Final Poster Design!

We'd originally been playing around with using graphics and symbols to get across this idea of technology and our cult using Photoshop, but decided that though this correlated with our trailer, on its own didn't make logical sense - it was almost too subliminal and psychological, too linked into our cult as opposed to advertising the film itself. We decided to go with a photographic image in the end - after one unproductive afternoon Googling Google, we stumbled upon this image of Google reflected in an eye (above - we can't seem to find a source!) We thought this could work for our cult as well - replacing the Google logo with our cult's symbol being reflected into the eye, we liked the concept, that hint at brainwashing we wanted to get across - it reminded me of the brainwashing sequence in The Ipcress File, and the close up of his eyes as the flashing images reflect in it - I liked this idea that the cult was visually penetrating the brainwashee, or that the cult was always inside of us.

The Original Image:

We used our actress - Lauren Bradley's eye, because not only were they piercingly blue, but it established this idea that she was the cult's puppet, that she had been manipulated and brainwashed like all the other cult members even though she figure headed it and that the cult were in complete control of her. It took quite a few attempts to get all the positioning quite right - we used the dark room, keeping the whole room in darkness except for a laptop we placed on Lauren's knee with the symbol on its screen and tried to reflect directly into her pupil - we thought the artifical light of the laptop onto her face gave that technological feel to the shot, the whiteness and hints of blue it reflected. This was the best shot and I think we got it almost exactly how we'd envisioned it, we now just needed to edit it.

First Edit:

We wanted her face to have the same white finish it had in the trailer, and enhanced the exposure of the shot, lowering the saturation very slightly but also upping the contrast so that her eye lashes, and particularly the logo, stood out the most. We added slight tints of blue to add that technological feel and increased the whites of her eyes to make them unnaturally white - we wanted it to look like she was mid brainwashing, stunned and blinded.

Almost Final Edit:

Here we added in the font - we compositioned the eye slightly more to the right and added in the titles in our chosen font, Typewriter Condensed - borrowing the bottom credits from another film poster. We enlarged the whole picture very slightly as we wanted the majority of the lower half to be white, smoothing out her skin on Photoshop and again increasing the levels of white and the contrast just a touch. We wanted to refit the text, it seems stretched and we wanted the The Resolution very slightly bigger and the tagline - 'We are the answer, the only answer' - slightly smaller as well as eliminating the white background it has unfitting to the poster's, we wanted it to be just text on top of the image.

Website Design

This is our final website design. We may tweak it in the next couple of days to finalise.


The website opens with a full screen teaser trailer 'tease'. This is a 20 second short version of our teaser trailer itself. It begins by autoplaying on loop.

This is achieved by using a 'skip to website' button in the top right corner of the screen.

Once skipped, the page then redirects to the main webpage.

There is a constant static loop in the background with the trailer in clear view on the right hand side of the screen. With links to facebook, twitter, youtube and blogger at the bottom of the screen.

Location Scouting: The Pill Box.

First cut!

Website Proposal.

Another idea regarding website proposals was to keep quite a simple and linear look to the design, whilst still leaving the viewer curious and intrigued to see what the website may be all about.

Although this is just a basic outline, we wanted to see what effect could be created by just placing in the basic requirements of both the website and also our cult, this so being the title, the logo and the proposed tagline. 

The website is animated and the two seperate pieces of the tagline slide in from the left in linear one after the other. The logo is then overlayed with the trailer video from youtube for the viewer to watch.

Other aspects that would be interesting to add to the website would be to have a button where the user can physically touch to 'join us now'. Another would be to have an RSS feed detailing every new person that joins the cult, such as ''John Smith has now joined The Resolution. Welcome John'', to imply it is a real, live and ongoing cult.

Having used wix to produce this website, we feel it is the most appropriate and effective website to use, and after further practice to make ourselves more knowledgeable of the different effects and things we can do with the website, hopefully we can make a clever and effective website.

Website Proposal #2

Again a simple idea, the trailer would go bottom right of the page. The background is in the style of the matrix, and is relevent to our trailer as it is filled with symbols and letters which we managed to get to move. The tagline for our trailer was "Join Us Now" which we included in the website design. The typography in this design is hard to read over the moving letters and symbols of the background.

Website Proposal #3

This is just a template idea, the teaser trailer would go in the centre left. This idea was a very basic idea with the facebook, twitter and blogger logos. The picture background was taken from the website Wix, and was chosen to represent a contained area and a possibility of danger. The red typography incorporates the conventions of a psychological thriller.

Poster designs

This is a basic design of a poster. It includes symbols for the background, which makes the overall poster look crowded. I decided to put our logo in the middle to convey its importance, and to show that this symbol means The Resolution, the jagged edges are to portray that nothing is simple, everything has its pros and cons.

The blood drips are to portray the effects that surround the cult, and we are the only safe place. The typography is simple, but it is hard to read over the symbols.

Second storyboard.

Final draft of beginning speech.

We wanted this speech to be very cleverly worded, devious and slightly manipulative, with double entendres and such – I think we wanted to appeal to a higher intellectual capacity of viewer, one that might see through our spinning and be aware of the conspiracies and dangers we were trying to allude to. We eventually had to cut it down – we didn’t want it to be speech heavy as we didn’t want to lose our viewer’s attention so intercut with visual images to lay down this idea of subliminal messaging and keep the viewer alert:

I am going to offer you a truth, an upsetting, distressing and indeclinable truth. This truth is of the evil of this modern world, the wave of sin that washed through it and that you are drowning in. The corruption and insatiable depravity of man that slowly consumes you. I do not say this to frigthen you, I say this because we wish to help you. We can save you and your soul. Join us and we can offer you a new truth. We are the Resolution. We are the answer, the only answer.

The Resolution Symbol.

After many an afternoon doodling, this was the logo we finally decided on.

The eye was taken from an old Egyptian Hieroglyphic of the Sun God 'Ra' which fascinated us and we liked the connotations the eye held in today's society.

That idea of 'being watched' and 'being controlled' - the constant surveillance around us, CCTV, cameras, is this the government, the cult? We thought it had an Orwell 1984 type vibe also, that everything you do is watched and noted, that 'they' are in complete control of your life and everything you do, that paranoia of stepping out of the line and the repurcussions it could hold. There's definately something very ominous about it baring down over you, and the eye in itself does hold Biblical connotations - the eye of God, for example. 

We also thought the eye alluded to this idea of 'seduction', of almost flirtatiousness, that the cult is luring you in and 'seducing' you.

Some say that eyes are the 'window to the soul' and that therefore they are the most honest part of you, that they can't lie so we combined this with the spikes below the eye - again three as a Biblical connotation, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, but the spikes represent danger, that you can see into the cult's soul but you'd get hurt if you were to try and touch it, or into serious danger.

Make Up Trial #2.

Channeling news reporters and political leaders flawless appearence we created a make-up trial on one of our team members; Lucy.



Green Screen #2

We attempted to the green screen a second time, but with a few modifications to correct what did not work so well last time.

   Firstly we filmed it with a dark room and lit it manually using lamps and spotlights, to create more artificial lighting in comparison to last time where it was within a room lit by daylight and general room lighting. The second attempt definitely worked a lot better.

Green Screen Test #1

Although the greenscreen test didn't come out perfect, it has helped us to know how to make use of the greenscreen feature on 'imovie hd'
From this filming we will know what do try to achieve next time:

• matte makeup on our actresses face.
• lighting, all over equal
• larger greenscreen
• an appropriate greenscreen background.

Screentest: Lauren Bradley.

Why we chose Lauren:

She perfectly fit our criteria - she's very attractive, good skin, neat hair and has a clear, well spoken voice, speaks eloquently in a refined accent therefore giving her that upper middle class edge but also has an approachability and femininity to her - she can be severe, but isn't overly so. She is slightly younger than we would've liked but we thought that she fit the role so perfectly and with more make up and a business like suit could definately pass for at least twenty years old.

Casting an actress!

After deciding upon having a predominantly speech based trailer, our priority then was finding an actor/actress to fill the role.

Gender: I'd always envisioned the trailer with a female speaker - she is the cult's figurehead, essentially their puppet and I think females generally have more of a softer manner to them - their voice and features and mannerisms, which makes them seem more approachable I think, and more relatable. I think the Resolution would've chosen a woman because of this, wanting to recruit as many new followers as possible and she would have had her image very manipulated to their ideal.

Class: Our actress should be middle to upper class, very well spoken, Estuary accent, clean cut, eloquent,  implying a superior level of intellect - her class is appealing to other members of her class and intelligence, that upper middle class the Resolution wants to appeal to and recruit.

Appearance: I think the cult would want to present somebody aesthetically pleasing, quite attractive but not intimidatingly so. Essentially when you join a cult, to follow the leader of it, you are basically striving to become them, so presenting an attractive woman is them showing what you could become were you to join. In her costume, I think we'd like her to have an edge of severity - wearing a suit, her hair and make up very slick, just to add that degree of professionalism the cult wants to portray and again reiterating her middle class status.

Age: We thought our actress should be reasonably young - late 20's, early 30's? Any earlier than this and we risked undermining the professional image we wanted to portray, youth does have connotations of recklessness and we want our actress to appear completely stable in herself and her status.

Symbol tryouts.

" A symbol is something such as an object, picture, written word, sound, or particular mark that represents something else by association, resemblance, or convention. "

First draft of cult promotional speech

            I am now going to offer you an indeclinable truth. An upsetting, distressing and indeclinable truth. The truth of the insatiable and seemingly unstoppable corruption and depravity of man, a corruption and depravity that is inside all of you, seething and breeding. As humanity further grows and grows, so does the immortality, the injustice, the criminality, discrimination, violence, insanity, baseness of our modern society – a society that you inhabit, and therefore an iniquity that surrounds you.
            I will now offer you a new truth. This new truth not merely a statement, but a proposal. A hand outstretched from our church to your heart, an offer of emancipation. We can free you from this sinful modern world; rescue you and your soul. We believe that we can create a new idyllic, utopian world free of affliction and evil. We lead the revolution of God and we need you. We offer you the key to salvation.

We drew inspiration from political broadcasts - their very clever, sometimes devious choices of words, euphimisms, double entrendes etc. We worded it very carefully - we wanted it to have religious, Biblical references - 'church,' 'free,' 'revolution,' 'God,' 'evil,' 'salvation' and wanted to express the cult's disdain for our modern soceity but very subtly. Subltety was the key to writing this, we wanted the reader to be unaware until the last minute of the eeriness of the cult.

Make Up Trial # 1.

Following the Youtube video step by step, I trialled the black eye on a friend to see how the effects came across on camera, and which colour combinations were most effective. Although not the same materials were used as on the Youtube video, I found that as long as the basic structure, colour and idea was there, you could improvise quite a lot. I think it worked effectively, and with the exact right matte colours, it would be possible to make it look very realistic and accurate. Although this was only a quick trial, it helped us to get an idea of the look and worked well overall. 

Film Make up Research

So I've been looking a little bit into make up research in links with our storyboard idea, to see how we can effectively make someone look beaten up. One video that I've come across on youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvcePKwOgpM) is a video tutorial of how to do this look. I think it works really effectively, and I am going to attempt to recreate this look to see if it can be translated just as well to camera. It also made me think that the dark hair really aids the make up and would work effectively for our main character within the cult, as a specific when casting. I look forward to trying out this, and am excited to see the outcome.