Lighting

Strobe

For our party scenes during the film we wanted to create a nightclub effect as we had decided to base our film around a typical teenage party. We took influence from Skins as there is a lot of strobe lighting used in the parties that take place there. 

We therefore found a strobe light that we could use and decided upon using it as our only source of light when filming as we thought this would be more effective than if the light was on. 

Problems we faced:

Because we had to film our actors dancing in the strobe light we found that because it flashed on and off so quickly, the camera sometimes would not focus on the people. We found that when we held the strobe light up nearer the camera it was more effective because it lit up people's faces therefore focusing on the victims that the clown will try and murder. This was important because of the use of Facebook profile pictures featuring in our trailer along with the people actually in the party to be linked together by the audience. 

We took a lot of footage for the party scenes to make sure we had enough good quality footage for the final cut of our trailer. This gave us much more variation of shots to choose from and helped when editing them together because the strobe created a smooth effect when editing different shots together as it was not as obvious that we had taken two different cuts and put them together.

Other Lighting

Because the lighting was fairly dark anyway as we were in a cellar at night time, this meant that we didn't have to alter the lighting for the scenes outside the main party room that much because it already had quite a 'creepy' affect to it without much alteration. We ensured that for the scene which contained the mirror, we had quite high key lighting so that the shot of the clown behind the girl in the mirror was more effective, otherwise audiences may not notice the clown and it wouldn't have the same effect.

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.

Audience Feedback

We had a viewing of our teaser trailer to a range of 16-18 year olds and created a questionnaire in order to get feedback from our target audience.
The questionnaire consisted of these questions:

1. What genre do you think it is?
2. Have we portrayed this genre well?
3. After watching the trailer do you understand the title?
4. What part was most effective?
5. Do you think the music was appropriate?
6. Are there any parts you didn't understand? If so what?

We were very pleased with the feedback we recieved as it was mostly extremly positive

We originally had the definition of coulrophobia in our trailer however took it out as it didn't fit well with the rest of the trailer, we were therefore pleased to see that there were enough hints in the trailer to show that the title 'Coulrophobia' means the fear of clowns.


Other feedback we got was that we portrayed the genre well through the lighting and costume and also through the music and sound. People also thought the music was very fitting and said 'It emphasised the fear and urgency'

We were pleased to see that the close up shot of the clown at the end of the trailer made a lot of people jump, and on the feedback questionnaires many people put that this part was the most effective. 

Some feedback we got was that the parts we didn't film seemed random, and therefore we are going to further edit this montage of YouTube clips in order to show more clearly how they represent the back story of the clown showing he is disconnected from society and therefore explaining why he is killing the girls.
 

Website: Final draft

This is the final draft of our website for 'Coulrophobia'

• Background image: Original for the background image on the website we used a screenshot of the clown from our footage, however we decided to go for a more professional look and therefore took some stills using the clown outfit we used in our trailer. We decided to use this image for our website and poster in order to create a well known image for our film and to link them all together nicely.
• Font: We decided to use the same font that we have used in our teaser trailer and poster in order to create a recognisable font for a film, we chose this font as we felt it fitted with the genre of our film and the crosses through the O's indicate death. We have placed the title on the right hand side of the web page as here it doesn't take away too much from the image of the clown.
• Our trailer plays automatically when you enter our website, we did this to show the visitor what the film is about before the explore the rest of our website, this also seems to be a common feature of horror movie websites which inspired us to do it.
 

 

• The tabs we have chosen are 'Home', 'About', 'Trailer', 'Gallery' and 'Cast and Crew' we chose these as they seem to be a convention of a horror movie website as we have seen similar tabs on websites we have researched which are of a similar genre to our film.

• We have also included links to Coulrophobias Facebook, Twitter and YouTube channel along the top bar of our website. We decided to do this as it has appeared successful for other horror films and can act as free promotion of our film as visitors of our website can follow/like us and share it with their friends.  

As we only had to create the homepage for our website when you clicked on the tabs to go to another page it says 'Page under construction' (as shown below) However for the 'Gallery' page we added some screen shots of our film in order to make the website look more authentictic.

 HERE IS THE LINK TO OUR WEBSITE:

http://deadendfilm7.wix.com/coulrophobia

 

Website deconstruction: Mama

When you first enter the Mama website the trailer for the film plays automatically, we feel this is a good idea as it gives the visitor an insight to the film before they enter the website and further promotes the film, therefore we have chosen to have our trailer automatically play on the homepage of our website.


This is the homepage of the 'Mama' website:

 

• The background image is a familiar image from the film which is also used as the image for the poster, we have decided to this with our film website and poster in order to create a familiar image for our film
• There are Facebook and Twitter links across the top of the website, this allows visitors to like or follow these social networking sites and share with their friends, acting as a form of promotion for the film. Therefore for the homepage of our teaser trailer we are going to include links to the Coulrophobia twitter and facebook pages, as a way of promoting our film.
• The same font is used throughout the homepage of the website, which is also the same font used for the titles in the trailer
• They include 'Creator of Pans Labyrinth' on the website, this creates a high expectation for the film as the creators have already made a successful film, and could attract more people to watch the film as it is likely to be of a good standard.
• There is a song of a horror genre playing as you look at the website, this enhances the genre of the film and gives more of an essence of the film as you are looking at the website.
• There is also a twitter live feed on the home page, showing tweets about Mama, this allows anyone who visits the website to see reviews from other people about the film, acting as a promotion tool.

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.