Professional Practise: Echoes of Silence Poster 1

The first attempt I had at making a poster was a minimalist poster for Echoes of Silence which Brad had sketched and then I took and made a digital, cleaner version of then made some tweaks based on his and other's feedback, this is the process I went through to make said poster.

This is the original poster Brad sent me to make, it features a burning casket on the sea.

First I opened an A4 page and sectioned it into thirds so I could get the ratio of sky to sea accurate.

 Then I had to find the right shades of blue and draw two rectangles to fill the space of sky and sea.

 Next I googled, wooden casket, found a picture that was taken from the angle I needed and added this to the image. I then removed the brown background by tracing around the casket with the magnetic lasso and selecting the inverse and deleting it so that only the casket remained.

The next step was to firstly resize the casket to fit where I wanted it and the size of it. At this point it was still the raw wooden picture of the casket, so from here I lassoed three polygon shapes for the three areas that light is hitting the casket and I then block filled the casket with these three shades to make it 3D by adding shadow. This worked quite nicely I feel as you can tell that this is a wooden casket without there being any detail and this is what minimal posters are all about.

Next was to add titles, Brad said he wanted a thin but blocky Sans Serif font so, upon trying a few I settled on the font Letter Gothic Std as this I feel was most fitting for what he wanted. I then tried googling the font that is usually used for the credits at the bottom of a film poster to no avail but I did find that it was a compressed thin font that is almost always sans serif, as a result of this find I scrolled through all the options on photoshop and found that the most suited was Avenir Next Compressed. I then added the credits and positioned them under the casket, later on I did move them down slightly so they were more central.

 Next was to add the fire, to do this I first attempted to draw my own free hand, however, given that I was using a laptop track pad and I am not very good at drawing anyway I scrapped this and instead got a cartoon image of a fire, I could have just added this in and more or less be done with it, however,  did not feel that this would be my own and as such wanted to edit it as much as possible to make this poster as much completely my own as I could. So I used the area selection tool and selected the whole fire and coloured it in the above shade of orange.

 The orange on its own did look okay but I felt a little too basic, as a result of this I duplicated the orange layer, downsized it slightly, repositioned it over the first set of flames, coloured it a darker shade of orange and removed the bits of flame that aren't attached to the main body. This I feel looked much better but was still minimal and basic.

The feedback I received on the fire however was that it just sort of looked like it was there and not particularly on the casket, as a response to this I simply added a glow at the bottom in the form of a darker orange oval that sits on the casket and adds to the fire, this I feel really helps to tie the image together.

It is worth mentioning at this point that the poster could have been considered to be done, it wasn't and I decided to make some more changes based on feedback and my own preference, but nonetheless this could be used as a poster at this point.

Brad then asked if I could add some waves so I took this image and removed the blue so that it was just the white lines in between. I then had to duplicate this and put the second line of waves just above the first and behind the credits.

This was the first attempt at waves, I must say I was not a fan, it was too busy in comparison to an empty sky and I felt it just didn't look good in practise, however, I didn't just scrap the idea.

I then removed some of the lines of the waves to make it more subtle and less busy which I feel worked well, I now like the inclusion of the waves from a personal viewpoint. I also darkened the sky based on the feedback that Brad wanted it to look more like it was approaching night time and I felt the previous blue was too bright for this.

I did however receive mixed feedback on the waves so as a result I have saved two versions of the poster, one with waves and one without, personally I feel with it better but from here I have two options to put forward for the film poster. The beauty as well of such a minimalist style is that It can be very easily upscaled depending on the size needed for the poster.

Professional Practice- Film Posters

This is a brief blog post to discuss my research into film posters so I can recreate one for this module in order to better sell myself by better selling my films. I thought that the first port of call for said research would be to look at some existing film posters and styles to help me to recreate a style or theme. So a handy first step is to simply google film posters, as of yet I don't really have a style or genre in mind so this is a handy start point.

The first thing that clearly jumps out to me is that the majority of them feature the same or similar composition, everything is central and then the surrounding area is either empty or filled with other aspects of the film, so Star Wars for example features a large central Luke Skywalker and surrounding him is the smaller characters who are physically smaller, then outside of their space is the emptiness of the white and red (which in this case is symbolic of the lightsaber that Kylo Ren uses). If we take a less busy example such as the fight club poster or the Moonlight one we see this much more clearly, the protagonists (or what we assume is the protagonists) are central and the only image and they're surrounded by a void of one colour. This I feel is because if a poster is too busy then it becomes hard to look at and the information isn't conveyed effectively.  Another thing of mention with regards to a poster is that it does not have to particularly have a sense of scale, it is very common to feature people over the top of a much bigger image, so in this case we look at Titanic it features the three aspects that are important and central, but the two people are on top of and much more commanding in the image than the ship, the point I am trying to make is that they can look like a collage of images rather than being one image that 'makes sense'.

Another type of poster you commonly see for film is that which is illustrated, unfortunately my talents do not lie in illustration, as a result I will not be illustrating a poster because I simply cannot draw, however, this is something I could definitely outsource to someone else. The other issue with this in terms of me creating it (and the other posters as well) is that without footage and imagery from the finished film it would be hard to create a poster which encapsulates the imagery of the film. There is a way around this which I will get to, but for now with regards to illustrated posters, it is of note that generally speaking they follow similar composition rules to the other posters, though they can be a little more liberal as they are more to do with the artist's interpretation of the imagery and their personal style.

The potential answer to being able to make the poster without the film being finished and without knowing how it will look is to go minimal. Admittedly these are often fan made and not usually a style that films use for publicity, however, I do feel that some of these are much better than their equivalents that are produced for the cinema releases, because of this I feel that these are a valuable option to me in terms of poster creation. In terms of what they look like it can take just as much preparation and planning or inspiration to make an effective piece. This is due to their basic nature, you have to think basic and use basic shapes and colours as much as possible. The other side of these posters is that they are usually made after the fact by fans, however, this could be flipped on its head and used to create intrigue, for example, the usual suspects poster with the footsteps would make little to no sense to someone who hasn't seen the film, however, this would make people intrigued to see if they hadn't seen the film, especially once people who had seen the film start to talk about it and how subtle the poster is. To briefly summarise this entry, I feel that there are a few options available to me, I will attempt a professional looking poster like the first set and will certainly create some minimalist posters like the last set as I feel these are extremely effective.

Professional Practise- My current work

This will be a relatively brief post to explain my current professional situation which is probably my fancy way of saying the job that I currently do. I am a sales assistant at Cex in Hartlepool, this is a part time job as I am contracted to a minimum of 5 hours a week (though I have never done that few) which is ideal for me as it means that I am able to do this job doing university to the best of my ability. I must say that at one point my job did seem to take over and my minor project did almost suffer as a result, however, I addressed this and was able to sort myself out and refocus on university and it has not since been an issue.

Within my work I have learned many transferable skills that have genuinely made me more employable in other fields. For example, I am now a much more accomplished salesman and I am now much more competent at dealing with people both the good and the bad in that, the nature of the shop I work in can often lead to people getting mad, I feel I am certainly more equipped to deal with this as a result of my job. There genuinely isn't an awful lot to be said about my work, I am a run of the mill retail worker but one thing worth mentioning is the potential progression in the job, the step above me is supervisor which is like a mini manager, then from there assistant manager, then store manager, then ops manager. That is the basic progression but there are different branches within the company that one could potentially split off and follow, such as the repair team or marketing for example, though I don't at this point think of Cex as my career, there are prospects there should I want to pursue it, though it is definitely a stop gap at the minute more than a career.

Trick of the Dark- Practise shoot Cave

In an attempt to find a cave that fits what I need for the film, we lugged all the equipment to Blackhall Rocks, a set of caves and cliffs around 20 minutes away from uni so a perfectly workable distance, the only issue in terms of this is carrying the equipment for what is about a 10-20 minute walk down to the beach and then along to the cave, although if the cave fits the purpose we need of it then this is just something that will have to be done, it is not an unreasonable request of the crew to ask them to do this and I am happy to do it myself so this is not really an issue as such.

This is the route to the cave and as you can see it is not far at all (although apparently a little longer than the 20 minutes I thought). So we knew it was workably close, so the only thing to do now was go and see it as I said, which we did. Full disclosure, this was actually the second attempt at finding the cave but the first time we never found it due to walking completely the wrong way up the coast, the cave was by no means hard to find, it was simply that we spent the whole time walking away from it. So, on second attempt we found the cave, or rather, three of them, the first was fairly dark which is ideal, decently sized but the only issue was that it has two very large openings at either end of it so it is more of a tunnel than a cave which makes it hard for us to shoot as we would only have two of the four walls to shoot against. Though we did not at this point rule this cave out due to its ideal lighting, we did later rule it out simply because we found a better cave. Enter cave 2 and technically three. I say this because the cave we then found had a little off shoot section thats almost like an extra cave but smaller. Cave 2 was huge, really open space that would serve as a nice blank canvas to work with, on top of this there were a few easy to reach platforms that would work well for getting high angle shots.

This is one such platform, though it serves to highlight also the issue we have with Cave 2, it is very open to sunlight, which isn't a bad thing as it gives plenty of light to work with, however, it is a nightmare when you're trying to make people appear to be trapped somewhere, this is where cave 3 comes into play, if you look a the cave hole in the picture, just to the left of that is another little section which has 3 solid walls and then that opening you can see in the image as a 4th wall, this means as long as we shoot away from that wall there should be no issues in making them look trapped, the only issue is that it is slightly lighter than I would ideally like and slightly smaller, but both of these things are preference and are by no means deal breakers. There was also another little space which we found that took a little climbing to find but when we got there it was pitch black which makes it an ideal shoot space although it was hard to reach and is a very small space so we wouldn't be able to do any kind of wide shots.

This is footage from Cave 2, 3 and the little space we found that Beth has colour corrected I believe to see if the three can be matched up, the wide of all three is in cave 2, the rest is in the other caves, the others match up well I feel but the wide is too bright in my opinion so from this I learned that preferentially I would not really like to use cave 2 as I got a great effect from 3 and given enough care we can do wides in this space it is just not as obvious as to how as it would be with the huge space that cave 2 would give us. One thing I have not really mentioned which isn't in the video is sound, surprisingly the sound in the cave is workable, there isn't a huge amount of echo and the sea isn't too prevalent, we are definitely blessed in this that the sound is crips and clear and should make this a very useable location. I think from this test the best course of action is a mix of studio and cave, it seems unnecessary to drag all the equipment and actors to the cave for every shoot when it will most likely be very cold and awkward in terms of working conditions, so instead I would like to take advantage of the studio and shoot as much as we can in there and black out the background behind the characters.

Trick of the Dark- script revision

With time being as it is on the project I felt now was the time more than ever to sit down with the script and really rip it apart so as to reduce the shoot time and to really hone in the script to 'trim the flab' of it in removing bits that aren't of huge need to the plot.

The first thing I had to do in doing this was to take every page and literally cut it up into the individual scenes, the above image is the final script order after the process of rearranging was complete, it does however highlight the crude but effective nature of what I was doing to the script. So having done this to the script (cut it up), I then categorised the scenes by importance. This was useful as it was the first step in removing excess because it allowed me to objectively look at every scene and break it down into what it was adding to the film, any scenes where the answer was very little or nothing were then added to the side and what remained was moved to another side. 

Now I had two categories, useful and not useful, so I next took the useful scenes and put them in a new order that worked better around the narrative in a way that I feel would get the message across more effectively and also build the character relationships and audience perceptions of these characters in a better way. Admittedly, there was a part of me that at this point was thinking "great this could be done, with just this the film could work". This was not the case and as such I did two things.

The first thing that I did was to revisit the not useful pile and think about how tase scenes could be put back in to add something to the film or to aid the pacing. This was a little bit useful but on the whole once I had decided that these scenes no longer had a place, it was then hard to find a place for them. Though the sunset scene did prove to have a place because it broke up two scenes in the same place and aided the pace of the film which was invaluable despite the scene itself having no real impact on the narrative. The second thing which I did was to write in some more scenes involving characters other than the ones stuck in the cave, in doing this I didn't take away from the film by removing some cave scenes because the message was still being portrayed in other ways, but what I did do was reduce the stress on shooting as much as possible in the cave. The most key of these scenes was the scene whereby Rachael (the wife of the protagonist) has a conversation with the person who saves our protagonist about how Scott is doing.

This was a key addition because it helps sell the reveal at the end of the film that the saviour is in fact a doctor and the rest was merely fabricated by Scott. However, in adding these scenes and trimming the unnecessary ones, I was still not done with the script, narratively it was sound and the pacing was sorted and we had a manageable script, but the one thing left to amend was the dialogue, with the scenes being moved as they had the dialogue in parts was now disjointed or in parts nonsensical. This required me to simply rework some lines and some sections of conflict so they fit in better, this did not take a great deal to achieve in all honesty but it was still vital. The only thing left to do was take this script, rework some of the less well-written lines and then type the whole thing up again and we had our new script for Trick of the Dark, which I feel was drastically improved by focusing on trimming and honing what we had.

Echoes of Silence- Shoot 1

This post marks the beginning of shooting for Echoes of Silence. we shot the opening of the film yesterday in the university auditorium with a around 20 extras from uni as well as Graham our lead who is playing Julian. In the scene, lecturer Julian is delivering a space themed lecture to his class whilst the projector plays out scenes of galaxies and stars that adds a deal of vibrancy and colour to the scene. In all honesty, I was somewhat late for the shoot, but not without good reason, I was at the doctors, I also made up for it by bringing extras. When I did arrive on set as well my first port of call was to get permission forms for all of the actors involved which I will then put on the VLE, this is so that we have saved permission so actors can't hold the footage to ransom or anything similar, not that they would.

The shoot itself from what I was there for went well, particularly we got some very nice shots on the slider. Admittedly these probably took longer than they should have due to perfectionism and having plenty of time, however, this is by no means a bad thing, being so early into the production we don't run the risk of this being an issue because the shots that we did miss as a result of taking longer on others because we have plenty of times to go back for pick up shots.

There's not a great deal I can talk about in terms of what I did on this set as I was drafted to be an extra and the production log was taking too much time so was inevitably scrapped for sake of efficiency. That being said what I can talk about it the lighting, though it was not my job to input on this creatively, I did however give suggestions where I could and this I feel helped the shoot run smoother and lead to some nicely lit shots that looked great on camera. The only thing left to do was to hand this footage over to Beth and Jamie to work their magic on and see how beautiful they can make what we shot.

Trick of the Dark- Character Rachael

This is the character profile for Rachael who plays the wife of our protagonist, she is a support role that I originally wanted to simply serve the purpose of giving Michael some back story, however, as the script developed to be more three dimensional so too did her character. The best way for me to describe Rachael is that she is a considerate person who is devoted wholly to her husband but she is certainly feeling the strain of their relationship. This I feel gives her a very human quality in this sense and currently the best example of this I can think of in a fictional character is Beth from Rick and Morty.

Beth is a very strong woman who loves her husband dearly but feel the strain of their relationship, while in Rick and Morty, Beth struggles with Jerry (her husband) being an idiot, Rachael struggles with dealing with her husband's mental health issues and his self inflicted isolation, though this is never explicitly said, this is the metaphor of the film that Scott is in an emotional pit and has eventually taken it too far to the point where he has attempted suicide. The other similarity in their relationships is the fact that the woman is the rock for the man when they don't have an awful lot in their life besides this. Though neither men would admit this is the case as they are both trying to get through life on their own without any real regard for the woman who is their rock through it all. The other character I thought of during my writing of Rachael's character was Carmella Soprano from the hit TV show The Sopranos. In the show she is wife to a mob boss, Tony Soprano, whilst he is struggling with his personal life and his work to the extent that he is having panic attacks and collapsing from them fairly often.

Throughout Tony's ordeal, Carmela stays strong and supportive for him in his troubles, however, she does not compromise her code and morals in order to do this, she very much still holds Tony accountable for his actions and doesn't give him any kind of easy ride when he wrongs her. This is key because there are I feel three attitudes to mental health, to ignore it and say its all in people's heads (which it is but its not as black and white as that, it is not as if its a choice), to learn someone is mentally ill and then treat them very differently in a similar way that people react by making someone a saint when they're dying. And then there is the third and what I believe to be the correct way to react, which is to be there and supportive but still be fair with them so if they do something wrong they should be told and they should not be allowed to use their illness as an excuse unless something is a result of their illness. So for example when Tony cheats on Carmela, she leaves him, it would be easy for her to stay so his health doesn't deteriorate as a result or for her to blame his condition, but instead she holds him accountable and does what I feel is the right thing to do. To link this back to Rachael, it is that strength I want to also instill in her so that she is strong for Scott but also fair.
That essentially sums up Rachael's key character aspects as she isn't a huge part in the current script so doesn't need to be as well defined, though she is still important and I don't want her to appear 2-D.

Professional Practise- Promotion Interview

Within my current job at CEX I had an interview for supervisor in the shop, this would essentially be a step up from basic tasks of sales and buys to more important tasks like running a shift and dealing with the figures as well dealing with complaints and staff issues, it would be in essence like becoming a manager to some degree, particularly when I would be the senior figure on a shift. Anyway, the interview itself was an interesting experience for me as it was the first time I have had a serious interview and on top of this the ops manager (sort of like a regional manager for Cex) was sat behind me in the whole interview. I am not sure if she was there to observe my manager or to interview me and just chose an awkward place to sit but I definitely felt the pressure of her being there and felt as though I may have crumbled somewhat when she asked some harder questions. Having obviously at this point done the interview I have asked my boss for the notes on the questions asked and how I answered. Having now looked over these notes I realise they aren't of a huge help to me because the notes he took are extremely bare, nevertheless I feel it is worth showing them from an academic point of view to evaluate the types of things I was asked.

As I said, it would have been more useful from an academic point of view to know exactly what I said but it must be stated that these noted weren't for my studies, my boss has given me these just as a reference, they were a reference point for him I have no doubt to job his memory when deciding who to promote. Some key questions to highlight I feel are the interview classic "describe your toughest challenge..." in Sean's notes he has not done justice to what I actually said in the interview, in actual fact I talked about the production of Inheritance from last year and how though things looked like they wouldn't get done we as a team managed to create a film which not only got me and those involved a good grade it also ended up being the best film I have directed to date. Another key moment in the interview was when I was asked about targets, unfortunately I didn't do my homework well enough, I forgot a couple of my targets and as such feel this will have hindered me, in an effort to salvage this however, I did hold my hands up and say I had forgotten but did talk through how to find my targets on our system so here's hoping I wasn't affected too much. It wasn't in this list of questions but I was also asked how I would deal with a member of staff who refused to work, this is a question I feel that everyone was asked but I was comfortably the youngest applicant so I feel I was being asked especially, whereas the others I feel were probably asked for a more run of the mill style interview question. Anyway, I didn't do well on this question, I answered by saying that if they refused to work then I would potentially send them home, I realise after a discussion that this was way off, while it is an option there are many other things I should have done before then such as an IMR (a minuted discussion, like a disciplinary but not as serious. So while I wasn't wrong this certainly was deemed an overreaction on my part, though In my defence I have since been told and it is this kind of thing I would learn in the early days of the job should I get it. In summary, I feel the interview went well, for the most part I made a good showing of myself and would have done enough to get the job. However, I face stiff completion in my past supervisor who had stepped down due to health so it will most likely be him who gets the job based on experience.

Trick of the Dark- Character: Alex

So the second of the important characters within TOTD, is Alex. Alex is the closest thing to an antagonist the film has, he clashes with Scott on a regular basis and the two of them are often at each other’s throats. The reason behind this within the script is that Alex is symbolic of the destructive part of Scott’s mind, as it is later revealed that he was never really there my personal view then is that the personalities of both Susie and Alex are then symbolic of how the mind of Scott works. So then for me to say that the two are not alike wouldn’t be strictly correct because Alex is Scott if you take away all of his positivity and capacity for hope, Interestingly then, this makes him more of just an antagonist but also a microcosm for Scott’s battle with his mind and mental state. So then, which film characters, that already exist, would I compare Alex to and have I drawn inspiration from.

The first character that I draw comparison with is Tyler Durden, it makes sense that Alex would be the Tyler to Scott’s Jack right? Almost definitely this was my first port of call when creating a mentally fabricated character. This is not just for the obvious reason that they both turn out to be imaginary, this is also because, despite them being imaginary, they still have very different chains of thought to the person who created them, I love this about both characters that they have the same mind as their creator but are perceived to think differently from the original, I feel this is symbolic of human nature and the fact that we don’t see how people are actually perceiving our actions. On top of this there is also the fact that Tyler is a destructive force in Jack's life that almost drives him to suicide, this is almost identical to m own film though in a very different and more obvious way. Admittedly I have always taken issue with the ending of Fight Club and the fact that shooting himself in the cheek leads to Tyler leaving despite it only being his cheek, I don't know I suppose the point is that the action made Jack believe he was gone and by believing that he is then gone, however, I feel that my ending may have a better reason for the damage that is done rather than just a means to an end, though mine will be harder to pull off and for people to understand without me explaining it.

The next character I can see comparisons with is Marty from Seven Psychopaths, though it is worth mentioning Marty becomes a different character by the end of the film but I am referring to him at the beginning when I am referring to him. Marty is a cynical kind of character that doesn't really see the positives straight away, he is nicely juxtaposed by Sam Rockwell's character in the film who is entirely positive and energetic and this juxtaposition is something I want to emulate but tone down somewhat in my presentation of Alex and Susie. Though there are a few things that separate Marty from Alex I do think there are comparisons that can be drawn. I think however it is worth me mentioning that Marty is a comedic character whereas Alex is meant to be a little more sort or realistic and therefore he seems harsher than Marty. In addition to this, Marty is more sort of down than Alex, where Alex is angry, Marty is more sad or empty. The last thing worth mentioning is that Marty is an alcoholic, Alex doesn't really have a vice like that in his life. Marty is also the protagonist of the film and has the others playing off of him, Alex differs because he provides the motivation for Scott rather than the vice versa.

The final and possibly most fitting character is James McAvoy's Bruce Robertson from the film Filth, Bruce is a severely mentally ill character who instead of dealing with his issues and working with people he bottles it up and lashes out at the people around him in a destructive way which leads to him stepping on people at all times and in the end without spoiling the film, leaves him in a very dark place. I draw comparisons on many levels with Alex because A, Alex doesn't particularly care for the others he is with, he is in it for number one and thats it. That being said, lets not forget that Alex is an extension of Scott and his psyche, so when we say Alex is entirely selfish and destructive this is because he is the side of Scott which is destructive and only really cares about his own survival. However, it is this aspect that is Bruce's downfall and it does all of the damage that is done to him, in the strive for everything for himself he is left with nothing because of his self destructive habits that stem from a self hatred rather than a love of himself. Of course as well as hurting himself, in an attempt to distance himself from needing anyone other than himself he lashes out at people who want to help or are concerned, to get this back on track, I feel that Alex is the same and lashes out and pushes away Scott and Susie, despite all the good that comes from their cooperation just out of an internal need to be above them and do it without them. The other aspect of Bruce that is within Alex is his paranoia, this is particularly strong in both, Alex from the get go feels that the others are against him and that only grows, Bruce too struggles with this feeling in the film which only fuels his desire to be above the people who are pitting themselves against him.

I feel this has been a extensive look at Alex's character and my inspirations when writing him and from here I have a good understanding of what character I have created based upon existing ones.