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Ross Morrison 1748

Claremont Fan Court School 64680

I worked with Casey Drewett 1723

Our film brief was to create a promo pack, this consisted of a teaser trailer, full trailer, film website, film poster and social media pages. The title of our film is "His Last Mile". His Last Mile is a horror/thriller film about a sports rivalry who turned violent as the bitter rival becomes a serial killer and takes revenge on the athlete that stole everything from him. Our film focuses on a number of characters, the athlete, the rival, the athletes girlfriend and the detective. 

Camera Work -  I did the main amount of filming when we were creating our production. However, at times I was unable to film as I was in front of the camera at these points Casey filmed although I was still organising the camera angles. For a number of the scenes I used a Nikon 4K HD camera. 

Editing -  I edited our production from organising the sequence of the trailer to editing the colour and audience of the trailer. As I was completing my production in a lockdown I decided to buy Adobe Premiere Pro so that I could edit at home whilst getting the crisp and professional finish I felt my production deserved.  After deciding to use the same ident from our AS production I decided to change the fonts on the ident as I felt that this made our ident look more professional. 

Directing - I decided on where we should film and where the camera and actors should be positioned to gain the best shots for my production. The locations that we filmed at such as the park, school grounds, woodland and the house worked perfectly for the horror film we wanted to create. I took the main brunt of the directing with Casey providing input where necessary. 

Main Trailer (click to watch) 

Teaser Trailer (click to watch) 

Poster

Website (click to view) 

My Social Media 

In order to distribute my film I created a number of different social media pages. I decided to create an  Instagram and Twitter page for my film as when researching I found that my target audience of people aged 15-35 mainly used both of these pages. Social media is used by film companies to provide information to their target audiences.  Social media pages can be used to show behind the scenes, teaser trailers and the full trailer. 

By using Instagram and Twitter I intended to post information about my film, reviews, information about screenings and links to my film website. I will release my film poster on my films social media pages to build suspense before I release the trailers. 

REFLECTIONS

Film poster: First design through to final design. I decided to change elements of my poster to create a better narrative for my trailer. After receiving feedback on my first design it was clear that the main characters looked like they had just been added and seemed to be floating. I decided to add the playing card into the poster because the playing cards are seen throughout my trailer and specifically the queen of hearts because it tells the audience that there is a romantic element to this film. I also made sure that the female character  remained over the athlete's heart again showing the romantic element of the film. 

Film website reflections: Feedback from people who have used my website. 

Trailer reflections: 

After reviewing the initial footage taken I felt the first shot was too grainy and dark so we reshot it with a better camera and better lighting.  This is shown in the pictures above. 

When editing the sequence there were a few shots I felt should be reshot as they did not look professional. The reason why I did not feel as though they were professional was due to reflections of people and objects being in the shots such as the cameraman or lighting equipment. In the picture above I have highlighted errors in our shot such as the lighting equipment being visible,  one of the doors being left opened and the camera chargers and can of beer being visible in one of the shots. When we reshot the scene we made sure that all equipment had been removed and was out of shot. 

CONSTRUCTION: EDITING

 When editing I decided to move on from iMovie to Adobe Premiere Pro as I felt that although last years production was good it was not as crisp as it could have been. I felt that Premiere Pro could give me that clean crisp finish I wanted our trailers to have. I started by dropping all of the clips that I wanted to include in our trailer after doing this I decided to play around with the colouring of the footage. I found colouring that i felt brought out and enhanced the colours in our footage also i sharpened the scenes to give our production a crisper/sharper look. 

With the use of Premiere pros capabilities i was able to find inter-titles that i could write on and add them into my production. This also was useful when I added in the end credits as there was already a template for this. I added the blood dripping font after editing that in photoshop to appear on the end titles. After a long search we found a suitable soundtrack that would work with our production, after messing around with the volumes of the sound I found a level that worked to help create the horror genre of our production.  

We also decided to add some dialogue to our trailer as we felt that it was not building up the sense of horror that we wanted it to have. On top of the dialogue sounds of dogs barking and owls hooting were also added to create a sinister environment. 

CONSTRUCTION: FILM IDENT

Image of the creating and editing my our joint film company ident for RFM FILMS and ALEXANDER PRODUCTIONS (using iMovie)

In majority of films the film companies put their company idents before the film begins. The ident is a combination of words and visuals that deliver the brand identity of the production company. Often the ident is eye catching and even witty, playing with alliteration or visual puns, to make it memorable.

For our film trailers we decided to use the same ident as out AS work on our film opening. 

For our film company ident we wanted to brand the companies as sophisticated modern, so we used the visual of a green star is a clean, stream lined image. The star has connotations of stage and screen. However, to make it different from the our AS film opening, we decided to have the writing in a blood red font, which links to the tone and genre of the trailers.

CONSTRUCTION: FILMING

The first location we filmed at was the shed. Having removed most of the debris a few days earlier we were able to set up our camera, props and lighting quickly.  We set the tripod and camera up facing the chair in a low angle seated mid shot in of our lead character . We used a portable led floodlight as well as the natural light to create a sinister environment.  By using the school grounds we were able to create a horror environment using the woodland areas for running/detective scenes. Being able to use the school grounds meant that we could get a variety of shots from a range of locations.  With the restrictions around meeting people from other households changing and with schools being forced to close whilst completing this project it meant that we had to adapt. We asked a number of our actors and actresses to film scenes on their own and send the clips so that we could edit them to look like they were shot at the same time/. 

We filmed on different days and at different locations to build a wider sense that our production was not just going to be in one location. We moved around from filming in Richmond park to filming down streets of Ham. This enabled us to gain more shots of the athlete running at different times of the day. 

A number of different pieces of equipment were used over the days of filming, these included iPhones, tripods, stabilisers and Nikon and Cannon cameras. The use of these pieces of equipment meant that we were able to create a professional looking production. We used the tripod for a number of the running scenes as well as when filming the bodies being revealed. The stabiliser was used when filming the flashing light scene. 

                                          

CONSTRUCTION: MERCHANDISE

 I decided that I would add a shop component to my website as this helped to give it a more professional look. I thought about what products I could sell to my target audience and came up with a number of designs. The first product I thought of was a hoodie as it is very common for clothing to be sold when films are released. I decided to incorporate both the blood drip font and the axe man. The second product I decided to create was the phone cases I decided to make two different designs of the phone case. The first design was just with the blood drip font. The second design I included the axe man as-well. I then came up with the idea of creating branded playing cards. These help to tie in elements of my promo pack as my poster contains a background of a playing card as they feature throughout our production. This product is very unique to our trailer. The final product I came up with was the idea of a branded face mask, as we are still living with the Coronavirus I thought that creating a branded face mask would be a good idea. This is is because people are in need of face masks and it boasts as another form of promotion as the brand name and font is on the front of the mask. 

CONSTRUCTION: SOCIAL MEIDA

 In order to distribute my film I created a number of different social media pages. I decided to create an  Instagram and Twitter page for my film as when researching I found that my target audience of people aged 15-35 mainly used both of these pages. Social media is used by film companies to provide information to their target audiences.  Social media pages can be used to show behind the scenes, teaser trailers and the full trailer. 

By using Instagram and Twitter I intended to post information about my film, reviews, information about screenings and links to my film website. I will release my film poster on my films social media pages to build suspense before I release the trailers.