PROMO PACK BRIEF

Ben Richardson 1853

I worked with Sam De Bruin 1815, Matt Heyns 1828 and Finn Hanley 1824.

Our brief was to make a promo package, consisting of at teaser trailer, full trailer, film poster and social media pages for a film.

Our film was called Off The Leash. Off The Leash is a horror/thriller film following the adventure of four teenage boys investigating a group of violent protestors called the 'Transparent Animals'. The film takes place during the covid-19 pandemic, which has forced the government to take action by initiating a national lockdown. As a result of the lockdown precautions, the Transparent Animals have begun committing violent crimes and misbehaving in order to show their disrespect towards the governments. The group wear animal masks in order to hide their identity and appear intimidating. 

You can see my Creative Critical Reflection by clicking here or you can access it by clicking the page above.

Camera Work: We filmed the majority of our film using an iPhone camera. We used an iPhone 12 Pro camera, which films in very high quality (4K HDR).  As each member of the production team also appeared in front of camera, everyone had to do their fair share of filming. In scenes that I was not in, I often was behind the camera filming. Furthermore, if I was behind the camera and another person in the team was filming, I would be giving advice and recommendations about different camera angles and shots we could use to create meaning.

Editing: We used Final Cut Pro to edit our film. Throughout production, Matt was our chief editor due to his previous experience editing footage using Final Cut Pro. However, I also helped out and made suggestions for edits we could implement and came up with different ideas and variations. For example, I suggested that we use a variety of short clips (e.g. close ups) with fast editing in order to build suspension and create an eery atmosphere for our film.

Lighting: We filmed a large amount of our trailer outside in the woods, so we used natural lighting for the majority of our production. However, some of our trailer was filmed in the dark-room at school where we used a variety of red lights to create a scary effect. I thought the red lights would connote a threatening situation and I feel as if it was successful.

Directing: Throughout our entire process, each team member contributed ideas and thoughts about plots, shot-types, locations and props. This was very helpful as it allowed us to always have a variety of options when it came to filming. One main directing aspect that I took control of was finding props. For instance, I suggested that the antagonists wear animal masks and I found my animal masks that are used in our trailer. Furthermore, I was able to sort out getting a car to use for one of our scenes that required it.

Main Trailer

Teaser Trailer

Film Poster

Social Media: Instagram

https://www.instagram.com/offtheleash22/

REFLECTIONS: DARK ROOM

When I reflect over our film trailer, multiple scenes stand out to me as being successful in creating meaning. Some of my favourite footage from our trailer is the clips we got in the schools dark room. Using the dark room allowed us to film creepy, eery footage with jump-scares. We used red lighting in order to build tension, as red often connotes warning and danger. Furthermore, we filmed using found footage which made the audience feel as if they were actually in the shoes of the protagonist and experiencing the horror for themselves. 

We used a variety of different camera angles in order to portray the antagonists as threatening and scary in this footage. For example we used a low-angle shot (see below) in order to connote power and authority which is something that the protesters want to have. We also use a mid shot which showed a protester and also enables the audience to see what he was wearing, along with the background of the room, informing the audience of the location.

Overall, when reflecting on the footage captured in the dark room, I believe it was some of our most successful footage as clearly emphasises the horror genre of our film. The footage was scary as it acted as a jump scare for audiences to experience. I also feel as if the variety of camera angles proved to be successful in creating a sinister undertone for the antagonists.

CHANGES: STORYLINE

One main change we made during our production was to the storyline of our trailer. Originally, we had a completely different idea from Off The Leash. When we were researching we came across the TV show 'Hunted' on Channel 4. This TV show explored the idea of a group of people on the run from another group who had the aim to 'hunt the runners down'. We liked this idea as we thought we may be able to develop it into an enticing, action film. We explored different ideas; one idea we had was to have someone who owed a powerful organisation a lot of money (maybe drug money) and was on the run from them. We believed this idea could work because we could create an action-thriller trailer using lots of short clips and fast editing.

Eventually, as a production team we drifted away from this idea as we realised that involving drugs and dirty money is not suitable for audiences under 18 and that would significantly limit our target audience. We still were enthusiastic about the idea of an action-thriller, so we still followed this idea. We had to adapt our plot so it was more suitable to younger audiences, but also keep the genre we liked, this proved to be difficult as we had to work around fine margins. However, we eventually came up with the idea of 'Off the Leash!'. We still took inspiration from Hunted in the sense that there were a group of antagonists terrorising a group of teenagers. We also made our protagonists teenagers, this was a good idea as it will attract younger, teenage audiences to watch our film because they feel as if they can relate to the characters of similar age.

Overall, I believe the change to our storyline was successful and for the best.

REFINEMENTS: FILM POSTER

One refinement I made was to my film poster. Once I had finished my first draft I realised that I could significantly improve it as certain features were not right. For example, in my first draft the central image was slightly being obstructed by the film title. The refinement I made to overcome this issue was swapping the position of the film title and the tagline, using photoshop. By doing this it freed up more room towards the top of my poster, enabling the face of my central image to stand out and no longer be obstructed. This was a key edit as it must be clear that the figure is wearing an animal mask, as this is an important, reoccurring feature within our film.

Furthermore, in order to make room for my film title at the bottom of my poster, I had to edit the billing block and make it shorter and wider, in order to create more space above. This was an easy edit to make on photoshop as I could just edit the size of the font and compress it. This was also an important edit as it was important to make my film poster look professional. Professional film posters often have small billing blocks that are barely visible, in order to fit more important content onto the poster, such as the central image. I would say that this edit was successful as my poster turned out well and I am pleased with how professional it looks.

EDITS: GREEN SCREEN

One key edit we had to make in our production process was centred around the news reporter scene. We made use of the media departments green screen and Final Cut Pro in order to create an effect where the reporter appeared to be in a studio. This edit was one of the most challenging, but important edits we had to make. It was important to make this scene look realistic and convincing because if the editing appeared lazy and sloppy it could make our production team look unprofessional.

Using Final Cut Pro we were able to remove the background of the image and just select the reporter (Tom). We were able to complete this edit with relative ease because we filmed the footage against the green screen which had a strongly contrasting colour from what the reported was wearing. This allowed us to differentiate the reporter from the background. Next, we had to import an image of a news studio as the new background. We researched various images and eventually found one we thought would look convincing. Once more, using Final Cut Pro we could successfully underlay the image behind the reporter to make it look like he was sitting in a news studio.

Overall, I was happy with how this edit turned out. We were successful in creating a convincing edit that makes it look like our news reporter is in a studio.