Video Update - Discussing Actors

This is an update, recorded in PhotoBooth, giving details on what we have completed, what we are in the process of completing and what we are going to do next. 

Location recce and assesments.

Abbey Road. 
We are going to be taking a number of stills aswell as filming on Abbey Road.
We are taking some of the images for the magazine cover and our film posters on this road.
There are going to be some of the most important shots of the trailer filmed on Abbey Road.
When we are introduced to our main characters and the main zombies.

This location is behind the arts centre, we found it to be a good location to film our last few shots. 

This is the Studio in the arts center, where we will be taking the photographs for our print products. 

This was one of the alleys near The Leas which we filmed the final shot of the trailer again, however the shots looked better on the original footage so we decided to use them instead.

This is toms house where we filmed nearly all the interior shots.

Toms back room, where we filmed a small number of shots.

Toms garden where we filmed the scene with the zombies being attacked with the toaster and snooker cues.

Toms living room where we filmed them watching shaun of the dead and where the zombie getting a CD thrown at them was. 

Costume and Props For Magazine

Costumes are the same as in the trailer and poster


Lauren - Martyr Defiled T-shirt, dark blue skinny jeans, flowery cardigan, chunky shoes and red lipstick.
Matty - Green Hoody, Batman shirt, jeans, converse.


For props we are going to use ones from the movie, the knife and the ladle. 
We will be taking the images on a black backdrop!

Costume and Props for Poster.

Sophie Richardson


For our film poster we've come up the idea of whilst filming or straight afterwards taking some stills to use in the poster and magazine cover. 


We thought we could get some shots of them when on location if we try to compose them properly, this way we could get the zombies in the shot too, which would save time on re-doing all the make up to take the shots for magazine and poster.


For our poster we're going to have Sarah and Karl stood side by side, Sarah positioned on the left to show her dominance, both holding weapons (Karls something ridiculously stupid and Sarahs something more threatening.) So they will be wearing the same clothes they wore in the trailer. In the background of the poster we were thinking of having the zombies or just zombie hands, which we could take individual photos of and then drop into photoshop to put together. We could also have various props in the background such as; CD's and various weapons. 


To create the comedy in our film, we decided that we should have some silly weapons in the trailer, for example, Sarah picking up a knife in the kitchen and then Karl picking up something like a ladel or a french baguette as they are something that could be found in a kitchen and they are both not threatening at all, but will hopefully come across as funny to our audience. 


If we could stage a mock up of these, without the actors being in costume it would be good. We could then develop what facial expressions were needed, the positioning of the actors and the use of different locations, some taken on location, others in the studio, to then see what would look the best when putting our magazine together. 

Costume Research For Trailer.

Sophie Richardson
For our main characters we have decided we want them dressed casually in everyday clothes. 

So basically  jeans, tshirt, hoody and baseball boots. 


For our main male character we're going to dress in something like this. 

And our female character in something like this. 

 Although, when asking our main two actors to read there lines, we discovered the height difference between them was more than we thought, which could cause problems when filming, so we have discussed the idea of Lauren wearing heels in the film trailer, as she is already acting as a feisty character, we believe that this will add to the effect. I also thought that if she was to wear red lipstick it would be connate to her personality, showing her as feisty, a sign of danger, although she isn't a danger, she will just be the more argumentative character. 

Zombies
For our zombie characters we weren't sure how to dress them aside from being in ripped and old clothes. For our main zombie, who was supposed to have escaped from a psychiatric hospital, we wanted to have her dressed in a torn and blood splattered hospital gown, however after looking on the internet the only places we could get them from turned out to be very expensive, and the cheapest we found was about £15 a gown, so we had a think about what to do and decided to just dress her in scruffy clothes, our friend and classmate volounteers in a charity shop and phoned up the people who sort the clothes and they send a bag full of clothes that couldn't be sold for whatever reason. I managed to get three shirts for free and took them home and used one to make Jens zombie costume. They were un-sellable because the buttons of the cuffs of the shirts were missing. I had a white shit and I was just going to cut and cover in blood a shirt and leave it at that but managed to make something better. I cut off the collar and the cuffs to begin with, then i cut the sleeves short and cut away at the collar a little bit more to make the neckline more rounded. I then used dark greys and green eyeshadows to put on the shirt to make it look dirty, i then ripped it it different places using scissors then addes fake blood then i got Jen to wear it back to front and it looked like a hospital gown, i am pretty pleased with the way this turned out and i'm going to distress the other outfits for the zombies in a similar way.


For Jens make up i used white facepaint to make her look very pale, i then added grey/black eyeshadow underneath her eyes to make her look dead, and on other parts of her face to make her look drawn and more zombie like I then added fake blood around her mouth, on her chin, cheek and forhead, again to make her look more zombielike. I also added blood and eye shadow to her arms to make her arms look authentic too, at the time aswell she was already wearing chipped red nail polish which added to the effect perfectly.

This is a photograph showing me doing jens make up, at this point i was adding the white facepaint.

For the rest of the trailer we asked our actors who were playing zombies to bring clothes that they wouldn't mind getting dirty, ripped and having blood on.

Location Ideas.

Sophie Richardson


Alleyway 
There are a number of alleyways near my house or toms house which we are going to use, a few of the shots will be involving chasing and long shots of the zombies. Our final shot in our trailer will also be filmed in an alleyway, showing Karl running and shouting 'She's gunna kill me!' then it cutting to an inter title then we see a shot of Sarah running after him, this is supposed to appear more comical as it appears at first that he is running away from a zombie.


Stanhope Park
We are going to film a small amount of shots here, just short ones, showing the protagonists fighting zombies. 


Tom Harris  House
A large portion of the shots will be filmed here, some with zombies, some of them just talking. There are a variation of different shots to be included. 


Tom Harris'  Garden
A few shots are to be filmed here. 

College Studio 
We will be taking the photos for the print products in the studio. 

Aniamatic

Sound Ideas

Sophie Richardson




Sound Ideas. 
There are going to be a number of different sound elements in our trailer. 


At the start of our trailer we're going to have a radio broadcast, but it spoken by fiver separate radio presenters slightly overlapping each other. We already have written what it is going to be said in this portion of the film and who is going to say it. While this is being said the screen will just be blank. 


Over the rest of the trailer we are going to have a voice over, just giving an outlook onto what is happening in the film.




We have also found a couple of websites where we found sound effects, which we could use for things such as

Storyboard

Sophie Richardson 

These are the storyboards for our trailer, which Tom Harris drew. The storyboards give good detail into the types of shots and the people within the shots. In a previous post there is also a detailed description of each shot, the duration it will be on screen, the dialogue within each shot, this is to give a better and more detailed understanding for each of the shots. Slight amendments have been made to the descriptions as when we got our actors to read the dialogue out, we felt it didn't suit there voice, or would be too long for the shot. This was also helpful to demonstrate how we were going to film our radio introduction as it was harder to shown in the storyboard. 

Flatplans (magazine and poster)

Trailer Script

 TRAILER SCREENPLAY:

GREEN RATING CARD

The two production logos are shown in co-operation with voice over’s that are speaking over each other:

V.O. 1 – “...local authorities have advised citizens living on the island to report any suspicious behavior to the police immediately...”

V.O.2 – “...the escaped convict in question was originally detained in the Hollow Psychiatric Facility situated on the south of the island and is described by officials as extremely dangerous...”

V.O.3  – “...talks within Parliament are believed to have been very constructive regarding the future of Hollow Island...”

V.O.4 – “...it is with deep regret that all ferries arriving to and departing from Hollow are hereby cancelled to maintain the safety of British civilians living on the mainland...”

V.O.5 – “...people of Hollow...stay indoors, stay equipped and above all...stay safe...”

The last voice over is then quickly followed by blackness.

(15 SECONDS)

A quick straight cut and audible bang is then used and shows a zombie in a close up shot. The setting is on a dark and empty road at about late evening with frightening non-diegetic music being used in the background. The same shot begins to zoom out slowly until it also shows the backs of the main characters, Sarah and Karl, standing on the left and right of frame respectively with the zombie still in the middle creating a long three shot. Here, you see that the zombie is wearing a torn, blood stained hospital gown and both Sarah and Karl are wearing casual clothing with specks of blood on them. Still in the same shot, Sarah lifts up a blood stained knife with her right hand and followed a second later by Karl lifting up a ladle in his left. The scary non-diegetic music suddenly stops leaving just the ambient sounds of the wind. Karl looks at the ladle, then the zombie, then Sarah, and says: “Yeah...you can have this one”. He then proceeds to walk past the camera out of shot much to the shock of Sarah and the zombie. After the text has been on screen, the camera then pans from top to bottom.

(10 SECONDS)

The text “This Halloween” appears where Karl was just stood.

(2 SECONDS)

Panning from top to bottom, we see a long shot of an empty street with Sarah and Karl stood either side of a zombie holding planks of wood. The camera is slowly zooming in as they both hit the zombie round the head forcing it to fall to the ground where it is now out of shot. The camera then pans from right to left.

(4 SECONDS)

Panning from right to left, a medium shot of Karl and Sarah in a house with Sarah on the top left of frame looking down on Karl on the bottom right is used.

(2 SECONDS)

An over the shoulder shot is used with Sarah on the left in the foreground and Karl on right saying: “I know we’ve not seen eye to eye lately, but… I’m ready to forgive you now”.

(5 SECONDS)

The same long shot as before is now a medium shot and is used with Sarah on the left and Karl on the right still holding planks of wood. Whilst taking a breather, the zombie reaches its hand into the air whilst groaning much to the confusion of both characters. They begin hitting it again on the floor.

(5 SECONDS)

An over the shoulder shot is used with Karl on the right in the foreground and Sarah on the left exasperated saying: “Excuse me? You’re the one who cheated”.

(5 SECONDS)

A medium shot of the characters taking a breather is used before the zombie reaches its hand out again. They wearily begin hitting it once more.

(3 SECONDS)

An over the shoulder shot with Karl on the right and Sarah on the left is used again with Sarah in the foreground and Karl in the background saying: “Little details Sarah, that’s always been your problem, you pick up on the little things”.

(5 SECONDS)

The medium shot shows the zombie reaching a hand out once more and Sarah saying: “Fuck it”. She goes out of shot for a couple of seconds, comes back and throws a toaster at the zombie. She wipes her hands together and walks out of shot. After the text has been on screen, the camera then pans from bottom to top.

(7 SECONDS)

The text “Work Effectively As A Team” appears where Sarah was just stood.

(2 SECONDS)

Panning from bottom to top, we are shown a medium shot of two zombies scraping and banging on a window. They are both wearing ripped, everyday clothes with blood both on that and their flesh. The camera then pans from left to right.

(4 SECONDS)

Panning from left to right, a reaction shot shows both Karl and Sarah in a medium close up shot with Karl on the right and Sarah on the left of the screen. They are stood in a Dining Room in a house and both look very scared and shocked as the camera slowly zooms towards them, then suddenly Karl turns to Sarah and pulls a DVD out of his pocket.

(6 SECONDS)

A close up shot of Karl is used with him still positioned on the right of the frame. He lifts up a “Shaun of the Dead” DVD with a serious look on his face and says dramatically: “Looks like we need to do some homework”. The non-diegetic music starts to get more dramatic. The camera then pans from top to bottom.

(4 SECONDS)

Panning from top to bottom, we are shown a long shot of a living room with Karl and Sarah watching Shaun of the Dead on the television. The non diegetic music stops and all you can hear is the sound from the DVD and the two zombies from before that are still banging on the window which can just be seen in the background. Karl is sat with a smile on his face on the right of the screen eating popcorn and Sarah is sat on the left looking both bored and disgusted at Karl. There is a huge gap between them on the sofa. After a few seconds she turns to Karl and yells: “Do you have to eat that popcorn so loud!” to which Karl replies by shrugging. After the text has been on screen, the camera then pans from right to left.

(8 SECONDS)

The text “Keep Yourself Busy” appears below the characters.

(2 SECONDS)

A pan from right to left shows the back of a zombie wearing a beret on the left and Karl on the right holding a baguette. Karl says: “Au reviour, senorita” then hits the zombie round the head with the baguette. The camera then pans from bottom to top.

(3 SECONDS)

Panning from bottom to top, a medium shot of Sarah knelt down surrounded by lots of CD cases is used. The shot zooms out to show two zombies approaching her slowly.

(5 SECONDS)

A reaction, close up shot of Sarah looking worried is used then she starts rummaging around the cases and taking CDs out from them.

(2 SECONDS)

A shot from the French zombie’s point of view on the floor is used to show Karl towering over it, then picking up the baguette and starting to eat it.

(2 SECONDS)

A three shot showing Sarah on the right of the screen and the two zombies on the left is used to show Sarah weakly throwing a CD at one of them. It mildly strikes it in the stomach when it stops, looks at the CD then back at Sarah and starts approaching her again.

(7 SECONDS)

A close up shot is used on Sarah sighing and saying: “It never works like it does in the movies!” After the text has been on screen, the camera then pans from left to right.

(4 SECONDS)

The text “Collect A Variety Of Weapons” appears above Sarah.

(2 SECONDS)

Panning from left to right, we are shown a three shot with Sarah holding an injured man in her arms on the floor with Karl stood on the right of frame. The man is covered in blood and holding a gun.

(2 SECONDS)

A close up shot of the man shows him saying: “Please…kill me, don’t let me turn into one of them” with him holding the gun out to Karl.

(4 SECONDS)

The same three shot as before shows Karl pick up the gun, look at it worryingly, and then aim it at the man.

(4 SECONDS)

A close up shot of Karl is used with him closing his eyes, whispering, “I’m sorry”, followed by a gunshot. After a second, you can hear the man screaming “You shot me in the leg! You moron!” Karl slowly opens one eye. After the text has been on screen, the camera then pans from top to bottom.

(6 SECONDS)

The text “Help Your Fellow Human” appears below Karl.

(2 SECONDS)

Panning top to bottom, both main characters are shown in a medium long shot with Sarah on the left in the foreground with her head bowed and Karl in the background on the right eating a big block of cheese. Suddenly a zombie appears from the left and starts trying to bite Karl. He manages to wrestle it to the ground but it is still trying to kill him. He yells “Sarah…”

(8 SECONDS)

A close up on Sarah is used to show her shaking her head disbelievingly.

(2 SECONDS)

Straight cuts back to initial medium long shot showing Karl struggling against the zombie and Sarah still with her head bowed down. Karl again yells: “Yeah I could do with a bit of help here”.

(4 SECONDS)

The shot cuts back to the previous close up showing Sarah saying: “Will you just shut up” The camera then pans from right to left.

(4 SECONDS)

Panning from right to left, a long shot shows a back alley from a distance with quick footsteps getting louder. Karl suddenly appears from the left of the screen running with hair and sweat all over his face. He is screaming: “She’s going to kill me”.  He runs out of shot on the right of the frame.

(5 SECONDS)

The film title, Another One Bites The Dust appears in bloody, red text on the wall.

(2 SECONDS)

Sarah appears in the same alleyway as Karl on the left of the screen, running after him with a hammer held above her head. She stops in the middle of the alley and yells: “Knobhead!” It then straight cuts to complete blackness with the non-diegetic music stopping as well.

(5 SECONDS)

Character Ideas.

Sophie Richardson

Actors

Matty Frankland  and Lauren Smith are going to be our main characters. The story behind them is that they are a couple who break up, but stay as friends but constantly argue with one another about minor things, this will provide the more comical elements of the trailer. They work together to defeat the zombie outbreak from the mental asylum. 

Ryan Knight

Joeseph Read

Jenny Lee 

Emily O'Hara 
Michael Jenkins
Sophie Richardson

These are the actors that will be playing the zombies in our film. Although their are less female actors than male, this is for no specific reason, other than the fact that they were the only actors available. We are going to have them dressed in very dull clothing, blacks and greys because they are supposed to have escaped from an asylum, suggesting they have no colour or happiness in their lives. The types of clothing we are going to use with probably be dark t-shirts, dark jeans and black shoes. 

Trailer Idea.

Sophie Richardson. 
For our trailer we've decided that the genre is going to be a zom-com. We've sourced the majority of our actors and roughly know how we're going to film it and where we are going to film it.

Our idea is going to be based around two main characters, Karl and Sarah. They are going to be a couple which split at the start of the film, however remain friends but have a love hate releationship, with Sarah's feisty personality combined with Karls selfish and wimpy one she has to help protect him from the mysterious zombie outbreak, which is actually  from a mental aslyum, so the zombies anyway are already a threat.

We are going to open our trailer with a black screen and a radio broadcast over the top, warning people about the outbreak. The radio broadcast will finish with the two lines. 'Stay Safe' which we will then intercut a shot of one the zombies or maybe just one of the zombies, then the next line 'Stay Equipped' then we will see a two shot of our main two characters, Karl and Sarah. Sarah positioned on the left of the screen to show dominance holding a more threatening weapon, then Karl positioned on the right with a weapon which isn't threatening at all, which adds to the comedy side of the trailer. It isn't shown in the trailer how to get rid of the zombies and is left to the main characters to use their initiative to find a way to destroy them.

We haven't officially decided on a name for our trailer yet. But after reading other names of horror/comedy films and saw the name 'Love At First Bite' we came up with the name 'Another One Bites The Dust' we both really like this name for our film trailer, and are thinking of using it.

Feedback

Sophie Richardson
When we pitched we recieved feedback from the rest of our class and our teacher. 

This helped us discuss in more detail what our narrative is going to be about. Knowing that we need to do more research into the zombie films we have looked at aswell as the two films we both analysed for out textual analysis. I analysed Shaun Of The Dead and Tom analysed Zombieland, we need to research more into different shots within these trailers that could feature in our trailer and that we need to do test shots to see if they look professional, the same with the make up for the zombies to see if we can pull it off. We also took from the feedback that we needed to find a way to make the trailer funny and come across as a comedy. We also have to be sure of the audience and whether they would work.  

               

Primary Audience Research

We showed a range of our peers the Shaun Of The Dead trailer, poster and magazine cover. Then asked them questions and asked them to leave some feedback on the videos. What genre they thought it was from, how did they know this, do they watch this genre film, would they watch this film etc. 

Audience Conclusion

Sophie Richardson 
After completing our audience research, looking in detail at films with the same genre as ours (Zombieland and Shaun Of The Dead) we have discovered that our main target audience will be aged from 15-24 years old, a mixture of male and female and from the class group C1. However there is still a large percentage of the viewers aged from 25-34, so hopefully our trailer will still appeal to that audience too. But we are aiming it more specifically at 15-24 year olds. 

Shaun Of The Dead Audience Research

This is a screenshot from www.pearlanddean.com showing the details of the film as well as a comparable profile from a similar film, in this case '28 Days Later' it shows the percentage of the 

audiences age, gender and class. 

This comparable profile shows that the majority of the audience are aged 15-24, male and class C1, meaning that the target audience for this film would be male or female aged 15-24 working class/lower middle class.

Although this isn't for Shaun of the Dead, the audience would be pretty much the same. This gives us a rough idea what the typical target audience would be for Shaun Of The Dead. 

        This is the  poster for Shaun Of The Dead although its a horror film it comes across quite well showing the fact that it is a horror comedy. I think something like this would be quite easy to replicate, with a simple shot then adding it together with multiple shots of zombies then editing it so it looks like they are surrounding the protagonists.
























This is the trailer for shaun of the dead. The trailer shows  both the horror and comedy aspects of the it. The light humor encourages the audience to want to see it. There aren't any overly difficult shots in this trailer , many of them could be easily replicated. The acting in the trailer could also be easily replicated. As it shows quite clearly the two main protagonists,  which is shown through the use of two shots and the dialogue and coming across as a funny set of best friends which is something that we could do if we sat and thought about the dialogue properly, and write some funny lines which could make our trailer come across as more comical. 


                                                


























This issue of Total Film magazine shows Simon Pegg Dressed in normal clothes covered in blood, apparent as the zombies blood.  With the sellline 'Simon, Nick, Edgar and the mayhem behind Shaun Of The Dead' Something like this could be easily replicated if we were to take a shot of our main characters and the zombies whilst filming, or taking them to the studio while still in costume and getting a good shot like this then editing it if need be on photoshop.

This is a screencap from the trailer. Although this isn't an overly interesting shot or that anything is happening in it, it shows the relationship between the main characters which allows the audience to make assumptions and relate to the characters aswell as making the type of relationship within the characters obvious. This is something effective yet very simple that would be good to use in our trailer

.This is a medium two shot of the two main characters, although this isn't anything special i thought it was effective as we see the arms of the zombies and them in the middle from a distance, giving the feeling of a more closed framing too. Again this is something that could be very easily replicated. 

Zombieland Audience Research

Zombieland is a Zom-Com genre film released in 2009 and gained immense success in the Box Office. Our own theatrical trailer is going to be based upon this film and Shaun of the Dead so the audiences they engaged will be very similar to the target market we are aiming for. The figures below are comparable between both Zombieland and Shaun of the Dead and give a clear indication of what age, gender and class we are looking to produce this trailer for. The main type of person who is most likely to go and see a film like ours is going to be a lower-middle class male between the ages of 15 and 24.

By Tom Harris

Idea Development

Sophie Richardson 
Our  initial idea was to have a girl from a mental hospital that had escape and who Karl had got pregnant as a main focus story, meaning it would be more like a drama/horror. We were going to have her infect every and destroy the relationship between Karl and Sarah, showing more fights between the two. We then decided that this idea would be a difficult one to pull off due to making a pregnancy bump and it looking realistic, aswell as it coming across well in the narrative, perhaps making the trailer look confusing and more dramatic but in the way people might not want to go and see it, so we expanded and decided to turn into into a zombie comedy 'zom-com' showing a love hate relationship between a feisty Sarah and a cowardly Karl. Showing them destroying zombies in ridiculous, funny ways, adding to the humor. We have decided to make it in the style of Shaun of The Dead, 

Update.

Sophie Richardson.

We have discussed a range of different ideas for our teaser trailer, we have decided to create a horror comedy teaser trailer, with the horror aspect being zombies. We have taken inspirtation from trailers from films such as Shaun Of The Dead and Zombieland. We have already sourced some of our actors and started discussing locations for different shots and how we are going to compose the different shots.