Thriller Poster Research

A high contrast poster with little colour variation. The edges of the character's body are either solid black or white, resulting in a striking silhouette. Additional information about the film is revealed throughout the use of overlays, in this case, a woman's face.

The poster for The Next Three Days is reminiscent of older thriller movie posters, such as an Alfred Hitchcock's North By Northwest and Vertigo, combining the more recent blue graded, high contrast visual style with classic iconography.

When researching thriller posters, it became clear that a very popular convention is to show a protagonist's face in a mid or close up, and use overlay effects to super impose a scene from the film into the image. The thriller posters shown here also use few distinctive colours and high contrast, with a few even opting for a two tone colour scheme. Typically, images seem to have a blue overlay. On most of the thriller posters I've encountered in my research, block capitals are used on almost all of the text to ensure that it is clearly visible. My favourite poster I have encountered during my research is the following for the thriller Identity, as it is much more imaginative in it's use of shape and contrast, providing more information to a viewer without using obvious superimpositions, which are used in most of the other posters.

Initial Music Research

Recently I have been gathering various examples of music with my group's feedback in an attempt to help our group to decide on the musical direction our project will take. The tracks below come from a range of sources, and I have chosen them since music with elements of these tracks or of a similar style may suit the mood of the short.

I had initially swung towards an ambient/electronic direction as in my opinion it suits the atmosphere, which is dark, psychological and mysterious. However, due to common conventions, we may use acoustic instruments such as a piano to convey the mood of emotive situations. Currently, I am planning to create the music for our project, so I'm hoping that surrounding myself in music earlier into our projects development will lead to much better results. With our previous opening sequence, the music was an afterthought, and whilst I believe that it fits well with the sequence I did not get a chance to develop it as much as I would have wanted.

After the results of our audience research to considered choosing an alternative genre of music as this may appeal to the audience my group is targeting, however we have since decided that this choice may not be appropriate for the mood of the short film. However some elements of alternative music, such as lesser known instruments may play a subtle role in the soundtrack.

Electronic/Ambient examples

Post Processing Research

Timelapse Compositing

The Boardwalk Empire introduction demonstrates a few special effects which are constructed in a similar manner to what I have already planned for our groups short film. The main effect that I am aim to recreate a recurring motif show's intro, and is shown at 0:17, 0:31, 0:52 and 0:55.

The special effect is comprised of a composite between two layers, the foreground  in this circumstance the figure, who was presumably shot against a blue or green screen and chroma keyed and lighting adjusted. The second, background layer is a timelapse of the sky. The two are combined resulting in the character looking out towards the ocean as a normal speed, with the footage of the sky behind him playing at a much faster and contrasting rate, with rough and dramatic clouds rapidly moving above.

In this example, the effect is used to show the character's power, almost portraying him as the god Neptune, his internal moral conflicts and emotions and the rough and brutal nature of his life as a gangster, and generally create a foreboding atmosphere. In my groups short, I would like to use a similar effect to demonstrate the passing of time and the character's thoughts of reliving his attack as a he slowly walks away from the scene of it.

Cinemagraphs

The initial inspiration for this time-lapse composited shot came from Cinemagraphs, short and often very simple looping animations in which most of the frame is still, with the remainder subtly being animated, such as moving hair blowing in the wind of a still person, or a man shuffling a newspaper amidst a still city.

I had initially thought to separate the character or a part of him from the scene to in a couple of shots to show that he is deep in thought and isolated. This would also show the transition period between the real world and his thoughts.

Cinemagraphs are commonly found in the format of looping animated GIFS, which has made them easy to distribute and view across the web, this format as well as the use of the web has near wholly allowed them to gain the small following that these images currently have.

Some examples

Audience Research

UKTribes

UKTribes.com is a which catalogues information the various sub-cultural groups which exist in present day young society. This website will be useful to our group as it will give us an insight into the styling and brand affiliation of the characters. It will also allow us to target our project towards a specific audience.

The research conducted on UKTribes shows that there are fewer hard bounderaies between social groups as in the past, with complex relationships between each group. The website also states that the groups of those containing 'alternative' media tastes are now sufficiently large enough to not denote outsider status for the individuals. As such, the alternative crowd of young people can be considered as entering into the mainstream. The website describes individuals in the alternative group as conforming to their peers, and being different as a group, rather than by themselves.

Due to the groups interests, the project has taken an alternative stance by default, however using this information will allow us target more specifically towards our youth target audience.

The research conducted by CrowdDNA shows that brands favoured by the young alternative crowd include H&M and Vans. This information will allow us to give the characters accurate and believable styling and costume for the characters.

Previsualisation

In today's lesson, Chris brought up the idea of using an animated storyboard, also know as "previs". As our group did not follow our storyboard closely in our original project, I began researching into the possibilities of creating our own previsualisation during the preparation stage. However, it soon became obvious that the task of creating a previs the length of our short film would be far to large for a project as small as ours.

Here's an example of previsualisation being used for the movie trilogy "The Lord of The Rings". At around 8:52, an example of very basic animated sequences being combined with frames of storyboards. The still images are used to show facial expression and pose of characters, whilst the 3D animation is used to show movement and positioning around the scene.



Here is an example of more modern previs being used on the latest Indiana Jones movie, demonstrating movement of key objects and characters in each shot.



Whilst we may not use 3D animation in combination with a storyboard to plan out our project, however by placing the storyboard frames in a sequence should give us a much clearer starting point when filming.

Tools available

Previs anamatics are usually created using a combination of editing and 3D software. My initial plan was to use a program such as Adobe Photoshop to cut out characters and important objects from a scanned in storyboard and animate their basic movement on screen, and use a 3D animation package such as Blender for complex movement. However, to save time we could have instead used another piece of animation software, Source Filmmaker, and would not have to create our own resources such as characters, objects and scenes, instead using readily available game assets from games running on the Source engine.

Whilst not strictly previs, the animation software is demonstrated below, in which a scene from The Matrix has been recreated using this tool and pre made assets.

Further narrative development

Over the past couple of lessons our group has discussed which events should occur in the alternative imaginary sequences. Here are the events that

• 'Real' world fight sequence
• Enter imaginary state
• Alternative events
• Exit imagination
• Considering imagined scenarios
• Scenario occurs again, attempt to effect reality

Project Pitch

Short film: First thoughts

Our group recently brought together initial ideas for our short film. We are planing to use a story in which a character is is exploring multiple outcomes of the situation he is about to enter into. Because of this narrative element, our group will have to overcome the challenge of making this element clear and understandable to the viewer. Since my role in the group will probably be visual effects and music, I will likely get a chance to work on the effects used to convey both passing of time and sequences of thought.

At it's current stage of development, the short film will contain a scene in which the passing of time (a couple of days) is noticeable. To visually stimulate the audience, I have suggested using a combination of time lapse photography, inverse cinemagraphs, and post processing. Cinemagraphs are a more recent creation which have become due to their presence as animated gifs across the web. The are comprised of one or more subjects which are subtly in looping motion, with the rest of the image as a still.

My initial idea is that the main character should be seen walking or sitting at a normal or slowed down pace, with the background scenery being a time lapse. Further post processing will allow us to animate the light level in the scene, to make it appear as if day is turning into night. We will experiment with this effect to make sure that it is the right choice of visual stimulent to use.

Initial short film research

In today's lesson we began research into other A2 level short film projects. One example of another A2 film is "Prophecy", which tells the tail of an older brother realising his maltreatment of his younger brother.



An interesting and perhaps unconventional twist used by the film is the special effects occasionally used on the characters, which makes them appear as illusions or holograms, and keeps the reasonably simple and interesting.

The short film contains examples of both handheld and stationary camera work, however the latter is only used in a few shots at the beginning of the film. The camerawork is fairly well done and suitable for the genre of the film.

Prophecy's main strong point is the use of mise-en-scene to convey the bleak emotions of the plot. The main interior location is dully lit, featuring plain set pieces with often over bearing floral designs. To enhance the way lighting has been used, a strong cool blue grading and a vignette have been added in post processing stages.

The soundtrack features both piano and choral music as non diegetic sound, which is only present near the beginning and end. The music is suitable because it conveys the emotional aspects of the character. Diegetic sound is also present, with hyperbolic emphasis complimenting the special 'hologram' effect which occasionally is used on one of the characters. Whilst suitable, the soundtrack of the short film does not stand out from many of the others that we have watched.

A short film containing an example of a good and complimentary soundtrack is "El Diablo Pinata". Whilst the non dietetic music is not original ("Spanish Flea" springs to mind), the quirky choice of both blot and soundtrack go hand in hand to create something a little more memorable.