Mr Smith - Our Film

1. In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms of conventions of real media products?

2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

There is a strong link between our film, radio trailer and poster; our poster helps create an effective visual for our film. The poster would really support our film if it was to be shown in cinemas.

To create our poster we used Photoshop, we had taken pictures whilst we were filming to use when it came to this stage. There are two main images on our poster, the background is the graveyard/church that our character walks through every day, on top we have a silhouette of our character. The reason why we have used the image of the church is because it is one of the main locations in our film, this image also reflects on the film – spooky. We decided to have our main character as a silhouette because we thought that it helped make the poster look scary, we also thought that it’s reflective of how the character is in the film. Mr Smith is a very quiet man and does not say much in the film, the silhouette suggests that may be he is a dark character, hiding many things.

The colours in our poster are very dark and creepy looking; we had done this because it helped create that eerie atmosphere which links well with the film. The branches in the poster are more visible when the image is darkened and the darker blue help give it that sinister feel. The colours reflect the film very well as throughout the film it is very dark and eerie. There is also an outer glow on the main character as well as the text, the outer glow on the character suggests that there is some innocence of the man, it makes you think that maybe he isn’t the bad/evil one; the outer glow on the text again helps create that creepy and eerie feel which links well with the film.

The font used in our poster is called ‘Cracked’, I think that this is an amazing font and is perfect for our poster/film. We used this font because there were cracks in each letter, it gave that horror feel – we wanted to make sure that the audience knew straight away that the film is a horror film and I think that the font is one of the main things that help achieve that, and this font had done an amazing job in doing so.

The text on our poster is bold, we decided to do this because we wanted it to stand out, we have used the rule of thirds as our tagline ‘an ordinary man an ordinary day an extraordinary set of events’ I think that this tagline is effective to the audience, what helps create that fear to the audience is that the font gets bigger and bigger, we have done this because again we wanted to create that creepy feel. ‘MR SMITH’ is also in capital letters and is at the top of the poster, we decided to put that text at the top because firstly it is the characters name and we wanted to place it above the silhouette, also because it stands out more at the top... shows that it is important. This text also has red outer glow instead of the white, this is because we wanted to ensure that the viewers knew the name of the film and also because it gives a hint to the audience that something is going to happen to him.

Typically the BBFC rating are usually on the corners of posters, we decided to place it at the top right hand corner, this indicates the level of horror the audience should expect of the film. We decided not to add text saying ‘coming soon’ or the release date because we thought without  that it creates a more mysterious feel to it, and the audience will be eager to find out when it actually releases.

What makes our poster effective are the images and the colours on the poster, if the images had not been darkened down it would not make the poster as effective because it did not give that horror feel that we were searching for. I think the image of the church is what makes the poster, it is the whole background and very effective because of how the branches stand out and how old the church actually looks.

When creating the radio trailer we used the digital editing suite A.K.A The Studio. Recording our radio trailer in here made it sound extremely professional and the quality of the sound was great. We had a male voice over in our radio trailer, we done this because we wanted it to be very dramatic and it was. We also added background music which was used in our film, we got these from royalty free websites. The reason why we used the same music in our radio trailer as well as our film is because we wanted our ancillary text to link in with the film. We had first started off with eerie music which then lead on to it getting faster, which is quite typical for horror film radio trailers. We also had sound effects which we took from the film, they we’re the loud door noise, this is because throughout the film the loud noises are usually the door, we thought that it is an important sound from our film.  

Our trailer support our film because we have included our tagline ‘an ordinary man an ordinary day an extraordinary set of events’ , if you was to hear the trailer then you would immediately link it with our film poster as it has the tagline on it. We also have ‘Coming soon’ in our radio trailer, when this is said it is silent and there is no music playing, I think that by doing this it is very effective as it will hopefully excite the audience and attract people to watch our film.

Creating a poster and a radio trailer is very effective, as it can reach out to many more people, we can feature our poster on many magazines, newspapers and billboards which are seen everywhere, a large amount of people look at newspapers and magazines and advertising our poster on them would attract more audiences to want to see the film. The radio trailer would have only been played on specific radio stations and it would not have been heard very much so it is important that our poster is everywhere. 

Overall, both my ancillary texts are effective and create a very strong link between them and my film. 

3.What have you learned from your audience feedback?

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

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3. Audience Feedback

VIDEO RESPONSES:

Above are the reactions that some of our audience got, I think this is exactly what we wanted. You can tell by their face that they were getting scared.

4.How did you use Media Technologies in the Construction and Research, Planning and Evaluating Stages?

Poster

Radio Trailer

Editing

We had used FINAL CUT PRO to edit our film, we had used this application because we thought it would be best to use to edit.
At first it was difficult to use, how to create different effects and adding transitions were quite hard to do; but after a few tries I had become more familiar with it and it became a lot more easier to use.

There are many tools which we used whilst editing, on of which is the RAZOR TOOL. This allows you to cut up different parts of the clip. I had used this tool to get rid of the unwanted parts of the scene.

I had also added transitions between the clips, I mainly added it when the location/setting had changed.


I had also created the title of our film 'Time Films... Presenting Mr Smith' on Live Type again, it took a while to get the hang of it but i became familiar with the application very quickly.

I had also used iMovie to create the credits at the end. It was very easy to create the credits as they already had layouts available, it was very simple to use.

Deleted Scenes:

There are many scenes that did not make our final film, our original idea for Mr Smith was for him to return many years later; the audience would have know this by his twitch.

Here are a few scenes that didn't make the final cut:

  

  ^ This clip is in the present, where Mr Smith would return, I really like this shot as it starts of with the arrows with the different subjects listed and then you seen the character walking up the stairs, it reminds me of the beginning of our film of how we wanted to keep the identity hidden.

^ Above is scene which we were meant to have in our final film, HOWEVER.... as you can tell that there is no sound, unfortunately we had realised during our editing stages that the boomer did not pick up any sound,   so we had rushed back to film and had decided to change it to the gates that weren't opening  as we did not have enough time.

^ We were going to use this clip in between certain scenes, but we did not use it in the end.. the famous twitch!!

^ This is scene is when Mr Smith finds his pen in the graveyard after misplacing it, this had been cut off as there wasn't enough time to show all the creep moments, originally we wanted the film to based on the 5 days of Mr Smiths' working days, as there wasn't enough time we had to cut a few days off and this was one of them

^ This shot is of Mr Smith walking through the graveyard.... his daily routine... I really like this shot but this is one of the working days of Mr Smith that got cut off.

^ This scene was meant to go at the beginning of the film, when Mr Smith is going into his lesson, unfortunately it did not make the final cut as we decided that it was needed/what we really wanted.

BLOOPER REEL:

A Few Changes...

Script Changes:
Originally we wanted our film to be based on the 5 school days of Mr Smith but then realised that it would take too long and may become boring, whilst the filming and editing stages we decided to cut a few days and chose to only show Monday, Wednesday and Friday. This meant a lot of the creepy/scary scenes had to be cut and we chose the ones that were worth showing.




Logo:
This is the logo that we created for our film company:

When it came to creating the poster and film we thought that this logo did not go with the horror theme and we thought that inserting this on our poster would destroy the horror/creepy feel it gave.


So we changed the logo to:

This new logo goes perfectly with our film and poster.

Narrative-Opening Scene

In our film 'Mr Smith', it begins with the main  character walking to school however, the audience do not know this as we only show his body parts - his foot, back of the head/body and his hands. We also do not show his face so it mysterious and eerie to the audience (enigma code).
When the main character (Mr Smith) walks into the classroom that is the first time that when the audience see his face, but it is not a  clear shot as it is through a window so the atmosphere is still mysterious. We have decided to do this because we want the genre of our film to be very clear to the audience and also for them to be drawn into the film and are eager to know what is going to be happening.
The audience get to see his face clearly at the end of his lesson, when he comes out of the classroom, as Mr Smith is a quite, humble teacher there is not much speech from him so that also adds to the eerie atmosphere.

Structure of Mr Smith:

(the graph)

Filming

Today is the last day of filming, we got a lot done today. We managed to film the climax scenes (Mr Smiths disappearance) and a few more office shots and walking shots, as well as the present scene shots in the new building which did not make the final cut of the film.
Here are a few images:

Going back to film a few scenes:

Filming

Today we filmed the graveyard scenes, we managed to get most of it done but towards the end it began to rain, and our camera also died luckily we had had taken enough shots so we did not have to go back to film.

But we had a problem beforehand, the date which we had set to film these scenes were not done as the person responsible for the the graveyard premesis was not there and forgot that we we're meant to be filming, so we had arranged for another date.
Here are some images of when we did film the graveyard scenes:

Filming

Today is the first day of Filming, we managed to film the opening scene of our film when Mr Smith enters the school building, we also filmed the teaching scenes and a few of the office scenes.
Today's session went really well, we all had met before the actor came and organised everything, making sure that we had all the right equipment and props. Here are a few images of the scenes we filmed.

Filming Schedule

Audio Files

We had taken royalty free sounds from many websites, some from sounddog.com and others from incompetech.com and soundwashed.com.

Actor Contracts

Above is a the actors contract, as our film only consists of one character is was very easy to organise filming dates ect.

Location Contracts

Here is the location contract:

Our film only two main locations, they were the school and graveyard.

Production Meetings

Costume and Props

Here is a list of costumes and props that will be needed when filimg our film, it is necissary to know all the things needed and also have them when filming so that i am prepared to film the scene planned without stopping because the actor or location is missing something.

Lighting Plan

Animatic

I have made an animatic for our film Mr Smith. My group members and I had split the script into three parts, I got the middle part (scenes 5-8).

Creating the animatic:

The animatic:





Storyboard

My group members and I decided to split the script or 'Mr Smith' and create a storyboard for it. I was in charge of scenes 5-8.

This is the storyboard that I created:

Super Macro

Super macro allows you to focus even more on the object than a normal macro mode. This allows you to blur out the background and be very focused on the object; this is very similar to depth of field.

Depth of Feild

Depth of field is the distance between the nearest and farthest objects in a scene, the nearest objects are in focus.

This allows the audience to be focused on the main object.

Headroom Shot

Headroom is the amount of space between the top of the subjects head and the top of the frame. If you have too much headroom it does not look good and wastes frame space.

Lead Room Shot

A lead room shot is when there is space in front and in the direction of an object, it is usually in the direction of where the object/person is going.

For example: cars require lead rooms, extra space is allowed in front of the moving car so the viewer can see that it has some place to go.

space in front of the car

White Balance

White balance is the process of removing unrealistic colours in the frame, this is so objects appear white in the photo/film as it is in person. White balance improves the image under a wide range of lighting conditions.



as you can see in the second picture it is more cleared and the there is no unwanted colours.



Here is an interesting video on white balance:

Rule of Thirds

The basic principle of understanding the rule of thirds is to imagine breaking an image down to thirds (horizontally and vertically) so that you have 9 parts.

With this grid in mind there are four important parts of the image that should be considered in your frame.

This theory is that you place the important parts in the middle or making the image more balanced.

Audience Research

We had carried out a questionnaire on Survey Monkey to find out what sort of things our audience would like to see in our film,

(click on images to enlarge)

Looking at the replies we had got back, there are a few things such as location and the time which we will be trying to incorporate in to our film.
There are also many things that we will not be including in our film, this is because we want it to be more of a surprise to the audience rather than it going along with what they thought the film is going to be about. For example, the main character is going to be in fact a male, he is not within the age range the audience wanted and there are no deaths in our film.