Subliminal Messaging.

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.

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.

Inspiration: Communist Propaganda

For our poster we began looking to this idea of political posters and this idea of recruiting people through propaganda, specifically Communist propaganda. I don't think cults have too much propaganda, because generally their cults revolve around some level of illegality I'm not sure they're allowed to advertise quite as overtly as political parties who set up huge, costly advertising campaigns and we looked back to old dictatorships who used brainwashing in much the same way cults did. In the Communist posters we looked at, we were inspired by their use of images and symbols and words, as opposed to photographs - colour schemes seemed to be particularly important, most of the Communist propaganda being heavily dominated by red. I think repetition and this idea of subliminal messaging is key - repeating slogans, symbols - the first is quite predominant in these posters, and relaying and relaying them until they're inside people's heads.

The Resolution: Viral

We liked this idea of taking our cult online, its expanding and spreading through the internet like a virus and brainwashing users, and created this super short viral video out of all the off cuts of footage we had. We didn't want it to reveal anything about the movie or the actual trailer, just to set out a tease about the cult - symbols, the static we'd used in the original trailer, and then used for the background of our website, some extra shots of Jim Jones giving a speech we'd taken off of YouTube, and of Lauren from our main filming shoot - we adjusted the exposure on all of them and whitened them all out to give them this eerie, clinical feel. We wanted it to be super short, we felt 22 seconds was long enough to create a tease but short enough to catch the viewer's attention, and keep it, before realizing what it was and switching it off. We could imagine it being a pop up, literally popping up on people's screens over websites and again incorporated this idea of subliminal messaging - the slogan, the Resolution, the date flashing up, constantly being reiterated into the viewer's mind. We added a short soundtrack - an eerie low sound, almost like a very low horn or breathing and I think it was effective, just creepy enough to unsettle you and imprint itself on your mind.

Brainwashing.

This is a video created by Lost, shown by the 'Others' in the eerie Room 23 for the purpose of brainwashing.


After watching the 'brainwashing' video I really liked the way at the beginning the old camera effect was used. Like the picture start text, giving the illusion the film is eerie and almost not meant to be seen by the public. I also liked the idea of using texts along with lots of different pictures that on their own stand no relevance whereas when put together create a strange sensation to the viewer of a subliminal message being passed on. By using several images flickered in our film we can create the effect as if trying to 'brainwash' the viewer of the trailer while also giving the viewer an idea that the film itself is about brainwashing and cults.
While I do like the video I didn't like some parts of the sound as the laser sound. Although the building of tension sound can be a useful tool to create suspense while also giving a build up the to the end of the trailer with a release date and title.