Researching Film Posters to Influence Ours

After collecting some images while filming that we thought could work well on our movie poster, we decided to research films with similar narratives and similar settings as ours. These would give us ideas on what images and wording to include in our posters, so that we can target the correct audience and draw the right people in to see our film.

Brad has taken some very professional looking pictures of the outside of the house we were using to film in. With some excellent positioning of certain props, the images looked great and as a group we decided that we should try and incorporate this picture into our poster in some way. After watching some films and researching many more, we came across the poster for ‘Cold Creek Manor’ (Dir. Mike Figgis, 2003). This poster was very intriguing to us. There was an appealing house in the background that very expensive, yet very worn out at the same time. Most of the poster was filled up by long grass, and the colour scheme was a shade of brown and dark green, giving viewers connotations of suspicion and mystery. We liked this poster very much and thought it gave a similar effect to viewers as we wanted our poster to do. We decided to try and incorporate our picture of the house in a similar way to this.

Another set of excellent photographs that were taken at our location were of my character looking into a mirror, seeing a reflection of himself, but also seeing one of a man behind him, with his back to him. We immediately liked these pictures and though they gave off a very tense feeling and gave the audience many enigmas, and left them wondering who both of these characters were. After researching similar film posters, we came across one for ‘The Unborn’ (Dir. David S. Goyer, 2009). This also had a character looking into a mirror, and seeing a reflection behind them. We liked the creepy look of the character behind, and the colours used (grey, white, silver) gave the impression of a supernatural being, one of the ideas we had for Brad’s character. After much discussion, we decided to try to incorporate both images into the same poster, as we thought this would give it a complex feel, and would make the audience want to come and see the film to find out answers.

Below is our completed poster. We are very happy with the final product and feel that if this was shown around the internet and at outdoor places (a bus stop, for example) it would shock people and make them wonder what the story was about. We want people to be intrigued by the images shown, so that they will become interested and come to see the film.

- Taylor Gladwin

The Use of Viral Marketing for our film

For further marketing for our film, and to build up the hype, we would want to exploit the internet and use viral marketing techniques to advertise our film. In the past, viral marketing has proved very successful for other films and has allowed them to make a lot of money and people have become transfixed by their marketing techniques. One good example is ‘Cloverfield’ (Dir. Matt Reeves, 2008). To advertise this film, a teaser trailer was released over a year before the films release date. The trailer also did not give the name of the film, just a website that people could visit. Over time, as the release date drew closer, each of the films characters developed back stories and were given Facebook pages that were regularly updated up until the film opened in cinemas. Also, pretend companies that were to be used in the film were given web pages, to make them seem real. A whole Cloverfield world was created, to make the film seem more real and draw people in. It worked, and the film was a success at the box office.

Another example of successful viral marketing was ‘The Dark Knight’ (Dir. Christopher Nolan, 2008). Like ‘Cloverfield’, a whole world revolving around the film was created. But, along with that a treasure trail was made, and fans had to follow clues around the web and also around the USA to get their first glimpse of The Joker among other things. Almost a hundred websites were also created to make Gotham seem like a real city, and bit-by-bit they were ‘Joker-ised’ to create hype about the famous villain.

We agreed that viral marketing would be a great strategy to use to market our film, as we thought it would build hype and we would be able to give away the name, posters and trailers bit by bit, allowing people to become excited and intrigued about the new film. We would want to be as secretive as possible, so that no major plot points would be given away and that people would go and see it to find out why this film was so secretive.

Techniques like dark, gloomy advertising at the top of websites would intrigue people. We would want something to catch people’s eye and make them wonder what the advertisement was about. Maybe we wouldn’t put the title of the film and just a tagline of some sort, so they would click the link to find out the title and other information. The trailers that would be released would barely have any footage from the actual film, just specific sounds or voiceovers. We hope that this would make the viewer feel tense, yet wonder what this advertisement was about. A website or social networking page would maybe be displayed at the end, not the film’s title. This would allow people to log onto these sites and find out more, thereby increasing the interest in our film.

We would want to create as much interest as possible for our film, without giving away any of the plot and barely any footage. We agree that this technique would make all types of cinema-goers interested, not just the ones that only enjoy thriller films. Overall, we think that this would create much interest and allow our film to succeed at the box office.

- Taylor Gladwin

4th Day of Filming - 'Hanging Man' shots

After completing our main shots that would make up most of our film, we had to go to a separate location to film a few other shots that will become dreams or hallucinations in our film. The location and setting for these shots was very important. The shots were of a man being hanged from a tree, with a figure running away in the background in one shot, and standing very still in the other. A couple of weeks before this shooting process, we had visited the location to make sure it was suitable and created enough enigmas for the thriller genre.

The location needed to be isolated, as someone would not be hanged in a busy area. That meant that the area needed to be open, with no houses or people in the background. It also needed to have a tree in the middle of a large field, as this is a typical place for an act like murder to occur as it is closed off from the outside world. It also gives the audience the impression that someone could be being watched but not know it, or that they may feel very uneasy and nervous out in the open. We thought the location was perfect, and would look very intriguing and suspenseful in our thriller.

On the day of filming, the weather was also going to play a big part. We didn’t want it to be very bright and sunny, as that would make the act look less psychotic and sadistic. We also didn’t want it to be raining and too windy, as then water would get on the camera lens and it would take away the feeling of realism in our film. As it turned out, though it was slightly windy, the weather was perfect, with greying clouds above giving the sense that this was a calculated murder and that a storm may be coming for whoever was responsible.

To film these shots of the man being hanged, we decided to use the tripod for some, but also try some handheld shots to see which looked better. As we filmed and tried a various number of shot types, we realised that using the tripod was easiest. Though using the camera handheld worked well for the point of view shot we were trying to get across, it didn’t look as if it could be coming from somebody’s eyes. When the tripod was used, the smoothness and the use of the tilt made it seem more like somebody was actually walking up to the tree and seeing this brutal act of violence.

We also filmed a few close up shots of the man in the background running away. This proved slightly difficult as it was hard to run after the character and keep the camera still at the same time. Thinking these shots hadn’t turned out particularly well, we didn’t hold much hope. But when returning to the editing room, the shakiness of the camera running after the running man looked very effective and added to the confused psychological state of our main character.

- Taylor Gladwin

Location hunting for the hanging person shot

Our thriller opens with a person who has been hung on a tree. Foe this we needed to find a location which would be appropriate. For this we intended to use a place which was open, and of course had a tree in it. Dave and Taylor had found a very good place to use in Ongar which was an open field with trees in the far distance. We can see how the field looks isolates which could create an enigma about the character who is hanging.

Although this is pretty much a perfect location I thought it would be a good idea to take photos in the nature reserve at Langdon Hills. I thought it would be good to show the group and then we may want to change our minds where we are going to film this.

This is the first part of the nature reserve. It overlooks farmers fields and if the picture was big enough you would see Canary Wharf but if we did film hear you would not be able to see it in the film anyway. The field is good because it gives you a wide view of a nice landscape but the lowest branch on the tree was very high. This means we wouldn’t be able to hang from it. Even if we did it would be to dangerous because it was at least 12-15ft.

A short distance away in the nature reserve there is a massive hill. As it is in a nature reserve there are trees everywhere but finding the right one is very hard.
Here you can see the hill is very steep and would be ideal for the footage of the hooded man running away or standing in the background.

I thought that this would make a good shot because if the barbed wire and the harsh image it portrays but it would be hard to see the person running away.

This was from the other side of the path and I thought that it was better. Because u could see the path clearly and it still had the barbed wire to give a harsh penetrating affect.

The best location to use for this shot is the open field and tree in Ongar as it portrays the best image and shows isolation of characters. We have also been waned not to use the woods as a setting because it just isn’t scary enough because it is what the audience are expecting to see, they may also be thinking “oh here we go again, another film in the woods.” We are trying to think out side the box and create as many enigmas for the audience to make them engaged to make them want to watch the whole movie.

-Bradley Hart

Third day of filming - New location

As explained before, the second day of filming wasn't completed due to the change in brightness because of the time of day. This meant that we arranged to come back to the same location in the day instead of the afternoon two days after the second day. When looking back at the second day's worth of footage, we decided that we would carry on filming from from the clip of the character played by Taylor when he drops the pill pot and goes to pick the pills and eat them. This was because this is when we started to notice a large difference in the brightness of the shots. When filming on the third day we noticed that everything seemed to go a lot quicker, this is because we probably had a lot more experience using the camera's and we new the shots we had to film because we had done it the day before.

Throughout the 3 hours of filming we had no real problems except sometimes we had to retake shots more then we would of liked, but this wasn't that much of a problem because we had plenty of battery time and we had a spare tape because we was well prepared. We established that we didn't always need to have our camera on a tripod because it made the footage look too simple and boring. This meant that we tried a few different methods using the hand held technique to make it seem more realistic, for example when we first of all chose to do a pan where the main character played by Taylor picks up the pill pot, we decided instead of using a pan going up, we would hold the camera and follow the pill pot going up using a close up, we still took the footage of the pan, but when we was editing we found that the hand held technique went really well and suited the style we was going for. Another thing that went well was that we. The only problem from the days worth of filming was that we forgot to do the shot of when Taylor goes from a standing position to a kneeling position to pick up the pills. Before we edited we thought that this was going to be a very big problem, but when it came down to it it was good because it made it seem quicker and more fasted paced. Altogether this day of filming was the best because we completed all of basic filming that we needed meaning we only had to go to our second location of filming in Ongar to film the hanging man which we would use in a flashback on our thriller.

Tom Winn

Second day of filming - New location

After an unsuccessful first day of filming we had to somehow find a new location for our thriller. We all had different ideas on where we could have our new location, we had the thought of going to a place called Regents House, which was used by a media group in the year previously. As this location was situated in Ongar, two members of our group (Dave and Taylor) went to the location to look if it was suitable for out filming. From their feedback we found out that the location itself wasn't practical because of the room that we was thinking of filming was a little bit to messed up, for example the walls were asbestos, which was a serious health risk to us if we did decide to film there.

At this point we had very little idea's on where about's we could film. When we done some research we had a spot of luck finding out that one of our friends owns a second house which isn't being used because of water damage. We decided that it would be a very good idea if we went to look at the location during one of our media lessons because the location was very close to the school and also our friend said that because of the water damage, a lot of the walls and floor looked damaged and messed up which ironically was perfect for us as this was the type of effect we was looking for. When we arrived at the house, we went inside to find that our friend was right, the location seemed like a suitable solution to the problems that we had faced previously. We found out even better news when went into the garden, we discovered that he owns a medium sized outhouse, which when we looked inside was perfect and even better then the location that we was going to use previously. So we decided to use this for the location for our 2 minute thriller.

On the day of the filming, we arrived at the location at around 5:00pm, this left us a short space to film in because of the change in sunlight at this time changed very quickly, and altogether we found that it changed more quickly then we first anticipated. We wanted to keep the same camera shots that we was previously going to use at the first location because this would keep things simple and would help us speed up the filming stages so hopefully we could of been finished before the lightning became to dark which would of ruined the continuity editing. The first hours worth of filming went great as all of our shots went too plan. One of the favourite shots that came together was the pan around the main character from one side to the other. We done this shot by holding the camera steady and walking around the character, at the time we didn't think that it would work, but when editing we found that it worked very well. Throughout the few hours of filming, we decided to try a few extra shots which were not initially on the storyboard, we done this because we thought that instead of finding that the shot we originally planned wasn't great when editing we could have a backup shot from a different angle which we could use instead. A problem that occured was when we tried a few of our panning shots we noticed when watching it back that it wasn't as smooth as we hoped to be on some of the shots, also when we did pan it made a noise which at the time we thought could ruin the shots. A good thing that went well was the mise en scene of the messed up location that we used, and also the clothes that our main character played by Taylor was wearing, this helped establish that our film was based around a thriller. Also another thing that went well was the fact that in the location we had used, there was a mirror on the wall. We used this to our advantage and created a new shot of the character played by Brad to reflect in the mirror, this created a good effect of Brads character creating mystery which is the idea we was looking for but as we got near the end of finishing our shots, we noticed when looking back on the camera's tape, that the lightning had changed a lot without us realising. At the time we decided to carry on filming because we didn't like the idea of coming back another day and shooting at least half the film again. So we carried on until the darkness had got so dark we realised it was inevitable that we would have to sort out another date to finish it. This was proven the next day when we looked back at the difference from the start of the filming towards the end so we decided that we would go back the day after during the day which would allow us to have plenty of time to film.

Tom Winn

New Location

Our new location was our friend’s property; he gave us permission to use it after we had had a conversation about our media coursework, and when we told him about being asked to leave from the abandoned house in Hutton Mount by the police he told us that he owned a house which is being knocked down a few houses away. This was very intriguing and he allowed us to look around. I took a few photos inside the house but all of the rooms were the same. Because the house is getting knocked down it is completely empty and looks to nice for our thriller. There was one room which was water damaged because the lead from the roof was stolen. But mould had grown on the floor and it was too small to film in. other than that all the rooms looked like they could be lived in.

After looking through the house we went into the garden and there was a shed/garage, this was perfect for our filming and was even better than the first location we chose. It was very dirty and the walls were stained. The floor was concrete rather than wooden flooring which created another enigma. It was also the perfect size because it showed that the character was going to be a bit crazy as it is a very unusual place to wake up.

-Bradley Hart