Poster Designs

Over the past week Hannah and I have been been experimenting with Adobe Illustrator to design some poster ideas. We both decided to come up with one design each for now to allow us to get to grips with the software. The results showed how myself and Hannah took completely different routes with contrasting thoughts and ideas. Where my idea takes a mysterious effect into account using an almost fog like shading to create a mist over "Lucy Firr" with a simple focus on the character and title of the animation, Hannah's takes on a much more artistic approach involving the title being pronounced with many features which almost combine magic and fantasy with the dark genre of horror.

I believe that our poster designs appeal to our target audience well. Mainly becuase teenagers will be draw in by the dark mysertous poster which reveals little about the storyline and therefore entices people to find out more about it. Whereas Hannah's design will draw in those in love with a magical escape from reality.

Please leave comments on what you like about each of the posters and what you think could be changed about it. All comments are appreciated. Thankyou.

(Left) My Design / (Right) Hannah's Design

We have previously been writing the poem that will be featured throughout the short-film, so far the first stanza has been completed, it sets the scene and background of the characters and their lives.


There once was a girl named Lucy Firr
Who never moans, never causes a stir
She lived in an orphanaged and that's where she'll stay
The shame is her firends never ask her to playThey just run about their childish deeds
Without a thought or glance as this girl recedes
Into the darkness isolated and alone
While the orphanage owner sits high on her throne
The orphanage owner is horrible and fat
Lucy's only true friend is the orphanage cat
He pays her attention he'll let her come play
And in turn for his comfort she allows him to stay
High up in the orphanage inside a small room
Lucy and the cat will play in the gloom
Rather than games such as hide and seek
Lucy would rather play torture the weak
She scares the children with spiders through floors
And howling loudly at night throwing novels at doors
The orphanage children who are frozen with fright
Lie aware of the things that go bump in the night

As we continue to write our poem we have fod a very useful site to aid us in any difficulties with rhyming.
http://www.rhymezone.com/
Take a look at it yourself if your a budding poet.

Coraline synopsis and textual analysis

Coraline is a feature length, stop-animation film based on the children's book of the same name. Originally written by Neil Gaiman and adapted under director Henry Selick for the purpose of the movie, the story is about a young girl named Coraline who is ignored by her busy parents. After moving into a new house she discovers a small door containing a tunnel leading to a house that seems identical to her own. These assumptions are short lived after Coraline meets her 'Other Mother' and 'Other Father' along with the improved, fun and entertaining house. At first this new world seems perfect until she's asked to replace her eyes with buttons. After rejecting the offer the world around her starts to deteriorate and show it's true colours, once Coraline has left this world behind something terrible happens, her parents have disappeared. Following the sighting of her parents in a mirror Coraline knows exactly where they are. Now Coraline has to go back to her other mother and find a way to win them back.

In terms of mise-en-scene, this is where the film really flourishes. In reality Coraline's house is very dim, it is portrayed with dull shades of white, grey and brown exacerbated by low-key lighting. The Kitchen seems barren of food and the bedroom features very few home comforts such as a photo of friends and a string of birds around Coraline's bed. Her fathers office is full of unpacked boxes and a dated computer on which her father is droning away with bags under his eyes to show how tired he is. All of these contribute to the very dim outlook on their life. As nighttime arrives the rooms become very dark using chiaroscuro lighting. To show the connection between the real house and the 'other house' Coraline goes through a tunnel consisting of entrancing purple and blue lighting, almost as if to show that something magic is happening.

In contrast to the real house, the 'other' house feels a lot more "homely", the kitchen is full of food and flowers while the other mother is cooking a roast "just in time" for Coraline's arrival. The use of color shows warmth with orange and blue as apposed to the grey cracking walls of the real house. The study has crooked and disproportionate frames on he wall showing an element of German expressionism. Replacing the dated computer in the centre of the study is a piano with moving hands which plays itself by controlling the other fathers hands showing creativity through music rather than documentation. Coraline's bedroom features live toys giving the room the home comforts that it was lacking before along with that portrayal of fun and excitement.

Moving on to camerawork and editing, an establishing shot shows the house at the beginning of the scene to let the audience know where the scene is going to be set. A mid shot is used to show the family around the dinner table, showing the body language of the three characters. There is a comic effect that come from a close-up of the food being served and a tilt up to show Coraline's disgusted reaction. There is a graphic match between Coraline slumping back onto the chair and then the bed. As night time falls and mysterious events start happening the entire scene is shown with a subtle canted angle to make the audience feel unnerved until Coraline opens the small door were there is a close-up to show her reaction to what she sees followed by a reveal shot of the tunnel.
Later in the other fathers study, while playing the piano to the music the camera spins around the scene as does the other father and piano, adding a sense of craziness to the other world. Then as Coraline goes to bed there is another graphic match between the bed in the other world and the bed in the real world to blend the two scenes almost making it seem like it was all a dream.

The sound in Coraline is heavily influential on the mood, while the scene is being set a calm and tranquil sound is playing, the track resembles a peaceful yet adventurous tone which matches Coraline's character. As the happenings in the night occur there is a much more fast paced track with wind and brass instruments building up to a crescendo, this creates tension before the opening of the door to the other world. The song played by Coraline's other father is centred around Coraline and the lyrics start with "making up a song about Coraline", it's an upbeat fast tempo song played on the piano which gives off a happy aura. Once Coraline enters her bedroom there are diagetic sounds of the birds wings flapping along with the speech "hello Coraline, hello, hello, hello" this once again centres the focus of the other house around Coraline's happiness. At the dining table of the other house the merriment of dinner is short lived when the other mother mentions playing hide and seek in the rain, when Coraline asks "what rain" there is a sudden crash of thunder and a flash of lightning which silences any other sounds and draws the audience to the realisation that there's more to this other world than meets the eye.

Our schedule...

We have Put together a schedule of what we need to be doing over the next five and a half weeks, the blank white spaces have been left for a chance to catch up on any missed or delayed work.

Deadlines

We now have a deadline for our finished project which means we have to develop our own deadlines for pre-production, filming and post-production.
Our deadline for pre-production is Monday 16th November, our deadline for filming is Friday 4th December and our deadline for post-production is Friday 18th December.

Movie Poster Research

We have been looking at different movie posters for the Genre of our animation so films such as Coraline, The Nightmare Before Christmas and 9.

Coraline, as part of it's promotion had all the letters of the Alphabet come out as Posters featuring different Characters and settings of the film. This was appealing to their target audience of children. We could incorperate these ideas into our poster but since we are only making one we could incorperate introducing the characters into one poster and also attracting our target audience.

This is the main promotion poster for Coraline which shows the genre of the film and introduces the main Character Coraline herself. The dull dark colours contrast with the bright light giving an insight inro what the movie will be like itself.

This is the promotion poster for The Nightmare Before Christmas, this is more our genre and we are going to incoperate the lighting in our poster and the style of the text used which gives it that creepy gothic look.

This is the promotion poster for 9 which is the new Tim burton film which came out recently this once again fits in our genre for the dim dark lighting and the colourless settings with the contrast of a bright colour to show different emotion and life.

Town setting complete

The overall town setting is now complete, the roofs were made out of black card, and taped together to be easily removed and the cobbled street effect and well were premade. The cobble streets were created by using printed paper with the cobbles on it and the well was from a model shop.

High level, high angle shot of the town

The left side of the town

An open plan version of the town

Close-up of roofs

 

Close-up of cobbled street

The finished park

The park setting is now complete, with the tree and bench finished and placed on top of the hill the only thing missing is the backdrop of the moon. However the backdrop could infact be created using lighting, the setting could be placed in a dark area and artificial lighting could be used including a lamp acting as a spotlight to symbolise the moon. Using a lamp as the moon would also keep the shadows in the correct place giving it a sense of realism, one drawback of this method would be that the lighting on some possibly crucial areas may be lacking not to mention the facial features of the character would be hidden.
In terms of construction, the tree was made out of wire twisted together then branching out, I then shaped the lone sections of the wire in a twisted and flamboyant way to create that almost 'Dr Zeuss' like shape. I then drybrushed a dark brown acrylic onto the wire to give it the correct colour. Although we considered covering the tree in plastacine, we decided that the wire gave an interesting look and continues with the 'twisted reality' look we are going for.

The top of the hill

The entire park

Looking up the path

Park base completed

The park setting is nearing completion as the entire model is coated in model grass and gravel. Along with this we were thinking about what to use for the bench and tree shown in the design pictures. We had considered building the bench out of wire or wood but it would have been difficult to achieve the look we were going for. I then found the perfectly innocet yet gothic bench in a model shop and although there were some doubts about the size and proportions to characters and settings, but luckily it fits perfectly ontop of the mound and Lucy's character model fits nicely.

The overall setting

Close-up of bench

Following the path from the top

The Park - Adding the colour

There has been a large delay in the construction of our park setting as during rolling out the plasticine to coat the scene, we found that a whole block of plasticine would only roll out to a very small area and that layer would be too thin. So due to this Hannah and myself have been looking at ways to coat the setting and still give it a reasonably professional look. We looked at clay, cloth and other kinds of patchwork fabric ideas all of which would have been too time consuming to fit into our deadline. This left us believing that we would just have to paint the hill and hope it looked alright when filming. However in the last hope I was looking around the local stationary store to find new solutions and found a new idea, this would involve coating the entire hill with green felt. After purchasing the felt and applying it at home I realised that the felt left seams or overlaps on show as we were only able to obtain A4 sheets of green felt.
Although the felt did provide us with the required shape and texture we needed to try and disguise the overlapping sheets so I decided to use model grass on top of the already textured felt to disguise it. I have only used one layer of ti so far on one side to test out how the glue will let it set but it will be completed soon.
We has left an are cut out for the pathway and seating area and to fill this used model gravel which after pouring onto glue and coating with a spray on diluted PVA glue set perfectly.
As you can see from the pictures below the pathway gets wider as it gets lower showing a distorted realiity in this world we are creating.

Here is the setting from the left side showing

 the first layer of grass and the gravel pathway

Here is a closer view of the pathway

This is the angle that this scene is likely to be shot at

A Bird's Eye View of the seating area on top of the hill