WELCOME MODERATOR!

 Welcome Moderator!

Christina Taylor 1799

Claremont Fan Court School 64680

I worked in a production team with Jacob Cooper 1720 and Harrison Allman-Varty 1701.

Our brief was to make a main trailer and a teaser trailer, along with a poster and a website. We decided to make a paranormal horror based on true stories from Claremont Fan Court School. Our film is called Charlotte. We planned and researched the genre as shown on my blog.

I acted in the film, in the role of Emily, a paranormal fanatic who loves ghost hunting.

I also worked as a director, camera woman and editor. 

I worked with the other actors to create the exact shot I wanted and wrote a script for the actors to make their jobs easier. I sorted out quarrels in the group effectively.

We filmed all of our shots on a phone as we were inspired by found footage films such as the Blair Witch Project. This added an authentic quality to our films that added to the mystery.

At first I started editing on Premiere Pro but I found there were too many issues with the software, so I switched to Final Cut Pro X. This software was much more sophisticated and I got the results I wanted.

FINAL PROMOTIONAL PACK

 My final trailers can be found on YouTube.

Final FULL TRAILER:

Final TEASER TRAILER:

This is my final POSTER:

This is my final WEBSITE:

https://cbtaylor1238.wixsite.com/charlotte

CONSTRUCTION: SOCIAL MEDIA

 I chose to use the platforms of Twitter and Instagram to promote Charlotte. I liked these platforms as they are user friendly and allowed for both pictures and text to be uploaded together. I decided to upload 3 posts with identical text on both platforms. Each of these posts included 3 sentences, to abide by the rule of three, to increase the mystery around the film. Although I haven't reached much of an audience on either platform, I managed to use the follow function to give hints about the plot by only following paranormal experts and short films. By creating social media, it allows for a wider audience to discover the film and become potential audience members.

The instagram can be found at https://www.instagram.com/charlottefilm2021official/

My Instagram is very basic as I wanted to build up the mystery, so by using 3 black posts with white lettering, it made the text stand out a lot more than it usually would. I used a brief synopsis to allow the audience to get more of a feel for the film. I really liked the effect of the black backgrounds with the dark mode on Instagram as it blended into the background, leaving just the white text to appear as if it was floating, much like paranormal objects.

The Twitter can be found at https://twitter.com/CFilm2020

My Twitter was quite similar to my Instagram, as I used the same text on both. This allowed for a cohesive social media brand and helped potential audience find both platforms effectively. My profile picture came from a video I took that eventually got cut from the final trailer but I still really liked the mystery it gave off.

Upon reflection, I think I should have used images on my Twitter and had more than 3 posts on each. However, I am happy at the basic format that was cohesive on both platforms.

REFINEMENTS, CHANGES, EDITS AND REFLECTIONS

Over the course of the construction of my trailers, there were a lot of changes made to my two trailers. My first full trailer received the feedback that some clips were portrait and didn't reflect the stereotypical trailer. At first I thought I could justify those clips being from a phone and reflecting the found footage, but upon self reflection I felt they weren't necessary and that I could create a suspenseful trailer without them.

Once I started using the Final Cut Pro X software, I found my work was of a much higher quality and I felt a lot more confident in my ability to create an effective horror trailer.

When I filmed a lot of my footage, I was unaware that the wind would cause interference with the sound, so when I was editing I acted on feedback to create a voiceover to replace the original sound in the clips that included wind interference.

I was proud of the way I wrote an initial script as it formed the basis to the storyline we ended up creating, and without it our trailers may not have had a fully developed story.

I didn't get along with my production team at first and that really meant a lot of confusion over what we needed to get done, By speaking to Mrs Mann, we managed to get the boys up to date on what their roles were in the production team and we produced a lot more quality work after creating a group chat on social media.

I managed to create a custom filter on Final Cut Pro X with the help of Harrison in order to fix lighting inaccuracies. This ensured that the daytime shots looked like night. I layered sound on the software for the first time and the feedback I received made me aware that these both were effective in hooking the audience in. 

CONSTRUCTION: EDITING

 I was not expecting to edit my own trailer as this had originally been assigned to the boys. However, the 2nd and 3rd lockdowns meant I had to reassess my editing skills as the production team could not come together to create trailers together. I learned how to use Premiere Pro by Adobe as a starting tool and created my first trailer. 

Upon coming back into school, I received the feedback that the trailer wasn't as similar to the horror trailers I researched as I hoped. I was advised to switch to creating my two trailers on Final Cut Pro X and this really helped build my confidence when editing. I talked over my fears about editing with Mrs Mann and my production team, who then supported me with editing my trailers.

The two main issues with my trailer were the sound and the appearance of some of the clips. Because we shot our footage during school hours, the light in the clips was apparent but our story took place at night. With the help of Harrison, I created a new night filter which I applied to the outdoor clips and received feedback that the filter was effective but that my sound was still a problem that distracted viewers from becoming fully immersed. I added voice overs to the clips that had background noise in the initial clips. I also added a couple of voiceovers to make the storyline and the ghost of  Charlotte believable.

Lastly I added an ident and intertitles to my trailer and received the feedback that both my trailers were ready for publishing. 

CONSTRUCTION: FILMING

 Harrison, Jake and I all decided to work on three different cuts of the trailers as we all had different visions for what the trailers would entail. This meant we took the opportunity to film during our lessons as a way to be time efficient. We filmed the majority of the shots in order of location before Christmas. We then filmed pick up shots in early January to February during the editing stage so that we could create a more cohesive storyline in our trailers having received feedback on our initial trailer edits.

There was tension in the group which was resolved, centring around the shots we wanted included in the trailer. I hadn't done much camera work before so we came to an agreement that the boys would take over the filming work as I am much more comfortable in front of the camera. 

We eventually ended up with shots filmed outside the belvedere, in the mansion tunnels and in the sixth form centre, as these were prime locations and all our actors were free during the same time, in school hours. 

CONSTRUCTION: SCRIPT

 Our group decided to write our ideas into a script on Celtx.