The Trailer Is Finished!

Now that we have the finished product (which can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tu5qzpHpf80) we can all finish off our ancillary tasks and focus on the evaluations. Making the trailer was really fun but now we need to finish the whole thing off.

T.F

Editing 03/03/10

Today we did some editing, and we're very close to finishing the main task! The focus of our work now is more on making minor tweaks than major changes. Today we added credits at last, changed some colours, and filmed a new version of the 'innocent student being scared' scene with Dan actually looking scared this time! The colour was changed as the lighting made the shot very yellow, but we changed this for a slight blue tint, the result being the shot looks very clean now, and we might go over the other scenes if there is time, and check their colours.

Tom accidentally deleted our mood music for the first half of the trailer, but we replaced this for a slightly different music anyway which sounded slightly better because there was variation in it throughout it, whereas the last music we used was just a constant noise which didn't sound very pleasing.

Tomorrow we hope to add some voice overs, but we don't know whether to use Rob's well spoken dramatic voice or a boring voice. We'll see tomorrow!

D.N., R.K., T.F.

Filming and Editing 24th February 2010

Now we're focusing more on editing, but there are still scenes which have now decided we want to re-shoot or there are scenes we want to add into our teaser trailer. One of the scenes we needed to re-shoot was a close up with Tom. The first attempt wasn't brilliant, we were trying to set up the shot to make our villain look intimidating, but the angle of the camera, plus Tom's face didn't look convincing enough!

This time, we had the camera at and angle, and Tom changed his facial expression in the brief scene to avoid having a rather static shot. Below are two takes of this shot for comparison.





Editing has now reached the stage where we've got roughly what we want, and now we're focusing on fiddly changes to the film, such as shortening scenes in order to keep a pace to it. Sound is now playing a greater importance in editing, we've been carefully editing the mood music and been adding our first voiceovers, although these were deleted as they need to be improved due to sounding dangerously cheesy.

R.K., D.N. and T.F.

Filming 11th February 2010

Today we filmed two further scenes for our teaser trailer. Today we intended to get some dialogue into our trailer. Both scenes feature our main character, Agent Valentine.

In the first scene, we filmed Valentine running, stopping to fix his shoe, then shouting at a villain he is chasing. First we had to find a shot where the bright sun wasn't going to blur the shot, and where there was enough shade to dull the surroundings. This was done in three takes, and our second take can be seen below. We rejected this one because there was a sound fault and the top of our character's head was cut off.



In the second scene we shot, we wanted the scene to feature our title character doing something other than running. In the end, we shot a scene where Valentine sits on a bench singing along to 'Remedy' by Little Boots, making an fool of himself. The effect of this scene is intended to disappoint the audience, as if to say "here is the man who's going to save your life", to then disappoint the audience. We did this in two takes. Because of the sun we had to be careful with our shadows, so we filmed the scene from some distance away from the subject and then zoomed in order to avoid any complications. This scene was done in two takes.

R.K, D.N. and T.F.

Overview of the trailer so far

The trailer now has some music and sound effects on it and there is text. The first half of the trailer is more complete than the second half, we need some more scenes to play around with in order to build up the pace a bit. There are also a couple of scenes which we will consider reshooting a couple of scenes because the quality of them is a bit dodgy.

R.K.

Not as planned...

Our trailer is currently lacking a lot of dialogue so we decided to go and improvise some scenes with dialogue in. It didn't go to plan though, and we only shot an running scene where Valentine chases a villain across the screen, and then the villain chases Valentine back in true comic fashion. We didn't get any dialogue though so we need to go out another time and film something! It would've helped if I (Rob) didn't waste any time trying to double park someone!

D.N, T.F. and R.K.

Editing 4th February 2010

Today we did some editing of what we have so far, and we made a lot of important changes to our trailer. We spent a lot of time playing with the music in our trailer, and based on this we moved a lot of scenes around in order to build up the trailer to a climax which is what we wanted to do right from the start. What this does mean though is that our trailer looks nothing like how we planned it in the storyboard, but we've learnt a lot of new skills since then so we've put that to a good use to produce what we have at the moment.

R.K. and T.F.

Colour and characters in a film poster

For my poster, i've been using a lot of bright colours to reflect Valentine's Day being a comedy. The posters for 'Twilight' used lots of dark colours such as black and grey which gives the impression to someone looking at it that it's a serious film, in comparison to the poster for 'Bruno', which used a lot of brighter colours such as blue and yellow, this gives off a much more light hearted impression. In my poster i've decided to use plenty of bright colours, particularly the colours of the Union Flag, which makes up the logo for the film. By running these colours throughout all three pieces of the coursework, the continuity will give the film a proper brand identity and ensure that it is as similar as possible to a real film marketing campaign.

The pose of the character on the poster is also important in identifying the genre of the film, so in the Twilight poster, the two main characters are in each others arms, with rather blank and perhaps sad facial expressions. In comparison, the main character on the Bruno poster is smiling and has a cheeky pose to reflect the comical nature of the film. However, in a spoof action film such as Hot Fuzz, the two main charcters on the poster strike a serious pose in order to trick the audience into thinking that the film in from the action genre. What i've done is have the characters on my poster follow this principle, but hinting that the film is infact a comedy. On my poster, Valentine is striking a serious pose which defines the stereotype of an action or spy film, whilst Smith has his head in his hands in shame to add some comic relief to the poster and to hint towards the spoof genre.

R.K.

Ideas for additional material

We have decided that we want to play on the title of our film a bit more and that we need more dialogue. An idea we have come up with is that Valentine could do a monologue in a card shop of the cards section of a store, and because we're still filming relatively near Valentines Day, he could pick up a Valentines Day card whilst he is talking. This would give us some extra material to work with an we would have more dialogue in the trailer.

An additional idea I have just thought of is that Valentine could use a dodgy chat up line on a girl, which ultimately fails and he could get slapped? This could help to enforce the idea that Valentine is a bit of a failure.

R.K.

They Ripped Us Off!

Unfortunately half way through the production of our film trailer Hollywood has gone and beat us to it and released a film with the same title as ours! As you can see from our blog we had the idea for this as our film title a long time before they released the film (Feb 12th 2010), so it is just an unlucky coincidence. Luckily though their Valentine's Day is not of the same genre as ours, so their shouldnt be too much confusion.

T.F.

Film Posters..

For my film poster i have decided i am going to use the 'Valentine's Day' logo that Rob created, but edit it ever so slightly. I believe that doing so would create some synergy between the trailer and my film poster, and would make it look more like a real promotional package


T.F.

Filming 28th January 2010 - Taking a hostage...

Today I re-shot the hostage seen. In contrast to the previous shoot, I filmed from a high angle in the corner of the room, and angle which is intended to be similar to that of a CCTV camera. I set up the room to look scruffy, although to be fair, the room was already a mess! I placed the main subject (the hostage, played by Mike Oldrid) not in the centre of the frame, but partially cut out in the bottom corner of the frame, this is due to the fact that CCTV cameras are set up in a fixed position that covers the whole room, and they are not trained on specific objects. I can then add the CCTV camera effect onto this.

R.K.

Filming 27th January 2010...

Today we decided to film a scene differently by attaching a camera to a remote control car. We did this so the camera could move round quickly and get through small areas we wouldnt usually be able to get to. We wanted to make the camera angle kind of disorientating for the audience. We thought itd be a good idea as its quite comical and typical of our genre.

D.N.

Proposed ammendment to 'Hostage Scene'

Having filmed the 'hostage scene' last week, when it was uploaded onto the computer, we realised it didn't really have any effect, the lighting was wrong and the mise-en-scene didn't have anything distressing about it, so when I'm going to get this scene re-shot from a high angle looking down onto the room. A CCTV effect could then be added afterwards on iMovie. I'm also going to make sure that the hostage is clearly struggling rather than just sitting still like in the previous shoot. I hope that all this will give the impression that a school is clearly under attack.

R.K.

Poster research...

Our next task is to produce a poster for our film:

I decided to research what a film poster looks like so i have an idea of what things to include when producing my own. I focused on posters advertising for action/spoof movies as this is the genre me and my group are focusing on.

• I noticed that the main character is always the focus of the poster like shown above on johnny english.
• As its advertising a spoof movie theres always a funny slogon 'he knows no fear, he knows no danger, he knows nothing'.
• The tag line also hints at the genre.
• Simple, plain background
• Bold fonts used to stand out

I will use some of these forms and conventions when making my own film poster to make it more realistic.


D.N.

Filming 20th January 2010 'Hostage Scene'

Today we decided to film the scene where a teacher is held hostage and tied to a chair. We had to think about mise-en-scene here to create effect. We decided to find a small room, quite grubby and cluttered and that looks unused. Charlotte Meritt played our teacher, we placed her on a chair tied up in the corner of the room. Our aim was to show that the school is clearly in trouble here, will valentine save the day??


D.N.

Poster Research

For my research into posters, it was best for me to study posters for films in the same genre as my trailer as they would be marketed the same way. I have deconstructed the poster for 'Hot Fuzz'.
R.K.