Analysis of the questionnaire for the synopsis of our film The Forgotten Truth

              

Q1) What genre do you think our film would be? The majority of people said that they think our film would be a psychological thriller, which is what genre we said we would make it to be. This is a good result as we now know that people know a bit of what to expect from our film.

Q2) What age rating would you give our film? We got a range of answers from 12 to 18 for this, but mostly said it could be rated as a 15. This is a different rating to what we thought the film would be as we aimed for it to be a 12A. We will now do research into what a 15 would have to include and reconsider rating our film.

Q3) Would you watch our film? 5/6 people said that they'd watch our film. We are happy with this result as we know not everyone would want to watch it, but I think that 5/6 is a successful result.

Q4) Do you think the storyline is easy to follow? The answers for this were about 50/50, but it was said that it was not a bad thing if the storyline was hard to follow as sometime the complexity of a film could make it more interesting. Looking at these results we may consider altering the storyline to make it a bit clearer.

Q5) What do you like about our film? A few things that were said that people liked were to do with the twist at the end of the film, and how it appealed to a certain age category.

Q6) What sort of music do you think should be played in our film? People said that they'd expect to hear really tense and jumpy music as this would then add to the atmosphere of the film and make it scarier. This is what we plan to do.

Q7) Where do you think you would see our film? A few people said that are film could be seen at places like in the cinema, YouTube or Netflix. We think that our film would be most likely seen on YouTube as it is only a short film.

Title Sequences for our film

I've taken some inspiration for our title sequence from several films such as…

Se7en

Se7en has a good title sequence that we could take aspects from as the pictures behind the titles relate to the genre e.g. books- finding out information/detecting, dark rooms-secrets, drawings-plans. We could use similar such as pictures of blood to show death, mental asylum picture to show where our main character is and files to show he's going to find out information about himself. The main title is also in a strange text, that shadows over itself showing there's a sense of confusion in the film. Our film could have a strange text that gains the audiences attention and has different text types over pictures of things that relate to our film.

Kiss kiss bang bang

Kiss kiss bang bang has interesting titles at the start as the writing slides down the page on the actual title which shows the genre as it resembles a gun shot through the page. This looks mysterious and as though there's going to be a lot of action in the film. The blood on the page also shows this. We could put blood on our files and enter in into our title sequence to show the person in the files dies. Giving the audience a slight hint but not enough for them to guess the storyline. It teases them The text is in red and white conforming to ideas of death and innoence which could show there's an innocence in the film which leads to death. Our film could have black and red writing to show there's death and anger in the film.

Six feet under

Six feet under has credits that we may use ideas from in our film because of the images relating to the film and the simplicity of the white titles, standing out against the colourful backgrounds, which is ironic as the film concerns death. Our film could use a bright colour scheme at the start with simple titles to show the irony of what happens in the film and the fact it's not so simple and more complex than the audience may initially guess. The eeriness of the simple text is vast as the pictures are very noticeable and the titles make the audience want to look at it.

Our title sequence would be simple in order to not complicate things any further as the plot is quite difficult to grasp. Using simple texts and monochrome colours would be very direct and the audience wouldn't know what to expect if the title sequence didn't really match the film.

Production Logo Research

Production Logos are important for production companies because when they make the film, the logo will be associated with it. If the quality of the films that the production company put out is of a high standard, then the logo and therefore the company will become synonymous with great cinema, almost like a hallmark.

For the logos to be memorable, the images need to be quite simple and the information should be easy to read. Here are some examples of successful production company logos:

Tricky Shots

When Damen was searching for Lilly through the corridors of the mental home, we wanted to do an effect to try and show that Lilly wasn't really there. So as we panned the camera when the shot went on to Lilly, we made it so that it went from being unfocused to focused. Hopefully, to the audience, the would suggest that something isn't right as it is not a normal pan.

---

Here with this show we wanted to create an uneasy feeling for the audience to show that Damen was realising that he had murdered Lilly. I filmed this shot by walking closer to Damen whilst simultaneously reverse zooming with the camera. I thought that this would be good as it will seem unnatural to the audience and hopefully they will start realizing what Damen has done too.  

---

Here Damen and Lilly are arguing and Damen pushes Lilly against the wall, to show that their relation ship was getting more aggressive. We wanted to quickly pan the camera as Lilly hit the wall to make the push seem faster and more violent. This was difficult to do as we had to make sure the pan was in time with the push and also a smooth pan.

---

In this shot we wanted Lilly to disappear to show to audience that she was just a spirit in Damen's head. Also it show that Damen is realizing that she isn't really there. This was a hard shot to do as we had to make sure that the camera was in the exact same position and also make sure that Damen didn't move.  

---

For the fight scene we had to try and make the violence look as real as possible without anyone getting hurt. We tried to get shots from different angles to hopefully cut them up to increase the speed of the scene. We did this so tat the scene would look more brutal and realistic.

---

Here we had to try and make it look like Damen was hanging himself without the actor really getting hurt. This was difficult as we couldn't get the upper body and lower body in the same shot as it would ruin the illusion of him hanging, so instead we did separate shots.

Radio Trailer research

            

Here is a radio trailer for Doctor who. It starts off with the sound of the tardis landing and the door opening which is a well known/popular sound. It then has Matt Smith talking about how he's accidently landed in a radio station. The trailer doesn't actually advertise the show it's self but it will remind anyone who's listening about it and could make them want to watch it.


           

Here is another trailer for Doctor Who. This one again starts with the sound of the tardis. It then goes into Matt Smith & Karen Gillan talking, but this time it is the dialogue form the show from when they both first meet. The audio in the background of the speech is upbeat, exciting music which makes the show seem more action packed.

Film Poster

I made my own film poster using Photoshop. I started by finding a relevant background colour. I went with the colour black as our film is quite a dark film and includes death. I liked the effect of the smudges in the black colour as it gives it a scarier atmosphere rather than just having a solid black colour. I then took the photo of the main characters that is used in the film and took parts away from the image to make it look a bit rougher. I thought this would make the image blend in to the background more and create a better effect. I then though the text should be a bright clear colour as on top of the black background it would stand out more. I chose for the title text to be in capitals to make it more clear and eye catching, this would make it one of the first things would look at. I chose to have the slogan and other text at the top of the image as in then frames the main image. Also, I made sure the release date for the film is clear and central so that the audience would know when they were able to go and see it.

Film Logo

I made this film logo for our film poster and film. Since we were going to make a psychological thriller, I thought that the logo should look quite dark. Therefore, I chose a dark background and used plain white text. I then created a shadow behind the text to make it look more sinister. Which would give the audience an idea of what kind of film we produced.

Prop photo

This is the photo that we will print out and use in the "Mental Room" scene in out film. I thought that this would be a good picture to use as they both look happy to be together and it will show the audience what life was like before Damen turned mentally ill. It will also work well in the film as the photo is take from the "Park Memory" Scene, so as the picture is show it will be clear the the scene after it is a memory.

Poster Research - Similar Posters

Posters I looked at that our poster can take inspiration from are Shutter Island and The Sixth Sense.

These posters have similar layouts to the template I made after researching film posters. The Title is below the main image, making the main image the most important part of the poster, people tend to respond to imagery better than text so this is a good way of catching the audience's attention.

The colours are dark to represent the mysterious and serious nature and tone of the film, and with our film being of the same genre and similar storyline to the two films, I think we could adopt so of these films in our poster.

An image of the main actor is central to both of these posters, the actors have mysterious, stern looks on their face, again, to emanate the genre and tone of the film. If this were a Romance or comedy for instance, the actors wold look happier and the colours wold be much brighter, the cues to the thriller genre seen in these posters is very apparent, and I think we need to ensure we emulate these techniques in order to have an effective poster for our film.

Poster Research - Layouts

This is an example of a typical film poster layout. The poster's aim is to draw the audience in with the main image, images are more attractive than words, so this techniques will be more effective in attracting the audience. The focus on a large image on the poster also allows the poster convey the tone of the film more effectively to the audience. Another observation of this layout is the Placement of the lead actor's name at the top of the poster. Audiences are more likely to be drawn to a household name than the title of the film itself, all too often we hear "The new DiCaprio film..." and this is evident in this poster layout. We will use a similar poster layout when we create our poster.