Our Finished Epidemic Horror Poster

Poster Design Idea 5

This is an example of a poster design idea we created in colour so we could better visualize our final poster. The positioning of the subject is incorrect and would be better if it was similar to the first sketch. The colours are close to what we want to achieve. Yet the black background maybe too bland for the warmer tones we want to present. The cracked chunky font is what we will use in our final poster along with the film credits and date displayed along the bottom in traditional poster style.

Poster Design Idea 4

This idea was also seen o be too similar to already existing posters not in keeping with our wanted originality in the horror genre. The bloody hand would be too much of a cliche for our poster perhaps. Yet we agreed that red more chunky fonts were the way we wanted to go in our final poster.

Poster Design Idea 3

Another nice idea for our poster was a long shot down a corridor (possibly of our derelict nursery location). Yet due to a lack in numbers and costumes this would be hard to achieve. The titles of this poster idea are more stylized yet perhaps not exactly representative of the horror genre.

Poster Design Idea 2

When discussing ideas our first one was to use an eye for the poster showing off the white contact we had used. Yet we found this later to be too similar to already existing posters. The eyes in the background would also represent other zombies of the Epidemic. In this poster Halloween is in the titles to show our best time for releasing the film. The background would be black.

Poster Design Idea 1

This is the initial Idea with our male zombie character looking over the shoulder at the camera. The poster will utilize high-key lighting and represent warmer colours so that the red gore of the image shows out for greater horror effect. The Titles are in simple bold font so that they stand out.

Existing Film posters- Research

Looking at existing film posters we got a number of ideas for our poster, we spent a lot of time analysing different posters so that we could get a number of ideas of how people project themselves on posters.

The horror film "The Eye" was released in 2008 and was a re-make of a Hong Kong thai film made with the same name. This poster produced for this film was clearly carefully thought about and utilises technical photoshop editing for dramatic effect. The positioning of the eye in the centre of the page makes the view concentrate on the eye. The texture of the face and the hazel eye pupil makes the whole mis-en-scene blend in well together. The text is fairly basic and it is clear that the picture is the main focus of the poster. The Eye is put in bold for emphasis that contrasts with the picture. The designer of the poster has made the font of "eye" in bold text which links to the main subject of the poster for added emphasis. The poster is fairly simple yet effective, with the hand coming out of the poster it creates a creepy atmosphere and makes the horror genre that the poster is aimed at, stand out further.

This poster gave us an initial idea to design a poster with an eye on the front, but have the victim in the eye so it looked like the villain or killer was watching the victim, the victim would look scared and shaken up to create an ominous horror feeling.

Famous zombie films like "Land of the Dead" gave us the whole initial idea to do a zombie trailer. As zombies are getting more and more popular we decided we would follow trends and adapt them in our own way for original success. The colours in this poster really work well to create a grim and fearful atmosphere that zombies give. The red text represents blood and is a typical convention used throughout horror posters, magazines etc. The image of this poster is of loads of zombies walking towards the viewer as if they are being approached, the murky green colour used represents rotted corpses and gives a gruesome feeling. Although we cant see all the zombies faces we can see the ones vaguely at the front which show blood and pale faces. A lot of zombie films use the pale face look we decided to break the tradition and go we a more up to date look of freshly killed zombies more like films such as 28 Days Later.

Shaun of the Dead is far from scary being more of a horror comedy, but it does have some horrific aspects and the zombies typical to the conventions we are analysing. When looking at this poster we got the idea to use white contacts, as they would work well to create a zombie effect. Typically, audiences convey red as blood so the red doors in the mis-en-scene create a sense of danger and death. All the zombies in this poster are presented as dark and gorey and look drained of colour in their complections. The main actor is presented on the poster as bright and colourful which causes great contrast, this also helps distinguish the difference between the undead and the living. The slogan and title is white and bold which makes it stand out but also could symbolise surrender, peace or innocence. This font type is another factor we considered in our design ideas.

Film Age Rating

To get a rating for a film you have to go through the BBFC who watch and classify the films before release, unlike other legislations like OF-COM they can do something before the release of the film. The British Board Of Film Classification is an non government independent body which was set up in 1912. The BBFC is in place to protect people, in paticular children.
They may reject a film if it is not in line with the UK Legislation requirements. An example of this was The   Exorcist which was released in 1970, the film was so vile and gruesome it was banned from being shown, and wasn't re-released until 25 years later when the film had been "toned" down and still today it isn't being allowed to be released on DVD.

The BBFC looks at legislation and acts and works alongside them, these are all on the bbfc website.

www.bbfc.co.uk/classification/the-bbfc-uk-law

They may also ban or alter categories of films exhibited under their own licensing jurisdiction. The BBFC has set guidelines and the last set was published in June 2009.

Existing Film Magazine Ideas.

 To get some ideas for our media magazine we decided to do some research on some magazines that already exist. We decided to look in our local shops to see if they had any horror magazine ideas but having little success we decided to browse the internet for inspiration.

The Character The Joker comes from "The Dark Knight" which is the last of a series of films about The Batman. Although this film is more action than horror as a group we liked the detail of the makeup used on The Joker and also the way this magazine was layed out and it gave us some inspiration for our own work. The letters joker were written in a way so it looked like the O and E had been stamped on, but also the lettering in general reminded us of the joker instantly. His head is positioned facing downwards which gives him a dark feeling but we can see he is looking directly at the camera with the one eye that is visual. We decided to use this idea in our photography so that our actor was facing away from the camera but he was still looking directly as if he was looking right at the audience. We did however think this magazine cover was a bit cramped and the space wasnt used as effectively as it could have been.

The lettering on this magazine was used really well and gave out the impression to the audience that it is a horror magazine instantly. Our group liked the makeup effects used in this picture and it gave us the inspiration that blood coming out of the mouth would be a really good vampire look. This magazine follows the typical conventions of a magazine but is also careful not to use to much lettering which would cover the image up.

Roles of Post Production

Ashleigh: My main role of post production was ensuring that the blog was up to date and that everyone had their work produced on time. I planned out the blogposts carefully and produced a lot of well thought out blog posts when we weren't filming  I have also been working alongside Eliza to get different make-up techniques to make our villan look as scary as possible, whilst we tested out the makeup we took pictures so we could look over them after.

For our new footage we plan to film I am searching for more actors to be in our film and taking photographs of the new location to put on our blog. After all our filming is done i will put the photography on our blog and continue to add more blog posts about filming and other work we have done.

Andrew: My role of post production consisted of creating a suitable movie poster and magazine cover to go along with the teaser trailer. Through the researching of many other horror magazines I was eventually able to produce a magazine that followed the traditional simplicity that most, if not all other horror magazines held. I presented the magazine to the rest of my group and asked for feedback; overall they said it was very good, but they still had me take note on small adjustments that could make it better. I took the feedback into account, made the changes and the final version of the magazine was produced.
The magazine is still in the process of being made, but as the photos have yet to be taken, I am limited with what work I can do while only analysing sketches. Since we plan to take new footage, we also decided to take the photo for the magazine before, during or after filming.

Micah: My main role of post production was the editing process of our teaser trailer. I utilised the software of final cut to splice and seamlessly edit our footage together. I also predominately have produced the poster and magazine front cover sketches and final design ideas for Andrew to use when he creates both the poster and magazine cover. I have created a soundtrack using garageband software for our trailer to avoid copyright issues and make our work more original. I drafted and designed the ideas for our "Reactions Productions" logo; in this process I carefully studied other companies logos and took ideas from these to create our own unique production logo to display at the beginning of our trailer.

For our new footage we plan to film. I have drafted a new storyboard to include within our already edited footage. I plan to direct and shoot most of these shots next week. After all of the filming is finally completed I  will edit all of the footage together using our original created soundtrack and finally complete the trailer.

Eliza: My main role of post production was to assist with the blog and also to research makeup techniques and ideas for our trailer. I have been looking at different techniques that will make out zombie look as realistic as possible. I have tested out some ideas on different volunters and pictures of these have been taken.

Unused Footage 1

During the editing stage a number of shots were not used in the final cut. Here are some clips uploaded to the groups youtube account from the first shoot that did not make the final cut:

Updates For December

Andrew has almost completed the poster for our horror film and the film magazine cover has been started. We have drafted a new storyboard due to complications with the filming equipment and the decision to add in more flashback scenes during our first attempt at filming. We complete all of the filming by next week including new extra shots in a new location. All of the original footage has been edited to match a new storyboard and the new footage will be cut in alongside this. The soundtrack for the teaser trailer (created by Micah) has been added over the top of the footage.