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Centre Name: Norbury Manor BEC

Centre Number: 14343

Candidate Name: Zainab Shah

Candidate Number: 8162

Unit: G324

Evaluation - Question 4

Evaluation - Question 3

Evaluation - Question 2

Evaluation - Question 1

Final Trailer

Final Magazine

Final Poster

Discussing Audience Feedback

My group and I filmed our self talking about the audience feedback we have received. 

Audience feedback - trailer, magazine & poster

We asked six students around the ages of 16-17 year old's to watch our trailer to see if they found it effective. I have already done audience feedback on the magazine front cover but showed them the magazine front cover as well to get more views and opinions on how they liked it. Overall, they liked and found the trailer, magazine and poster effective and saw a link with all three of them together. 

Summarized feedback:

Trailer:

·         They got Goose bumps due to the tension building up

·         They did not expect ending – shock scene

·         Find beginning was dragging on – long intro

·         Did make sense overall

·         Could have made the child scene clearer

·         Does look like a professional trailer

Magazine:

·         It does link with the trailer

·         She looks sinister as shes half smiling

·         Although nun’s do not show their hair

Poster:

·         Liked the scar on face which was edited on

·         The title is effective with the slogan

After target audience feedback!

After our target audience, me and my friend that shared the same target audience made a video about the feedback that we have received based on our created magazine. Overall, my product feedback was positive as they had said there was a lot of similarities with my product and the real Empire magazine which is a good thing as this shows I have followed most of the conventions carefully in order to similar my product with an legit Empire magazine front cover.

Audience feedback on created magazine

As I had finished making our Empire magazine for our trailer, I wanted to get some feedback from my target audience (16+). As me and another media student in my class had the same target audience, we thought we would use the same people to talk about our created magazines. In order to achieve this, we had got two boys from our college who are at the age of 17 and 18 and here is a video of them talking about my magazine front cover. They have compared my created magazine to an existing Empire magazine to see the similarities and differences and how effective it is.

Here is my magazine front cover that I created and the real existing Empire magazine they were comparing my product to. 

Inspiration - Empire magazine

I have been inspired by many Empire Magazines as they are all eye catching and appealing to me but I mainly followed the two main magazine features which I am about to show you. The image above shows that I have incorporated the 'exclusive' right about the actresses name. I liked how this looked as it looked professional and realistic and in the real existing magazine, it has it right on top of the movie name. I also added little lines besides the word exclusive to give it that effect just like it has on the Empire magazine and so that I can make my product similar to Empire's. 

This is another main Empire magazine front cover I have been inspired by (more so on the style of text and layout.) As you can see, I have also incorporated the plus sign in left side of the page to give it a similar effect. On the Empire magazine, it as the movie name big and bold in the middle of the page on the models image. Like so I have done this as well as our movie name 'DEVIL'S NOTE' is placed across our actresses mid shot image. Lastly, I have also been appealed to the ripped paper effect that is at the bottom of the front cover which I have also incorporated onto my magazine front cover but with different text written on top of it so that I can get the same effect. Why this feature appealed to me the most because I thought it looked realistic and quite eye catching as most Empire magazines have unique and different features on their front covers. 

Decision time?

As I was creative enough, I decided to create two magazine front covers as I had been influenced by and thought about whilst making my first front cover (right magazine cover.) I personally like both the magazines I have created as they are both conventional of Empire Magazines and effective in their own way. The front cover on the right is the one I made last as I had been influenced by another Empire magazine front cover. On the new magazine I created it has less text which I noticed is a convention of Empire Magazine whereas the other magazine I created (on the left) as more text which also is a convention in Empire Magazine. They are both similar but what I have done differently is took away some text and the circle shape and added a ripped paper effect (which I saw on another Empire magazine) and added text onto that following with a bar code placed underneath the title which is unusual. I noticed that the bar codes on Empire magazines are placed in unusual and not standard places so I followed this convention. I showed my other group members and decided we should keep the new magazine I created for our final product although we all loved both products!

Process of magazine

As I am in the process in making the magazine, I noticed that the red circle on the lower right side of the page had a bumpy outline to it so it did not look like a smooth round circle. In order to fix this problem, I went into blending options and selected the 'Bevel and Emboss' effect which gave the red circle an outer white glow. This blurs the rough edge of the circle so that the bumpy edge is not noticed. This is also an convention of the Empire Magazine as most of their front cover's have circled shapes on them with special features or freebies that are available with the magazine. In my case, I have included 'FREE POSTERS OF CHLOE MORTEZ' (actress who plays Carrie 2013 film.)

The title of our film name was in white before due to the background being black. The white text itself did not stand out enough as I had noticed that the film names on Empire magazine front covers stand out. I simply had the idea of using the same font and effects that was used on the poster so that it matches and that particular font and effect represents our film. Although the blur effect did look good and effective on the poster but looked a bit too much on the magazine front cover. So I took away the effects but kept the same font and glow that is used on the t which is transformed into a cross icon (as this has a clear relevance and link to our trailer.) After taking the effects out, the title of the movie still did not stand out to me so I decided to go onto blending options and add a 'drop shadow'. I thought this stood out more with the drop shadow with the text still in the colour white because readers can read the movie title name clearly in the colour white. 

Prayer in our trailer - dialogue

In the beginning of our trailer, our main actress is reciting a prayer. Why we thought our main actress should be reciting a prayer right in the beginning of the trailer because it would make the audience wonder what is going on and get them questioning as she sounds as if she is praying with a fear and not praying in peace.

Hail Mary, full of grace.

Our Lord is with thee.

Blessed art thou among women,

and blessed is the fruit of thy womb,

Jesus.

Holy Mary, Mother of God,

pray for us sinners,

now and at the hour of our death.

Amen.

15 Certificate

As a group, we decided to have the age rating of 15 for our trailer because I had done research on other horror movies that had a 15 certificate; Insidious, The Grudge, The Conjuring, The Purge, The Possession and many more. Why we decided to have a 15 certificate was because of the violence and blood that may occur.

Due to the BBFC, a 15 rated film may contain:

- strong violence

- frequent strong language

- portrayals or sexual activity

- strong verbal references to sex

- sexual nudity

- brief scenes of sexual violence or verbal references to sexual violence

- discriminatory language or behaviour

- drug taking

In my trailer, there are scenes that contain blood and also a exorcism scene which would not be appropriate for viewers that are under the age of 15. Due to these scenes in the trailer, we have chose to have a 15 certificate. 

Chosen film company

We decided to go with Paramount Pictures for our film company for our trailer which would be included in the beginning of our trailer. Why I personally think Paramount Pictures is suitable for our trailer is because I did some research on the company and they have released well known horror movies which I would make a list down below. Also it looks more realistic and Paramount Pictures is a well known film company that is seen in many popular and well known movies including horror.

Here is a list of well known horror movies Paramount Pictures has released:

Green Screening

Before our trailer, we included the green screening because this would state the age rate of our film. This allows viewers to see if the film is suitable for them to watch the trailer or not.

Summarizing Narrative

I thought I'd be creative and created a Wordle online in order to summarize our narrative. This a website that allows me to enter in words which would outcome in a word collage which looks like the image below. These specific words represent our narrative and would give you a sense of what our film is about through these chosen words.

Flatplan: Magazine

Looking at fonts

I decided to go on the website Dafont.com to play around with fonts for our movie title 'DEVIL'S NOTE.' I clicked on the Horror catagory so that it would help me to find horror themed font styles. Here are a list of fonts that I came across that looked appealing as I imagined it on our trailer.

Decided on film name!

As a group we discussed each other's ideas of the film names and agreed to name our trailer 'Devil's Note.' Why we decided to choose this name was because we thought it had a clear and obvious relevance to our narrative. This was because in our narrative, the main character Jane discovers a phrase/note that was written on her wall which was covered by her bedroom wallpaper. We also thought it was effective as it was short, simple but still sounded effective and does link to our trailer.

Coming up with film names

As I have mentioned before, we did not know what our movie would be called so we called it 'The Nun' temporarily. I then decided to come up with a list of movie names that could potentially link with our narrative/trailer. What helped me come up with movie names was by going on to Google and typing in connotations to words such as; scary, mysterious, secret etc. Here are the list of potential names for our movie that I wrote into a word document.

The Untold
Unrevealed
The Hidden
Secrecy
The Devil's Nun
The Devil's Secret
The Devil's Note
Devil's Note
The Devil's Riddle

Introduction of Paramount Pictures

This is what the Paramount Pictures film company introduction would look like when we incorporate this in the beginning of our trailer. 

Comparing Empire & Total Film

Research - Total Film Magazine

Location Scouting - Google Maps!

Here is a group discussion on a potential church we could use in order to film the rest of our trailer scenes in there and also a local park that was near by the church. We eventually did get lucky enough to have the opportunity to film in the church and in the local park that was near the church.

Character Profile

Amber would be playing the main role in our trailer of 'Jane' who is the victim in our narrative. As a child, she discovered something that she shouldn't have and ever since then strange paranormal things starts happening to her and her parents send her to a convent as they thought that was their last option in order to protect her. She arrived at the convent when she was 13 years old and and ever since then she had remained safe and the weird things had stopped until she was 16. After she had turned 16, she noticed strange things started to happen again and she use to get flash backs from when she was a child when she was experiencing those horrific moments. 

Research - Empire Magazine

Playing with effects

In order to edit pictures we took in the church of our main character in a nun outfit, I went on a website called Befunky.com to try and test out different types of effects that could be used for our potential poster. I tried out three different effects and tried to link it as much as possible to our trailer. Since we set our narrative in the 1960's, I mainly looked for dull and vintage effects which I did manage to find as shown below. I tried out two different vintage effects and one dried out black and white effect which still as an vintage effect without the brown. Also the first image is the one I like the best because of the minor scratches it has around the poster which is faded so it is not that obvious but the audience can still see it and it also gives that element of horror (also an convention.) What I find effective about these images is that firstly the positioning and layout works together because the nun has her back towards the audience and is facing towards the front of the church and we can see the church without it being hidden too much from our actress standing right in the middle. 

Process of our potential poster

During the process of making our potential poster for our trailer, we finally agreed to picture that would be effective and represent our trailer. The image is of the main character (Jane) and the mise-en-scene is that she is still wearing the nun outfit and is holding a lit up candle which we though gave an element of the religious victim finding peace when something is after her which I think is effective.

We also decided to add in cracks on her face around her eye area which you can see in the image below. Why we decided to add in cracks was because to show the character is distressed and is going through something he does not want to experience which would get the audience questioning the poster. Apart from that we added a flame that is coming from the candle because we thought it gave an sense of someone else is around and it is also a convention of horror (candles lit/candles being blown out.) 

Regarding the font of the title, we did not know what to call our trailer so we called it 'The Nun' temporary in order to carry on with our project whilst we decide on a name later. We came up with two potential fonts and the first image is a plain, blocked font with the the letter 'T' in a cross icon which was effective as we thought this does relate to our trailer due to her being nun. The second image is a font that has a scratched effect which also relates to our trailer as she does discover a Latin phrase in her bedroom with a similar type of font. As a group, we are still in the process of using and finding different types of font and would soon come to a decision on what looks better on our poster. 

First image

Second image

Playing around with PhotoShop

From the images we took in the church, we thought that the pictures that were taken in the church can be our potential poster. I decided to go onto PhotoShop to play around with the images I had from the church we went used as our main location. Here you can see our actress is standing in the middle of the isle facing towards the exit of the church and her back towards the front of the church (where people would worship to.) The element I tried to create here is that something is wrong as the Nun would be praying to God but is facing her back towards God. Also I have cropped one of our actresses and stuck her up on the wall in between the windows to create an illusion that she is different from others and that the Satan has control of her soul which is why It look's like as if she is going up in the air. 

Footage - Behind the chase scene

After filming our scenes in the church, we went to the nearby park in the morning to film the chase scene which would be towards the end of the trailer. Why we decided to film early in the morning is because it would be empty so it would have been easier for us to not get other people in the scene we film. 

More behind the scene shots!

As my group and I didn't get time to film the rest of our footage yesterday which was Friday, we decided to meet up on Saturday morning as we also did arrange with the vicar from our local church to use the church on Saturday which is called The Parish Church of Saint Philip Norbury. As our narrative is based with a girl in a nunnery/convent, we decided it would be more realistic to get a church as our main location as it fits in with the concept of our character and narrative as it was quite hard to find nearby convents for nuns. The filming in the church seemed realistic meaning this was successful as it fitted in well with what I had imagined in my head. 
After we filmed in the church, we had to have a scene of our main character running through a forest to give the element of her running away or escaping from something. Near the church we was filming in, there was a park up the road with loads of trees and hills so we thought this was be an ideal location to film our running scene which would be the put towards the end of our trailer. I did take some photos whilst we was behind set!

Behind the scenes - exorcism scene

For one of our scenes, we had to record the main characters friend taking part in an exorcism. How me and my group thought of doing this was by drawing out a pentagram on the floor (a star shape in a circle) which is spiritual icon. In order to create an perfect shape, we made this by sticking masking tape on the floor. The location we used was the enterprise hall in our college as we thought it was suitable for the scene as we can close the curtains and get the room to be dark as possible. 

After creating the star shape with the masking tape, we put salt all over the outline in order for the shape to stand out on camera. After this we put candles around the pentagram and in the pentagram in order to give that spiritual and realistic effect as the actress would be inside the shape. 

Main costume - Nun outfit

As our narrative is based upon a girl that is in a nunnery/convent, due to mise-en-sense she would have to wear a nun's costume. My group and I thought it would be good to create a nun's outfit from scratch but I thought too much time would get into the making of a costume and that would be time consuming. So we went online on Amazon to order a reasonable priced nun outfit which we did eventually find. The costume was cheap and all group members would contribute money towards the outfit. The outfit includes a head peace and a long black gown.

Music for our trailer

Due to all the research on looking for potential music for my trailer, my group and I finally came up with the music that would be suitable for our trailer and it is by Two Steps From Hell.


Why we decided to use music from Two Steps From Hell is because I had an idea in my head that as we had religion as a big element in our trailer, we should incorporate music from an orchestra in the beginning of the trailer as it would have religious connotations and imagery. Slowly building up towards the middle where all the fast scenes begin right towards the end of the trailer, we are going to have the slow low pitched music turn loud pitched and become more faster until it gets really fast with the montage of fast clips. By this it creates tension and panics the audience as it sounds more sinister this was the effect we are going for. 

Scary makeup tutorial

As it is shown on our storyboard, the last seen in our trailer would be a scary face popping up. I thought it would be interesting and creative to do a scary makeover on the actor/actress who would be playing our scary role part. I went on YouTube to look at scary makeup tutorials and came across one which was a look inspired to look like 'The Grudge' which I found scary and suitable for our trailer.

Finding music/sound effects

In order to include sound in our trailer, I was researching on some scary background music and scary sound effects on YouTube which may be potential enough to include in our trailer. 

Inspiration - The Devil Inside

Our inspiration came from the movie The Devil Inside, This is a popular and recent talked about film that has released not along ago in 2013. The similarities in The Devil Inside and our trailer is that they both involve nuns and convents. Why we thought having our narrative based on  nun would be effective is because it would be different rather than having your standard horror movie with a vulnerable teenage or adult getting attacked. By having a nun as our main character gives the element of religion which we would mix with horror so that it is not your standard horror film but is scary. By having religion involved in our trailer (which is a big element in our trailer) gives the sense of confusion to the viewers. This is because they would feel that people would turn to and feel safe when they are praying and turn to religion. By our trailer having different aspects of horror and religion, this would most likely make the audience uncomfortable and scared which is our aim to do so. Our main character is a Christian which is a popular religion and nun's are mostly known to be Christian or Roman Catholic. 

More test shots!

Here are some more test shots we had carried out during our other test shots. What we tried to do is create a slow motion on the camera settings and we used the torch light on an IPhone to create a special effect without editing to see how it would turn out. These test shots came out good due to the unique idea as we got someone behind the character and to wave around the phone light behind them and around them to create that bright wire light effect. Why we thought to try tests shots like this is because we thought it would give it more of an pocession and supernatural element due to our trailer narrative is based on pocession and supernatural.

Test shots for our poster

 I have created a presentation explaining and showing what these test shots are taken for which is mainly for our poster. There are some good test shots that have come out and can potentially be used for our real product of the poster of our trailer. We thought by having the main character on our poster would be more effective as the audience would know clearly what the film is about. Mise-en-sense plays a huge part in our poster as it shows the person is a Nun through her outfit that we have purchased online. 

Door handle tests shots

Trailer in the making - feedback

As we are in the process of making our trailer, we have started of with the shots that we are going to use in our final product. We did not get all of our scenes filmed as we are struggling to find a church that would allow us to film inside so we are still on the hunt for that location. We asked our teacher to look at what we have so far and to give us constructive feedback so that we know what we need to do as a group in order to improve our trailer. Overall, our teacher said we had good work so far.
Here is the feedback we received from our teacher:

·         Likes how we filtered the colour out on the scenes of the young girl playing with the ball

·         Needed to include music in most of the scenes for the background

·         In the possession scene, the crackling music is too long and the actress looks like she is dancing – cut down the scene

·         Likes the shots in the beginning as it flows well together

·         Cut a bit of the back shot of the actress in the beginning if possible

·         Likes the slogan of our trailer

·         Loves the ball scene when the girl drops the ball and the scene of the ball rolling underneath the bed

·         Good actresses playing their parts well

·         Not quite sure about the Latin dictionary – make it look more realistic if so

Test shots - Book flicking

In one of our scenes in the trailer, we need to give the element of a book 'flicking through it self' and to land on a page that says 'LUCIFER' in blood. In order to make this scene happen, my group and I took test shots in the girls toilets underneath the hand dryer to see if the book flips properly. If not, we are also thinking of using a hairdryer or a fan. 

How to make fake blood?

As one of our props is 'fake blood' I thought it would be a good idea to see if it is possible to make your own fake blood by stuff that would be lying around at home! I decided to go on to YouTube to see tutorials of people showing how to make fake blood which I took into consideration. Why I thought of making your own fake blood might be a good idea is because we had already fake blood bought from a costume shop but I wanted to see if the quality of making your own blood would be better or not than the already made fake blood we had. Here are some tutorials that I had looked at. 

Making the props...

As part of our narrative, we needed to create a prop which required us to use the art facilities (paint, brushes and big A3 paper.) We needed to create the note that would be laying underneath the wallpaper so that in the trailer, when June (as a child) rips her torn off wallpaper completely off, the Latin phrase would be there. We used dark red paint to create a blood effect and used brushes and fingers to give the effect of it being 'written by someone.'

What the Latin phrase stands for is 'I proclaim my soul to Satan Lucifer. He chooses me.'

More research into nuns!

I decided to go on to YouTube to find out more about nuns! I came across this video which is about Catholic Sisters (nuns) are talking about their experience of being a nun and how they got intrigued in their religion in their own words. 

Timetable!

I have created a short presentation explaining the timetable my group and I discussed about and created in order to help us when everyone in our group have free periods in order to be present during our filming time. Most of the times we do not have free periods together but we have our media lessons together through out this entire week. 

Shooting Schedule

Here is my shooting schedule that my group and I created to help us when certain scenes should be filmed and what props and actors would be needed in different scenes.

Prop list...

I thought I would create a animation speaking about the props I and my group would need during our filming. I choose this because I thought it would be more of an exciting way of presenting a list of items rather than typing them down. It also seems a bit more personal with the readers/audience so that they can understand clearly. 

Location - Nun's Room

We needed a location for the Nun's room as most of the scenes would be filmed in her bedroom. We decided to look around the college for potential locations that would be suitable for a bedroom and came across the medical room in our college. The medical room was appropriate to use for our Nun's bedroom as it did include a bed and looked basic which most rooms would have looked like in a convent ages ago. Although we did find this challenging to use this room due to having certain things in the room that came across as 'modern' so we really put effort in mise-en-scene to try create that vintage look. 

Research into Nuns

Group Discussion

We decided as a group to film our group discussion over the location of the Nun's room which would be filmed in our trailer. We decided to use the medical room in our college as the bedroom as it looks suitable for a Nun's bedroom due to the dullness in the room. We were also discussing what props would be needed in order to make it look more effective and realistic. Here is what we thought of the props we would include in the room.

Props for bedroom location:

- Religious wallpapers

- Bed sheets

- Pillow(s)

- Cross symbol outside bedroom door

- Cross on her table

- Standing mirror