Magazine Cover - Finished Design

This is our finished magazine cover for Little White Lies magazine. We are very pleased with the final outcome and we feel that it conveys the emotion and drive of our appropriately.

We compared our cover with a past cover from one 'The master' which we researched when conducting our 'What is a Trailer' research. 

We asked potential audience members what they thought of the comparison and the accuracy of our cover. 

The response was very positive as most members said it effectively reflected the essence of the film whilst still keeping with in the Little White Lies illustration style.

Magazine Cover - Progess

From our sketches we liked 'two faced' the best as we feel that it best portrays the mood and synopsis of our film. We felt it was also suitable for Little White Lies as they have an abstract style for all their covers. 

Instead of taking a photo of Noah, we thought that it would be better to draw the idea. This would create an edgy illustration thus again fitting in with the style of Little White Lies. 

To start the making process, we scanned in the outline of the ideas sketch. Once we had it up photoshop, we realised that the scanner hadn't picked up all the sketchy strokes that we had drawn. So we decided to abandon this method and instead we took a photo of it. We had to draw it out again but this time onto tracing paper and then put it up next to a window to let the light shine through it in order for the flecs to come though. This method worked out very well as it transferred the image to computer exactly how we wanted it to. 

The reason why we wanted the flecks was because we thought it would create quite a cool natural effect when coming to colour in the image using the colour fill tool. 

Carrying on the making process, we wanted to get rid of the white background. This actually proved quite easy as we used the magic wand selection tool allowing us select areas of the background to then delete it using the backspace key. However there were some areas that were harder to erase as they weren't picked up by the magic wand tool. In order to get rid of these problem areas, we used the quick selection tool and targeted the problem areas. After this, we were left with an outline.

The next step was to colour up the image. We used colours that were quite subdued and 'moody' to again reflect the themes of our film. We did this using the paint bucket tool. 

Once the image was coloured up, we wanted to add the the 'Little White Lies' logo.

This was our finished magazine cover, however we wanted to experiment with the image a bit more with colour as we felt it lacked the usual vibrancy of a LWL cover e.g.: The Django Unchained issue. 

We decided to mock up different colourways just to see if it resemble a LWL cover even more.

                         

We examined our first draft to see if there was any room for improvement. We noticed that there were some vital details missing e.g.: The price, date , issue number and LWL's slogan: Truth & Movies. To add these vital details in, we had to select the text with in the LWL logo and nudge it down in order to make space. We then just simply added in the details using the font tool with similar fonts to the ones used on the actual magazine.

 This was the end result of all our hard work on Photoshop:

Magazine Cover - Ideas

These are a few sketches that we have done for our LWL cover. 

 Beau's sketch

 Ellie's sketch

Beau's Sketch

We have decided to go with the last sketch as we believe that it truly expresses the tone and emotion of our film. The others we feel are a little vague and lack expression of our concept. 

Magazine Cover - Research

There are quite a number of british film magazines and we have chosen to look at probably the three most famous ones; Empire, Little White Lies and Total Film.

Empire

Empire is a British film magazine published monthly by Bauer Consumer Media, it's first issue was published in July 1989 and it reviews both mainstream and art films but predominantly the former. Empire's magazine covers are very straightforward as they just use one photo from a film, that they are talking about in the issue, for the background of the magazine. As well as the main film that they are focusing on, the cover also displays photos from other films and text with different headlines. As our film isn't particularly mainstream, we feel that this magazine wouldn't be the best option for our film as they mainly target at big budget blockbusters.

Total Film

Total film is a UK-based film magazine published 13 times a year (every four weeks) by Future publishing. The magazine was launched in 1997 and offers cinema, DVD and Blu-ray news, reviews and features. Total Film is available both in print and interactive iPad editions. Like Empire, Total Film focus on big blockbusters such as Inception and The Amazing Spider-Man. We don't feel as if our film would be suitable for Total Films magazine as it wouldn't attract the correct audience for both the magazine and our film.

Little White Lies

Little White Lies is a bi-monthly, British independent movie magazine that features writing, illustration and photography related to cinema. For their covers, LWL mostly chose films that have/will win awards and merits not just because they are the most popular at the time. 

While Empire and Total film are very similar in terms of layout and style, Little White Lies has a completely different and more stylistic and simplistic effect. This is why we feel that LWL will be the most suitable for our film.  

Audience feedback on the Audio

The Editing Process - Sound

This is the speech that we have written to use as the voiceover for our trailer. It is supposed to be a doctor giving a diagnosis to Noah's mother about why he can no longer speak. We made sure to find a correct diagnosis and symptoms of selective mutism before writing the speech as we wanted it to be as naturalistic and believable as possible.

"Mrs Bloom, your son Noah has what is known as selective mutism. It is a childhood anxiety disorder where a child cannot speak in almost all social situations and often only in front of family members and close friends. However your son seems to have completely shut down. This is rare but has been linked to the result of some sort of psychological trauma. He may or my not speak again."

The first person we asked to record the voiceover was a drama teacher, Mr Beardsworth. Unfortunately we weren't able to use it due to the amount of background noise in the recording making it sound unprofessional and his voice was being drowned out. As well as this, there were several pauses when he was speaking and he accidentally fumbled a few words. Plus, through no fault of his, his accent didn't sound as professional as we would have liked because we needed someone quite posh to represent a doctor from London. Here is the first voiceover that we recorded but chose to not use.

We only realised that we needed to change this after very helpful audience feedback from people that we asked to listen to the first audio and give us constructive criticism on it. Nearly all of them told us that we needed to change it as they couldn't hear what he was saying clearly enough.

The second person we asked to record our voiceover was an english teacher, Mr Pickard. When reading through the script he sounded much more like a doctor and we liked the pace and rhythm he had whilst reading. As he is very well spoken it sounded a lot more like a doctor and we were very happy to use it for our voiceover. Here is the voiceover that we chose to use.



As well as the voiceover we also had music so therefore had to cut the voiceover and move parts of it around in order to adjust the sound levels for particular parts. When cutting the voiceover up we decided to overlap some of the audio as it not only made it run for a shorter amount of time but it got rid of the pauses and made the diagnosis clearer and more to the point. We also used an effect called 'telephone' which we added to the voiceover because it helped cancel out some of the background noise and gave the audio a sharper sound.

As you can see from this screenshot of the sound from our trailer we had to alter the levels of music and  use fades in order to put our voiceover in and be able to hear it. We were especially happy with our choice of song when doing this as the fades aren't obvious due to the repetition and echoes of lyrics which also helped with the timings as we could adjust and cut parts of the song to fit our trailer how we wanted it. This also made it a lot easier when ending the trailer as it could fade out without obviously missing out large parts of the song.

The Editing Process - Titles

For both our film title and coming soon title, we developed graphics on Photoshop for the best aesthetic effect. We did this by pixelating the words and duplicating it many times in different shades of grayscale.

We are very happy with the outcomes of the graphics as we feel it effectively reflects the tone and emotion of our trailer. 

From our research, we contracted that almost every professional trailer has a whole screen full of credit tags at the end. So in the spirit of being professional we intended to do the same. We did this by selecting the 'trailer' option in the titles sections of Final Cut Pro X. 

To edit the text, we opened it in Motion. After we did this we changed the background image to just a plain black screen. 

This is the end result of our end credits.

For our actor and director titles, we just used a standard white font as we didn't want to disorientate and distract the audience from our trailer.

For text transitions we used 'wipe', 'cross dislove' and 'simple'. We felt that these transitions were appropriate for our film as they were quite subtle yet affective in keeping with the feel of our trailer. 

The Editing Process - Shots

After filming it was time edit the shots that we had taken. Here are a few that we have selected that show the transformation from the original to the finished clip to be used in the trailer.

This clip is of a boring shot that we edited into a sequence of shots in order to make it more interesting.



One of our luckiest shots that we filmed was the tube entry shot. We thought it was one of the best shots that we captured. However, it was incredibly long so we had to alter the speed in order to include the whole of it.

Deciding on Music

James Blake is an English electronic music producer and singer-songwriter from London. We used one of his songs in our AS piece last year entitled limit to your love and we felt that it worked really well and fitted the mood and genre of our piece which was a psychological thriller. We chose to use a James Blake song again this year because while we are both familiar with his music and he is very successful, we know that his songs aren't particularly well known and are quite different.

When deciding on the song we narrowed it down between:

• I Never Learnt To Share

• Life Round Here

One particular aspect of these songs that we thought would really fit the mood of our trailer was that both songs aren't entirely made up of lyrics but also feature a lot of music and echoes. The repetition of lyrics in both songs fit the concept in our trailer as it also involves repetition of the tasks and places that Noah is visiting e.g. he travels a lot via trains and tubes as well as walking around alone. 

We chose to use the first song 'I Never Learnt to Share' because it conveyed a darker mood that we wanted to capture through the lower and quite slow beat. 

When reading the lyrics to the song we could see reflections and similarities to our themes of isolation and silence which are very relevant to our trailer. Although these lyrics are about people not talking to one person and ours differs in the way of the singular person won't talk to anyone we still feel that the key ideas are shown. For example, the lyrics "But I don't blame them" can express how our character Noah blames himself for not telling anyone about what he witnessed, resulting in his silence, and the repetition of the word speak throughout the song emphasises to the audience his inability to speak.

On Set Filming

After months of planning, we have finally on to filming our trailer! So far everything has gone to plan due to our effective planning and research. Whilst filming, we decided to do some spontaneous shots that we didn't include in our storyboard just in case some of the shots we planned for look ineffective when it comes to putting footage onto the computer.

 A bridge in Bermonsey that we filmed some shots in.

 The central Line; What we spent most of the day commuting on.

At Mile End tube station trying to figure out the journey to our next filming location; Gants Hill.

Casting Shots

These are the two actors in our trailer that we decided to use to play the part of Noah and also of the killer. We chose them due to them being our relations and also they both have a bit of experience of acting.

Name: Harry Jackson

Character he is playing: Noah Bloom
Reason for casting: Harry is the perfect age for Noah as he is a 14 year old boy although he looks slightly older and he really enjoys acting and has past experience performing in school plays and having been to several auditions. We also knew he would act very professional and help us by following direction and doing what we asked. He didn't have to speak however we knew it was a good choice as he conveyed sadness very well. As well as this we knew he would be reliable and give up a whole day to go to London and film several shots with several outfit changes in the cold.

Name: Darryl Pitt

Character he is playing: The Killer in the flashback and also a figment of Noah's imagination
Reason for casting: Darryl has been in several independent short films over the years and also quite a few adverts including a rugby themed Powerade advert. After watching them we knew he would get into his character and also be very reliable and professional. He was willing to film in many different locations and for quite a long period of time. The character he was playing required him to look quite scary and he embraced the role and played it very well.

Filming Schedule

This is our filming schedule for both day that we plan to film at the various locations. It is incredibly important to make a filming schedule so that we can accurately organise and manage our time effectively. This will also be beneficial as we know when and how long we need to call our actors for.

We've included many additional shots that aren't featured on our storyboard. The reasoning behind this was because our trailer isn't in a chronological order, it's more fragmented. We added some filler shots for transitional purposes to help us out when editing just in case some our shots didn't turn out too well.

Storyboard - Animated

This is the animated version of our story board. In theory this could be the very first edit of our film. We've added the sound to it and some sound effects, enjoy!

Storyboard

This is our storyboard. It's always useful to have a storyboard to avoid any confusion or misunderstanding about the type of shots that you want to use, camera angles, camera movement  when filming on location. It also enables you to be organised and efficient with your time. This is a very rough draft of what we aim to include in our trailer. Some amendments will be made to get it closer to the vision in our heads that we both share.   

Shot Ideas

In order to put together a successful storyboard, we tested out some of the rough shot ideas that we had in our heads. This year it was a lot harder to know what shots we wanted and needed to do as our trailer will be not necessarily in chronological order like one of our influences that we looked at, 'SPIKE ISLAND'. We filmed some of them and then others we have just photographed due to the still nature of the shot. 

This is just a simple walking shot that we wanted to include to introduce the character or to display titles or just to put to a voiceover audio.

This is another simple walking shot. However, we like this one better this one better than the previous one as it allows the audience to concentrate more on the character as oppose to the surroundings. We intend to use this shot in our 2nd draft of our storyboard. 

This shot is different from the others as we used a downward angled pan. We felt this shot is possibly more interesting than the others as it changes the dynamic of the shot. We will be using this shot in out second draft of our storyboard.

The shot testing below was one of the most important as it could go either way. We used some willing volunteers to test it out.

Location Ideas

We've had a couple of ideas for the location of our film as we plan to show aspects from all different parts of the film which are all in different places around London.

One of our first ideas for a location that spured from our very initial idea was to film in the London Underground. Especially on the central line as most stations on the line possess the aesthetic qualities that we feel will represent Noah's feeling of isolation and loneliness the best. We did some research into   some of the stations on the central line in order to decide the best ones to film at.

When researching we came across the station Gants Hill. This station really appealed to us due to the unique design of the tube station. Gants Hill is quite an old underground station as it hasn't yet been renvated

Another station that we really want to use in our trailer is Mile End station. 

Mile End station in particular appealed to us as it has a cross platform interchange which will allow us to film from the other side of the platform. This is incredibly useful to us as we have had the idea to film an incoming train go past our protagonist and then to leave the station with him still standing in the same postition. Here is an example of the shot that we want to achieve:

Another Location idea that we had was to film in Southwark Park for the flashback scene. There is a heavily wooded area so that we can vaguely show the killing from Noah's point of view. The wooded area will also help us create the effect of a flashback as it will still be visable but we will also be able to conceal aspects of it as Noah's memory is fragmented.

Although we could possibly have an issue with the lighting as the forestation there is quite dense making it hard for any natural light to get through. To resolve this issue, we will have to find an area that is onlooking the forestation as if to create the effect of a densely wooded area.

We plan to use places like London Bridge underground tunnels and Bermonsey tube escalators for transitional shots as we really like the atmosphere and totally feel that it portrays the correct sense of loneliness.