COVER DECONSTRUCTION: Empire, Star Wars

COVER DECONSTRUCTION: Entertainment, Avatar

COVER DECONSTRUCTION: Empire, The Dark Knight

COVER DECONSTRUCTION: Empire, Inception

WEBSITE: Inception

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.

Mind Control

Mind control is an act of persuasion which may involve aspects of religion. It involves people are put in physical or emotionally distressing situations;

1. Their problems are reduced to one simple explanation, which is repeatedly emphasized;
2. They receive unconditional love, acceptance, and attention from a charismatic leader or group;
3. They get a new identity based on the group;
4. They are subject to entrapment (isolation from friends, relatives and the mainstream culture) and their access to information is severely controlled

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_control

Mind control is also known as brainwashing or persuading, this is linked in with advert sales and computer games.

• From the 1960s an increasing number of American youths started to come into contact with new religious movements and some who converted suddenly adopted beliefs and behaviors that differed greatly from those of their families and friends; in some cases they neglected or even broke contact with their loved ones.
• In the 1970s the anti-cult movement applied mind control theories to explain these sudden and seemingly dramatic religious conversions. The media was quick to follow suit, and social scientists sympathetic to the anti-cult movement, who were usually psychologists, developed more sophisticated models of brainwashing. While some psychologists were receptive to these theories, sociologists were for the most part skeptical of their ability to explain conversion to NRMs. In the years that followed, brainwashing controversies developed between NRM members, various academic researchers, and cult critics.

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.

POSTER DECONSTRUCTION: The Dark Knight

The poster uses the colours blue, red, white and black. The use of blue goes against the conventions of horror and adds a slight psychological twist to the poster. It makes the viewer aware that it is going to be a dark film and the implication people are going to be getting killed. These colours are also mirrored within the colouring of his face and the colour on the card. Blue has conotations of coldness, perhaps cold heartedness in the Joker's case, and mystery. Black has conotations of death, destruction, something being hidden and secrets. The colour red has connotations of war, danger, death, warning and anger. Together, the poster gives implications of what the film is to be about just through the colourings.  

Test Cards.

As part of our cult storyline, we have been looking into the idea of ending on a testcard, to imply that the previous footage should not have been seen. It would be combined with a monotone beep to add eerieness to the trailer. Within the test card would be a symbol of the cult, details of release and title of the film. We are currently looking at existing testcards and ways to edit and manipulate them for our film.

http://www.meldrum.easynet.co.uk/mhp/testcard/bbc_test.html

DECONSTRUCTION: Drag Me to Hell poster.

DECONSTRUCTION: Empire, The Godfather cover.

This is EMPIRE magazines 'Godfather' cover. The cover is iconic as it needs no title to show what it is about. It is similar to 'The Number 23' poster posted on this blog as it is a black and white face coming out of the darkness. The eyes are hollowed to black pits and the faces' angry expression is clear.
EMPIRE's usual red title is instead gold symbolizing that this issue is special in some way as gold usually represents winning, royalty or greatness. The title at the bottom proves this with 'The Godfather' named 'The Greatest Movie Of All Time'. Although the title being gold is a great different feature of the magazine we will try to keep the formalities of our magazine cover the same to represent to our audience the clear conventions of the magazine. We like the ides of one item whether it be the title, a face or a symbol being the hook for the movie and we will look further into this using research into symbols.

DECONSTRUCTION: The Dark Knight Poster

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. 

DECONSTRUCTION: The Strangers poster.

This film poster is really clever as it puts the viewer in the position of one of the seated hostages. Its put the viewer in an awkward, uncomfortable position as you do not want to watch this.
The use of the power of three is very effective as it makes it appear a powerful force against the two seated. Their stance is also quite intimidating as they are facing inwards towards the viewer.
The use of the font colour white on the black, naturally draws the viewer down to the title after looking at the picture. It is the simplicity of it also that makes it so effective.

POSTER DECONSTRUCTION: The Number 23

The number 23 This is the film poster for the film 'The number 23'. We have taken lots of influence from this film as it follows the ideas of obsession, in this case numbers.The film title is clear and in a bold white, which stands a stark contrast to the general theme of blacks and dark greys of the overall poster.The main focus of the poster is Jim Careys face, although his face was not used as a 'celebrity pull' for the film. Instead; acting as a canvas for the scrawling of the symbolic number '23'.  The eyes are the first thing the viewer notices as the eyes are drawn to them as they are central and darkened to give a deep, mysterious look.The edges of the face are also darkened into a deep black background showing no influence of where the character is.

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.

History of Horror

1900s

At the beginning of the 1900s came the first monster to appear in a horror film. Quasimodo, the hunchback of Notre-Dame who had appeared in Victor Hugo's novel, "Notre-Dame de Paris" (published in 1831).

 

1910-1940
Hollywood was influenced by the era of German Expressionist film during 1910-1920 where German film makers created many of the earliest feature length 'horror films. In the early 1930s American film producers, particularly Universal Pictures Co. Inc., successfully made horror films popluar. They used Gothic features such as: Dracula (1931) and Frankenstein (1931). Some of the films were science fiction as well as Gothic Horror for example James Whale's "The Invisible Man" (1933)

1940-1960
Universal's success with horror film carried on into the 1940s with "The Wolf Man" (1941) which was the most influential werewolf film even though it wasn't the first. Horror films mostly have low-bugets. During the 1950s there were a lot of horror films that featured humanity overcoming threats from aliens and deadly mutations of people, plants and insects. This was most noticeable in Japanese films as there society had clear knowledge of the effects of nuclear radiaition. In 1957 "The Incredible Shrinking Man" from Richard Matheson's novel become one of the most well-known films of the 1950s.

1960-1980
Hitchcock's The Birds (1963) is one of the first American examples of the horror-of-Armageddon sub-genre. In the late1960s George Romero's film "Night of the living dead" (1968) became influential, it was direscted and produced by Romero. The 60's horror films influenced the 70's as the youths began to explore the medium.Wes Craven's The Hills Have Eyes (1977) and Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) recalled the Vietnam war.
 

• John Carpenter created the Independent film Halloween (1978) which became a instant success.

• Sean Cunningham made Friday the 13th (1980). 
• Among the popular English-language horror films of the late 1990s, only 1999's independent hit "The Blair Witch Project" attempted straight-ahead scares.
• Japanese horror films, such as "Hideo Nakata's Ringu" (1998), also found success internationally.
• An updated remake of Dawn of the Dead (2004) soon appeared as the zombie comedy Shaun of the Dead (2004).
• In 2009 "Paranormal Activity" another low-budget production became successful and received good reviews.