Film Poster - Diary Of The Dead analysis

Diary of the dead is a film about a film student recording everything that goes on around him as the dead start coming back to like. The poster does nothing to keep any mystery like in the first two posters. In fact, it’s pretty self explanatory to what you would expect in the film. Instead of the genres given away a bit more subtly, everything we need to know is shown straight in front of you.

For instance, in the other two posters, the sub genre is given away with lighting, titles and recording symbols, where this poster shows the camera in the middle and seems to try to make in the main focus. I particularly like the way the camera shows the man’s head on the screen showing more obviously that it will be that point of view you will be seeing. However, I think this is effective in the same way as it still lets the audience know that the film is using a hand held camera so would attract their target audience. Zombies are the main horror focus in all posters films; however, this is the only one that actually shows this. I think this is for the same reason as the camera being on the poster as it allows the target audience to see straight away what the film is about.

We also see a small line given to us on this poster, much like the one on [REC] which is ‘shoot the dead’. It very obvious and to the point as well as being quite a clever play on words as it could mean using a gun or a camera to shoot. I prefer this line much more as it’s much more likely to stay in someone’s head long after they’ve seen the poster so will try to use this technique in my own piece.

The font used for the title, is a very bold one. This makes is stand out well on the page as well as appearing quite dirty because of the browned edges on some letters. It gives it quite a scary look. Ive also noticed that the font seem quite similar to the one used in ‘Dawn Of The Dead’ maybe to attract the same audience who liked this film.

I think that the only thing that lets this poster down is the colour, in my opinion. Being such a light, ‘pretty’ blue, it seems far too of a delicate colour to be associated with this type of horror film. I suppose it could be associated with night time but I thought that the darker colours in [REC] and Quarantine seemed much more effective in giving a creepy feel to it.

Film Poster - [REC] Analysis

[REC] is a Spanish film based on a reporter who films the events of a house filled with infected people whilst trapped inside. The film poster gives very little of this away. We don’t see anything that could give away the storyline. All that is presented to us is a picture, the title and ‘experimenta al miedo’ meaning ‘experience the fear’. The simplicity to this poster is something that I feel I am seeing quite a lot with film posters. Not giving much of the film itself gives a sense of mystery to the story. It makes you wonder why the woman in this picture looks like this and makes you use your own imagination to do this.

In my own poster, I hope to do the same to make my film seem very mysterious with its story. This would mean that people would have to watch a trailer to get a bigger picture of the story so would inevitably gain me more advertisement.

But although little of the story is given away, what is presented to us is enough to grab the attention of the target audience. The genre of horror is certainly shown in the poster. The colours used are very dark with the majority of it being completely black. The only part where there is lighter colour is the title and the small line above. This makes it much more noticeable and draws your attention straight to this. The picture also shows its genre through the shadows of the girls face. Because of this shadow, we see little of the girl’s face which as a result, could lead the target audience to make this up on their own. It doesn’t give away whether this character is good or bad so adds more mystery to the film especially because you cannot see her eyes at all as they are such a huge give away to our expression. Finally, the line ‘experience the fear’ is another sign of the genre. It also makes the films look more appealing to horror fans as I think its implying that because of the use of the hand held camera, you would feel closer to what is happening and feel that you are experiencing it yourself.

Not only does the poster give away the genre of horror, it also allows us to see it sub genre of hand held camera horror. The obvious give away is the title [REC] with the big red circle in front, known to most people as the icon that shows whilst the camera is recording. However, the lighting seems to be another clue as the light on the girl appears very much like its coming from one source in front of her. Personally, I think that this looks like a camera spotlight.

I think showing my audience the same sub genre would be very effective for my advertisement as these films are becoming very popular. However, because my title is much more subtle than [REC] I will have to use another technique to make this more obvious in my own poster. Another thing that I shall consider using in my own piece is something similar to the line that is used in the poster, ‘experience the fear’. I think that this is very effective for getting the audience’s attention. The small line is almost a teaser to the story.

Update - Editing: Day 3

Editing, this week, has been the most successful I think. I am now much more comfortable with using Adobe Premiere Pro and can use all the tools I need very well. There were no problems with the software at all and the only issues that came up were more to do with music, however, I feel I have overcome this problem.

So far I have edited about a minute into my trailer and have also included some music into it. The first track worked very well with my video. I may need to figure out how to play around with the volume so you can hear the narration over the top. The only problem that came with this track is the transitioning into the next one. As it’s not the end of the track I will need to find a way to transition them together so it flows smoothly. I have tried to add the transition affect where the track decreases volume until its silent and then starting the next one but feel a loud noise in between may help with the atmosphere I want to give. The choice I had originally chosen to my next track will probably change. I don't feel it worked too well with the video. Although it does have a creepy feel, I think it may be to over the top.

I have decided that I will begin to follow the script more precisely in the second half of my trailer. I felt that, will all the extra shots I did, I could edit something much better than my script. As my second half is more diagetic dialogue, following my script would be better.

To overcome the problem of adding in the narration at the end of editing my video, I made sure that most of the shots within the first half of my trailer are able to get longer or shorter to suit to length of the audio clip. This would mean that I don’t have to worry too much about the timing as I’m editing and just get the order I think works best.

Update - Editing: day 2

So far, in editing, I have learned the basics of Adobe Premiere Pro cs4. Although I worked with this software for my last project for AS, I needed to know more about the effects available on there and how to cut small sections from a large clip in the preview area because of the lengths of the clips I captured.

I came across many problems when editing the second time. When opening my film that I had previously started, nothing was playing. Once I had closed the programme down and restarted it, it managed to fix itself.

I then had problems with the video and audio link. When I pulled a clip down from the preview area, only the video would show up on the timeline and not the audio. This is probably due to how I was putting in my narration. I would use the drag audio only button in order to do this and it seemed there was no way to reverse it. I therefore had to start my whole piece again. This time I decided it would be better not to adjust any of the audio until I had all my shots in order. Although it may stop this problem occurring again, I am going to find it much more difficult to figure out how long the shots should be when there should be a voice over on top. I am hoping that when adjusting this towards the end, it will not effect my film very much.

When I started putting all my shots in order, I then wanted to add effects to them in order for one shot to blend into the next one. It took me a while to understand how this worked as I kept dragging the effect bar to far on the next shot causing three images to be blended together. It took me a while to get my head around how to use this effect, however, I do understand now. When previewing what I had done, the image seemed to glitch a lot. I had done the effect correctly so am thinking it’s to do with the shot itself. I’m hoping that it’s just with these two shots that I blended together as I would like to repeat this effect throughout my film.

Because of the way I have filmed, I am not following my script so strictly when editing it. Although, it has proved much more difficult when choosing where some clips should go, I can be much more creative. It has allowed me to experiment with effects and when something goes wrong with my script, I have many other clips I can replace it with.

As time is going to be a potential problem due to problems booking the editing computers, I wanted to make sure I understood ways in which I could edit more quickly. As well as cutting from the preview area, I am adjusting to using the keyboard to do most of the work such as ‘I’ and ‘o’ for selecting what I wanted to cut and then the comma to drag that down to my time line.

For the moment, as well as concentrating on the editing, I am trying to understand Adobe After Effects so that I am able to add the glitched shots I wanted. So far, I am finding it quite difficult and complicated and am hoping there are tutorials on YouTube for this effect rather than using the help bar which I thought was far too complicated. I didn’t find many useful effects on Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 which is why I am going to be using After Effects. Although I am still learning how to use this software, I am well aware of how to add the clips I have made on there, easily to the Premiere Pro timeline.

Overall, although I didn’t get much of my film done, I still think this day was successful. I learned more about the software, such as effects and cutting, as well as learning time saving ways of editing. I think that if so many problems hadn’t occurred, I would have got much further with my editing, however, I now know how to overcome these problems if they ever happen again. It has made me aware of how long I am going to need to complete my film. I don’t think that the time I will be able to book in the college computers will be enough so am hoping to use a friends computer who has this software to help me finish it on time.

Update - Editing: Day 1

Capturing the film onto the hard drive proved to be fairly simple. There were no major problems other than occasionally pausing without reason or having problems with audio. However, within about half an hour all of it was uploaded onto premiere pro and each clip worked perfeclty fine. Most of the clips are in big chunks with no real order so I may decide to cut each scene out to make editing less complicated. However, as ive had a chance to get some clips in order on the timeline already, ive felt the process of cutting it out of the 1st preivew screen just as easy so feel this will waste time.

So far I am just reminding myself of the features on premiere pro such as learning how to just drag the audio into the timeline or mute or cut vision out of one of the levels of the timeline. Im making sure that everything that I want to put into my final piece is available ont his software such as the glithing affect.

I haven't faced any problems so far in editing. I am slightly worried about adding the music into my piece. I have already chosen all the sound affects and songs I want to add but am just worrying about the dialogue which will be added over the top or the transition between one song an another. I will look on the editng software to see what audio transitions there are or research back into other trailers to see how it was done it them.

Overall, I am pleased with how it looks now that it has been uploaded to a bigger screen. None of the shots seem to dark which it the main issue that kept coming up in filming. Although I was hoping to have more takes of the more important shots, so far, when looking back over the foutage, there arent any shots that look as if though they will cause any problems.

Filming: Day 2

My second filming day was on the 5th of February, starting at 2 o’clock and stopping at around 6 o’ clock.

On the first filming day, I followed the script exactly and found that some shots didn’t work or was to dark to do. Because of this, I decided that on my next filming day, I wouldn’t use any script and just shoot things I thought would work.

I started off with me just walking with the camera recording, going in and out the tunnels. As the light from the torches wasn’t enough to do the establishing shot, I did this all in the day. I was disappointed by this as I didn’t think that it would give the creepy feel I wanted however, the weather was very cloudy and fairly dark on the second day which helped. When walking around, if I thought something would look good in my trailer, I would shoot it. As I shot so much, I think that this will be good when editing as I will have a lot of choices there for me. So although, I don’t think I will be able to follow my script very well, I have a lot I can work with.

Being so free with my filming actually allowed me to shoot some great shots. For instance, as it was windy, there was a large metal door that kept banging shut on its own. Not only did it look good, it also gave me a great sound affect.

I thought this day was very successful, not only because I was freer without the script, but I had a lot more time. Not being restricted allowed me to think things through much more thoroughly and discuss with my helper and actor what shots I could do and how I could do them. I was also able to take many of the same shot to make sure that I had choices when it came to editing.

Having someone there that wasn’t an actor helped with lighting, organising and helping me with the camera when I needed to be in the shot.

The biggest problem I faced when I was there was that I only had one actor available. I originally wanted to retake some shots where the whole group was there but these might have to be replaced. Although having one actor was difficult, it did help with time issues, organising and noise. I found it so much easier to work with just the one actor and as a result, I thought it helped getting shots I wouldn’t normally have come up with.

The only major problem I had was that I wanted more shots with the ghost and the only character I had was the main investigator. As I had the same sort of hair, I tried doing these shots myself. The cameras screen was able to twist round so I could get a general idea of what it would look like before it was recorded. These shots took the longest as I had to go over and over them but I think that it was quite a success. I don’t think that the character will look noticeably different when I edit it together but it may mean that some previous shots may have to be cut out.

I decided to record the voices separately. I did this for many reasons. Firstly, it will allow me to be freer when editing it. I won’t have to put some unwanted shots in just because of the dialogue. Secondly, the recordings on the camera when the people are further away was poor, so having it separate meant that I could put the camera closer so hopefully, the quality will be better. I am unsure to how well I did these recordings though, however, if these seem to be a problem they are easy to redo.

Lighting was hardly an issue on this filming day. I decided to go up earlier when it was light so I could get all the establishing shots I needed. Some of the shots in the tunnels that were originally to dark were helped with the light coming from the end of the tunnel. I only had 2 torches to work with in this one but this wasn’t a problem at all.

Overall, I thought that this filming day was very successful. I don’t think that there was any major problems but if there are some shots from my script that didn’t quite work, I know that I have plenty of other shots I can change this for.

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