Film Branding

I really want to start thinking about the Films visual identity, its branding and perhaps most importantly its logo (going hand in hand with it's credits font?). I think that this is important to make the visuals instantly recognisable, an iconic logo which stands out, and doesn't blend in among less succesful thrillers.I have collected these two posters to show branding for two different ad campaigns very much on the same boat. The title fonts are extremely similiar and both share very similiar imagery, only different through tone, Saw being perhaps more surgical and about humans as meat. Hostel takes a darker, grittier, more sexual take on the totrure thriller genre, and is certainly more dumbed down. Both are visually similiar ad campaigns, but Saw is more iconic (maybe because hostel lacks a real plot, let alone twists or closure; or maybe its because the villain in Saw is iconic, whereas Hostel has no single villain).
On the Test Shoot I wanted to capture anything I thought could be iconic for this film. I wanted to see what could represent our film the best. So I took photos like these above. I saw the camcorder as an opton for the films icon, likewise with the blood splatter. I am very far from deciding (just showing you guys my train of thought), and I think that a photo shoot would be helpful with next shoot, by this I mean, rather than behind the scenes photos we change the entire lighting on set for photography and snap away. I hope to come out with some more meaningful photography from the next shoot (i.e. less blurry).

The Actors

For our test shoot we used Bekah Murrell for the part of Samantha Harris, and Sian Parkinson as Karen Williams and they were both brilliant! They were very tolerant of the cold, uncomfortable environment and long filming hours. And Sian didn't even comlplain when we covered her in sticky fake blood.


Bekah is mixed race with dark afro style hair and she is about 5 foot 6. Her costume was jeans, boots, and plain black and white layered vest tops. We wanted the character to be wearing virtually no make up except for quite a lot of black eye liner under her eyes, which we purposly smudged so she looked rough. We chose Bekah to act because we knew that she does some professional acting work, so knew she would be good in this tricky role to play.

Sian has fair skin, fair blonde hair and is a similar height to Bekah. Her costume was a white shirt and black trousers to giver her character a proffesional look. Her make up was quite plain again, just a bit of mascara, which we smudged to make it seem like she had been crying. But then we did use make up to create a bruise on her forehead, as well as putting fake blood in her hair, to give the appearence she had been attacked, taking a big hit to her head. We thought this turned out well and did actually look very scary and very real. The pictures from our test shoot will be up soon, so you can see what you think...

Test Shoot Photos

Are up on Facebook now. They'll be posted soon.
Note: People are in motion in nearly every shot.

Making Blood...

We've had the issue of recreating blood. We've come across various methods in which to recreate realistic blood, and we have spent some of our day experimenting with it. Trying out different tones, liquids and viscousity (it matters). We managed to recreate it quite nicely and got really good results. Here's our testing palet.

I can tell you one problem with our current formula, I reckon one of our actors has some red highlights now... Minor adjustments may need to be made.

Original Script

This is the original script for the hostage video in he beginning of our opening sequence. We plan to change and adapt this script as we go along. Its not complete. Our references were real hostage videos on youtube.com.

Bekah: My name is Samantha Harris. It is Saturday the 17th of May 2009, and I have been kidnapped and held here for 3 days now against my will. My captor is demanding £10,000 for my release. This should be payed directly to the bankaccount of Miss K. Williams, that's £10,000 to Miss K. Williams. If you do not complete the transaction within the next 24 hours, she says she's gonna kill me... (all found difficult to say, crying and sobbing throughout)

BLK feedback

hope today went well guys, looking forward to seeing your footage :-)

group photo please. . .

Test shoot

So today was our test shoot and i think overall it went quite well. We were shooting 10-6 so that meant we had 8 whole hours to film:)
Everyone arrived at mine early and so we were sure to head off straight away. Our schedule consisted of:
10am-1pm --> we finished off some written work (shot logs/storyboard) and also shot all the living room scenes. we also set up both the living rooma nd shed scenes(lighting/positioning).
1.30... (lunch&waited for our actors to arrives)
3pm-6pm---> we shot all the neccesary shots in the shed.

We managed to shoot a great amount of footage in the shed, and our actors were a major help aswell. The shots we took were very good, except i think our only flaw today was being maybe a bit unorganised. I think by the final shoot we should have a neatly drawn up storyboard, a neatly typed up script and shooting script. Because although we did have this all done i do not think it was as neat as it possible could have been.
The light coming in the shed was an issue at first, we needed to block all the windows but only had sugar paper enough for two out of the six windows. So in turn we decided to cover them up with black towels and it blocked out every little bit of light and left us with the complete darkness we had hoped for! You wouldn't think it would work but it did work very well.
Also, i mentioned as a pro that filmin inside meant no off-scene noise could interveen but in fact i was wrong, there were builders opposite my road and the noise did manage to be heard, but it ok in the end because we though of shooting all of the living room scenes first and hoped for the builders to have stopped by the time we moved onto the outdoor shed; thankfully it did!

Costume- Today we also for the first time made our fake blood, we followed the recipe exactly and were happy with the turn out. Sian a.k.a K.Williams look very very very good with the blood, and even on the camer it look realistic. We used make-up to make it look like she had bruises on her head and her wrists were hurt, the make-up looked jsut as effective and i think we will be doing the exact same at our final shoot. We also smeared eyeliner and mascara onto Bekah to make her look tired and exhausted. To conclude, i think costume and make up was exceptional and we will definitely be keeping this the same next time.

Lighting- we had to move it around quite a few times in order to get something that suited us all. After numerous times of changing the two lamps around we decided to use one as a prop on the table and ang one up on a hook to make Sian look more significant.

Camera- today we used a range of different shots, just so we could get an idea of what shots we should use more of on saturday and others that we may not need to use at all. We all took our fair share of filming, directing & sound. Some shots were harder than others but we all took a good shot at them all.

Group work- As i mentioned before we all took a fair turn in filming, sound & directing. Although some of us were better at certain things we gave eachother a chance to do everything. Tom was the only one out of the three that got shown how to use the focus but so that we could all take turns he took time to teach me and Hannah how to do it and it was a great help, now we can add to the amount we have learnt. For some of us something as easy as turning on our camera seemed a struggle but as a group we didnt waste no time in helping out, isn't that right? :]]
Today was a productive and fun day. Cannot wait to upload all our footage and start editing.

WELL DONE 'TOM'S GROUP' :]
yaayyyyyyy!!