Eduards Čaklais Media

Film Production Logo Research

Logo of a brand / film production / person is their identity in one image. It portrays their ideologies, their history, their audience etc. It is crucial for a logo to be as close as a representation of a film production to reach the needed audiences.

Walt Disney Studios

The logo of 'Walt Disney' shows a colossal bright castle with a reflection in a lake under a beautiful blue sky. A castle symbolizing fairy tales the audience can understand that Disney produces movies that have fairy tale like plots with not as much naturalism as surrealism.

Moreover, the vivid, bright blue sky with several stars shows how magical the world of Disney is. The Whole image seems like its been painted showing that animation is a part of their films. Combining these things and adding the fact that the logo font is very child like it is fairly easy to make the link that Disney produces movies / animated movies for kids.

Warner Bros. Pictures

The Warner Bros. Pictures logo may seem like any other logo at first however it holds the history of the production. Warner Bros. Pictures was founded by four brothers: Harry, Albert, Sam and Jack. The idea is that each brother has a quarter of the shield (that represents strength). The idea of power and strength is emphasized by the bold, thick 3D font Without one of the brothers the shield would not serve its purpose.

Moreover, the logo is visually pleasing as complimentary colours (orange / yellow and blue) are used. The shield being warm orange / yellow on a cold blue background it stands out making it look more epic.

This logo does not clearly show who the audience are, showing the variety of movies / movie styles Warner Bros. Pictures produce.

Twisted Pictures

Twisted Pictures is a production focused only on production of horror / scary movies. Their audience is not as large as it is for Warner Bros. Pictures however it is very narrow and cannot be misunderstood. To communicate their ideology Twisted Pictures have made a logo to represent themselves and reach the correct audience.

Firstly, what stands out is how dark the logo is. The colour black symbolizing mystery and death the logo sets an atmosphere and overall theme for the production. The barbed wire also usually associated with pain, cruelty and prison portrays their 'typical' film theme and story line. Lastly very sharp and high contrast shadows are used portraying that the production deals with very scary and serious imagery.

Lionsgate

Several film productions that produce a variety of movies in different genres with different audiences such as Lionsgate change their logo / details of their logo to fit the specific audience for the movie. Just by simply changing the colour of the logo can change the aura and meaning behind the brands ideology showing how important colour choice is.

Triune Films

Triune Films is a Relatively small film production studio. The founder and owner Ryan Connolly produces a comedy / educational weekly show "Film Riot" along making action, comedy and horror films. Because of the simplicity of the logo and the clean graphic design look this logo works with anything he produces. This is because the use of grey colour makes it seem monotone and neutral along the simplicity of the shapes. Moreover, Ryan called his production Triune as he always wished to do three things in his life: music, film and write which is referenced in the name "Tri" (three) and is portrayed with the triangle.

Combining different meanings about object symbolism, colour, text font connotation and historical meaning I will design and produce my own film production logo.

Little Picturehouse - Logo

YouTube URL link to the animated version of the logo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTFV-Ba1_ho

For my logo I made sure that it appeals to my target audience of my genre, the genre Psychological Thriller is usually all about mystery and dark secrets, therefor I decided to chose a dark overall look as the colour black symbolizes mystery. Using a bold and all capital font I portray how the movies produced by this production is not for the weak ones. I Chose the colour white on the font to give high contrast making it look more epic and dramatic. To make it more visually memorable I placed a graphic design style image of a Polaroid film referencing the the productions name. Just to be clear I placed the image behind the word "Picture". Also a roof of a house can be seen in the triangle. The image is also white to make the logo as simple as possible and visually easy to understand, Adding the fade to the black on the text and the picture I create tension as the viewer does not see everything making him / her feel like they are not in control.

The animated logo starts out with a fast cut edited black and white old photos of people. I chose these images as each one of them had a person in them and the image told a story about them. However, I "scratched" and hid their faces with black lines. This not only helped me to protect the identity of the people in the pictures but also hides their "story" from you. The idea is that Little Picturehouse discusses and reveals the millions of untold stories by a number of independent, unique filmmakers. As I have decided that the production Little Picturehouse will produce Psychological Thriller, Drama and Horror films, some of the faces are hid with symbols such as "X", circle, clown face, broken heart, knife etc. to show the different themes that can be shown trough the films and overall gives a weird feel to the fast sequence of images. I made sure to make the images weird to clearly establish the surreal and dark theme.

The Sequence of images also refer to the name of the production Little Picturehouse as I imagine a Picturehouse to be a house full of collections of albums containing thousands of pictures.

To establish how epic and serious the production is i added a slow zoom in at the final image, which is the still logo as it slowly grows and ultimately feels like its going to overpower anyone as it does not stop growing.

Broadcast Research

Production Values

As much as I understand that i am not marked on the production value i do believe that if the film has missing extras, bad acting or a prop is badly made it distracts the audience from my film making them start to think how badly made the movie is just because of low production value. This can be avoided by getting good actors, making sure the mise-en-scene is as close to the look I am going for. The other way could be fitting the plot to my available resources and abilities; this is easier and more both cost and time efficient.

One of the most distracting things in bad low budget and even indie films is a poor quality of sound and lighting. By using the wrong lighting you can set a different mood to what you are trying to achieve, confusing the audience and losing interest after a while. The sound can either make your film or break it.

Story VS Plot

Every film must have a story and a plot for it to be engaging and making sure the audience can follow the storyline. Story simply is the meaning of the film, the message that is told, the emotional theme. Story can usually be defined in one or two sentences telling what is the deeper idea of the film. This is what the audience can attach to emotionally. on the other hand, plot is the series of events and the relationship between the cause and effect. Simply saying it is what happens in the movie, however a good plot pushes itself throughout as different events cause the next ones. If there is no plot in the film, there is either nothing happening throughout or the events that take place do not link to the whole plot resulting in boring series of events. If a film doesn't have a story it is simply boring as there is nothing for the audience to attach as emotionally there is nothing to it; no message put across.

Story gives meaning to plot, plot gives action to story. when writing my movie i will check if my film has both a meaning and the plot points make sense.

Plot Structure

Feature films have a completely different plot structure than short films as they are a lot longer.

After watching a few short films of many genres it is clear to me that the short film that seen interesting and well paced have a thought out structure

Firstly, There is a set up which can take up from 5 sec to 10 min, however you have to keep it as brief as possible as this is just the set up. A problem is established throughout the set up or right after it. This is the event that either creates the problem or an opportunity to solve the problem / reach the character’s goal. Without this we don't know what the character’s goal is. Now that we do know what is his deepest desire we can follow him through his journey and feel for him as we know what he wants. We have created an emotional attachment which is crucial as without this the rest of the film can be useless.

next up is the rising action or everything that the character does to achieve the goal that was set at the start and new minor problems he / she / they faces. This is where tension can be built as we see how the character struggles to achieve the goal.

Climax is usually closer to the end of the plot. This is the most emotional point of the film and tension is high up. We are about to see is the goal will be achieved or not and mostly it looks like not creating a lot of tension as we are as close as ever to solving the problem that was established at the beginning.

Lastly there is the resolution which comes right after the climax. This cuts all tensions, answering all questions. Usually giving you that relieved, relaxed moment.

Of course all of these rules can be broken and you could still have a great short film however I think that the most important thing out of all is that a character must have a goal and the goal is either achieved or not at the end.

Moreover, each scene can have a small goad for the audience to feel more for the character as we see him struggle whilst tension is built.

Genre Conventions

I have decided that my short film will be a Psychological Thriller. This genre is quite dark and tells a story through scary and high tension plots. Overall theme is dark will high contrasts yet with not many bright colours. To create an eerie mood blue and green colours are used Sharp shadows and harsh lighting can be used to create a dramatic scene however depends on the purpose and the goal of the look. Sound is a big part of this genre as it emphasizes every movement and emotions creating a lot of tension. For example, amplified footsteps or ambient sound such as cutting food are quite harsh and can be heard easily with the pauses of silence contrasting the noises.

Furthermore, Music is often used to portray the emotions of a character raising suspense at times. Music can also change the pace of the film without affecting the actual length of it.

Not most, but quite a few short films of this genre have an ending without the resolution leaving the audience with unanswered questions and tension even after the credits roll.

This genre might appear similar to Horror however what separates Psychological Thriller is that the events portrayed are on the border of "unreal" and "this happens every day" making the audience think that this might actually happen to them, where as in Horror we all know that we wont be attacked by a giant sixteen legged ghost-monster that has an army of blood thirsty, slow walking zombies. In Psychological Thriller the Horror happens in the minds of the audience and almost never on the screen.

Print Research

Poster

To get my audiences more excited and engaged into the movie posters come in handy. Not only the quite a few people like to purchase the original poster but it also promotes the film to whoever sees the poster even without reading anything about the film. To make the poster interesting so that it catches audiences attention, it has to be visually good looking with a thought put in colour, composition, shapes etc.

Furthermore, when the poster has grabbed the audiences attention it should tell a bit more about the film. usually the genre can be distinguished quickly so that the right audience is attracted. Psychological thrillers tend to be either quite dark or just really weird with a meaning behind it. The poster can tell a bit about what’s the story about not just trough text but also trough the symbolism in the image /s. What usually looks quite bad with amateur posters is the choice of font- It tends to not fit the film as it is too generic, or does not fit the film at all. Its the small details that make the overall difference. to make the audiences more engaged a strapline or a rhetorical question is added to the poster as this communicates directly to the audience. There are some conventions that can be followed such as the release date, age restriction and actors / directors / producers etc.

Leaflet

Where as the poster attracts mostly new and already existing audiences, I will make a leaflet dedicated to those who know a bit more about the genre filmmaking and the cast and crew of the film.

Just as in the poster I want to sent the theme and genre with the visuals of the leaflet so perhaps using dark colours with weird shapes and possibly some shots from the film. Adding shots from the film show what style of filming it is and how the final product looks. Everyone loves behind the scenes especially my target audience for the leaflet therefore some talk from the director or an actor about the plot and making of the film will be added to hype the viewers hoping to see all that is written in a moving image on their screens. Yes, this might spoil a bit of the story but giving just right amount of information will already raise suspense whilst waiting for the films release. Quite a few of psychological thrillers are often based on real life events therefore I could talk about the story that inspired to make the film. Furthermore, I can promote people to buy the poster showing an image of it on the leaflet. To even more get involved with my audiences I could have a contest announced on the leaflet to win the poster signed by the cast and crew