''s could symbolize death and crossing the victims off as he kills them. However, an issue with this font that we have is that it is quite difficult to read. Therefore, we are going to ask people who do not know anything about our trailer what it says to see if they can read it.

For this poster we used the font Erthqake. We chose this font because we liked that it was slightly blurry, which could imply that something isn't right. However, we think that it doesn't go with the theme of our film enough and doesn't look right on the poster.

This font is called Vtks Contact. We originally liked this font as some of the letters were blurred, again implying that something is not right with the clown. The font also looks a bit like the font used in older films and war films when they look at reports. This could suggest that the clown is being looked into by the police and there is a report on him.

The last font that we liked was called Wilderness. We liked this font as we think that it fits well with the theme of our film and stands out well enough against the black background but does not take any attention away from the clown. This is important as we want the clown to be the main feature of the poster, and for people to look at the clown and immediately know that it is from our film.

Typography

We used the website www.dafont.com to choose a font to use for our trailer, poster and website. Here are the ones we have been looking at:

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

We have decided that fonts 1, 2, 5 and 9 are our favourite as they fit best with the concept of our film. We will therefore experiment further with these three fonts in order to select the typography to use in our trailer, poster and website.