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Casey Drewett 1723

Claremont Fan Court School 64680

I worked with Ross Morrison 1748

Our brief was to make a promo package, consisting of at teaser trailer, full trailer, film poster, film website and social media pages for a film. The title of our film is 'His Last Mile'. His Last Mile is a Horror/ Thriller film about a sports rival turned serial killer, who takes revenge on the young athlete, who took everything from him.  The films narrative rests on a triad of characters, all of whom we explore: the golden boy athlete (an easily recognisable icon), the damaged rival (the stuff of every black thriller) and the world-weary detective with a rough exterior but a big heart (the anchor in every police procedural).

Camera Work - Due to the pandemic, much of our cast had be changed and both Ross and I starred in the film. When I was not in front of the camera, I was organising and using a Nikon Camera to shoot the shots. For the house scene, I used a Nikon camera, with 4K HD quality, for a crisp and professional shots. 

Editing - I participated by creating the fonts for the credits/ title, and I made so that it would suit our film genre. I also created the joint company idents for RFM FILMS and ALEXANDER PRODUCTIONS. Additionally, I imputed and approved the various sound effects and music that we put in our teaser trailer and full trailer. 

Directing -  Before we shot the scenes, I initiated the various places we could and did shoot our film opening. I felt the locations, in School and in woods/parks, that we filmed at, were necessary because of the ages, jobs and storylines of each of the characters. I directed alongside Ross even when I was acting in different shots.

My Teaser Trailer

My Full Trailer

My Film Poster

Click for Film Website

MY SOCIAL MEDIA

In order to successfully distribute our film and to attract audiences we create social media pages. We decided to use Instagram and Twitter as it is the most used social media platform for our target audience, which is ages 15-35. Social media is key for all film companies, as it allows them to give quick information about their up and coming films and different insights to them, such as behind-the-scenes footage and film posters, teaser trailers and full trailer releases.

Across the filming period, we decided to take various screenshots from our film footage and post them on our Instagram, in order to give our audience a small glimpse of some of content in our film. On our Twitter page, we decided to post photos from behind-the-scenes to allow our audience to enjoy the filming process alongside us and to create further connection with our audience. Furthermore, we posted our two film posters on both our Instagram and Twitter pages, a week before our film release, to build up suspense and to entice our audience. 

REFLECTION

Reflection by Casey Drewett

CONSTRUCTION: EDITING

When editing, we decided to used Adobe Premiere Pro, instead of iMovie, because it allowed us to develop our editing skills and to produce high quality trailers. Ross Morrison managed the editing and I assisted him with sound effects, music underscores and arrangement of clips in the trailer sequence. 

Editing process

We began by dropping all the clips that we wanted to include in our trailer and we began playing around with the length and colouring of the clips. In many Horror/ Thriller film trailers, the dark colour toning helps to create the sinister and ominous atmosphere of the film and, additionally, it helps to set the tone of the trailers. Moreover, we enhanced the clips featuring key people in order to sharpen the scenes and to give our production company a more professional look. We understood that it was important for use to include inter-titles within our trailers, to inform and entice our audience, and with the use of Adobe Premiere Pros capabilities we were able to add them. Furthermore, when creating the end credits for our trailer, the premiere pro text features allowed us to create sophisticated and crisp credit.

In order to make our trailer credits unique, we wanted to add our own branded title for, 'His Last Mile'. discussions of text font and colour schemes led us to using Adobe Photoshop, where Ross designed a template for our title. On the text Ross added the blood dripping font and blood red colouring, which created an affective edge on our title and made it unique. 

After a long search we found a suitable soundtrack that would work with our production, after messing around with the volumes of the sound I found a level that worked to help create the horror genre of our production. We also decided to add some dialogue to our trailer as we felt that it was not building up the sense of horror that we wanted it to have. On top of the dialogue sounds of dogs barking and owls hooting were also added to create a sinister environment. 

CONSTRUCTION: FILMING

Once we had planned where we wanted to film and how we would go about doing the various shots/ scenes, we began filming. This was a very enjoyable part of the production process because it allowed us to be creative and develop our camera, directing and acting skills. We filmed across multiple days, in order to have the perfect weather when filming and to add to the dark setting of our film. We took advantage of our school grounds, especially the woodland area, for the running scenes and the dead body scenes, because we were restricted by the Lockdown rules. By using the school grounds were were able to produce various shots for the scenes, so that when we came to editing we could choose which shot looked best for our Horror/Thriller trailer. 

As we filmed on different days, we timed our shoots for both day time and night time, in order to collate more film footage. As the day transitioned we moved to various locations around Richmond Park and Ham to capture the Young Athlete running shots. 

We needed lots of different equipment for different scenes, this included our canon and Nikon cameras, tripod, camera stabilizers and iPhones. This was useful to create a high quality film teaser and full trailer. the use of camera stabilizers allowed us to do moving shots, alongside the actors movements. For example, we used the camera stabilizer for the flashing lights scenes, in order to stay level with the actor and to create and intense atmosphere. 

CONSTRUCTION: FILM IDENT

 

Image of the creating and editing my our joint film company ident for RFM FILMS and ALEXANDER PRODUCTIONS (using iMovie)

In majority of films the film companies put their company idents before the film begins. The ident is a combination of words and visuals that deliver the brand identity of the production company. Often the ident is eye catching and even witty, playing with alliteration or visual puns, to make it memorable.

For our film trailers we decided to use the same ident as out AS work on our film opening. 

For our film company ident we wanted to brand the companies as sophisticated modern, so we used the visual of a green star is a clean, stream lined image. The star has connotations of stage and screen. However, to make it different from the our AS film opening, we decided to have the writing in a blood red font, which links to the tone and genre of the trailers.

CONSTRUCTION: MERCHANDISE

In the film industry, merchandise for films has increasingly grown and is a key tool in engaging audiences. I added an extra page on my film website for merchandise, which gave it a more professional look, because we decided that we would design and sell various products. I researched about different film merchandise to understand what products would be successful when selling them to our target audience. I discovered that the most commonly sold merchandise upon a films release are hoodies. Ross was in charge of designing the various products and he created a unique hoodie design which incorporated the blood drip film title and the Axe man. 

Moreover, I discovered that phone cases were a commonly sold item, specifically phone cases that had designs on white and black backgrounds, so we decided to create two designs. The first design just had the blood drip film title, which we gave the buyers an option of having it on a white or black background. The second design included both the film title and the axe man, however we decided on sell this phone case with a white background because we wanted to add a special limited edition element to our products. This engages in audiences as the product is a short stocked, must buy product, which will make them feel unique and special once bought. 

However to make our merchandise unique, we decided to sell branded playing cards. This is because the playing cards a key element of our film, as the Serial Killer uses it to trade mark their kills. This product links to my film poster, because I have placed blooded playing cards in the shards of broken glass. Additionally, the cards link to my film website because in the background of some of my pages I have silent video footage of the detective finding the playing cards.

Due to the global pandemic, everyone has been wearing a variety of different face masks and we decided to design branded face masks. These masks have our blood drip film title across the front so that we can further promote our film and with every mask bought, the buyer gets a free bottle of hand sanitizer. not only does this show use trying to help our target audience but it encourages them to buy a mask and stay safe.