Diary of a Dying Girl trailer

Final Poster and Magazine Cover

Evaluation Question 4

Evaluation Question 3

Evaluation Question 2

Evaluation Question 1

Magazine Cover Creation

Our magazine creation was inspired by Empire magazine which is the beiggest company that deals with up and coming films. We found this fitting to use the logo and layout design for our Magazine cover. To create great synergy wanted our image used to relate to the trailer and poster. After adding in the Logo using Photoshop we used the shape tool to create a Red circle which would have a headline on it. This idea was also taken from Empire who use similar add ons.

 From research some aspects from magazines we liked was the promotion of not just one film. We used the shape tool again this time a rectangle which would be the background for the featuring films. We changed the colour of it to match the Empire logos colours. Films we chose to promote and add on was The Revenant, Kung Fu Panda 3, How to be single and Deadpool. All images were found from google.

 Then using the text tool, text was added on both sides of the cover. Having short and snappy sub headlines for example 'exclusive interviews' also having the names of the featured films there too.
From this point a barcode was added. This was to give the magazine cover a realistic feel to create an illusion it was a real cover.

Our main female lead was photographed individually and placed as the image foe the cover. The font colour was changed to allow readers a clearer viewing. We added a tag line or slogan "Dying to be in love" which was fitting to the name of our trailer Diary of a Dying Girl. As time went on we thought the coloured rectangle made the cover look tacky and cheap so it was changed to a film strip which was more fitting to have. Also allowing a more professional finish.

After a long debate the brick wall background didn't look right at all. We still wanted to make sure the 3 products connected well. So we decided to take an image of one location in the trailer which was also used in the Poster. To grab the silhouette of the actor we used the quick selection tool, this allowed us to then move her over on top of the park background. What we thought was effective was the diary also in the shot which seem important as it plays a big role in the trailer and was used in the poster.

The image at the end of the magazine cover fits perfectly with the story and creates a high standard trio of products. It doesn't give too much away in the picture it displays our character and showcases what is up and coming. On top of that she has half her face covered meaning theres something behind the diary, more to the story than meets the eye. A strength with the magazine cover is that its not over powering and allows a reader to focus on the main product being advertised.

Poster creation

To create our poster we used photoshop as our platform to edit our image. We took an image of the couple sitting on a bench which was showcased in the trailer. The equipment used to do so was a HD Canon 600D, we used this camera to make sure that we had the best quality image. We wanted to use this location to create good synergy for our ancillary products. Our aim was to get Hope the main character to slowly fade from the image to represent her life as she slowly was dying.

The first part was placing an image of the bench which was taken seconds before the couple sat down as the back layer. Using the quick selection tool we were able to select our actors silhouette. From here we used the refine edge tool which allowed us to smooth out any rough and jagged edges. Once the silhouette was separate from the image it was ready to be edited on. An effect called luminosity was added on tho create a ghostly feel to the Actors body. Then the opacity was changed slightly lower to create a fading effect.

We opened a new window and changed the layout to create a poster style page. We pulled over the edited image which was converted into a JPEG this allowed the image to stay all as one. From this point we started looking into fonts. The first we chose was from a website called DaFont which we found a font we liked. We chose black first of all however it came across dull and hard to read. We were still creating a romance so we changed the font to fit the genre.

The colouring we used was pink. This was to complement the romance genre. Looking into many posters we found the romances tend to have bright eye catching colours. We wanted to achieve the same so we took the font one step further by changing it to 3D. This would make the poster really stand out.
Studying and analysing posters allowed us to create ours to a high quality standard.

We have seen on most posters that at the bottom shows the cast and developers of the film. We did the same by using white thin font in the style of many posters. We added our tagline too, Dying to be in love.

We put a second image over the finished image. Then from here we used the opacity tool to have the diary slightly appear in the background. This was an important feature to add because the name of the trailer we ere creating was Diary of a Dying Girl and sou;d make scense to show it in the poster. This in our view worked well and finished the poster off well. The last item to be added was the logo. Our company was called West Coast Productions and we chose a wave to be our logo so we edited on a small wave to be put a the bottom left of the poster.

Task 14: Magazine Cover research

Task 13: Film poster influences

Movie poster influences:
To create poster a that would work for our genre would be to do some research into real movie posters to give us an idea on how the standard of a movie poster should be and what context should be shown visually. Using google we looked into posters matching our two genres which was Romance and Drama. Our trailer is based on a girl who suddenly  is diagnosed with cancer. From our initial research we knew there were plenty of film posters to gather ideas from.

The first poster we looked into was The Fault in our Stars. This film is one of the basis we gathered our ideas from. So starting at this point was the best idea. What captured our eye the most was the way the two main characters are positioned. It was clear that it was vital to have both characters in our poster. This would advertise them well and give clear understanding that the film would be a romance. From there we saw the continuity of the drama elements. The tubes coming out of the girls nose was a good touch to show the film isn't just a romance it has a huge dramatic side to it. We like this and know having a key feature to show the direction of our main character would help the audience understand the trailer much better.

 The second poster we looked into was Me and Earl and the dying Girl. What aspect that we liked was the font used. It was bold and clear to read. We would like to replicate this in our poster. The theme is quite simplistic and doesn't present a dramatic element. It is more low key and doesn't give too much away of where the story may lead. The main character who is meant to be ill isn't shown here to be that way. She's shown to be healthy which  might confuse audiences because theres no clear understanding anyone is dying.

The next poster we looked into was Now is Good. This film was our main inspiration to creating a drama romance. We found the poster to be simple but great at the same time. The first thing we see is the focal point of the image which is the couple. However we see the girl who is clear to be ill. The use of her facial expressions shows more than meets the eye. She's looking down and not expressing happy emotions. The guy on the other hand, has hope and is looking forward. This could be represented as his life as he looks forwards to a life without her. The touch of the sun light is beautiful. We see this as a happy thing meaning its all not doom and gloom and some happiness is showing. We think this poster is inspiring and we want to replicate ours to be near to this.

Production Company Logo

This is our production company logo that we created in Motion 5. This software was very useful as it had a range of effects that we could use to make our logo look more interesting.

We decided to get a clip of waves from Youtube to match our logo title 'West Coast Productions'. We downloaded this clip and uploaded it onto Motion. We then typed out 'West Coast Productions' in a similar font to match our poster and magazine cover.

Task 12:

Task 11: Script

Script: Diary of a Dying Girl 

LOGO APPEARS 

Hope writes our company logo in her diary

'West Coast Productions' 

Turns the page and starts to write with voiceover 

HOPE 

--Dear Diary, today I got you back, in the best possible way...--

Fades into locker scene 

Logan bumps into Hope and books fall to floor 

They both pick up the books and Logan tries to run after Hope with her diary 

NEXT DAY 

Logan turns up at Hopes house to return the diary 

 LOGAN 

'KNOCKS ON DOOR'

--You kinda forgot this the other day--

(to Hope) 

HOPE 

--Oh, thank you--

LOGAN 

--and theres one last thing...-- 

--Can I take you on a date?-- 

UPBEAT, HAPPY MUSIC 

Fades into clips of Logan and Hope going on multiple dates 

Overlapping clips of her writing in her diary 

Fades to black

Hope writes in diary with voiceover 

HOPE 

--This is before everything went wrong, those were the happy times--

Hope goes to get a glass of water and seems a bit wobbly 

Fades to black and the glass smashes loudly 

HOPE 

--GLASS SMASHES-- 

SAD, SLOW MUSIC 

Fades into clips of Hope being ill 

Hope locks herself in her bathroom as she's coughing up blood 

LOGAN

'REPETITIVELY KNOCKS ON HOPES BATHROOM DOOR'

--HOPE HOPE WHAT ARE YOU DOING!-- 

(worried voice) 

Sound of Logan muffles out 

TITLE OF FILM APPEARS 

VOICEOVER 

HOPE 

--Diary of a Dying Girl--

Task 10: 25 Word Pitch

25 Word Pitch 

This our 25 word pitch. The process we did was use our two main characters to speak the lines of our 25 word pitch. We thought a voice over would be better to show our media skills. The equipment used were a HD iPhone 6 camera and uploaded it onto final cut pro to edit.

We used the iPhone voice notes to record the voices and then emailed them to ourselves. We placed the voice note over the video so it play together. We edited and cropped the video to fit the audio. The video was sped up 8x faster.

The 25 word pitch clearly links together with our concept and was long thought out. The writing was written out on a whiteboard and this was inspired by Youtubers who do draw my life. They use the same process to tell a story.

Target Audience Research - Survey Results

  

From the results shown here, we can see that the ages most popular is 15-18 this works well because this age range is what we would like our target audience.

From this question we can see that the results from our survey match out target audience. Our highest result was the age range of 15-18 year olds, this tells us the main age range our film should target. I feel this will be good because we are in this age range and so are our actors. We also got two equal results from 14 and under and 26-35, this tells us that we could perhaps consider making our film attract a younger market as well as a slightly older market too.

    

From these results we can see what people like the most about romance genres. This will help us decide the main elements to feature throughout our film. It also gives us a rough idea of what elements should be featured more than others. For example the most popular result was relationships, therefore our trailer should feature this quite a lot throughout. Heartbreak has a larger result than happiness, this means that our trailer could include more heartbreak scenes than happy scenes. This question has really helped us as it has provided us with results that we can use throughout the trailer. 

Overall using the evidence from the charts we have decided that our target audience will be 15-18 year old girls. We will target them by having an attractive male lead and including real life issues like The Fault In our Stars, which is a really popular film of a girl suffering with cancer. 

Task 9: Costumes and Make-up

For our Trailer we are having our two main characters in normal clothes for 17 year olds. Lauren who plays Hope will wear plain casual clothing to keep it simple. For example plain skirts and pretty coloured tops. In school our main character will wear normal sixth form clothes to keep some realism to our trailer.

For Cavan he will wear normal clothes for a male teen for example skinny jeans, trainers and a top. He will wear smart clothes to sixth form, such as black trousers and a shirt, and when he takes Lauren out for their dates.

For our cast we will use some makeup to give our trailer a professional look to it. Lauren who plays Hope will wear Eyeliner, Mascara and Foundation. She will look like a normal 21st century 17 year old girl. Cavan will wear a tiny bit of make up it will be very minimalist as his character is manly. All Costume and Makeup will be our own and low budget. If we had a higher budget higher quality outfits would be provided.

Music Research

We have been looking into some soundtracks for our trailer. We wanted to use a variety of songs in our trailer to show all the different moments and emotions. We feel like using instrumentals would be best as it wouldn't clash with any dialog in the trailer.

Our first song we liked was Sam Smith Stay With Me. We chose this as it was slow and eases the audience into the scene. We didn't want to overwhelm the audience with a fast or loud song.     This version also is an instrumental so when our characters are first interacting they would be able to heard clearly.

The Next song we chose was one from our inspiration film. This song featured in 'Now is good' and is up beat and happy. We wanted this for all our happy scenes which shows our two main characters Hope and Logan sharing beautiful moments together. The song will feature words as we hope to use a montage of clips. This part won't have any dialogue as we want the audience to become invested in the characters. By doing this it will allow them to let their imaginations run wild and create their own dialogue for our characters.



For when the trailer takes a dark turn we wanted once again an instrumental to add a haunting feel to the trailer. This is when Hope starts declining and becomes very ill. The slow dramatic beats in this song will add emotional tones to the trailer. We are hoping to create a sad experience for the audience to truly make them feel as emanational as Hope as she becomes diagnosed with cancer. The song will blend well with the story we are hoping to create. This also fits well with the Drama genre. We looked deep into films with the same concept as and we tried to mirror their use of music. 

Task 8: Props

Props

Our main prop is the dying girls diary. She writes down in her diary everything that happens throughout the film, so it is the most important prop. Her whole life has been written down in her diary, so it really helps to demonstrate what she's been going through. The diary also helps to pull the two main characters together. Logan-the male character-picks up the diary when Hope drops it. He then goes round to her house to return it and asks her out on a date. Therefore the diary plays an important part in starting the romance between Logan and Hope. 





Another prop that we are going to use throughout our trailer is Starbucks coffee cups. These will feature in our trailer when the couple are going out on dates. One of their dates will be shot in Starbucks and the coffee cups will be the coffees that they have brought on their date.

We are also going to use one of our main characters - Logan's - car. The car will also feature in the date scenes. We will shoot this from the back seat so we can see that Logan is driving and Hope is in the passenger seat.

An important prop in our trailer is a glass. In the middle of our trailer we will have an over the shoulder shot of Hope filling up a glass of water. The screen will turn black and all you will hear is the glass smash. This will be a symbolic part in our trailer as it will represent the start of Hope becoming ill.

We will also use fake blood throughout our trailer. This will be used as one of the symptoms of Hope's illness. Therefore the blood will represent how ill Hope is becoming.

Lastly, we are going to use real photographs of the couple in our trailer. These will be in photo frames in Hope's room. We will use a panning shot to pan all of the frames in. We think this would be a nice feature to add as it makes the couple seem more realistic. 

Task 7: Actor/Actress shots

Casting Shots: 

Cavan Rogers staring as Logan.

Age: 17 years old

Gender: Male

We chose Cavan as he will be starring with Lauren who plays Hope. Cavan and Lauren are boyfriend and girlfriend in real life so will feel comfortable around each other. We feel that this also helps as they will make the relationship look as natural and real as possible. We think he will fit the male role well as he is attractive and quite muscular so we feel our target audience of teenage girls may swoon over him. Cavan has the right look for our trailer because he is a young teenager and is dressed in typical teenage clothing for a white male which fits the stereotype. Cavan fits the stereotype of a mainstream role of a teenage male in a romance film. For example in films like now is good and the fault in our stars, the male leads are always teenage and muscular.



Lauren Malcolm staring as Hope.

Age 17 years old
Gender: Female

We chose Lauren as she will be staring with her boyfriend Cavan who is playing Logan. We feel Lauren will be good for this part as she is young and pretty therefore we think boys will be attracted to see the film. She's slim and well dressed typically wearing clothes for a normal 17 year old. Lauren fits the typical white girl stereotype for mainstream audiences. For example, the actress Rachel McAdams always stars in mainstream, sad, romantic films and is a typical slim attractive girl. Rachel McAdams has starred in The Vow and The Notebook. 







Poppy
Poppy is Hopes dog. She makes an appearance when Hope and Logan are on date talking her for a walk in the park.

  

Filming Schedule

Filming Schedule:


Before we start filming we wanted to create a filming schedule, this is so we can keep track of what we have filmed and stay on a time schedule meaning we will finish everything all on time. We left spaces in between just in case of errors or if we needed to revisit scenes and re film parts. This is also spaced out carefully for editing purposes as it take some time to put the trailer together. We may change our filming schedule on the way as the taller might go in a new direction however at this point we think its smart to have this a guide line.