Unit 8

Go here for unit 8 : http://littleyellowdevilunit8.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/week-1.html

My Trailer

Video

The video takes place in a first person perspective. This allows the audience to experience the situation as if they are actually there. The trailer is in black and white as I wanted to have it take place at night, but due to how late we would have needed to stay and the amount of time that we had to film I decided against this. So to compensate this I decided to make the trailer in black and white, this would bring back that feel of mystery that was lost by changing to daytime.

I wanted to show that the novel follows a dark theme. To do this I wanted to give the trailer a dark appearance, hence wanting to film at night. I also wanted to

Photoshop Work Critique

Photoshop Critique

Over the past couple of lessons I have been working on making several frames of an interrogation scene in a Noir style.

This involved taking pictures using three point lighting, a style that is most prominent within Noir films and images. The idea is to use a 'Key' light to act as the light source, this would be the brightest light and would be placed at an angle to the character. Behind the character would be the 'Back' light and would be responsible for adding depth to the characters and objects. The final light would be the 'Fill' light which is a dim light that is there to fill in the shadows.

After taking the pictures I exported them over to Photoshop and began to edit them in order to achieve a style similar to Noir and Frank Miller.

I began by making the image black and white. I wanted to increase the contrast but as the images where too dark the image became unrecognizable, This meant that I was unable to make a Frank Miller style image.

Then, using the paint tool and by lowering the opacity, I began to add colour to parts of the image, including blue on 'the interrogator's' jacket and red on the eyes and necklace of the 'criminal'. This was to symbolize who is good and bad within the image.


In future work similar to this, I would first make sure that the scene is adequately lit so that I am able to edit the images fully. I would also try to make the contrast of colour and black and white more prevalent, as you could easily not realize that the image is in black and white.

Advertising

Advertising

For part of out interactive novel we also need to design both a print and interactive piece of advertisement. Before I began to design them I first needed to look at what examples exist and what makes them successful.

Print

Here is an example of a poster and while this is for a film, I believe that most of the aspects from this would be viable on a poster for a novel. The aim of the poster is to show you what the film is about and make people want to watch or buy the thing that is being advertised. The poster is also supposed to give people information, such as who its suitable for, when it will be available and who created the product.

When choosing whether to use a poster or not, you need to understand a few things, Is it suitable for all ages and will people its aimed at see it. Firstly as it is a poster that will be displayed in public areas, you need to remember that people from all ages, genders and beliefs will see it. This means that you need to make sure that it will not disturb or offend these people, while still being interesting to your target audience. You also need to think about the placement of the poster, and whether the people you are aiming at will see it. There is no point putting a poster for a rock concert in a library, as the people who would be interested in it would be unlikely to see it.

Interactive

This is an example of interactive advertisement from a website. This 'banner' allows a website to switch between multiple adverts, this saves space and has a higher chance of advertising something of interest to anyone visiting the website.

The banner features several numbers, which the viewer can click to switch between different slides. On each slide is a different advert that consists of a picture, some text describing what the advert is about and a link to take you to the main page.

This allows a page to advertise itself on other sites with similar content. This gives it a higher chance of attracting an audience.

My Work

Here is the design of my novels printed advertisement. The aim of the poster was to convey the theme of the novel, without giving any plot detail away. This would make people who see this want to know more and would go to the site given to find out.

From the advertisement you can tell that this novel will feature dark and gory elements and is clearly not aimed at children.

This means that this could not be posted in public as it is not appropriate for young people. If I were to have this placed anywhere it would be inside the covers of comics of similar style. This would allow people who are interested in this style of novel to notice this and possibly gain interest.

Above is my interactive advertisement. I designed it in the form of a "banner" which could  be placed on a website and used to advertise and to find out more information by following a link to a web page. The style of this is similar to the poster so people who see one will be able to link the two together. The banner would be one of a few different advertisements that the person viewing will be able to switch between using the arrows or by waiting a few seconds. By clicking the 'Enter' button the person viewing the site will have a new window open up and take them to a website about the thing that is advertised.

Reflective Writing

Reflective Writing

In today's lesson we looked at reflective writing and how it can be used to set the scene within a story.  In the lesson we began by trying to write what our earliest memory was. This was to help us see how we reflect on events and to see if we could improve.



> insert earliest memory <



Our next task was to read through what appeared to be a short story called "Brownie Points" which recalled the experience of a young girl performing a ceremony at church.



> insert scanned page <



By cutting out lines from the text we were to locate pieces of reflective text that matched what the chart was looking for. When going through the text I noticed that there was a couple of examples that were not in the text, this included reflective text on smell and taste.

When writing reflective text it seems that adding detail greatly improves the quality of what you are writing about. Reflective text is best used for describing past events as it can give the reader a clear indication as to what is happening and how characters feel.

Storyboard and Script

Storyboard and Script

Before I could begin filming on my trailer, I first have to crate a script and storyboard to plan what will happen in my trailer. I decided to start with the storyboard as I felt that it would be easier to draw a visual plan out first and write out the speech after.

> Insert Storyboard <

After being satisfied with the visual plan I then began working on the script. As I don't have much talking within my trailer, the script talks more about what you see and hear over what is said.

> Insert Script <

 

Fade In:

Scene 1

We fade into a dark school corridor, the camera slowly making its way along the corridor. Every step makes a creak and the end of the hallway is illuminated.

[Camera Pov]

[Heavy Breathing]

Every couple of steps the camera fades in and out to symbolize blinking.

[Door Crew]

As the camera reaches halfway the door crew will begin to open and close the doors.

Scene 2

The camera has reached the end of the hall and is standing just on the edge of the light. On the floor lies a body.

[Door crew]

Stop opening the doors

[Camera Pov]

As the camera inspects the body the lights start to flicker.

[Camera Pov]

[breathing INTENSIFIES]

Then the lights go out.

 (Parenthetical information)

Scene 3

The title of the film then fades on with the chime of the bell before fading to black once more.

 

Fade Out:

The End

when coming up with the idea for this trailer, I also had to make changes to the story of my novel so that the trailer would be more feasible. This means that the idea that I previously had needed to be changed. This actually will help me, as I felt that my old idea was a little too ambitious and difficult to achieve.

Game Trailers

Game Trailers

As part of our work we have to produce a small, live action teaser trailer for our novel. In order to help me know what a live action trailer needs to include we looked at two trailers, one is live action and the other is digital.

Within this trailer for the video game Call of Duty I see several things that reference gameplay features such as wall running, ground pound and even some of the guns. The trailer also tries to appeal to the average person by having the trailer feature a very average man as the center of attention, making him seem like the best. The trailer also tries to appeal to a female audience by having a woman take down the man. This type of trailer is useful to advertise a game when there is not much finished gameplay to use.

This trailer is more about getting people interested in the game, over showing off the gameplay features. This is one reason that live action works so well with it, as people will use their imagination to picture what the game will be like based on the trailer.

The Borderlands 2 trailer differs from the Call of Duty on in may ways, most noticeably by the fact that it is predominantly gameplay footage. This gives the audience a more accurate depiction on the gameplay elements. This type of trailer usually has more detail than a live action trailer as it is made when the game is near completion.

This has helped me to see the reason behind using a live action trailer, over one with 'gameplay' as we do not have anything. I decided that I don't want to tell too much within my trailer, as it will not only give me room to change, but will let the audience use their imagination to picture what the story will be like.

Graphic Novels

Graphic Novels

In this weeks lessens we looked at the novelist Frank Miller, who is one of the most well known in the industry due to his work on the Batman, 300 and Sin City novels. His style of art focuses on detail and dark atmosphere. This matches the darker style of story telling that his work is known for.

The following is an analysis of the cover of Frank Millers 'Batman The Dark Knight Returns'

The covers of his works are usually recognizable from his use of silhouettes and pastel colours. The use of these shadowy figures lets the reader know that this is going to have dark story. It also builds mystery towards the character, an example of this can be found on this cover to the Dark Knight Returns, where we see a silhouette of Batman with only his eyes being visible. This gives you the feeling that you are looking at him
through the eyes of the criminals he catches, who only get to see a shadowy figure in the night.

This use of symbolism greatly affects the impact of the pages on the reader, helping them to imagine the scene and almost feel what is happening.

I then compared this to another novel called Judge Dredd by a different novelist by the name of John Wagner.

The style of the cover has a similar feel to the covers by Frank Miller, which has a silhouette of something to do with the story, usually characters. This also differs from the Frank Miller style, as there is far less emphasis on color, usually only having a single colour in the background. While in Frank Miller’s cover, the colour is as important to the mood as the image, the colour here does very little for the image.

While they each have there own style, they also share a lot of similarities too, such as the silhouette and feel. This is most likely due to them having stories that are similar in style, both have graphic violence and a main character who fights crime behind a mask. This means that the characters should be presented in similar ways, but as Judge Dredd is about a legal hero, people know him, but Batman is mysterious so he is shown to be just a silhouette.

Using a scene from one of his books, I attempted to redraw a character from one of Frank Millers books. The book I chose was Sin City and I attempted to draw a character in the style of Frank Miller. However the image did not come out like this and instead was more like me drawing his work in my style. I felt this worked though, as it lead me to think about how different a scene could be simply due to a art style change.







I now know that the story has much more importance than being what the people read, but also affects almost everything. From the art to the layout, you should always look at the style of the story and try to symbolism it within your drawings and layout.

This also has made me question the style of my characters, which I will now have to rethink to help make them fit with the story.