OFFICIAL TRAILER

Today we finished our final trailer. Overall, I am very happy with the result as we managed to fulfill each genre conventions and make it look the way we wanted that is both very appealing and attracting as well as engaging and exciting. Although, we faced some difficulties throughout the process we managed to overcome them and achieve the initial ideas that we first had for our trailer.

These are some images of different effects and filters that we added using PicMonkey for our posters.

PRODUCTION COMPANIES RESEARCH

UNIVERSAL

Universal Studios is an American film studio, owned by Comcast which is one of the Hollywood’s “Big Six” film studios. Universal Studios is also a member of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). Universal was founded in 1912 by the german Carl Laemmle and it is the world’s third oldest major film studio. Three if the Universal Studio’s films - Jaws, E.T. Extra- Terrestrial and Jurassic Park, all of which were directed by Steven Spielberg achieve box office records and each of them became the highest grossing film ever at the time of its initial release.

Most profitable films: 

1. Jurassic World - 6521,926,50
2. E.T. the Extra - Terrestrial - 435,110,554
3. Jurassic Park - 402,453,882
4. Despicable Me 2- 368,061,265
5. Furious 7 - 352,768,830
6. Minions - 335,036,900
7. Meet the Fockers - 279,261,160
8. The Grinch - 260,044,8250
9. Jaws - 260,000,000
10. Despicable Me - 251,513,985

We decided to look at Universal Studios as we thought that it is one of the most popular production company in creating movies that involve special effects or animation such as the films that I have listed above. We thought that this way the genre of our movie would fit very well with the production company. As Universal Studios is a very large and famous production company, part of the Big Six, we thought that the audience would easily reocognise it with the specific type of genres, movies and film techniques and therefore engage them even further into watching our trailer.

We also found a YouTube video with the company logo which I think suits the theme and genre of our trailer perfectly and would help to deliver the feelings and emotions from the beginning.

PARAMOUNT PICTURES

Paramount Pictures is a film studio, television production company and motion picture distributor, consistently ranked as one of the “Big Six” film studios of Hollywood. Paramount is also a member of the MPAA and has distributed several successful film series such as:

• Transformers ( $319,246,193 )
• Star Trek ( $257,730,019 )
• Jack Ryan ( $50,577,412 )
• Jackass ( $117,229,692 )
• Paranormal Activity ( $107,918,810 )
• Friday the 13th ( $65,002,019 

Paramount Pictures appears to have similar most profitable genre movies but appears to have a larger variety of genres compared to Universal involving both sci - fi, action, comedy and horror. This suggests that this production company would be recognizable to a lot more people as it targets different types of genres thus fitting with every sub genre that our trailer fits into, making it more suitable for both the production company and audience. 

We also found a YouTube video of Paramount Pictures original logo in high quality. However, compared to Universal this logo does not suit our trailer as much as it is designed to represent different types of genre movies. 

SOUND RESEARCH

Whilst doing some research on different soundtracks and music to use for our trailer, we came across a website called Position music *http://positionmusic.com*. We found this website very useful as it had many compositions and different sound effects that were suitable for trailers. We really liked a particular piece called The Haunted which we found to be the perfect match for the ending scene of our trailer where we portray the zombie characters as it contained very powerful and strong sounds with pauses between them that would help to add energy and build up to the scenes. The main sound that was used for the composition appeared to be almost like a gunfire or a gunshot with other supporting background music in order to make the original sound even louder and heavier creating more energy. We then decided to look at different gunfire sound effects and combine them with similar background sounds. As we experimented and tested, we came across several different ones and although we managed to replicate the original piece that we used for inspiration, it didn't manage to create as much power and tension therefore unsuccessfully  matching the scenes and editing. We then re visited the trailer Contagion and we found that it has a similar idea and editing style to what we were doing so we decided to take inspiration from the soundtrack as well. Compared to the initial piece, the sound that was used for this trailer appeared to have a more of an alarm sound effect that changed as a new shot appeared. We decided to use a similar sound effect and also add some other background sounds in order to make the whole soundtrack louder ans heavier matching the fast, energy filled sequence.

Position music music piece : https://soundcloud.com/transmission-35529979/the-hunted-twisted-horror-sound-design-trailer-music

Initial Soundtrack : https://soundcloud.com/transmission-35529979/transmission1

Final soundtrack : https://soundcloud.com/transmission-35529979/transmission2

CHANGES IN OUR VOICE OVER

After we researched different types of trailers and found that a lot of them use voice overs,whether they are taken from a dialogue or a monologue, we decided to incorporate our own voice over. After we did multiple scrips.tested different locations and set ups and tried out using different types of microphones ranging from computers and laptops to camera mics and phones, we decided to use ans choose between both female and male voices to incorporate for our trailer. Although the protagonist in our trailer is a male character we still decided to try ans test a female voice. When we eventually edited and placed both voices with the trailer it seemed that surprisingly the female voice sounded and matched the trailer better than the male voice. As our trailer contains a male protagonist and several female zombie antagonist, the incorporation of the female voice in our trailer helped to introduce a new character ad well as to make the trailer appear a lot more mysterious and suspenseful therefore engaging and attracting the audience attention even further making them more interested and curious. The voice over matched perfectly what was presented in our trailer and helped to make the story and plot a lot more clear. However, when we recorded our voice over we only had our script thus making the tone and mood of it very scripted and presentation and did not sound engaging enough in order to fit with the visual presentation of our trailer. This is why we thought that our voice over might not be as appropriate to fit with our trailer thus having to either make changes to it by perhaps watching the trailer itself whilst recording or slightly correcting the script or work on the soundtrack and focus on it a lot more in order to compensate for the missing voice over.

Female voice over: https://soundcloud.com/transmission-35529979/female-voice-over
Male voice over: https://soundcloud.com/transmission-35529979/ian-voice-of-over

Editing and Sound Research