Final Logo

For our production company we decided to create a few logo's and see which one was the most succesful and refected our group the most.

Ideas:

-The use of an eye to represent the reactions of the nervous system relating to the name of the team
-Use of shadow and colour to contrast

Logo Design Research

First of all to create our own "Reactions Production" Logo we looked at a range of different logo ideas already created by famous production companies and distributors. Both of the following examples utilise animation in their screen time.

"New Line Cinema", the distributor behind films such as "The Lord of the Rings" and the remake of "A Nightmare on Elm Street" have a very basic logo design. We decided to also use a similar kind of colour scheme in our own logo design for an edgy and dramatic feel. The black back ground brings out the blue glow around the black symbol in the centre. Shadow has been used to great effect in this logo perhaps using the burn tool on photoshop. The titles are in an elongated Times New Roman font in white to boldly stand out from the background, clearly stating the name of the company.

New Line Cinema Logo

The "Warner Brothers" Logo is a lot more of a vibrant logo idea. The sky blue background contains clouds and moves to create a dream like sequence. A crest or emblem is boldly embossed onto the foreground of the image clearly stating the titles in time new roman font across it. The bent nature of the crest makes it seem almost 3d, separating it from the background. The WB behind the title is the original symbol of the company combining the use of old and new techniques in logo ideas. The WB is presented in a different font then times new roman for an almost cartoon like effect.

Warner Brothers Logo

Filming Locations

For our trailer we wanted to film somewhere dark, closed in and something that gave the spooky impression (e.g. dirty walls). We began to explore differant places to film. We felt that the classroom was too open spaced and creating the setting there would be a bad idea so we began to look elsewere for inspiration. We had a good idea to film in the janators cupboard as this was small and creepy looking and you instantly thought of a horror film when you looked at it. However the room was a little to cramped and there would be no space for lighting which would give out a bad pictures when filming.
Our teacher than gave us the opportunity to film at his studio, the pictures he showed us of the studio was exactly what we was looking for. The walls were dirty and looked old and the whole setting gave you the vibe that a horror film gives you. The setting was perfect, and so we had our perfect location for filming.


(get pictures of janitors cupboard and studio)

Second Storyboard

Updates For November

8th November- Since October we have been working consitantly on the progression of our teaser trailer and are not coming to the end of its completion. Our trailler is 41 seconds but we aim to cut it down by at least 5 seconds more as, as a group we feel that it drags to much in some places. More blog posts have been added and these include our backstage photography which illustrate what we did on the day of filming and also some background knowledge on sub genres. For homework we are now looking for a logo for our production company. We have decided we will design this ourselves by using other companies as inspiration. We wanted our logo to reflect our company like other logos do.

Makeup/Costume

For my groups film trailer various equipment will be needed to create the set. As our setting is based in a basement we used various old household objects and laid them out in a way to create the illusion that the place had not been used in a long time. I have begun research on materials and makeup that portray zombies. Our initial idea was really good and that was to purchase white contact lenses so that out zombie would have white eyes.

Our research on zombies showed that clothing is usually generic or what the zombie was wearing when they died and is a little dirty and ripped. The makeup was a little more varied but generally they had cuts and bruises and dirty faces. Alot of zombies have pale faces but for our actor we decided not to do the pale face look. To accomplish this look we would use latex and dark makeup to create the cuts bruises and dirty face. We also would purchase some blood to make them look more scary. We will use all these techniques to make them appear more frightening.

Backstage Photography

We took a number of pictures throughout filming to show the progress throughout production.

Building up the Latex

Drying the latex, we held the latex down but apart to create a ripped effect

Sticking down already made latex

As the latex built up we added more blood

We put makeup on to blend the latex in so it was all one colour

Latex mask complete with white contacts in also

Latex complete with the fake blood

Andrew on set with lighting and props set up

Andrew and Eliza (Actors)

Micah (Directing)

Eliza (Camera Crew)

Ashleigh (Victim)

We begin to film

Andrew as zombie

Audience Research

We posted our questionnaire on Facebook and sent emails to people so that we could get a varied response as well as many answers as possible, we used surveymokey.com to design our questionnaire and to hold our results.

In order to know what our teaser trailer was going to be based around, we opted into making a questionnaire that was distributed on Facebook and via email to 21 varied people, asking them on their opinions. The questionnaire consisted of 20 questions that were related to the information we needed .Then having gathered the feedback we were then able to start the filming of our trailer. Below are the results we obtained.

Question 1 ; Are You Male Or Female ?

We decided to ask 21 people aiming to get half females half males we wanted to do this in order for our data to be fair and to have a general feedback on both genders opinions. However we ended up having 12 females and 9 males, but this was only by a minor amount.

Question 2 : How Old Are You ?

We aimed to ask a variety of people in our age gap of 17-21 and although most of them were 17 they were still in our age group and helped with out research.

Question 3: What is your ethnicity?


For our ethnicity question we didn't want to give tick boxes as we didn't want to risk excluding anyone or offending anyone, so we asked them to state their ethnicity if they wished. 18 out of the 21 said what ethnicity they were.

Question 4: What is your favourite sub genre horror?


With our research , we discovered that a small minority of people we asked enjoyed the sub genre of vampire and supernatural . More so we also found that the same percentage of people that enjoyed thriller and horror also was the same amount enjoyed by zombie . We decided as a group to then use the sub genre of zombie as part of our teaser trailer as seeing as it look more interesting.

Question 5: Where do you usually see advertisements for films?

The majority of people we asked seemed to say internet or bus this gave our group the impression that maybe mostly younger people were most out and about when seeing these advertised and many of them were regular users of the internet .

Question 6: How long do you expect a teaser trailer to be?


Seeing as the trailer we were asked to produce was to be a teaser , our group decided to look at other teaser trailers that were related to our sub genre , we noticed that most of the teaser trailers were between 30 - 50 seconds. Our feedback also shows that most of our audience expected the trailer times to be not more than 50 seconds .

Question 7: Does the trailer heavily influence if you watch the film or not?

20 people out of the 21 people we asked said that the believed that the trailer heavily influenced whether they would watch the film or not , this then made out group make sure the trailer was the possible best in order for people to want to watch the film .

Question 8: On a horror magazine front cover do you think the character should be in normal clothes or dressed as their character?


The majority of people we asked said that they preferred if the character on the magazine was in costume , we as a group also decided on making sure that our characters where in costume because it made it look more realistic and appealing which would gain the attention of our targeted audience .

Question 9 : Does the villan of the film influence if you watch the film?

The statistics we got in this data was quite close we thought the villan played a constructive part as well as main role in most horror films , so we decided to make Andrew the central point in our poster as well as within the trailer to appeal to the audience .

Question 10: Are props important to you?


The use of props in most horror films play a big part on the production and makes it seem more real as well as thrilling , 9 people didn't think props were important in a horror film , however we as a group liked the idea of props in our trailer , we didn't use an excessive amount of props but a reasonable amount .

Question 11: Do you like the actors in the film to be around the same age as you?

Again the results we got , the majority of people didn't mind . We in turn didn't rather mind about the age group , but we thought it did help , seeing as our audience we were targeting were fairly young we didn't think the involvement of drastically older people would have given them a positive response or made the film enjoyable .

Question 12: Do you agree there should be overhead music in the trailer and writing?

We thought as a group the involvement of both writing and music was cramming the trailer and making it excessively to much , we wanted to go for a simple yet effective teaser trailer . Luckily most of our respondents had the same view in mind as us , which it made it easier to plan .

Question 13: if you said just one in the previous question which one?


Many people preferred overhead music , to writing in a teaser trailer. We thought music created more suspense and impact , where as music gave away more than music , which wasn't out intention.

Question 14: How often do you go to the cinema?

Quite alot of our respondents ,went cinema regularly so we thought , that in order to attract our audience would be in cinemas and in many public places . Also our campaign on this film would have to be very appealing in order to gain attention . None of our respondents said they never went cinema which helped us .

Question 15: Do you usually watch horror films in the cinema?


10 out of the 21 people watched horror films in the cinema , we were hoping more would watch them , but nevertheless we still went ahead with our horror theme . 

Question 17: Do you think a poster should have dark colours?


We as a group also favoured the use of dark colours in our magazine as it connotes the characteristics of death , mystery , emptinesses as well as fear . We then decided to use the colour black in our work .

Question 18: Should a poster have one main picture or a few ?

Eighteen Respondents thought that one main picture on a poster was better than a few , we also thought this was better as there is one focal attention drawn and it shows minimal information on the film and looks neater .

Question 19: Are you more likely to watch film based on a review?

Many people were likely to watch a film based review , which was understandable , so we made sure that we created a positive buzz around our film.

All in all we were pleased with our results and it made it easier to follow through our next step and the other steps of making .

Roles of Production

Image taken after day of production (From left: Ashleigh, Andrew and Micah)

Whilst filming we all had very important roles to play to make our filming a success. it was vital we all knew what we were doing on set so that filming would run smoothly and swiftly.

Ashleigh : "Our filming location was in Hextable Kent. We met at 9am to ensure that we had enough time to film and that if there was any problems we had time to fix them. My main role throughout production was an actress who played the victim. Before filming, I had to find some old clothes which would be ripped and splattered in blood and dirt to create an effect. Also alongside Eliza I was a makeup artist who created the villan (Andrew's) look. This involved a lot of latex, blood and dark makeup and took us approximately two hours; this was very messy and involved a lot of patience. Also I had to assist Andrew in putting his white contact lenses in, as I am used to wearing contacts I was able to put them in for him as he doesnt like touching his eye and he tended to blink alot. Whilst it was very messy it was also fun to do and involved a lot of experimenting to see what worked and what didn't. The overall outcome was very scary and was a very convincing zombie".


Andrew : I volunteered to play the role of the main actor, which was the flesh eating zombie, as no one else in the group wanted to take on the responsibility and consequences that came with it. To prepare for this role the group decided that I should cut all my hair off as the my hair is not in a fixed position and would make it a lot harder to apply the latex and various other materials used.

The first part of the filming process was the application of make up, latex and other materials to make me look the part, I had quite a lot of hair before the filming so going clean shaven was probably best; when the deed was done the days only got colder as time went by, but when it actually came to applying the latex and fake skin, it was much easier as my make up artists had use of my whole head.

The application of latex took a long time to do, almost as much as the filming if not longer, we even resorted to using a blow dryer to help the latex dry quicker. They also cut up other pieces of latex using scissors and placed it on my head as they were trying to save time and use all the materials at our disposal efficiently.

They then put some blood on the latex they placed on my head and applied another layer of latex.

There was a bit of a problem when it came to inserting the contact lenses, since I cannot touch my eyes Micah & Ashleigh had to help me as they used to wear glasses and now use contact lenses on a regular basis. When the contact lenses were finally put in all was well, I just had to get used to wearing them that's why I had them put in during the make up.

After the scars and fake skin were finally finished the foundation was the applied to my head so that it would be the same colour as my skin, after that was finished blood was poured into and smothered around the scar on the back of my head.

Just before the filming began my shirt was cut up and blood was smeared in the rips, I also had to chew on blood capsules before the shots were taken so that I could dribble blood out of my mouth.

Micah : When it came to deciding film roles, we all agreed that I would film the majority of the shots of the teaser alongside Eliza. I also directed most of the shots and built set. When it came to the set, first of all I grabbed as many props in the studio as possible that looked appropriate for a storage room or basement, these included an old engine, dolls house, chairs, a fan etc. Once I had accumulated enough props they were all cluttered together in a corner to shape our set. The back drop for the shot was a dingy and blood splattered back wall, perfect for the feeding place of our zombie.

For the long takes and pan shots we had previously arranged to use a crane, there was an error with the production as a piece of the crane was missing that moved the camera. Therefore we worked around the problem by having Eliza steady the back of the crane while I moved the camera at the front. The shots we wanted were achieved and I studied the mis-en-scene of each shot to make sure the correct horror theme was created. I also positioned Andrew, Ashleigh and the lights in the correct places to correspond top the storyboard as best we could.

Eliza : On the 22^nd September 2010, I and the other members of my media group, agreed to meet up and watch a film based on the sub genre of our horror trailer which was zombies. In cinema there was a new film just released called Resident Evil after Life. This was in 3D. The whole aim of us going to the cinema was to get tips pre -hand on costumes we will use for our trailer also ideas on make up and lightening. Seeing as I was going to do Andrews make up for the trailer it was important that I made notes on make up techniques and develop on what was shown in the film .We found the film very helpful as this aided us in many areas of our task we had to complete and gave us more of an insight to our chosen subgenre of zombie horror. Many ideas from the film can be found in our work i.e. the use of white contacts for our teaser trailer.

Later On having gathered our props and finished our story board we decided it was about time we started filming our teaser trailer. So on the 18^th October 2010 me and my media group went up to Hextable in Kent to do our filming. My role in this was the make up artist. So I started by putting latex on Andrews head, this took approximately 2hours to dry. When dried I started building up cuts and effects on Andrew