Teaser Trailer - Final Edit

Fallen Grace - Teaser Trailer from Emma Taylor on Vimeo.

Evaluation Question 4 - Abi

Who are your audience and what have you learnt from audience feedback? The intended outcome of our production was to create a trailer that would appear to be a thriller for teenagers due to the coming of age elements also involved. I think we were successful in our endeavour, as the first 30 seconds mainly involve shots of teenagers behaving in a stereotypical and somewhat relatable way to our audience of teenagers from the age of 15-21, including parties, relationships and education. We should the thriller elements from then onwards, such as explosions, blood, chases and the authorities being called, however we still kept the coming of age element by showing flashbacks of relationships and our main cast being teenagers themselves. Our intended audience for Fallen Grace are mixed gender teenagers from the age of 15-21. This is shown by the elements of coming of age which usually appeals to a young adult audience, the cast being relatable due to them being a similar age, and the certificate of 15 that we gave the film, which also helps with the thriller element of our genre as it is rare for thrillers to be below the certificate of 15. We also chose this target audience as it is the one we can relate to most ourselves and therefore could portray our own emotions and experience and so help the audience relate more to our production as we have a better understanding of them. To attract the audience, we include two titles plate in the trailer which states “from the makers of Sweet Revenge”. This helps to pull in the audience as it will interest fans who enjoyed Sweet Revenge, which was another 15. It also gives some indication to the style of the film, including how we filmed and edited. Sweet Revenge is in this instance intended to seem like a well-known film, which quite a few people watching the trailer would recognise. This is also supported by the fact that both films are mid budget which means that a similar audience would be interested in them. To check for any mistakes and places that could be improved, we asked our friends and family to view our second to last edit and give some constructive criticism. This is because we felt that since we knew what every shot meant and the plot, we may be biased about the outcome. The qualitative data we received was very helpful as it allowed us to see mainly where more sound effects were needed, which we then added in for the final edit. This included the heart beat at the end and the gasp-like sound effect at the highlighter floating back into Grace’s hand. Out of the feedback we received, one particular comment noted was peoples love for the explosion. This comment particularly pleased us as we had gone to a lot of effort to do the explosion and a lot of hard work happened to make it possible – and look good. We decided to use an actual explosion rather than use legal accessible already filmed material as we wanted to ensure it was right for our production and we as realistic as possible. We also wanted our main actress Clare to be in shot which would not be possible without filming the explosion our self or using a green screen, however it would be hard for Clare to reaction to an explosion by falling to an explosion that wasn’t actually there. To do this, we contacted local business Lancashire Militia who had previously worked with our director Emma and so agreed to do the explosion for free in a safe environment. The explosion worked perfectly for the transition from equilibrium to disruption, as an explosion is a physical disruption and would shock the audience and make them more excited. Conforming to conventions of trailers, we only included shots of the equilibrium and the disruption, and none of the resolution. This is because the point of the audience going to see a film is to find out what the resolution is and how the characters achieve it, so showing the resolution would be pointless and would make us lose a large viewership. We did however, have a very fast montage of shots at the end of most the previous shots already shown, however due to the speed of the montage it is very difficult to see each individual shot in the montage. The montage also reverses the shots. This was inspired by the trailer for “How I Live Now”. We included this as it was a very good way to end the trailer and close it without ruining the end of the film. It also gives a very dramatic effect and the speed makes it quite thrilling conforming to the genre of the film. We also included Claude Levi Strauss’ theory of binary opposition, which is a common convention of thrillers. Binary oppositions which we encompassed include good vs evil, young vs old, fair vs dark, supernatural vs natural, innocent vs guilty, life vs death, happiness vs pain, love vs hate. These are Grace vs. Mr Eastwood, Grace vs. everyone, Grace’s emotions, Grace’s life and Charlie’s death (which was not seen in the trailer although there were subtle hints to it) and Grace’s emotions vs Mr Eastwood’s emotions. We also collected quantitative data so we could have statistics on how successful our production would be. We showed our trailer to the year 12 media class and gave them a set of questions to answer with yes or no, which could then be tallied and placed on a pie graph. The questions included; 1. Would you go and see this film 2. Do you find the storyline interesting and does it leave you wanting to see more 3. Would you like us on facebook or follow us on twitter? 4. Do you like and think the soundtrack is appropriate 5. Do you like the characters and find some relatable 6. Do you find the characters realistic 7. Could you easily identify the genre of this trailer The feedback we received was very positive, such as 85% of people saying that they would go and see the film at the cinema, meaning that our intended outcome was achieved as the students we asked the questions to are in the age of our target audience. We think this is due to contributing factors such as most of the people being able to identify the genre, which we achieved by the conventions and codes placed into our production. Also, our relevant use of mise-en-scene further helped as we clearly identified the thriller element with locations such as basements and the use of the explosion, and our coming of age element with locations such as house parties and the theme of young love.

Evaluation Task 3 - Emma

Fallen Grace; Evaluation Task Three from emmabrgs550

Evaluation Task 2 - Evaluation of Hardware and Software - Tom and Emma

Final Cut Pro X For the post production editing of our trailer we have used Final Cut Pro X (FCPX). FCPX is non-linear editing software developed by Mac for their Intel-bases OS Mac computers. FCPX provides effective and extensive use of editing techniques used within the film and television production industry. It supports a number of simultaneously composed video tracks, and user friendly interface, making it easy to edit complex edits such as multi-cam editing, Chroma-key and colour grading. It is a very effective and efficient editing system, which uploads straight to Vimeo which is particularly useful for time efficiency and sharing purposes.

 Canon 6D We used my Canon EOS 6D to film our production, with a 82mm full frame lens with polarizing filter. This high spec professional DSLR films at 1080p HD video, giving us the clearest, cinematic footage we could get to use for trailer. However the disadvantage of using this camera is that it is very expensive, especially with the range of lenses we used and could be easily broken. The camera is also complex to operate compared to other cameras, and an in depth knowledge of camera operations such as ISO and aperture must be understood in order to be camera operator.

Dolly We used a dolly for many of our tracking shots in the school scenes, and we used the dolly for professional looking shots. Although Broken Coal Productions do not have a professional dolly, I had made a dolly from some plastic piping from B&Q. The home – made dolly worked well in creating smooth and cinematic shots. However one issue with using the dolly was that they were not collapsible and remained their full size, making them difficult to be ported to different locations.

 SD Cards My Canon camera takes SD cards, and whilst lower spec SD cards are known for running out of storage space when filming, we used four 62GB and 32GB cards which can hold a lot of data. We didn’t have to worry about storage space on our camera running out, and on the mac we were editing on, the SD card could just be imported into the computer and the files transferred quickly onto the desktop.

Tripod We used a tripod to stabilise some of our shots as we didn’t want any camera shake which would make our work look messy and unprofessional, even though we did take it off the tripod to have some hand held shots to give some variation. The tripod proved useful for panning tracking shots, and we also used it to go onto the dolly for extra stabilisation. It was a very key and useful part of equipment to have.

 Batteries Whilst expensive, the Canon, rechargeable lithium camera batteries (Canon LP-E6) are very effective and let us have up to 5 hours filming time for each battery (we had two). These allowed us to film continuously for a long period of time without having to stop frequently to change the battery pack. Sigma 24-105 F4 DG OS HSM Full Frame Camera Lens This sigma lens which cooperates with Canon full frame cameras. I bought this lens as it is the latest addition to the ‘art’ series on lenses which give good image quality and has a 19 element/ 14 group design, with Sigma’s FLD glass, to minimize aberrations. The 45cm focusing range enables us to use a large depth of field in our work, giving sharp image quality and cinematic effect. However, this lens is very expensive and so we had to be careful when filming with it. To stop the lens glass getting damaged, I also bought a filter to protect the lens glass.

Polarising Filter Another filter I bought is an 82mm polarising filter which we used on the last few shoots to deepen the contrast in the colours for better quality images. This also protects the lens glass, as it is much cheaper to replace the filter than the lens glass.

LED Film Pannel Lighting The pannel lighting allowed us to channel a strong light source onto our actors to allow us to manipulate the cinematophy of the scene, enabling us to change and create moods. For example, when filming in the school and in a basement, we used a low level of light to create a chiarascuro lighting style, but we have enough light in order to not create grain by increasing the ISO settings on the Canon 6D. The lighting was useful as we could adapt the mood of the scene by changing the intensity and place of the pannel. The lighting is very expensive however and we had to be careful when mounting it onto it’s stand and putting the bulbs into place.

Reflector We used a reflector, as we only had one main light source, which meant that shadows would be created onto objects and faces, as all objects are either rectangular, square or circles. Faces are circles, so shadows are easily created and so a reflector is used to bounce light back onto the face to eliminate shadows. The reflector came in very useful on shoots as we were able to create shots with minimal shadow.

Clapper Board We used a clapper board in order to sync the sound and the visuals together in the editing process. We used the sound from the DSLR to sync up the sound with the boom mic from the chosen shot (marked by the clapper).

Sound recorder - Zoom H4N Solid State audio recorder We used this sound recorder which records onto SD cards and works in conjunction with the boom. This operates on two separate channels (one for right and left ear) and gives clear, detailed sound recordings which can be edited during post production.

Boom Mic We used a boom microphone in order to get the sound as close to the action as possible. This would enable us to cut out any unwanted disturbances in the sound, and get the sharpest sound possible. Danny Boyle said on the production of his latest feature film ‘Trance’ that ‘sound is pretty much 50% of the film. And I was lucky that my sound producer got as close as possible, and it really showed. I think the sound really made some of the scenes in this film.’ Continuing from this idea, we wanted to focus on the sound production to make it the best it could be, and with the boom mic being able to get close up to the sound being produced eg. Feet walking then this is beneficial to us in order to make the most realistic, detailed trailer. The boom is easy to hold and manipulate, making it easy to record sound effectively.

Dead Cat We used the dead cat in conjunction with the sound equipment when we were outside on location, in order to not get any wind feedback into the microphone, which would spoil the recordings. We found this useful as on some of the days, the weather would ruin some of the shots.

For our trailer ‘Fallen Grace’ we also used a variety of different software in order to conduct our research, display and share our work and edit the final production.

We used the video sharing site Vimeo as a way of uploading rushes, animatics and the trailer. Vimeo was a good site for us to use as we could embed the videos directly onto our blogs and also share them on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, which we also used to create fan pages, updating the followers on the latest film news. Vimeo is also accessible on the school computers. This was very convenient considering a lot of our work is being done within class hours so being unable to access and share our footage from school is very important. 

E-mail was also very useful as a quick and effective way of sharing work with each other, as we could always access the work whether at home or at school.

                     

We conducted much of our research on websites such as IMDb and Vimeo, as they both allowed us to watch the trailers of films with similar conventions to ours such as ‘How I live now’, ‘abduction’ and ‘I am number four’ and then analyse them so we could understand the genre specific conventions and adhere to them when making our trailer. Vimeo also allowed us to take screen shots of relevant features that we could then convert into JPGs to display on our blogs.

We utilised the software Open mind 2 to create a mind map of our initial ideas surrounding a coming of age genre and other sub genres such as thrillers, action films and Sci-Fi’s.

 Imdb actually had a huge impact on our decision making and what we would ultimately include in our hybrid genre of a coming of age and a thriller. For example it was only after watching the trailer for ‘How I live now’ that we decided to include an explosion as we felt this had a huge impact on the effectiveness of the whole trailer. We also drew influence from the editing style, of example, the end of the ‘How I live now trailer’ Includes a reversed montage edit of all the clips included in the trailer, we really liked the effect this added to the trailer as it essentially sums up everything the viewers has just seen in the trailer into a few short seconds, we wanted to replicate it in our own to bring the trailer to a close. We also included chiaroscuro lighting similar to that seen in the trailer for ‘I am number four’. The chiaroscuro lighting connotes the dark sides to the story. In I am number four, the chiaroscuro was most prominent at the point of disruption, in this case it is when he discovers he isn’t who he thought he was and his life is torn apart. We also used chiaroscuro lighting at the point of disruption in our trailer for fallen Grace, in both the explosion scene and in the scene where Zara is going off the rails.

                     

 We took a lot of our inspiration on costume design from figures in popular culture and also characters from other films and TV shows, Charlie for example was based loosely on the character of the same from ‘The perks of being a wallflower, IMDb and YouTube gave us a constant reference to the character, allowing us to mould our own characters according to dress codes etc..  

 Our research expanded several mediums; one of which was the software Prezi. This is online software that can be used to create presentations, this was a really fun and creative way of displaying our research that could then be easily referenced back to when planning our own trailer,

Photoshop cs5, although we didn’t need excessive use of Photoshop it was extremely useful when creating our poster. Photoshop allowed us to change the gradient so it goes from black to white from bottom to top. This way we can have a light colour at the top and still have back at the bottom allowing the important institutional information to be seen with a smooth transition from light to dark.

                                       

Using Photoshop also allowed us to import images onto transparent layers meaning we can have our photo of our main character Grace in the background with other layers of text on top such as the title, the age certificate and institutional information. We were also allowed to add further layers to alter the colour (selective colour layer) and another layer for contrast (brightness and contrast layer. This meant the colours could be altered within the poster to add more of a thriller atmosphere similar to that in posters we analyzed like the poster for ‘Shutter Island’ which features heavy chiaroscuro lighting and the main protagonist’s face half in shadow, we tried to achieve a similar affect with our poster with focus being placed on the Grace’s face, this was all possible due to Photoshop. The colours we used were also to connote an idea of death and destruction. We were also able to include conventions such as primary opposition into the poster with the monochrome effect using black and white to represent good and evil, reflecting what will be seen in the film itself.