- to create our own production company for our final filmed piece
Idea:
Burning a Polaroid picture with the name of the company in the frame of the Polaroid.
The picture above showcases the Polaroid picture that I edited to show my production company's name "Silent Productions".
After letting it dry I then decided to teabag stain the picture to make it seem old also I decided to burn the edges slightly to make it seem more battered.
After this to make it a video I decided to burn it on the floor and make a time lapse of it so that it looked faster than it was and so that it wasn't too long whilst maintaining the same effect of it burning.
The Brief: -To research evaluate and pick the production company to use in our film Compass International Pictures
Compass International Pictures was an independent film production company founded by Irwin Yablans and Joseph Wolf in 1977. Their most notable film release was Halloween in 1978. The company closed down in 1981, before being remade four years later under the name Trancas International Films. They are the copyright holders of the Halloween film franchise and have produced every film in the series to date. Produced:
- Halloween series - Fade To Black - Appointment With Fear - Blood Beach - Hell Night - Tourist Trap - Nocturna: Granddaughter Of Dracula
New Line Cinema New Line Cinema is an American film studio that was founded in 1967. It became a subsidiary of the Turner Broadcasting System in 1994 before Turner merged with Time Warner in 1996, and was later merged with its larger sister studio Warner Bros. Entertainment in 2008.Currently, its films are distributed by Warner Bros.
Produced: - Texas Chainsaw Massacre - Night Of The Living Dead - A Nightmare On Elm Street Series - Annabelle - The Conjuring - Final Destination - Friday 13th (2003 version)
Blumhouse Productions Blumhouse Productions is a production company, founded by Jason Blum. Blumhouse produces low budget horror movies including Paranormal Activity, Insidious, The Purge, Sinister and Ouija. Blumhouse currently have a 10-year first-look deal with the studio Universal Pictures.
Produced:
- Paranormal Activity - Franchise
- Insidious Chapters 1-3
- Ouija: Origin of Evil
- The Purge: Election Year
- 13 Sins
- Insidious Chapter 4 (upcoming)
Dark Castle Entertainment Dark Castle Entertainment is a film production label. It was made in 1999 by Joel Silver, Robert Zemeckis, and Gilbert Adler. They are associated with Universal Studios.
Produced: - Ghost Ship- Orphan - House of Wax - The Reaping
Ghost House Pictures Ghost House Pictures is a production company that was founded in 2002 by Robert Tapert and Sam Raimi.
Produced: - The Grudge Series - Bogeyman Series - Poltergeist - Evil Dead - Dont Breathe
Platinum Dunes Created by Michael Bay, Brad Fuller and Andrew Form on 2001, Platinum Dunes is a horror specialised production company.
Produced: - The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003) + the Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning - Friday The 13th (2009) - The Purge Franchise - The Ouija Franchise - Friday The 13th (2017) upcoming...
Rogue Pictures
Founded in 1997 and re-launched under its current name, Rogue Pictures was owned by Universal Studios up until recent years now being owned by Relatively Media. It has always and still produces horror, action and thriller movies. They haven't produced any standout, hit horror films but have been subsidiary to universal whilst making the hit action comedy Hot Fuzz.
For this task, we were asked to create our own production company logo. As a group, we were asked to make one each and then decide which one we like the best so that it can be used on our final piece of coursework.
To start with, I came up with different company name ideas that correlated to our chosen genre of 'Slasher Horror'. Here are some of my initial ideas:
Slash Productions
Axed
Serial Productions
Possessed Productions
Overall, I preferred the name 'Axed' because it is not too long and the word relates to the genre. I also believe that I can be creative with how I make the logo, for example, I can make an axe sound or I could use the splattering of blood or the sound of slicing flesh. The logo inspiration has been left quite broad so I am not restricted to only displaying and creating the logo in one way.
For the logo itself, I have come up with some initial designs for how I could display it:
Blood splattering
The sound of meat falling to indicate flesh
The 'swooping' sound of an axe/knife
The sound of glass shattering or wood being cut
I have created some initial drawings for what it could look like for each idea (each drawing is in order of the ideas above):
Overall, I believe that the best design is the 'blood splatter' design. This is because I believe that it would be easy to create yet it looks effective and creative. The logo also reflects my genre and ties in with my company name as it looks like someone has just been cut with an axe and their blood has splattered everywhere.
Production
To produce my blood splatter effect, I first of all put a camera on a tripod and faced it downwards. This was to ensure that the shot would look smooth and professional and so that there was no 'shakiness' to the camera.
Next, I put a sheet of white paper underneath the camera so that I could 'splatter' my blood onto a clean surface.
I then got a paint brush and dipped it into my 'blood' which was red food colouring. It took a coupe of takes to get the look that I wanted.
Here are some of the original takes:
Here is the final look of my blood splatter:
My next task was to create the text for my logo. To do this I typed out my text and altered the font, size and colour of the text.
I then selected the paint brush tool and then selected the right colour, size and style for the 'paint'. I used the same colour as the text to make it look more realistic.
Next, I pressed 'Shift' whilst drawing the blood lines to make them go straight and look as if they were dripping. I also added a few dots to make the text look splattered to go along with my logo.
Here is the final result:
Post Production
My final step was to merge my video and text together. To do this I used Final Cut Pro X. First of all, I imported my video into the program and trimmed it down to a suitable length.
I then detached the audio from the video because it had background noise that would make it appear unprofessional. To do this I pressed: Clip- Detach Audio and then selected the sound and deleted it.
The next stage was to import my text from Photoshop. To do this I clicked on: File- Import- Media and then found the file that I needed.
Next, I 'blended' the two videos together. This took some time to figure out and at first, I was clicking on icons to figure out how to blend the two pieces together. After trial and error, I managed to blend them together.
I then cropped the text down as it had a white background, so by cropping the excess and unwanted image, it meant that the blood showed up more.
This is what my screen looked like once I had finished editing the video.
Self Assessment
Overall, I am pleased with the final outcome of my logo. I am pleased with the appearance of the text and the video. If I were to improve this, I would try and remove the box around the text to make it blend in more with the video and I would also fade the text into the video instead of having it appear straight away.
Here is the final video:
Wednesday, 2 November 2016
Production company logo
Initial designs and ideas
For this practical task, we were asked to make a production company logo ourselves. Each person in the group was to make their own, and then we would decide on the best one and use this in our final coursework piece.
Some names I originally came up with relating to our 'Slasher horror' genre were the following:
SOS Productions
Unnerving Pictures
Obsessed
Slaughter Productions
I thought that the best name was 'Slaughter Productions' as I felt that this related the most to the genre, as it is quite a gruesome and horrible word. I also felt that this would allow me to create an original logo, seeing as it is not too specific to one particular item/idea such as chopping or hitting.
I also had multiple ideas for the logo itself:
A butcher's knife coming down to cut a piece of meat
Burning paper or leaves (as this is slaughtering nature)
Cutting down branches or flowers (for the same reason)
My favourite idea was the burning of leaves as I felt this would be the easiest to film but still look effective at the same time.
Production
I filmed the leaves burning on my iPhone. I used a tripod with a clip which I used to hold my iPhone, as this would prevent the shaking that would have occurred if I was holding the camera with my hands.
I collected some dry leaves and tried burning them to see how well they would burn. I burned one without doing any preparation type thing to ensure good burning. This didn't work very well, so I got the next leaf and put it in the oven on a low temperature for a few minutes to dry it out further. This burned slightly better, but I wanted the leaves to kind of explode into flames, and this leaf burned slowly and steadily. I then got some white spirit and poured it (very carefully) onto the next leaf and threw a match onto it. This gave me the desired effect burning wise as as soon as it caught, it burned very well, but the explosive effect wasn't very apparent. I decided I'd use a fire starter which you put on fires so they start faster, as these tend to have an 'explosive' type effect.
When filming, I began by having a pile of dead, dry leaves with a crumbling, old and dirty wall as the background. I poured white spirit onto the leaves and put a fire starter under the leaves.
I then dropped some extra leaves on top to create a naturalistic, autumnal effect. After this I threw some matches on top as well to begin the burning. The leaves took a while to catch, but when they did they burned very well and made quite a large fire. I decided that I could edit out some of the time it took for the leaves to catch to make it seem more explosive.
When I watched it back, I realised there were a lot of 'natural sounds' in the background, such as cars going past and leaves blowing around and loud sounds, as well as the crackling and burning of the leaves of course. I thought if I edited and manipulated them, they would add to the creepiness of the clip that I was going for.
Post production
In post production, I cut the clip into 4 pieces: the first one where the leaves and the match was thrown onto the first pile of leaves, the second where there was a loud noise in the background as the leaves were catching on fire, the third just of the leaves crackling and burning and the fourth just of burning but with strange, distorted noises in the background from the wind etc. I did this so that I could separately edit the sounds in the videos.
I tried the different effects of the clips with good background noises, but I didn't particularly like the effect they gave. In the end, I just amplified the volume of the loud noise in the second clip and left the fourth clip as it was, as I thought the sounds were creepy enough as they were.
I then added the title 'Slaughter Productions' with the drifting effect, and changed the font colour to red to represent fire and blood, and the font to 'Cracked' and the size to 144. I didn't like both of the lines having the same font, so changed the bottom line to 'Lucida' size 72 and bold, and kept the top line in 'Cracked' and the size to 144 in regular. However i didn't like the red as it kind of blended with the fire from the leaves, so changed it to white and much preferred this. I put the text to appear for 7 seconds on the screen, and it exits just before the end of the clip whilst strange sounds begin.
Overall I'm very pleased with my clip, and I love the way the editing and filming turned out. Here is the final clip.
