Our zombie make up

Shot on Wednesday, 2nd of November. This video features one of our group members being 'zombified' by a theatrical make up specialist we luckily managed to recruit to help our zombie trailer come to life. During this session, all four group members were zombified and had their photos taken which will be up on our flickr account and also published to our blog in a matter of days.

Makeup testing

We are currently undergoing our first makeup test on our team member Dan. We will be uploading our progress

Make up test

On Wednesday 2nd November we have organised an afternoon of make up testing. We have managed to gain a willing person from the Theatrical Make-Up course to use special materials to create our desired zombie look. She is going to use certain make up techniques and products that are a step up from the amateur shop bought materials and will defiantly look professional. Small additions like professional make up such as cuts and wounds make such a massive impact on the quality of our trailer giving it a more authentic look.
We will be posting images and a video of this Make-Up test onto our blog

These are some of the things we have discussed as a group as to what we are going to need whilst filming. These small inputs such as make up and props will all add to the successful and believable authenticity of our trailer.

Production ideas

http://www.bloodymarvellous.tv/index.php/welcome/page/shop

We've included this link in our blog as we are interested in purchasing some fake blood products to add authenticity to our trailer to create a professional and realistic image.

Finished Storyboard

Story Board progress

The Narrative (Rough)

Narrative

Begins with a close up of a test tube being dropped from a gloved hand and smashing (slow Motion) then a medium shot of the scientist as a zombie. Cut to black. Cut to a close up of the radio with a voiceover of a warning that a virus has broken out and is spreading. Told to lock all doors and windows and to stay inside. Cut to black. Cut to a long shot through the house and out the back door to see Noah in the garden. Cut to Leo looking over and seeing Noah running for the door. Close up of Leo’s hand locking the door. Close up of Noah banging on the window. Cut to black. Medium/ Long shot of zombies closing around Noah. Cut to black. Cut to a Medium shot of the window and a bloody hand comes up and smears down the window. Cut to black and cut to a handheld first person shot of Leo running across the road and looking back at zombies chasing him. Cut to black. Cut to a medium shot of Zombies running with their arms out and groaning. Cut to black. Cut to a medium shot of Leo in the woods. Cut to black. Cut to a close up of Zombies feet/ legs running through leaves. Cut to black. Cut to a long shot of Leo trapped against a wall. Cut to black. Cut to an OTS shot of Leo with Zombies running towards him. He brings a Baseball bat up and a cut to black. Title comes up on the black background with the release date.  

Locations

Locations, a set on Flickr.

FRIGHT NIGHT

This event occurs every year and has done for the past 10 years, FRIGHT NIGHT occurs every october for the Halloween period. It is set up till late at night so that all the main rides are open in the dark. However running around the theme park are people dressed up as zombies and infected people that grab you and chase you to give you a live feel for the terror used in films such as SAW. This sort of event would give a good idea of make up and even characteristics towards our film trailer also we would be able to experience first hand the tense atmosphere and sheer horror.

 One of the members of our group attended this event with a group of friends. She captured some of the key events that occured that day, this included the actors who walked around interacting with people, the sets of certain rides such as the saw maze which included live actors and sets made up which are seen in the real films and also props which were left around the park.
All of these added to the horror atmosphere when it hit 6pm it went dark and the actors came out dressed head to toe in makeup and character outfits chasing people around the park and interacting with everyone. Also they put out props such as the beheaded dummy as seen on the left, this was a very dramatic and gruesome add to the park as one of their main rides ran over

the top of these dummies so that you were face to face. However the biggest attraction was the Saw Alive Maze. This entailed live actors who were given permission to grab people who chose to enter and would shout and scream in their faces chasing them about the building. Each section was made up to reflect key scenes from the film such as the slaughter house with all authentic props and live actors this added to the horrific experience. Whilst experiencing this the one member of our team took notice that the addition of small props such as the beheaded dummies and use of theatrical makeup all added up to create an authentic terrifying atmosphere. 

Zombie Make-Up

This is a great video showing us how to create a great zombie using a few simple ingredients. We like this idea because not only is it cheap but it is also authentic. This make-up will allow us to create a great atmosphere on screen to terrify the audience.

Simple Special FX

We've chosen to include this video in our blog because it has also provided us with extra knowledge on editing for our trailer, which is extremely helpful. Especially the sped up background and day for night editing effect.

IMP AWARDS

This website has allowed us to gain images for our poster analysis, www.impawards.com. This website is a virtual library and has a collection of thousands posters from loads of previous and current films even those which haven't been shown in cinemas yet. This website has posters dating from the year of 1912 covering all genres from horror to romance to documentary, this website also categorises their posters into the design companies that they were made by. With many sub-sections to explore and discover hundreds of posters this website makes it simple and easy to access any poster that you may need in our case horror/zombies. We were able to come up with multiple posters to choose from to analyse for inspiration for possible film posters for factors such as combining colours, layouts, text, fonts and images.

Toronto Zombie Walk 2011

The Toronto Zombie walk would be a great location to shoot a scene for our trailer. We could have a high angle shot over the city and then the camera could tilt down to expose to the audience the vast scale of terror that is there. The fact that it is in such a large city would terrify the audience even more as they would feel that if a whole city could be affected then anywhere could be and this brings the terror home. Because this event is taken seriously the costumes would look very authentic and really help the on-screen effects. Unfortunately we do not have the finance available to go on this trip, however we may try to get to a smaller scale one in the UK.

Terror4Fun Zombie Event

This event could be a possible place to get some well costumed zombies to act in our trailer as background actors. This could help us to create a large scale zombie film as we do not have the special effects programs available to do it post-production. We could also get the make-up artists to 'zombify' us for better on screen effects.

The Horror Genre

This video has been shared to our blog purely because it has provided various inspirational ideas for our filming. The filming used in this clip is ideal for our zombie film trailer therefore this video has proved very useful/helpful.

Production logo survey

As a group we decided that the best possbile way to create a successful and authentic logo would be to create a survey and ask a selected number of people which two would they expect to see as production logos shown at the beginning of a trailer. The image above is our survey we created on a Microsoft Word document with the logos we need to decide between, we had to consider many factors when deciding what images we wanted to create and fonts that we thought were appropriate. With our genre of horror and sub genre Zombies we had to create an image that was both within the horror genre but of course nothing too extreme, for all three of our images we decided for our production company to be memorable we had to stick with our 'Zomble' Zombie theme, with two cartoon zombie heads and a zombie squirell as something different. We stuck to the colours which are stereotypically associated with the genre of horror, black and red also we chose to write our text in a gothic style font in black so that it stands out from the colourful images of course with the exception of the 'DEAD SQUIRELL' which we chose to try the colour red again sticking with the connotations of horror.
Overall asking 20 people to choose between three logos we calculated our results and we now have our final two logos which we will choose to work on from listening to peoples comments and opinions to improve the look we are hoping to achieve. 80% of the people we asked to complete our survey chose the logos 'DEAD SQUIRELL' and the last 'ZOMBLE PRODUCTIONS' logo. These will be the two we persue further and make some minor changes to to create the authentic appeal we would like to achieve.

SAW film poster analysis

This poster above is from one of the most well known horror genre films made, the Saw films which ran with 5 sequels to the first. Renowned for its horror and gore this makes Saw the perfect poster to analyse as it is closely linked to our genre of horror.
This poster appears very minimalistic when it comes to the layout and the combination of text to photography. The background/set used to shoot the image of the severed hand has the connotations of being clinical with the bright white tiled room. It has stuck to the theme of the greyscale colours with they greyscale hand heavily detailed and the white tiled room. However the break to this colour scheme is shown with the red blood running from the hand, red has of course the connotations of blood and horror, it is one of the most popular colours to be used when linked with horror.
Conventionally horror posters main subject are the victims, the villain or either both. It is extremley clear that the severed hand is of course going to be the victim this is an extreme way of showing the torture and horror of the film towards its characters. Again with such a shocking image and lack of people contact such as eye contact and even a busy background/set there is no expression or even eyes to follow but only a severed hand creating a erie and tense atmosphere. Because of the horrific feel to this poster less is more, all this film needs is the title and an image to create the attention grabber they need. We will defiantly look into the minimalistic style of poster to see whether this will be more popular and effective, the only negative side to this poster is there seems to be no date which is somethng we will defiantly be including on our poster.

28 Weeks Later Poster Analysis

This poster is extremely effective in engaging the audience as the two main characters appear to be running towards them as if in need of help. The silhouettes of the zombies chasing them show that the film is going to be about them running and being helpless, making the audience feel even more engaged. The red sky gives the impression that their will be bloodshed within the film. The slogan and the title stand out from the poster so that they stick in the minds of the audience. The use of the whole city behind suggests that it may not just be these two people in danger but the whole city/ country or even world. This again makes the audience feel involved because it may be close to home and they may then feel vulnerable.

Our second production meeting

In this production meeting we finished off our zombie movie trailer analysis's which we began individually in our spare time, these are now featured on our blog. We have also constructed some existing products for inspirational images for Zomble Production logos. Following this, we have created our own ideas on production logos. This week, our individual homework will be analysis's of horror movie posters which will be uploaded within the next week.

Zombie Production Logos !

These are three of our production logos we have decided to create using a simple PhotoShop template and experimenting with different fonts we wanted to create a logo which mirrored our chosen genre. We decided to stick to the two main colours associated with horror/zombie red and black. The red of course has connotations of blood and violence where as the black has the connotations of death and also neatly outlines and creates a stand out appearance. We wanted to also keep in with the theme of zombie therefore the first two are of Zombie faces which are making eye contact with the audience showing a very serious faces. The first seen is based more on the band Gorillaz who are well known for their music videos which include animated versions of themselves and our first logo shows some similarity to of the lead band member. However we added the use of red around the mouth to create the look of blood and as the eyes show as hollow instead of dead it mirror their personalities that Zombies are seen as hollow with no emotion. The second logo shows the stereotypical zombie as an ugly torn face with scruffy hair and a very serious stare, this unlike the others is in black and white. The use of black and white does give a very proffessional appeal more sophisticated than the other too but also by using a two tone image it gives it a very bland and serious look reflecting once again the personality of a Zombie. The first two both hold the title 'Zomble Productions' which of course is important as that is the name of our production company however we then chose to branch out to other company ideas. With many films there are usually more than one production company involved for example the productions credits on "Titanic" are for Lightstorm (James Cameron's production company), and both the 20th Century Fox and Paramount studios. We decided to use a slightly more humourous company this time and chose to create an image of a possessed squirrel with the decided company name of 'DEAD SQUIRREL'.

Inspirational Images for logos

This time we have researched on the internet zombies rather than possessed children we researched a film that we were aware has a strong influence in the horror genre and is known around the world as one of the iconic zombie films 'DAWN OF THE DEAD'. This zombie is actually used on one of their posters promoting the film however alone we believe that the image is a strong and eye catching image to be used with maybe a small amount of text such as a brief company name as it has a strong impact. The blood around the head of the guy and the white cloudy eyes portray the horror genre well therefore we believe this is a strong image to be used either as a poster or even a logo therefore we will base our logo along the lines of the research we have made today for a successful and authentic logo.

Inspirational Images for the logo

 After further looking at some footage on youtube such as a scene from The Grudge we came across some video footage of zombie and possessed people. The image above although is are slightly pixelated it is clear to see the image of the possessed girl known as The Grudge in the mirror.

This image gives us a rough idea of the sort of images of zombies we should use for our logo as you can evidently see characteristics such as white eyes that give that memorable erie stare and most of the time the wide open screaming mouth. What tends to make these sort of images shocking and horrific is because especially in this case a young girl with the connotations of innocence is used not an adult. This seems to be most effective as in many horror films not only are adults used as possessed people and zombies but most of the time children are involved too such as the film 'Insidious'.

Production Logos

This production company logo is a simple yet effective design, we decided to go with the simple idea as it proves to be most effective. Again you have to consider the fact that it is only shown at most for 2 seconds at the beginning of a trailer therefore if you were to over complicate the image with a lot of text and imaging the audience wouldn't have time to read and absorb all the information within the 2 second time slot. We believe this is effective for a horror genre due to the colour scheme of black white and red which has the connotations of death and blood and all correspond well together. The format of the text looks to be scratched and ripped giving again the horror look especially with the image of the scratched bloody cross above. This whole logo gives an effective horror feel and is extremely professional at the same time.

REC. 2 Trailer.

This trailer starts at 0.17seconds and lasts for just over one minute, our trailer will have to last the same amount of time for the successful teaser trailer we are hoping to create. By looking at this trailer we are now aware of how much footage we are able to shoot and use for the our film teaser trailer without going over our 1 minute limit or even below this limit. REC. 2 is the sequel to the film REC. about a virus which has leaked out into one tower block of apartments, firstly in REC. fireman were called to deal with a situation however seeing as this failed and all the fireman ended up either dead or infected REC. 2 shows SWAT Teams enter the building to resolve the situation however it proves to be not as easy as planned. The whole film is shot by head camera and hand held cameras creating a first person film, this adds to the intensity and suspense of the film. Usually during many horror films you are shown camera angle shots from track shot to long shots to give an overview of the scene. However during this trailer and film as it has been shot as first person the viewer only gets to see what the SWAT Team does. This gives the suspense as you are instantly thrown into the SWAT Team's shoes without knowing what or who is behind you. The night vision technology used in this trailer is an extremely effective technique it's unable to create detail but highlights shadows well therefore when one of the infected people jumps out from a dark corner it is unrecognisable till the last second when it's bloody face is in the camera screen. This night vision effect is a successful and intense format for filming a partial night scene, this filming idea is defiantly one aspect we are looking into due to its thrilling atmosphere it gives throughout this trailer. Non-diegetic sound is used throughout the trailer as a well known Spanish Opera song, it reminds the audience where this film is set. However usually in horror trailers you are shown screaming and high intense music combining Non-diegetic to Diegetic with speech from each character whereas the only Diegetic sound used throughout this trailer is not speech but cut shots to screams and the violent sounds of the infected people attacking people. This combination of cut shots to the diegetic sounds of screaming and terror against the soft gentle Opera music creates an erie yet horrific affect. This is again something we are considering due to the research we have performed on trailers and as shown below with the DEAD ISLAND game trailer it seems to be the new way of advertising horror it's effective yet horrific at the same time still with the heart jumping moments.

Dead Island Video Game (2011)

This is a very unique trailer, in a reversed order it unfolds the story about a small girl falling from a building after attacking a man. For the most of it the trailer is in slow motion, but the scenes that flash of the girl running away and screams. In our trailer i think taking these ideas will make our trailer different from others, slow motion to build the atmosphere and the flash clips to give it the unexpected screams and scenes. The music in this trailer is very good, compared to most horror trailers you will get basically no music and lots of bangs and screams, this gives the trailer something unique, I believe our group should use this music or similar music to this. The type of zombie in this trailer are more traditional zombies, running, infected and very scary, this is the type of zombie we would like to do.

Similar to the top trailer, it uses the same music, slow motion and zombies but this shows the fighting and killing of the zombies. The things which we can take out of this are the critics reviews on the walls/boats and the slow motion of this.

The Blair Witch Project (Horror & Ending Scene) Analysis

The Blair Witch Project (Horror & Ending scene) clip is shot via a handheld camera. By doing this, it gives the audience a first hand view of the situation, it also gives the effect that you're a part of the whole experience, as if it is happening to you at the same time. This specific scene from The Blair Witch Project has been shot in two different locations, one being a woods at night time which is often known for being frightening in real life, let alone featuring in a horror movie. The other location is an abandoned house within the woods. There are children's hand prints in blood up the walls in the house, ripped apart walls, no windows, broken floorboards, holes in the walls and flooring etc.. creating that horrifying overall appearance. In terms of editing, there are no sudden jump cuts from scene to scene. However, the clip cuts from one characters handheld camera to the other in a barely noticeable smooth motion. This clip features no music backing track, which often creates a dramatic atmosphere to build suspense. Although this is different to what we are planning on doing, it still gives us other options to consider. This video includes sounds such as heavy breathing, footstep noises, screaming, shouting, whispering between characters and crying. As effects go, the obvious one would be shooting in black and white. The reasons why we chose to analyse this certain clip was because it features zombie-like characters, in which we'll attempt to recreate, along with the handheld, first person filming technique.

First Planning Sheet

During our first meeting together as a group we thought through many different genres for our film trailer. However the planning sheet above shows our final decision as a group to go with the idea of a Zombie film trailer. We discussed possible trailers from well known Zombie films but also Game footage which would give us inspiration for small factors such as music, camera shots and also locations which combined together will hopefully allow us to create a successful Zombie Film Trailer.

Dawn Of The Dead (2004) Trailer Analysis

The Dawn Of The Dead trailer has lots of 'fade to black' quick cuts after being introduced by slow moving images and soundtrack. Inbetween shots, whilst the black screen is up, it is used to display messages, reviews or words to explain the film. Quick moving shots are used for intensity. Specific quotes from actors within the film are used in some parts to explain what is happening on screen.. Quick cuts between scenes to make the horror see to be non stop. The trailer then ends with a slow motion shot and the name of the film appearing to leave the audience with the name of the film as their last memory.

Our first production meeting

After a group discussion we have settled on the sub genre from our trailer.. Zombies. 
Attempting to scan in our initial ideas for inspirational trailers, however the scanner isn't working therefore our posts may be a little out of order.