Magazine cover flat plans

Here is the flatplan for our Magazine front cover that Asha has drawn. The cover uses the basic conventions of a magazine, using things like; mid shot image, main story, stick, side notes relating to main story.

Behind the scenes... preparing for the magazine cover

Here are some images from the photoshoot for the magazine front cover where Asha did Shria's makeup as the final girl. The look desired was that she has escaped the 'ghost', with that injuring herself.
Her I've posted what make up she used and the end result.  

Fonts

When planning the front cover and the poster as a group we have to do research into fonts. to do this we went on dafont.com and clicked on the 'horror' option.

After doing that we typed the name out our trailer into the box and searched through a variety of horror fonts as shown below. Carrying out this research enabled us to have a variety of fonts to choose from when choosing the right one for our film package.

General update: Photoshoot schedules

General update: Photoshoot schedules

31/01/14 - photoshoot with Jozefina in the studio (12.20-1.10PM) 31/01/14 - test shots for magazine front cover with myself, Asha, Beth and Shria in the studio (11.20-12PM)3/02/14 - photoshoot for the magazine front cover with myself, Asha, Beth and Shria in the studio (8.55-95AM)

Regina's death

For Regina's death scene, we wanted to do something different in the way she would die/or get tortured. through talking to Mr Varguese we came across a video on YouTube creating a cracking noise with a bottle. through the guidance of this person we will put this in our trailer as the scene where Regina is attacked possessed by the spirit Annabelle.

Title research

Today in the lesson, my group and I decided it was time to come up with a name for our horror trailer. to do this we produced a mind map exploring different names.
We first discussed things to do with possession as that is what our horror trailer is based on;

Based on the ideas we came up with, we selected a couple of names and then as a group, collectively tallied the one with the most votes. 

From that we decided to go with the name 'Chained Souls'. We chose this name as it could have a double meaning 1. that she could be literally chained to the previous ghost, or her surroundings and 2. the ghosts are haunting little girls, in a chain form ex. from Guinevere to Annabelle to Sammy.

Edit Decision Lists

Here are some shotlists/edit decision lists of the shots we will be taking in the near future.

Mise en scene

Behind the scenes... Filming

Here we are adjusting the hair and make up on Jozefina (playing the part of Annabelle) to make her appear more more sinister and scary in the trailer.

Our new, improved narrative

Update on our narrative

Today we rewrote our narrative with the changes we wanted to make and corrected anything we didn't want to include. 

The narrative of our film features a young girl named Annabelle, aged 15, who lived with her mother, father and younger brother. She loved to write, especially poems. Every day she would write in her diary; a new poem and a chapter about her day concerning her emotions and feelings especially about how she was tormented and labelled about having mental health issues as she would hear voices and see ghosts. She believed that she was being haunted by a ghost who she named ‘Guinevere’ (around the age of 5, but no one knows except herself) or otherwise known as ‘The ghost that lives at ‘134 Queens Road’, who manipulated and antagonized her constantly because all she wanted was someone to play with her and love her, like her mother never did. This eventually made Annabelle commit suicide; from a drug overdose, due to the constant hassle of people calling her ‘crazy’ and the continuous terrorizing from Guinevere. All she wanted was to be left alone. Guinevere was finally at peace when Annabelle died, as she finally got the friend she always wanted, now that Annabelle is in a spirit form.

When Annabelle died, all she left was her diary, and the mystery of her death unsolved. 17 years later, a group of friends are put together to research about something interesting within their locate area for a school project. Searching online they tremble up across an old article which tells them about a young girl called Annabelle committing suicide in this house. The group of friends consist of an innocent, studious and intelligent girl called Sammi (aged17) a provoking, attention seeking and promiscuous girl named Regina (aged 17) and an clumsy, foolish girl called Laura (aged 17). In search of this house, they ask a few people around the locate area if they have heard anything about 134 Queens Road and the story of Annabelle. They all receive negative feedback and are warned not to go there as the house is haunted by the deadly spirits of Annabelle. But without a doubt Regina insists on making a visit to the house as she finds this mystery of Annabelle intriguing and is determined to find out more for the school project set. On the other hand, Sammi disagrees completely and is constantly reminding Regina of what could potentially go wrong. On the 6th of March, around 5PM they make their visit down to the house, (having trouble finding it at first) they finally reach the old wooden gates. First in, Regina finds a back door which leads them in to the abandoned house, followed by Laura and lastly Sammi.

As they start to explore the old and dusty house, Sammi realise that something's completely wrong and tells the others to leave now. Now coming up to 6.30PM; after Regina's satisfaction of staying in the house and messing around they decide to leave, but Regina see’s a door leading to the attic of the house with she insists on exploring. She makes her way up stairs, and suddenly the door slams shut. The spirit of Annabelle kills her and the other two friends panic and run, reaching out for the front door, they hear it lock itself and jumped, left in complete silence.

Only accompanied by the spirits of Annabelle, things start to go bad really quickly. Sammi tells Laura to stay together but she disagrees and tries to find a way out. Second death happens to Laura as she gets engulfed into the darkness, and dragged to hell. Left alone in the haunted house, Sammi finds ways to escape but fails. She finds a dairy that Annabelle use to write along with her childhood toys, and discovers the truth behind it all. Speaking back to the spirit, she is tormented for a days until finds a way out and escapes from the house. The spirit of Annabelle is at peace through the killing of Regina and Laura, but this goes down as an unsolved mystery. The haunted house still waits for its next arrival, this time spirits of Regina and Laura will be after you. 

VoiceOvers...

We've decided to use voice overs in our trailers as it is a convention of some horror trailers and it also will fit well with what were trying to put across.

The first voice over we thought about using was from the diary scene clip.

The script sounded as follows..

The other voice we thought about using will start of our trailer, explaining to a class what their project is.

Difficulties we've faced

Throughout post production we faced a varitey of difficulties. Here is an example of one of them for the magazine cover. We had problems with being able to read the tag line well, as well as sticking with the three colours that are conventional to a magazine. 

When I looked back at the Harry Potter empire magazine cover, ( a real media text ) I noticed similar problems.

Changing our narrative... a little bit.

So due to many problems with location and time, we have to tweak our initial narrative so that our trailer is completed and to the best of our ability in the time set, without it looking rushed. Doing this, we've introduced new parts into our trailer such as starting it off with a voice over of a teacher explaining to the class there assignment, instead of having a family move into a house and the daughter find out. Although this would be an ideal way to present our trailer we don't have the charters or time to present this the way we would like.

The cast of trailer - chatacter profiles

There are 4 main characters in our trailer. these are their character profiles and what they will be doing in  my trailer. Highlighting whether there convention or not and why we have chosen to do this.

Shria plays Sammy who is the final girl in the trailer

When deciding to use a final girl in our trailer it was important that we conformed to the rules of Mulvey's theory. We portrayed this through things like the mise en scene of the character. As you can tell in the picture above her costume is all white which represents purity - something a final girl character holds - which is why we made her wear all white. She also has a flowery headband - flowers are sometimes associated with children and innocence. We also made sure she wasn't wearing any heavy make up to comply with her being pure and innocent. 

Her character is scared to go to the haunted house with the rest of her group but does in none the less as she needs to get a good grade on her assignment. All the way through the trailer she is the one most skeptical of the situation the other two girls get themselves into.

Beth plays Lara who is the friend that goes along with everything Kerri does as she wants to fit in.

Lara is the friend that goes along with the rest her group (particularly Kerri) as she just wants to fit in with them. she is dressed in ordinary clothes, however in most horror films, most of the cast die. Her character dies because she doesn't always follow the rules and wants to live care free. Similar to the friends of Laurie in Halloween, she dies because she is apart of that group and is not as pure as Sammy

Asha plays Kerri who is the promiscuous girl in the trailer.

Through the research of horror films such as Halloween and Carrie I realised that there is a reoccurring convention of a promiscuous/bully type of character. This is played through Kerri and the things we done to present this is though things like the Mise en scene. She wears medium to heavy make up, red lipstick and red/wine colour top, that is revealing and shows skin. Lives care free, has no repercussions and always up to try something new. Her character is one the to find the article on the computer and push her group to to go to the haunted house. She is attracted to the trill and the danger of the house that eventually gets her into trouble.

Jozefina plays Annabelle who is the suicidal teenager that is coming back to haunt the girls

Young and innocent girl who has committed suicide because of the ghost Guinevere who haunted her once her and her family moved into the house. She was told by the ghost that she wanted to be just friends, and when she told her parents, they didn't believe her. At the beginning of the trailer when the teenagers find the article about Annabelle, it is unclear of the reason she died. When they arrive she follows them around the house, until they find a diary, when Sammy finishes reading her last entry, chaos strikes.

MORE TEST SHOTS

Today we attempted to shoot test shots number 24 and 30 which consist of Sammi hurriedly running up the stairs using a handheld camera . To test this I ran up a flight of stairs to film it in order to see how it would turn out.

After watching it with my other group members, we realised that this form of filming for this particular shot was not the best way as it looked more messy, rather than chaotic. Alternatively I think it would be better if we did a high angle shot of Sammi running up the stairs as high angles from a audiences point of view symbolised inferiority to the person being shot which is something we want to portray at this point in our trailer.

Shooting schedule

TESTSHOTS!!!

This is test shot number 6

This shot was desired to be shot at a low angle - extreme close up. To do this I decided to film it handheld with a slight zoom. I did it like this as I initially thought this would be the best way to shoot this shot. however I and my other group members soon realised that the zoom made it difficult to film the shot handheld. As you can see in the picture below we got a table with a slant - a similar height to the door nob and placed the camera on there to make sure it is filmed steadily.

After realising that this shot wouldn't work in our horror trailer we decided to cut it out. This will not effect our trailer that much as the shot would have only lasted around 3 seconds and so it can be replaced by a different shot of the house.

Based On a True Life Story

So when writing our narrative we wanted to base it around a true life event as that is a convention of horror and has been shown to scare people a lot more than if the story was made up. (Including myself!) When searching, my group and I found a real life story about a suicide that has happened to a young girl, similar to our story line and here it is. Annabelle's character is inspired by the young girl in the article and it explains and gives us a background on why she committed suicide.

http://www.womensweb.ca/mental/suicide/teenage.php