Finished Magazine Cover

Today, We completed our magazine cover. We are proud to have achieved what we have, especially due to our select skills with using photoshop. We really struggled with photoshop particularly when trying to cut Emily out of the original image and place her with a new background, without her looking like she had been stuck on. The most difficult part was her hair and the attempt to make it look free flowing and not drawn on. We applied multiple effects to the magazine the hope of creating a convincing magazine cover, this involved darkening the image so that the text would be more obvious. We also found the same fonts to follow the style of Studio magazine. We also chose a grey background as this appeared most in the covers of Studio magazine.
We are pleased with what we have created and will be ready to move on to our evaluation.

Background drama

Today we went and took a photo of Emily who played our main character in Verity Lies.  We wanted to get the same feel as the Studio magazine women did so we turned all the lights off and used lamps to light her face and also used a hair dryer to get her hair to flow.  We took some in front of Emily's blinds that were spotty as we thought it would make a nice background and then some against her plain bedroom wall.
   Next we shortlisted our favourite photos as we did when designing our poster and discussed which one we felt would work best.  Eventually we chose the one of Emily side on with her hair flowing behind as we liked the unusual positioning and Emily looks very beautiful.

 Initially we liked the spotty background but when applying it to our Studio magazine layout we decided it cheapened the overall look of our piece.  We then made the decision to cut out Emily from the background thinking this would be a fairly straightforward easy process.  WE WERE SO WRONG.
   Daisy stayed after school today trying to get the background gone and nothing seemed to be going right.  The main problem is the hair.  It is very hard to distinguish where the hair stops and the background begins.  Once finally managing to cut her out placing her onto our fully formed magazine cover made Emily look very out of place and just sort of shoved there without much thought.
   We will continue to try to use this image as we really like it and want to use it for our cover but we need to think of a better way to achieve the look we want.

Today we have been trying to replicate the text of the Studio maqazine covers.  Using a website we were able to find out what the fonts used were and then use them ourselves.  It is difficult to know exactly what our cover will look like until we have the photo which we are intending to take early next week.  We chose a grey background as 3 out of the 4 issues of Studio have grey backgrounds. 

Ideas for Magazine

 We have looked at 'STUDIO' magazine, which is the British woman's first film magazine. Emily is the featured main character of our film so would be well suited to Studio magazine, however it appears to be less film related and more to do with the actress. This we do not mind as it gives depth to the character in the film however would like the film to be the main focus so perhaps Studio magazine would not be the ideal magazine.



We have also looked at 'SIGHT&SOUND' magazine in which a more artistic appearance occurs, which would nicely reflect our film that being one of the art house kind. However, much like STUDIO magazine the main focus is not the film itself but instead the directors behind the film. We are unsure as to which magazine we would like to use so shall look further.




We browsed over other magazines such as 'EMPIRE' and 'TOTAL FILM' but these are too commercial and orientate around large blockbuster films as suppose to art films.

Piranha Head

Get your gnashes round this. Here we were experimenting with trying to create a clear image of Emily's face but still retaining that sense of mystery. Here we combined an image of Emily and the poster so as to allow Emily to be more obvious as many people did not know what the poster was of. However, this cheapens the design and leaves nothing to the imagination so we decided against doing this. She looks as if she is screaming which fails to meet the genre and changes it to that of a horror. As well as making the poster look as if it has been photoshoped.

More Experimentation

We created these logos to go with the companies we made up.  The polariod pictures frame logo is to go with our production logo.  The camera logo is to go with the Diana Films company and and the megaphone to symbolise Loud Entertainment.  We chose to make these as we noticed on other posters they had very little logos under all the credits. After creating them we applied them to our poster and used the rubber tool so they blended in with the background.

Holly has left the building

Today Mr Go broke the news to us that Holly  is no longer attending Langley Park School for Girls. We were shocked by the news but understand we have a deadline coming up so have kept focused. We doing all we need to do to complete our coursework without our 4th Minion.

Verity Lies will go on!

Poster

 

This is the final Poster for Verity Lies.

We are really pleased with the final outcome, we like the fact our poster pushed the boundaries of conventional posters and was unique much like our teaser trailer. 

Progress

We have continued to work on our titles this week.  We have now added our text (Our title, our tag line and our actresses name).  We have moved the titles around a lot to see where we liked them best and eventually settled on having them all at the bottom.  However this  made the top part of the poster look quite plain and empty.  We then had the idea of having reviews at the top like many posters do.  This took quite a long time and much frustration to get all our stars and quote in the right place but we are now happy with what we have done.  We also added very slight highlights to Emilys mouth and nose area of to hopefully make her features stand out more and her face more noticeable.  We are now working towards our logos for our made up companies.

Experimenting with more photos

We were worried our poster was too simple and plain so we experimented by taking screen shots of Emily in our film and putting them onto our poster very faintly to add a bit more detail.  However we felt it cheapened the look of our unusual poster.  We also felt it gave the poster more of a horror element which isn't the genre of film we have made and would give a false impression.  We decided to remove them and instead work hard on creating really professional looking text.

TA DA .... WE FINISHED IT !!!!!!!!

Finally after weeks of planning, filming, editing and stressing we have finally finished our teaser trailer.  The 'finishing touches' took us a lot longer today then we had hoped! We thought our music would be a straight forward affair of recording a music student playing the piano to fit the song Molly had sang.  WE WERE SO WRONG. Trying to fit music to the singing was so difficult and we ended up with a piano piece we really weren't happy with.  We then played around in garage band ourselves to try and come up with something to go with the singing.  Finally after a couple of hours of stressing we decided to use a backing track to the original song.  Although it is sort of like using the original music we have tried so hard with our sound.  Making sure some parts are louder or more quiet and making all the singing fit perfectly was a challenge too.  We have also included voiceovers which needed adjusting once the music was in place.
   We are so pleased with our final outcome.  It is better then any of us expected because of the music, the interesting shots and the titles with the beautiful underwater photos we took.

text text text text text

Today we have been working on our text.  As our picture for our poster is quite subtle and mysterious we have to work especially hard on our titles to make the poster look professional.  Using the 'Rabbit Hole' for guidance we came up with our credits.  We liked the layout most posters use of having the persons title e.g directed by in very small lettering and on word being on top of the other.  And then their name e.g Daisy Sloman to be larger an more prominent.
   This has been quite challenging as it has required us to have each work on a new layer and this has become quite confusing.  Particularly when we decided we wanted to move it all slightly to the left.  We are now happy though with what we have achieved and we do think it looks like existing posters credits.
    We also like the layout of this poster and are now beginning to think about where the rest of the text for our poster should go.  We think having all the text at the bottom or on the left of the poster as it is the plainer side.  We have also thought about experimenting with the colours of our titles.

 We originally thought we wanted the titles all in white but as we want to draw attention to Emily's face which it might take viewers a while to spot on our poster we thought using an orange or red might help make her face more obvious.  We will begin to experiment with colours next week.

Completion of Titles

Me and Molly stayed behind tonight, and applied the photos to the titles with the correct font. They look really nice, better then we could have expected. We exported these and applied them to our teaser trailer. They go exceptionally well with the overall aesthetic appearance and mood of the trailer.
They add depth to the titles, allowing them to be more integrated with the teaser trailer as suppose to being individual from it.
We have watched our pretty much completed teaser trailer through and are really pleased and proud of the outcome, a massive improvement from our already good attempts at AS level.
The only things left to do tomorrow, will be the music which has already been sung, we just need to apply the piano to the music.
We would then be FINISHED !!

Titles

Seeing as the photos have come out unexpectedly dark and mysterious we have decided to use them for the background behind our titles, as we still wanted to incorporate them into our teaser. Here are some screen shots of how we have combined them with our titles. We are really pleased with the outcome of them, as they make the titles more interesting and give them a unique look.

Fav photos

Here is our shortlist of the photos we want to use for our poster.  We were unsure as to whether we liked the photos when we first saw them as they weren't what we were expecting.  However because they are so dark they have an exciting mysterious feel that will really work well for a poster and magazine cover. We have narrowed it down now to 3 that we think will work really well for a poster and 3 for a magazine cover and can now begin experimenting on photoshop.  We are hoping to overlay the photos and use the transparency tool to combine our photos and make an really intriguing and unusual poster.  We will also experiment with text and layouts and using the photos in different combinations to see what works best.

When shortlisting our photos we began to get really excited about the photos we have taken.  Also they are all upside down and turning them the right way round gave us completely different visuals and made us notice things that completely change the look of the photo.  For instance one of our favourite photos actually has Emily's face on it but we didn't even notice until we turned it the right way.

The top image is the original image that was turned upside down, we really liked it this way. 

The image below is the rotation of the image above, when we discovered that you could see the outline of Emily's face and expression we liked it even more. Initially we would like to use this as a main image for our poster.

Under Water Photos !!!!!

We have at last received our underwater photos, however how we thought they would look is not how they have come out. The issue is that the light level of the photos have distorted the overall appearance of the photos, but there is always a silver lining. The pictures that we have got are abstract, mysterious and actually quite beautiful. they are not necessarily appropriate to be in our teaser trailer but are entirely perfect for our poster and film magazine cover.  

Poster in the making

Music stress

 So we were hoping to have our music all done by Monday but unfortunately the a level music students we were counting on told us today they were unable to commit to our project with so much other work going on.  So this has left us in a bit of a muddle, none of us being musicians.
 So tonight i have had a play around on my piano and tried playing around with lyrics that could fit with our film based on the Lana Del Ray Video Game song that we have all fallen in love with.

   Playing with lyrics by Verity Lies

Inspire me

The thing that attracted us to this poster is the shattered effect it has. We think the effect of using a few images and cutting them up would give a disjointed, confusing feel and intrigue the audience.  It would also go with the subject of our film as our main character is meant be suffering from weird, scary dreams which leave her disillusioned and vulnerable.  We also like this idea as we have used face pace images of Emily in the pool and using a few of these would link in our poster and our film together.  Although we really like this poster we think the text is too small and subtle.  We want our title Verity Lies and our tag line of Do you ever question reality to be quite bold and grab audiences attention.

This poster was not one we initially liked, however there was a certain aspect of this poster we liked. The three characters that are featured in the film, are placed over each other, each being slightly transparent at the points in which it meets. We have considered this for our poster, where multiple images of Emily would appear on top of each other. These images in themselves would tell a story that relates to our film, for example the process of Emily being sad to happy, to angry to confused. All over each other to allow the viewer to know that there is something questionable about the mental heath of 'Verity'. We also liked the subtle landscape of New York, however this will not be used in our poster we liked the hidden image allowing more depth in the poster, this we will try and include in our poster, the sense of mystery that surrounds Verity.


We saw this film poster in a tube station whilst we were filming in London, we really liked the layout and idea of it as it has an interesting look and structure. We mainly liked how half of the magazine was one main character, which then matched up to another main character from the film. As the person viewing it you are automatically drawn towards the image and then find yourself looking at the titles. The actors and actresses' names are displayed in a small font at the top but they are actually slightly too small, we only have one actresses' name to display and we want this to be clear to the viewer. The name of the film itself is very bold and the font is quite harsh and square looking. The release date of the film is highlighted red, which matches the colour scheme of the magazine. This tactic draws the viewer directly to the bold title and red release date at a first glance of the poster. The credits below the title are quite transparent and are not really acknowledged by someone briefly looking at the poster. Overall we really like this poster and are going to attempt to have a similar initial idea for our own poster.


This poster shows a woman sitting in a closed body language position on the floor, surrounding her are many things to do with the film. We like it because it is bright and colourful and very hectic. The text differs from a banner effect to bright sparkly letters, this captures your attention as it is nearly the only text on the poster. We could use this as an influence because it shows layering and over lapping of pictures to make one big poster. They have focused on sizing and transparency to make it all fit together to make it look more realistic rather than lots of images scattered on a page. The colour are vibrant and contrast with the pale whiteness of the girl. Even though our film is a different genre and deals with different scenarios we could incorporate factors that relate to our trailer for example the main character's positioning. She is a young female who looks vulnerable much like our main character.   

POSTER PRODUCTION

This week we have began making our poster.  We have decided we want to use the underwater photos for our poster as they are really mysterious and would make a very quirky poster.  Today we have uploaded two of the photos and began to merge them together.  Using the brush tool we are blending the two layers until we get the effect we like.  Today we have found using photoshop a bit tricky and frustrating at times as none of us have used it in a while and it is quite a complicated programme.

Trouble in Paradise ?

I am afraid to say that there is a rift in the water, there is a delay in the development of the photos taken under water, however we shall not fear as using our superior detective skills we now know the photos will most defiantly be done by Wednesday.
This then gives us time to upload them and apply them in a rapid sequence, at the moment there are many film clips of the hands underwater, but they are currently in place in substitute of the photos.
We have already scheduled days in which we are able to stay during frees, and after school to make sure this is done.
We have edited the voice over so the words being said correspond to what is on screen as well as the volume being loud enough to be heard, with sufficient impact.
We are really pleased with our teaser trailer, and are proud of our efforts and the ultimate result.

Things still to do

Our deadline is only a week away and fortunately we are nearly finished. The things we have left to do are getting our actress Emily to come in and do the voiceover for reality and dream, as the ones we are currently using are not the best quality. We also need to add in the underwater photos taken from the pool scene. We are hoping to have all this done by tomorrow. We have asked two A level music students to compose something similar to the Lana Del Ray Video Game song we are currently using. We hope this will be done by Monday so we can add it to our trailer and play around with it. We also need to add our newest title to the piece. We are confident that we will meet the deadline and will have produced a teaser we are proud of.

Improvements

Today we received feedback from the go go about our trailer. In response to this we have taken out a section of clips which contains crazy laughing close ups, as these ran on to long and audiences could loose interest, also because we had a title in between in stopped the flow of the clip and didn't fit. We also wanted our reverse part to stand out more, to achieve this we added a white screen shot after the title and before the reverse clips then applied a wash out effect to this. Starting with the white screen shot adds emphasis to the reverse, this gives it a  dream like feeling that compliments the theme. We also increased the volume of the sound track at the reverse point, creating a gradual build up. By creating the emphasis on the volume of the soundtrack it creates a climax within the teaser. We also cut our voiceover as we decided we didn't want any speech over the reverse. Finally we are working on putting in another title. This one will read 'Is truth something only imaginary?' we feel that by adding another questionable title we will get the audience thinking and more interested in the film.

This my friend is what you call a 'Double Edged Sword'

Collectively as a group we have fallen in love with the temporary soundtrack of Lana Del Rey, alongside our teaser trailer however, due to the song being copyright and the frowns of the lack of musical editing, we are unable to use the sound track as a hum to our teaser trailer. Daisy asked a couple of music students whether they would be able to create a track similar to the one currently in place, however this shall be used in the same way, as the one currently in place so its a bitter sweet solution, as its not going to be the same as the current one. We have a running voice over which consists of the definitions of reality and a dream, however this needs to be re-done as the voice is too soft against the soundtrack.
The soundtrack to date has been the largest struggle in terms of creating a convincing teaser trailer, and personally i shall be praying that the in progress soundtrack is going to blow the current one out of the water !