Soundtrack - The Terminator

The soundtrack was used from 'The Terminator' directed by James Cameron notably known for 'Avatar' .
After careful considerations and examinations we throughly searched through different theme music for our trailer in order to create a thrilling and heart- beating experience for our audience.
We wanted build a momentum for the music which correlates with the action. A perfect eg will be when we see our protagonist realizing he is being watched and targeted he begins to panic and tries to evade his deathly fate. The music slowly tingles towards a louder tone and becomes more tense for the viewer.
In James Cameron's 'The Terminator' The theme tune is played when 'The Terminator proceeds' slowly and dangerously in for the hunt for Sarah Connor in the police station, my team were inspired by the music build up because it generates a momentum towards the final devastating scene.
The soundtrack was used to form mixed emotions and to emphasize the representation of imprisonment.

Inspiring films

- Phone Booth
The film that has inspired our teaser trailer was 'Phone Booth'
It falls perfectly within our choice of genre 'Psychological thriller'
The concept of the main protagonist being targeted and chased by merciless assassin. (good vs bad) (light vs dark)
Our trailer follows the narrative from 'Phone Booth' where the viewers will encounter a breif personailty of our protagonist as a scum to the society, where money, power and fame is his only priority.
We included voice-over for the hidden character in the background to narrate and describe what the protagonist has done and why he should be killed in the process of the chase.
Taking ideas from 'Phone booth' we decided to use voice over in the background to create an effective thrilling experiance, we believe that the technique used, was to create suspense which correlates with the genre really well.
We wanted to use plenty off speech epmhasising the communications between the protagonist and the assassin the same way as in 'Phone Booth' however the phone booth in London is not as wide and open to do so, however a teaser trailer is about showing short burst of scenes and situation avoiding the main narrative and giving away half of the film.
We took plenty of ideas which we were inspired by from 'Phone Booth' to ensure we get a thrilling, claustrophobic  reaction from our audience this is by tightly configured chases through the city which has been edited to explains the nature of the genre.

- Reservoir Dogs
This film made me focus on the concept of editing.
The scene that had inspired me to ensure my film proceeds further is; 'the bank robbery scene chase' when Mr. Pink robs a bank and makes a run from the police and falls into a more massive dilemma shooting the officer in the process and hi jacks a car. The scene establishes a a very well edited scene of a slow camera shot trailing Mr pink as he runs through the streets. We used the same idea in our video were we displayed the assassin in a suit, the camera shots were medium and long range establishing the effort made by the character, this is because we physically see the character manually running and using the energy he has to ensure the scene to be a success. The long/ medium shots allows the whole body to be captured so that audience can see every movement by the character, running and straining himself in the process. It also follows the concept of cat and mouse hence the chase.

This is the film poster that was designed to represent the teaser trailer. It denotes our protagonist holding the phone towards his ear to recieve information from the killer itself. The black and white colour of the background and the main protagonist expresses the past tense emphasising the incident happend a while ago. The black and white effect also expresses the tense and claustrophobic feeling such as everything around this guy is blocked and suffocating. The ideas for the film poster has great resemblence to the 'scarface', 'Godfather' and 'Resevouir dogs' film poster where as the black and white effect creates a mysterious and unusual feeling while viewing it. We decided to pursue this style of effect to broaden the idea of the City of London being very sinister and gloomy.

The big red dot in the middle is a key iconography. The red dot is anchorage text to express the protagonist being targetted by a hidden weapon such as a sniper rifle. The red dot is usally a major icon for long range weapons used to hunt down especially by an assasin which we portrayed in our teaser trailer. The way we designed this poster is by inserting the dot right in the middle beside the protagonist. Bold and dominant and flat with a slight transparent coating for the viewers to visually navigate through the poster. Our point was to allow the viewers to set their eyes directly on the big red dot and think of DANGER immidiantly. The colour red was typically applied to connote danger, bloody, killing, gruesome and thrilling directly allowing allowing the viewier to realise that the film is a hardcore thrilling movie.

The red dot correlates well the main title 'COUNTDOWN'. The text is big, bold and dominant catching the eyes of the viewers. The title is placed in the centre left covering half of the poster landscape-wise. We allowed the title to be positioned like this so it looks threatning and bloody and alongside the big red dot, it made sure it becomes the centre of attention if a customer was to pick it up from the shelf in the film stores.

The subtitle is distunighed in a white bold font smaller than the main title, it deontes the slogan of the film; '60 seconds worth fo distance run' this slogan clearly clarifies what kind of film this is. The viewer will be able to realise easily the film is more a thrilling, targetting, cat and mouse chase. The word RUN quickly expemplifies the effects of the film being quick, fast, claustrophobic and tense. The font was chosen as white due the colour co-ordination. In order to for the text to be read clearly the white softens the black and red colours allowing it to more visually comfortable rather than harsh colours flattening the poster.

I believe this poster has been a success as it clearly expresses the message in the film. By the help of ADOBE PHOTOSHOP we were able to play around with the effects, colours, transitions, and picture placement. In order to allow the message to be delievered, I learnt the position of the images is a vital effect that creates a meaning without text being involved.

Editing - Flashing shots

The trailer lacked action at first, it did not have more action during the running part. All action thriller should have a period of non stop action thrilling movements. We carefully revised previous shots and current shots and included all shots together.
we did this by cutting  small section of the action scenes and creating a split second effect, however some shots were quite long, I edited it and cut it carefully and aligned the shots so that it makes sense and corresponds well to the rest of the movie. The shots were planted in carefully creating a thrilling movement of running throughout the trailer.

Editing

Today I was finishing off the editing, I managed to bring in more clips from the previous of shots and combined them together. It was due to the action we lacked earlier, but now the film displays a lot of rapid burst of action to emphasises on the thrilling atmosphere. I used hints of the assassins shots to form a story line of Benjmin being chased. I realised a trailer does not need to be in chronological order, however as all shots are well maintained and releases a message to the audience.

I re-inserted  the theme music tune to correlate back to the actual video footage releasing the tension and suspense. I also included sound effects from the google, youtube converter, I copied and pasted a share URL from the youtube site. I specifically wanted gunshot SFX to build another foundation of suspense. The video footage also had fraction of SFX such as the Old clock, reloading, this allows it to make it more action packed and tensed.

Props and costumes 2

As major changes were made to the trailer the audience will now encounter two characters, Protagonost (Benjamin Tray) who supposedly should of become the man in the suit who had to run away from the killer lurking "behind the shadows" instead we introduced another character who plays the part as the killer himself. The killer is the one wearing the suit. The group used the previous shots which were jerky and used them to be part of the story to emphasise more upon the action.
Benjamin Tray our main protagonist is a normal casual Londoner who plays a normal life and works in the city, however he is not a typical Londoner who wears a suit to clarify his importance in the city/ business field. The shots portray him as a working class individual wearing his normal daily outfit for eg, a scarf, leather jacket, jeans, trainers etc For safety purposes we realised considering it was snowing it would be rather wise for our character to wear warm clothing and stabled footwear as there is going to be a lot of running involved, in conclusion the group was satisfied with the choice and proceeded further with the trailer.
On the other hand you are probably thinking why do you we have a suited character, did we not think about safety regulations back then? Well, at the beginning of the filming it did not cross our mind to think about the weather as it was not snowing or freezing like the period of filming Benjamin's scene. We also intended to interpret the suited assassin to be very lethal and sinister being careless about his health. The idea of clothing was carefully chosen due level of thrill the trailer would display for the audience.

Benjamin Tray's Props and costumes
- Casual Outdoor Garments (connotes being public, normal, trendy, fashionable or personal dress sense satisfaction)
- Bag (connotes being a student, hardworking, valuables etc)
- iphone (connotes in comparison to the blackberry, more youthful still business like, more interactive, productive, universal, high end technology etc.

Brad Pittt holding iphone

Casual outdoor clothing. better for running

RuckSack, Student like

Clothing and Props is a major factor when coming to film scenes, it creates a non verbal message of class, stature, heirachy, purpose, personality, period and development from old to the modern.

props and costumes

The trailer includes various of props and costumes to emphasise the area they are located in. In portrays conventionally the lower class and high class of stature. The audience first experience the commuting London. The shots display human traffic in outdoor warm casual clothing which denotes that they either finished work, weather reasons as it was snowing throughout the time we filmed. The background was barricaded by business buildings, banks, traditional British buildings etc. To represent importance of the specific location. Our characters were well organised as they came to film with warm clothing. We have a business suited figure who portrays the background villain. The suit idea was firstly used for the main protagonist who wanted to escape however we made a major change to the whole storyline, where the suited guy became the assassin. The suit clothing represent someone being sinister, powerful, intimidating etc the storyline by the help with the props and costume has allowed the video to have become more intense and thrilling to watch now, as we can see the villainous figure out in the open.

Assassin Props - Cigarette (connotes the 'Countdown' for eg the cigarette being smoked and as each inhalation of the cigarette is sucked in by the assassin so it becomes shorter, which reflects to the time)

Suit (connotes powerful, VIP, sleek, sinister, smart etc a suit conventionally can be used to describe individuals status) 

Blackberry (as blackberry since became one of the main icon in the business world we displayed a Blackberry to suit the whole costume theme. Blackberry can be used to send and receive emails, with the BB messenger we realised the Blackberry is a global leading phone and appeals to a business style person.

Man running in a suit
in the city

A good prop to represent time

Blackberry a tool to represent the advance technology.