Production Company Title Creation

To authenticate my teaser trailer I wanted to put some production company titles in it. I started brainstorming ideas; thinking of plausible titles for a company that would produce a film like 'Spinning Time.'

One idea I definitely wanted to go ahead with was Sugar&Spice Productions. I thought the name was appropriate considering the genre of the film - The 'sugar' suggests sweet films for girls, whilst the 'spice' suggests an additional element to the films that make them different to your average girly film.

I spent the best part of the day looking for pictures of cupcakes, and sweets...consequently making myself very hungry.

Anyway after a couple hours in Photoshop this was my final product...

When I started out I didn't think it would look good at all, but I think this came out quite well. the picture is light, dainty and very feminine - what could be more so than pink cupcakes and champagne flutes? The brightness of the image also presents connotations of happiness and laughter, which is great because these are the main themes of the film. I chose this font not only to set off the image colour wise, but also to add another dimension to overall title. The title was always supposed to be cute and pretty to appeal to girls watching, but having a really feminine calligraphy or cursive typography would've been too much. This more edgy fun font presents the 'spice' of the title and company and I think helps create a balance between elegant femininity and fun. I am really happy with the way this turned out.

Another company I experimented with making was Feline Features. Due to the format of my trailer, and the music I made for the beginning of the it, I need to fill at least 5 seconds with production companies. It doesn't sound like it, but this would be a long amount of time to look at just one companies logo. So with the second company I tried to be a bit more creative (and as a result gave myself a headache) trying to make a logo that moved.

To represent the 'feline' of the title I got a picture of a cat. I thought this was particularly fitting as cats have connotations with females. Thus making this 'company' a plausible one to produce 'Spinning Time.'

In Photoshop, I selected the head of the cat and saved a new copy of the image rotating the head a little bit every time so when compiled and sped up it would look like the cat was moving it's head.



It didn't come out as smooth as I wanted it to, but I still like it. I tried putting a title on it in Windows Movie Maker, but it just ended up looking really amateurish. Hopefully I can find a font and effect on iMovie that will make it look more professional.

In the end I was able to use some very complex looking software called Live Type to add some more professional looking titles to my Production Company. I came up with this.

The software was quite difficult to use as I hadn't used it before, but after a bit of playing around with it I was able to get a handle on it. I am quite happy with this title, considering how bad it looked in the beginning. It looks a bit odd here, but when incorporated into the trailer I think it looks quite good.

Title Design

The titles for Spinning Time are very crucial to creating the genre and right tone for the whole teaser. I wanted to keep the theme of time and clocks running in the titles and so I wanted to incorporate them into the title screens somehow. These were my initial ideas.

I have been scouring sites like urbanfonts.com and 1001freefonts.com to find the perfect to typography to display my titles in.

Here are some of my favourites and my opinions on them;

After looking at all of the fonts I've narrowed it down to 'Action Jackson' and 'Milk Cocoa'. I'll insert them both into my trailer in turn and see which one fits best to make my final desicion.

Garage Band

In order to obtain some uncopyrighted music for my trailer I decided to try my hand at Garage Band. It was really confusing at times but on the whole incredibly fun.

Conventionally Chick Flick trailers feature a number of musical tracks. They are not teaser trailers, but for example, in The Backup Plan trailer I counted 3 changes and in Confessions of a Shopaholic, 4!

The Backup Plan



Confessions of a Shopaholic



Taking this into consideration I made several small pieces of music in the hopes of incorporating them into my trailer in the style of conventional trailers of this genre.

Here is the music I came up with :D

Final Filming Session!!!!!!!!

link if video doesn't work :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsK3UleoroQ

Next Filming Session...

This is my schedule for my final filming session to be conducted tomorrow!

Behind the Scenes on Spinning Time!!!

a bit of padding to break Funmi's fall!!! :)

I don't wanna get up :(

Welcome to my crib :e

CHEERS!

What to have for breakfast? :$

Remember to brush twice a day kids!

Zoolander :$

The bus was due any minute...according to the timetable

so we waited...

and waited ....

...and waited. The sun was shining but it was by no means warm!!! :P

Second Filming Session

Once again I was cheated by the weather forecast. I scheduled to film on today, on Tuesday 12th of October, as there had been glorious weather on Monday and it was promised that Tuesday would be the same. We filmed during our free periods between 11:10 and 1:15 as we were all available then, but just as we wrapped up for the day the sun broke free from behind the clouds.

Excluding the sun, the filming went even better than I thought it would. We only had a small of time, but I was able to get some of my most vital shots.

I re shot scene 14 using the new camera angle I discovered when playing around on Saturday and had Funmi do all of the things I did. I also got my most vital bus shot, that I will use to show Myles reversing time.

All in all the session was very productive and I only have a few more shots to go. I intend to wrap up my filming completely on Saturday. I will post my filming schedule for that day soon.

Next Filming Session...

I plan to continue filming this coming Tuesday as Funmi, Dahlea and I all have free periods at the same time on this day. This is my filming schedule for the day.

First Filming Session

On Saturday 9th October I conducted my first filming session for Spinning Time. The weather said it was supposed to be a glorious day, full of sunshine and high temperatures - they lied. It was grey all day, and so the lighting in the house wasn't very good. It turned out I was being a bit ambitious as we didn't get to film all the scenes as I hoped we would because my actresses had to leave early due to unforeseen circumstances.

However, apart from these glitches, filming went quite well. There are some scenes like 1 through 9 that we definitely got that are ready to go straight into the trailer. However, others like scene 14 that didn't go as well as expected as I couldn't position the camera or the elements in the room so that you could see everything whilst maintaining good lighting. After my actresses left though, I kept playing around with the camera and was able to set up the shot in a way that you could see almost everything. I filmed myself doing the shot, so that I could edit it and see if it actually looked good so I'd know exactly what to get my actress to do in the next filming session.

As time was a luxury that we just didn't have getting the bus shots was a real pain, and we didn't get much. The 352 bus which was the one that we were filming with only comes every 20 minutes so there was a lot of waiting around involved between shots.

Overall filming went quite well, but there is still plenty more to do. I will be scheduling another filming session as soon as possible, as I'd really like to get all the filming done sooner than later so I can out my efforts into editing and creating the titles.

Set Decoration, Props and Costume

Set Decoration

I looked a bit into the trailer of Freaky Friday whose opening of the trailer is quite similar to mine. I paid specific attention to the props, costume and set to see if there was anything I could do to mine to make it seem more suitable to the average teen girl.

Looking at this bedroom I saw that it was very similar to mine; with bright furniture, pictures on the wall, and clutter on the floor, it was almost identical! Just to add some finishing touches, I replaced some of the pictures on the wall of me with pictures of Funmi and made my guitar visible to the camera. I also put some CD's and books on her desk to try and portray a bit about her personality, likes and dislikes.

Props

I wanted an alarm clock like this one for my trailer, so hopefully you would also be able to see the time in my trailer. I procured one from Argos for quite a reasonable price, so I was very happy with that! :e

I put fluffy teddy bears around the room to reveal more about Myles' personality. They further represent her femininty, sentimental qualities and this one particularly suggests the fact that she not long ago turned 16.

I also drew a door sign with Myles' name on it to personalise the room a bit more and really show it as hers. I'm not sure if the camera will be able to pick out the word so the audience can see it clearly, as it will be quite far from the camera. Although, hopefully they will be able to decipher it and the sign will add to the realism of the shot, and authentic the character of Myles and this being her room.

Costume

Her pyjamas consisted of a t-shirt and bottoms, so I dressed Myles in similar attire. I chose to dress Myles in a Fall Out Boy t-shirt so the audience would be immeadiately presented with information about her - she likes Fall Out Boy. I paired the t-shirt with similarly coloured pyjama bottoms, to show Myles' femininity (via the colour pink) and her like to be comfortable, (e.g. wearing loose shirt, and baggy trousers.)


For Myles' casual wear I dressed her in clothes that were light/bright in colour and flattering to reaffirm her femininity and expose a bit more about her character. She isn't a stereotypical 'geek' as she isn't dressed in frumpy clothes and wearing glasses, but she does care about education as she shown in the trailer packing her bag with books. However her fashionable clothes aren't supposed to suggest that she's the most popular girl in school. I intended the outfit to represent Myles as the average teen girl; she follows fashion trends, is engaged in her learning and has reasonable social status.

Conclusively, I wanted my teaser to be about introducing Myles to her viewers. Paying specific attention to costume, set and props I think has really helped me define her character and will create an accurate portrayal of Myles on screen.

Animated Storyboard!

I have finally completed my animated storyboard!...and I know I've been working on it way too long. I've got it as close to what I envision it to be like: The genre and style of music, and the inter-changing between tracks, like Chick Flick trailers do conventionally. The little snippets of dialogue, and ambient sound between tracks, and the style of the titles. Everything apart from my voice-overs are there, because I haven't found the right person to voice act for me yet, and I sounded stupid trying to put on a man's voice :)

Currently; I am playing around with Garage Band trying to make some new tracks that have a similar sound and feel to them like the ones in the video - I will document that soon. I'm also looking into Marketing and Distribution of the film, so I'll know which production companies to put in the trailer, and looking more into styling Myles in preparation for my first filming session - if all goes well, and there's no rain - on Saturday!!!

Marketing and Distribution

Marketing and distribution

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