Props and costume within the trailer

Progress

 

Further inspiration

After deciding on a close up image for our poster we decided to research further into posters which feature this kind of image. The above three are ones which I found interesting and seemed to portray a similar kind of genre to our film, Race Against Time.

The Grey
Main actors name at the top of the page
Films title in bold under the the characters face
Tagline underneath the films title
Production details and credits in small writing
Release date

Gamer
Main actors name at the top of the page
Films title in bold under the the characters face
Tagline underneath the films title
Production details and credits in small writing
Release date

Wrecked
Main actors name above films title
Films title in bold under the the characters face
Production details and credits in small writing

Poster Influences

We are now going throught the process of researching ideas for our film poster. We thought that the main focus of our poster should be a close up of our main character Scott's face. Despite the 'Ides Of March' not being from the same genre that our trailer would be placed in, we found that this particular shot could be used in order to reflect Scott's schizophrenia. Whilst the 'In Time' poster is from a similar genre and story line as our trailer and contains the close up image of the protagonist so can be used as inspiration for our poster. 

Race Against Time Trailer

Here is our amazing masterpiece, Woo! It's finally done! after all the hard work we're really proud of the outcome and proud of how we have worked together and achieved everything. Now...poster and magazine, here we come!

Voice over

We decided to create a voiceover in order to experiment with different ways of producing sound. The first is of a section of the phonecall between both Grant and Scott. The second is a voiceover of Scott  that will be used throughout the teaser trailer.






We have to split the sound into different sections and edit it into our trailer, mixing it in with our music that we currently have.

Deadline day!

Today is the deadline for our final edited teaser trailer. Our trailer is currently up to scratch and we managed to complete almost everything that we had hoped to do. After a few final touches with editing and sound our trailer will finally be complete.

Below is the stop motion clip that will be included in the trailer, we wanted to use this in order to portray a sense of Scott's schizophrenia. I think that the clips work well in some aspects, however the lighting is  slightly off in comparison to the other clips in which the stop motion will be placed. Hopefully we will be able to edit the lighting within this clip so that it fits in with what we already have.

We were unable to do the split screen that we had planned as when the footage was trimmed and cropped to fit the screens some of the footage was cut away, we didn't want to risk putting it into our trailer as we may get marked down for attention to framing.

Other than these few slight problems I am really pleased with the current stage of our work, the next step will be to begin thinking about film poster and magazine ideas. We have taken many photographs throughout the filming process so hopefully we will be able to use one of these images for our poster and magazine cover.

Credit Fonts

The first text that we found was on a text website, therefore it restricted us from editing it and adding effects to it. We watched more trailers to find some inspiration and settled on the text that we used in our storyboard which is similar to the text in 'Taken', we wanted to be more creative with our credits so on livetype we added the effect of 'frigid' which shakes the text which adds to the pace of the trailer. It also reflects the character, Scott's instability.

Plan of filming

Today, me and Florence are filming some extra pieces to add to the trailer, inspired by the taken trailer we felt it would be interesting to have a triple split screen shot in our trailer. We felt this would be a good idea due to compressing a lot of action into one shot which will add to the fast pace of the trailer.

The triple split screen will consist of:

- A POV shot of Scott looking at his watch and walking over to Grant's approaching car 

- The window of the car winding down

- The handing over of the money 

alternatively if the shots don't flow well we can use:

- Long shot of the back of Tommy against the car

- POV shot going through the money and the window of the car winding down

- The handing over of the money

In these shots the character's faces may not be revealed to the audience to add mystery but this may confuse the audience so we will experiment with this when filming.

Character Voiceovers

One of the final things to do in terms of sound are the voiceovers, we need to record the following:

Scott: 

I ran but running wasn't fast enough, love is a dangerous thing when put in the wrong hands (opening of the trailer)

Grant: 

7pm sharp (during phone call)

Filming and Editing Updates

After watching through our trailer we have found that the following things are missing that we had put in initially;

1. We found that there is discontinuity between two shots where our character Scott answers the phone and in the next shot when he is dropping the phone where he has switched hands.

2. Sound - We still need to insert our protagonist Scott's voiceover as well as Grant's dialogue for the phone call.

3. The triple split screen of the exchange of money and the plan to kill Layla in which there will either be:

- A POV shot of Scott looking at his watch and walking over to Grant's approaching car 

- The window of the car winding down

- The handing over of the money 

alternatively if the shots don't flow well we can use:

- Long shot of the back of Tommy against the car

- POV shot going through the money and the window of the car winding down

- The handing over of the money

In these shots the character's faces may not be revealed to the audience to add mystery but this may confuse the audience so we will experiment with this when filming.

Titles and Finishing Touches

We experimented with titles and after having a play around on live type we decided on some suitable titles which match the pace of the film and genre, all that needs to be done is adding in one more shot and our music which Alexis Skitini a DJ will send to me today we will be able to add alongside another song which we feel was suitable.

Screening feedback

Today we had a screening of our trailer at the stage that it is at now, we were also given the opportunity to veiwother students work and reflect on what they have done. We were given feedback sheets of everything that they thought was good and bad about our trailer so far.

Many people commented on the variety of shots that we used, saying that thhis was a good feature of our trailer. Somebody commented that the lighting in the tunnel was a lot darker compared to when he was on the platform. This is something that we have already disscused and we have decided that we will refilm this scene, however the scenes that are currently missing are of more of a priority to us. Most of the groups commented that the use of our titles was particularly strong and worked well with the genre and plot of the trailer. An obvious improvement suggested by all of the groups was to add sound, this is defiantly something we are working on and we aim to get this done as soon as possible.
 

Filming session 3

Today we had our third filming session, due to one of our actors being unavailable we were unable to film everything that we had planned, however we did manage to capture quite a few good shots.

We managed to film the scenes with just Claire and Ben alone. This includes when they were in the car together and when they were on the Train Station platform.

The above clip is an example of some of the scenes that we managed to capture. The clip is only a rough copy and it will be edited until it is perfect.

The photos above our from our filming throughout the day including travelling to the locations (which we now may use in our final trailer in order to add variety of shots and context) and filming the appropriate shots. 

Filming

After looking at the filming we done Friday, we noticed that in one of our shots our bags are visible in the background therefore we may have to refilm this shot, also in the kissing scene our actor playing Scott is wearing the same white shirt as he is in the running scene therefore we may have to refilm this as this is suppost to be a flashback. This monday we refilm them shots and take some snapshots of our actress playing Layla, by using stop motion it will look as if someone has been taken pictures of  her which makes it clear to the audience that she will be the victim and she is in danger.

Filming session 2

Today we had out second filming session. Due to the problems with lighting lastime we decided to film much earlier so it wasn't as dark. This time we were much more successful with the footage that we captured.

The first scene we shot was of Layla and Scott together on a bench. This scene would be part of the flashbacks as Scott is running to save Layla from Grant.

It took a few times to get a good shot as the characters we not used to acting however we manged to get a few shots from different angles.

We had to change the location slightly, as the lane that we had first chosen was far too buy to film whilst it was still light, so it wouldn't be possible to get our footage in time.

  

Below are some stills from some of the footage from the filming session:

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Due to the location of the new lane, we found that it was hard to get signal to make the phone call, we tried many times to resolve this problem however we still didn't manage to film the phone call. We will have to try again to resolve this problem.

Experimenting With Stop Motion

Before filming the actual stop motion shot that would be used in the trailer, we decided to save time by testing the shot and evaluating its effectiveness rather than doing this during vital filming time. We found that producing jolted images could reflect Scott's schizophrenic side. After uploading the images we tested out different speeds and settled for a 0.1 second pace as this was the fastest we could use.

Overall we think that this stop motiong effect worked particularly well and we would definatly like to use this in our final trailer.

Plan of action

We decided to write down a plan of all the shots that are yet to be completed. From the first filming session we decided to keep the clips of when Tommy (Scott) runs down the train station corridor and runs up the stairs.

Filming planning

Due to the poor lighting during our first filming session we have decided to be as organised as possible so that there are no gliches during our second session. Rather than having complete darkness whilst filming we have decided that it might be a good idea to film during the daytime. When the location shots were taken the atmosphere was very foggy and I believe that this worked quite well, this might be a better way to film.

I decided to look at weather forecast so that we can plan around the days we are available and so that we can aviod any unwanted weather such as rain or sunshine. Because we are now in November foggy weather is very likely during the day.

Our characters are not available to film on Thursday.

Friday the forecast is cloudy, this looks like a perfect day to film.

Saturday is forecasted for rain, which is very unfortunate.

Filming Session 1

We had our first filming session on Monday, the session proved to be extremely problematic due to lighting. We had planned to film in low lighting, to show that it was early evening, however the natural lighting was much darker than we had expected. We managed to capture a few good shots, so hopefully we will be able to edit them to make them better.

Overall we managed to capture some very atmospheric images that realate to the them and would work well withing the trailer. We will need to go through the footage very carefully to be able to capture scenes that aren't too dark and work well together.

Below is some of the footage that we think might be able to be used in our final trailer although some of it is very dark we feel that parts of it works very well.

Shot Experimentation

After seeing the tutorial above on Youtube we decided to test out the shot before filming our final trailer. In the tutorial they suggested using an elastic band in order to achieve a steadier and cleaner pan.  We tried to re-create one of the shots that will be shown in our trailer which is of Scott receiving a phone call which is one of the opening shots to the trailer.

Using the elastic band

We began by testing this panning shot usin an elastic band but the shot was still not as steady as we hoped it would have been.

Using the hair band

We decided to try using different objects in order to see if this could affect how the shot is shown, as you can see the shot isn't as unsteady as with the elastic band that appeared stiff and jolty but is still not entirely steady.

Manual pan

We then compared the two different methods with a normal pan that could be shot and decided which material would be most appropriate to use for our trailer. 

Costume inspiration

Scott Reynolds

- White shirt

- Black trousers

- Black shoes

- Suit
Layla Jones

- Red lipstick

- Red top/dress

- Black coat
Grant Smith 

- Black shirt

- Black tie

- Black shoes

- Black trousers

- Black coat

- Black leather gloves

Scott Reynolds:

                                 

    

We thought that putting Scott in a suit would allow him to be seen as sophisticated and somewhat desirable as we don't want the audience to hate him once they realise that his intentions are not what they seem. Above are some images that we will use as inspiration when choosing the final costume. We want Scott to be sweet, protective and caring but his schizophrenia lets the audience witness a different side of Scott. Although his intentions are dark we don't want to portray him too negatively as we want the audience to still like him when he has his realisation.

Layla Jones:
                                   

 

  

We wanted Layla to be seen as a very attractive woman. The best way to portray this would be if she is wearing red lipstick. However, we wanted her to be seen as someone who is unaware of her own beauty. which mean should have have to be innocent as her innocence will be taken advantage of. Above a few images  that may be used as inspiration. The use of Red lipstick will have to be discussed within the group as it may make Layla seem more confident and sexually provocative than she actually is.

Grant Smith:

         

For Grant's costume we wanted him to be dressed in dark colours. We thought putting him in a suit would allow him to look even more professional. For this character we wanted him to look creepy and eerie in order to reflect Scott's suspicions towards him and for the audience to take the side of Scott as opposed to siding with Grant. Above are some examples in terms of influences for costume.

Shot influences

              

In order to hint at Scott's schizophrenic side, we have decided that the shot most appropriate to present this is stop motion with a close up of Scott's head jolting into different positions which not only adds variety to the different shots used in the trailer but also presents Scott's realization as to what he has done and foreshadows the return of his schizophrenia which is one of the main plot twists in the film.