Making the film poster and final product

Below is a youtube video showing how I made the poster for the film 'The Unknown'. I took a film using quicktime screen record and used photoshop to edit the actual poster:



BELOW IS THE FINISHED PRODUCT:






































WHAT HAVE I LEARNED?

PROS:
- I learned more about how to use photoshop so that next time I can use shortcuts for things to be more accessible.
- I learned how to use Dafont and the two fonts that I liked in particular were 'Nuev' and 'Universal accreditation'. They allowed me to work quickly and effectively, although, they became very pixelated as they weren't fantastic quality.
- I learned a lot about how film posters work, i.e. the dimensions, where the titles go, the film poster symbols.

CONS:
-The final result came out extremely pixelated which was an issue because if we wanted to blow this up into the size of a poster, it wouldn't look like very good quality. However, that being said, we are only as good as the equipment we have and hence, as we were using a beginner SLR camera, the final project was always going to be pixelated.
- I felt as though the poster wasn't 'catchy' nor 'poppy' enough. Perhaps some colour or different fonts would change this.
- I didn't leave enough room for social media symbols and release dates.

Director's notebook

Here is a youtube vlog I created to go through my director's notebook, where I kept all my creative decisions and references during the production of the short film 'The Unknown':

Making the magazine review

In preparation for writing the film review I analysed a film review from the Empire magazine. I chose their review of "Bridge of Spies" as I thought that the layout would be most like the layout of our own film review. In my analysis I stuck post-it notes to the different sections of the review explaining the information that was given in each section and so showing the layout. Below are a number of photos that I took of each post-it note with the magazine:

The film review begins with the title of the film and some key points about it such as the release date, the name of some actors and the director. Then there will be an intro in which the basic plot summary is stated. This summary is only a few lines long and gets straight to the point.

After the plot summary is stated there is the main review. This is the section which writes about all of the different aspects of the film and the critic will tell the reader what they thought of each individual aspect. The aspects that are mentioned tend to be; writing, acting, cinematography, editing, muse-en-scène and soundtrack. The reader can make their own judgement on whether or not to watch the film based on what the critic has to say. In this sense, the main review is quite useful as it encourages people to go and see the types of films that they should hopefully like and it will also make it clearer to the reader whether or not it is a film that they would enjoy watching.

At the end of a review the critic will often write one last line or a few last lines to sum up their overall review of the film. It is by reading this part of the review that readers can tell whether or not this film is a good quality film to watch or not. The summary of the review will often be what make people decide to watch a film or turns them against the idea of watching a film. The rating may also be placed here although it can also be placed at the start of the review as well. The rating is normally out of 5 stars and so any film that receives 4 or 5 stars is normally a film that people will want to go and see.

Audience Response

This is the survey we intend to show people:


Below is a graph showing the answers to a survey about THE UNKNOWN. The test audience we showed this film to were teenagers of mixed genders and interests:

 

Below is a youtube video with a review from one of the test audience members:

REDRAFT: Script

As the film has begun to take place, we have realised that the script we previously had was simply not enough. We wanted to make the dialogue as interesting and informative as possible ad so we looked at different literary references. One poem that we found very striking was 'Aubade' by Philip Larkin. The stanza below stood out in particular. The plan would be to have this right at the beginning before the story kicks in as an intro/ prologue.


These few lines in particular:

"...No sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anasthetic from which none come round."

Below is the very final version of the script:

FADE IN - EXT.

Dylan, a young man of 19 years old and wearing dark clothes stands on the shore of a deserted, isolated beach. The sky is grey and the waves are calm. He looks out to the sea with an expression of desolate hope.

An internal monologue (VOICEOVER)

Montage one:

(with building intensity throughout) 

It's been one hundred and nineteen days since I last saw another human being...

Sometimes I wonder if this is just a nightmare that I’m forgetting to wake up from… Or maybe I’m in a coma and unconscious to the world around me. I feel lonely and I feel scared. Maybe that’s a blessing because I used to feel nothing. Once upon a time, I had a family. People said we were the perfect family. I remember my mother and father. I remember playing out in the garden with my older brother in Summer. We were young. The warmth from the sun soothing our skin. The smell of freshly cut grass and the vivid colours swirling around us. I remember our brightly illustrated books and comics. They gave us the belief that we were invincible. I think that’s as close as you can get to pure happiness.

Montage two

I should probably introduce myself now. My name is Dylan and I am Nineteen. I’ve never been very good at the whole social convention thing. You see, at the age of thirteen I was diagnosed with schizophrenia. My parents passed away in a fatal accident which I don’t want to talk much about. Firstly, I suffered from PTSD and then it developed into something completely different. I completely lost control of my own head. By then, my brother was eighteen. He had to leave school, abandon his hopes of a normal life and take care of me. He did a great job, considering what a burden I was. I was going to university in September to study astronomy and I could even stretch so far as to say, the future was looking bright. I had a girlfriend. She made me feel something. Love? I’m not sure it was that, but it was something. I told her I loved her and I felt like a fraud. I just couldn’t keep it together and I wrecked it like everything else in my life. I felt distant and thought I didn’t need her anymore. Never ever lose sight of the important things in life…

Montage Three

***’Nothing Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing

That this is what we fear - No sight, No sound,

No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,

Nothing to love or link with

the anaesthetic from which none come round.’

Hindsight is a funny thing and somehow, no matter how much control I clawed back from my schizophrenia, I was fighting a losing battle. And so, I left. Ignoring everything my heart was telling me and fully submitting to my head. Everything went grey and I lost sight of what I had. The schizophrenia came back with a vengeance and the more I suppressed it, the more my head contorted. I was paranoid and couldn’t silence my thoughts. All I could think was death would be easier and no one would even care. Selfish old me. I think of how I felt back then and that was easy in comparison to this. This Hell… This middle ground… This purgatory. 

What’s really strange is that I find things long lost from throughout my life. Memories wash up on the shore of this abyss like pieces of puzzle that I’m supposed to connect together.  Am I supposed to make some kind of self discovery to buy me a ticket out of here? Some kind of realization to get me out of this prison world?…When I first came here, I liked being alone, the peace, the solitude. Eventually I became confused about what was happening as a thousand rational and irrational thoughts flew through my head. Did anyone know I was here? After a while, it didn’t matter what this was but I couldn’t handle it. I was sinking deeper and deeper every single day. My chest confined like the waves above it, unable to breathe or reason. Then it became clear to me that I didn’t get out of the bath I took four months ago. That I had taken too many of my meds that night….

Montage four

(Whispers) This is my afterlife.

Editing: Voiceover

Recording The Voiceover:

The only voice heard in the film is a voiceover. The voice in the voiceover is Dylan's. This is used instead of him talking in the present moment of the shot. It helps to make the film seem more reflective as he speaks of the times in his life where he felt happy and everything that he misses. It also shows how he has reflected on his existence in the afterlife. The voiceover plays so that we can hear him speaking of the "middle-ground" that he is stuck in while the camera shots show him exploring this very place.

Recording the voiceover was the last task we had before making the final touches to the film. This was because we wanted to have the shots all taken and edited correctly so that we would know exactly how long he would need to all for and the different start and stop times in the voiceover. This meant that once it was done everything would be together. By shooting and editing everything first and leaving the voiceover to last, our group made the process of editing much more simple.

We recorded the voiceover on an iPhone using its built in speaker. There were a number of reasons for doing this

We had to record at the weekend and we therefore did not have access to the recording studio at  our school.
Using an iPhone was going to make the recording process a lot faster than spending hours in a recording booth thus meaning our actor wasn't being made to take up too much of his time.
An iPhone produces a lot less static noise than most recording equipment and therefore would help to give a clearer sound which would sound a lot better in the film.
After recording the voiceover, we transferred the recording onto the MacBook. Once this was done we added in into the video on Final Cut Pro and made sure that each clip matched up with the voice and that there wasn't a voiceover in any of the clips that we didn't intend to use of voiceover in. We also checked to make sure that the voiceover could be heard over the other background sounds.

Editing: Soundtrack inspiration

Inspiration for the soundtrack

Michael Suby: