The pre production documents made me start thinking about where I wanted to take my film photos so I spent time this week scouting locations. I also briefly practised taking photos using a camera on the school site so that I understood how to adjust ISO, aperture and shutter speed. However I felt that I could have spent more time practising with the camera and watching some youtube tutorials as I do not feel fully confident using the camera before I shot my photos due to issues I encountered later when shooting. I found this filling in the pre production documents was a bit tedious but did not come into any major challenges with this part of the project. With shooting however…. This was a whole different story.

 

I found shooting to be the most challenging part of the process as when I was out in the world with the wolves and the hills road students it was much more difficult to cope with the curve balls that were thrown at me. My main challenges with this stage of the process were camera skills, finding props and time management. Whilst I felt very confident with the end results of the posters, I ran into a few issues when shooting the photos finding the props. For example, a big issue I struggled with was finding props that stayed inside my budget with the most challenging example being getting a pizza within my budget. I had a very low budget of approximately £5 as I began the process with a very depleted bank account due to my own irresponsible spending habits. This meant that a medium meat feast pizza from pizza hut (£18.99) was well out of my budget. I solved this issue by purchasing a medium meat feast pizza from sainsbury’s (£2.35) and then asking the pizza hut on my road if I could have a pizza box for free which they thankfully said yes to. For the rest of my props I used things that I already had inside my own house. This did not come without its challenges either, an example of this being the apron. My film had two chefs which each needed their own red apron, however I only owned one red apron. I solved this problem by editing the text which read ‘her ladyship’ off the male chef’s apron and keeping it on the female chef’s apron. I really liked the text on the female chefs apron as I liked the irony between her dirty demeanour.

Another big issue I encountered was discovering that the camera had been on video mode instead of photo mode the whole time! The fact the camera had been in video mode made me feel stressed but I then knew what I needed to do to fix my problem so I emailed my teacher to ask for an extra hour of time to take photos and I then emailed my models to ask if they were able to reshoot the photos. Thankfully both parties said yes so I was able to take new photos which was actually a positive as I now had a much clearer vision of what posters I wanted to take. 

I think I did photoshop well as I was able to successfully edit out things I didn't want in my poster with the spot remover tool i.e nail varnish on Big Al, logos on jumpers, writing on Big Al’s apron, A distracting spot on Crazy Shelly. I also used the colour balance tools to give my posters a more retro look by increasing the yellow in them and I changed the brightness and contrast to make the poster look more defined. I used the steel tongs font for the informative text at the bottom of the poster as this is a defining feature of most film posters but for the title I chose a more cartoonish red font as cartoonish fonts are common for comedy horror posters and the colour red is used in all of my posters as a defining theme. However I think I could have improved my time management skills by keeping my vision for my theatrical poster in mind when taking photos as my original idea was not viable with the photos I had; I cropped out the tops of some peoples heads and arms and had very few full body clips. This meant that the idea of having the group of teens all branding comedic weapons (e.g. a hair straightener, a high heel, a bottle of fake tan and a bottle of wkd). The teenagers would be cut out and placed in a pyramid formation as this is a common feature in horror film posters. I planned to have the background as plain black to emphasise the horror genre however when I tried this on the real poster I felt it didn’t give my desired look. 

I think I met the client requirements as my film poster had both elements of the horror and comedy genre clearly displayed throughout. For example in my character posters I had Liv holding a gun to the camera to show the horror element but also putting on lipstick nonchalantly in the same shot to show the horror element, Crazy Shelly holding a blood covered pizza cutter to show the horror genre but having a cigarette in her mouth and apron that said ‘her ladyship’ to demonstrate the comedy genre and for Big Al I had him doing a ‘Kubrick Stare’ to show the horror genre but danglingling a slice of pizza juxtaposing the comedy element. 

I think my posters are suitable for professional use because the photos are good quality, the models are all in character and the props are all fitting for the movie’s premise.