Film Trailer Soundtrack!

Looking for songs from the 1900's - 1940's. One song must have a melancholy vibe to it, that's sad and simplistic and contains whimsical elements. Preferably just an instrumental piece. 

Also looking for one that is strong, orchestral and dramatic.

Anything kind of spooky and supernatural. 

I quite like this one!

A few Inspirational Images

The Final Pieces: The Film Poster and Magazine Front Cover

I am extremely pleased with the way in which my poster turned out. Although a few changes have been made to the layout, I am happy that I stuck by my initial ideas and that my vision was a success! The only thing I altered was the removal of the ghost child in the corner and I tweaked the tagline. Seeing as the poster no longer contained an additional character from the film, to have the tagline read 'united by pain' no longer made sense, and so I changed it to 'plagued by pain' as it refers to only the main character. There is no specific date stated or institutional information because I wanted this to stand as a teaser film poster.

I have to admit that I did find the process of creating the magazine front cover quite stressful. Having become immerssed within the world of filming and directing I feel as if I have discovered a hidden talent! Since beginning the process of constructing the still images, I felt as if my creativity was stunted and found it difficult to create a piece that looked authentic.

After playing around with different colours, fonts and placing pieces of text in different places, I felt like I finally found something that looked okay. Although I am not entirely satisfied with the results of my magazine and I even though I feel I have let myself down slightly, I am content in that I am starting to learn where my strengths lie within this creative subject.

Music Suggestions for Film Trailer

Due to the lack of proper sound equipment, I have decided it would be best not to include dialogue within my film trailer. Therefore, I will have to rely on the music and sound effects to entice my audiences. This post shows some very basic ideas of the sort of music I will be using.

Melancholy Soundtracks to Existing Films:

I don't particularly want to use a soundtrack for a film that already exists, as I wanted to research the era itself. I am currently searching for songs that are representative of the time, have jazzy undertones, reflect the melancholy mood and hint towards the supernatural genre of the film.

Technical Problems

For my filming, I decided to use a camera from home  which was a Sony HandyCam. After filming the first few scenes for my trailer I was extremely pleased with the results. The quality of the footage was brilliant and the shots I took looked authentic. I brought the disc of the footage into school to put onto the computers in order to begin editing. Little did I know that the footage wasn't the right format in order to convert files onto the computer or that the files were incompatible with premier pro. 

I contacted the IT professionals within school to help me with these technical problems and am still awaiting feedback.

Creating the Film Poster

The Unedited Image

This is the original image that I selected to use for the poster. I feel like the compositioning within the frame was extremely representative of my initial ideas and I am so pleased that my idea of the poster turned out to be successful. 

Using Adobe Photoshop CS5 I turned this image into a film poster to promote my film. This post follows the process of editing the image and creating the poster.

In order to create an even and flawless complexion, I used the blur tool and spot-healing tool to blur and remove blemishes around the face. I wanted the model to portray the look of a classic 1940's beauty and so I started with the lashes. Zooming into the eyes I used the sharpen tool to make the lashes appear more defined; using the smudge tool to make them longer and create a feathery effect. I also used the burn tool to make that area of the eye darker to draw more attention. The result of this lengthened the lashes.

To create the look of perfectly chiseled cheek bones, I used the burn tool again (increasing the size) and swiped it across the cheek. The same method was used along the jaw line in order produce a more defined bone structure.

Next I used the colour replacement tool to redden the lips. Below are two examples of the change in colour of the lips:

After I decided on the appropriate colour I used the burn tool to darken the lips.

The dodge tool was used to lighten the hair and give it a glossier, shinier and healthy effect. The blur tool  was successful in eliminating the wispy bits around the head. The burn tool was effective in darken the areas of fur and the dodge tool was used to lighten other areas of the scarf. Around the edges of the fur, the sharpen tool was used to define and make it stand out.

The models arm in the image is darker than her face, in order to create an even skin tone I used the sponge tool to make the complexion of the arm look as pale as the face.

Next I wanted to change the colour of the image to create the vintage look, I played around with the hue/saturation to provide the image with a sepia tone.

This is just one example of the effects of changing the hue/saturation. This example will not contribute towards the final piece.

The final part of editing included applying the text to the image, such as the tagline, film title and the date.

The final piece will be shown in a later post.

Storyboard

Click to enlarge