Progression.

For the last few weeks now we have been editing our trailer, i think we have made good progess, we have managed to decide what clips to use and we have cut them where it is needed. After editing some clips we thought that they didn't flow together very well and that something was missing. We decided to start making the music using GarageBand because we thought that would help us envisage how our final trailer will look. GarageBand is quite simple to use, it has all the sound effects from drum beats to people clapping. We had some trouble finding a base of the soundtrack as not everyone agreed with the chosen choices. However after many different types of music we finally decided one that sounded quite sinister and staying in the theme of the trailer. We decided to stick more with the strings and beats and less piano because we thought that sounds more thriller music. The print screen one shows our original music soundtrack, and how much we changed it to print screen two. We decided not to use the original soundtrack because we thought it was too busy and there was too many sounds. We also realised it didn't really fit with our trailer for example when the shots start speeding up and becoming more tense the music wouldn't mirror that.  After editing our trailer a bit more we decided to start fresh and try doing the music again but this time try not using many different sounds and adding tense music when needed. This way the music isn't the main focus of the trailer and doesn't overpower any dialogue we have in it.

print screen 2

print screen 1

Final Film Poster.

This is our final film poster. I am personally very proud of it and like how we have edited it. The idea we had for our poster is not what it turned out to be in the end. Firstly we weren't going to make the checkmate opaque, we were just going to have it on half of Megan's face like shown on my photo shop post however after playing about a bit with the chess piece we found that we liked the chess opaque as it created a sort of ghostly feel to it. We wanted to be behind this so she is sort of hidden from view which makes her appear vulnerable. We still wanted our shot of Megan to be quite picturesque so the audience would be interested in what they saw on the poster and hopefully want to watch the film. We made sure the continuity of the fonts were the same on the billing block, title and title on our magazine cover. We opted to go for a blood red colour title so it would stand out and it matched our colour scheme on our magazine front cover. We decided to have our magazine cover black and white as we thought this was the most effective colour for it and it matched the whole checkmate chessboard theme. I compared this poster to other real posters and found that we included all the conventions they had put in, like the billing block, the date and the main actress at the top of the poster. The only thing we left out was a catchphrase, but we thought the poster was effective enough not to have one. I am overall very happy with the decisions we made for our poster and hope our trailer turns out just as good.

13th of February.

On the 13th of February we filmed scenes for our trailer 'Checkmate'. overall I feel that the filming went well, we made sure we re filmed the same scenes more than once so we had a variety to pick from. We kept to our schedules (see previous blogpost) and we managed to get done everything we wanted to get done, and a bit more that we decided on the day. We haven't edited any of the trailer yet, but I took some videos on my digital camera and am hoping to edit them together as a little 'behind the scenes' video. Here are a few stills of what we did when we filmed.

Splitscreen (development)

Whilst editing our trailer we thought that an effective way to show one of the shots that we wanted to use but wasn't sure it was filmed well, was by putting a split screen in. We originally had a split screen in our animatics however we realised we didn't need that scene specifically for our trailer to make sense to the audience. So instead we used his scene where our actress Megan is slowly loosing control of her mind. We filmed this part by walking around Megan as she looks anxious and scared. After we watched this scene back when we were editing it we found that the camera was a bit shaky so the solution we came up with was to make it into a split screen. We decided to use the same shot in each split but have one going backwards and the other forwards. Also we split both clips up and sped up the shakiest part so it would appear minimal. We put the clips on top of each other and then altered the size of them so they were along side each other. I think this editing we used makes our trailer more effective and shows the variety of shots we can use.

Filming Preparation

These two print screens are lists of what props we need and the schedule for the day we are filming. This will help us be extra prepared and know exactly what we need to film. We hope our filming runs smoothly and there is no need to re-film any part like we had to do last year with our AS coursework. 

Analysis of Film Trailer.

The film I will be analysing is Disturbia. I chose this film to analyse because we used ideas from this trailer as inspiration for ours. Disturbia is a thriller/drama/ mystery about a boy who is under house arrest and becomes convinced that his neighbour is a murderer. The trailer is considerately long 2 minutes and 30 seconds.

The trailer opens with the main character Kale having a tag attached to his foot, there is a quick pan showing his face. Us, as an audience are automatically wondering what this boy did to get a tag. Non diegetic music is being played from the beginning. Then the productions companies come up and it goes to the judge sentencing Kale to 3 months house arrest which is important information for the viewers to know for later in the trailer. The scene cuts to Kale looking very bored making a tower out of food. There is a quick extreme close up of a gavel being struck against a sound block. As soon as that sound is played the pace of the non diegetic music changes to more up tempo. Text comes up on the screen next saying 'for the next 90 days'. This was a convention that we are using in our trailer. We decided that this was effective to help the audience to understand what was going on in the trailer.

The next shot it of kale putting down objects to make sure he stays in the safe zone. The scene first is an establishing shot of the garden, then a ground shot tilted up showing Kale,  and lastly a ground shot of his tagged foot  showing a red light and him placing down a garden gnome to show where he can go before the red light goes off again. Text again 'all kale has is the window'.


 The tempo of the non diegetic music changes to more drum beats and there is a voice over from the movie of Kale talking to his friend. As this is going on there is a split screen of four shots of what Kale is looking at through his binoculars. This was another shot we took as inspiration for our movie trailer, we were thinking of using a four way split screen of when our main character is walking.


As the trailer progresses the non diegetic change at certain important parts and there are a lot of fast shots in each scene. The non diegetic changes one last time to just beats and the shots change in time with the music. After this the non diegetic music changes completely to more serious dramatic sounds and the shots become a lot slower. This is 58 seconds into the trailer. We liked this convention that it throws the audience off what genre of movie Disturbia is. The trailer goes into more longer shots and a voice over of Kale speaking. There are some spoint of view shots from Kales camera filiming his next door neighbors house. The diegetic music becomes really high almost climatic and then stops completely. This is a usual convention for a trailer to have. The diegetic music returns and this time sounds like a heart beat as Kale tries to escape and find out what his neighbor is up to. The shots of the scenes become fast paced again and there is some fade outs. The text says 'the quieter the street' and there is a light beneath the text which is different to at the beginning where it was just a black background. The diegetic music speed up so it sounds a bit like a drum roll, and then it stops completely. As the trailer develops the clips get faster and they start to flicker to create an uneasiness with the audience.  The trailer ends with a climatic scene where someone is hacking at the door. The title credits comes up and then it ends. I think this trailer is a big influence in ours as we liked some of the conventions they used like the 4 split screen and the change in pace with the music and the clips. We also liked the text as it helped explain the storyline a bit more.