Man In The Night Final Movie

Here is my final movie, Man In The Night.

Pre-Production Evaluation

Pre-Production Evaluation

Script

From the start, I wanted to make a movie that fits within the horror genre, as I find them very interesting and I imagine they would be fun to make. Initially, I was going to make a movie with a totally different plot to the one I ended up making, and I started a script on that. However, it featured many complex dream sequences and would be too ambitious to actually bring to life. I thought about perhaps reworking this original script, but instead scrapped the idea. I then decided to instead make a slasher film. this would be a lot more fun to film, and also a lot easier. However, I still wished to limit myself to a two man cast. Due to this, I was limited for dialogue. I decided to use this as a positive and tried to focus more on expression and body language in my movie. While nobody involved had any acting experience, I believed I could get the reactions and expressions that I wanted. Nonetheless, all of this lead to there only being seven lines of dialogue in the whole film, all said by the same character. This allowed me to also put more focus on action. Due to my film being a slasher, it needed a recognisable yet realistic villain. To play into this, the villain was a large man in black clothes and a balaclava who stays silent and mysterious throughout the film. For the victim in the movie, I cast a friend of mine who is quite young looking, making him seem vulnerable and suited to the part. He also has a very slim frame, and looks like he could be realistically overpowered by the villain. With them cast, I also had to write around them realistically. This meant that for the fight scene towards the end of the film, I wrote for The Intruder to dominate most of the fight before eventually being overthrown. I also wanted to throw a classic slasher trope into my film, so I settled on a character that seemed to be dead, actually being alive. I was worried this would come out as confusing in the film, so I tried to write it in a way where The Intruder could realistically survive his stab wound. In the end, everything came together nicely.

Location

For my film, I only needed one location, that being a large house. This wasn't going to be hard, as I had a friend with a large house who volunteered to have this as the shooting location. To see if it was appropriate, I went and took a look around. Unfortunately, my movie required an upstairs bedroom, and the only upstairs bedroom was very obviously one that belonged to an adult and not a teenager. Due to this, I had to find another location to shoot at. Luckily, another friend of mine volunteered to have his house in the movie, so I went to do a second scout. While I was there doing a location scout, I also checked for any risks and filled out a risk assessment form. This was necessary as I would not be able to shoot in an unsafe location due to the risk of any severe injuries occurring while on set. If i hadn't checked for any risks, then I would potentially be putting myself and my crew in harms way when we came to shoot the short film. Luckily, there turned out to be no real threats. The only potentially dangerous thing that could happen is during the shooting of the scene that takes place on the stairs, but we had measurements in place to make sure nothing could have went wrong, and if it did, harm would be minimal. The location turned out to be suitable, and I had permission from the owner as-well. After having consent forms filled out, everything with the new location was sorted fairly quickly.

Budget Planning

Initially, I wanted to shoot the film on a non-existant budget. This was so that i wouldn't have to go through any hassle and wouldn't have to spend personal money on something I would use once. However, I realised i would need a prop knife, since using a real one was obviously out of the question due to the amount of safety risks. Then, a previously owned balaclava had seemingly gone missing. Due to this, I was forced to purchase a prop knife on Amazon and a balaclava in a ski shop, keeping my money spent still under ten pounds. Both items, while cheap, were still very high quality. The balaclava was something that I was very happy to find for the price, as it looks like a typical burglar mask, which fits into the breaking into homes aspect of my film. Luckily, I already owned a camera, tripod, light and access to editing software so no vastly expensive purchases had to be made. Since my sister allowed me to use her camera, she also allowed me use of her SD card, which was very helpful for keeping a low budget bas they can be very expensive. Keeping track of all the purchases that I made was very important, as it let me remember what I had actually bought and it allowed me to see the total amount of money that I spent. No other pieces of equipment where needed, so I was ready to film.

Storyboard

In order to fully see how my movie would play out, I had to draw up a storyboard. This allowed me to see how things would look on screen and if they would be hard to shoot or not. My drawing is not a strong point, so I was initially worried that my storyboard would come out really unclear. However, by using the description boxes fully to my advantage, everything tuned out fine. The storyboard helped me remember everything to do when shooting, specifically when it came to all the different camera angles and shot types. I personally feel like I may have used too many over the shoulder and close up shot's, but I wanted to keep things quite simple. I would've rather used simpler shots well than attempted a really technical shoot and having it come out sloppy. The storyboard also helped my cast as it was a simple visual presentation of everything that they had to do in the movie. This was useful for when I didn't quite know how to describe to them what I wanted them to do, where I wanted them to stand and much more.

Post Production Proof

In this screenshot, I show myself making a very simple title card in Adobe Photoshop. After finishing the creation, I imported it into the start of my movie.

I also then added some distorted music to play during this title card, to make it feel less empty. This also added a somewhat ominous feeling to the start of my short film.

Here is what my raw, unedited footage looked like. As you can see, due to the additional lighting, everything had been given a bright and orange tint which didn't fit the theme of the movie and was also quite unprofessional.

Here, I decided to fix the colour issues by adding an adjustment layer. In said adjustment layer, I had turned down the warmth, increased saturation and changed many minor things to swap out the warm orange coloring for a more cold, blue-ish colour scheme.

In this screenshot I show how I added a soundtrack to my film, to accompany some scenes that would otherwise be strange if they were in silence. I chose appropriate, pubic domain songs that are suspenseful and intense. I also added effects to certain parts of the music as I saw fit.

Here, I show how I increased the volume in every sound that featured either dialogue or diegetic sound that I wanted to be heard. This is because, with the addition of a soundtrack, these sounds would be drowned out if unedited. Doing it via Audio Gain also keeps the audio quality very clear.

In this screenshot I make it clear that I added rolling credits to my movie. I did this with the built-in credit making feature on Premiere Pro. To add a more professional aesthetic to my credits, I had two main text-boxes on the left and right side of the screen to allow it to be nicely centred by having the roles on the left and the people who fulfilled these rolls on the right.

Sound

In this screen-capture, I show that I have kept track of all three songs that were used within my soundtrack and I have also featured links to the website where I found the songs. I used timecodes for when the song starts and ends within my movie, then the actual length of time it is played for as-well. All of the music was in the public domain, meaning that I could use them without needing any permission from anybody else. I also don't need to pay anything to us the tracks and won't have to worry about encountering any legal issues surrounding the song use, which would happen if I had used songs that were not in the public domain. 

Meeting Plans

Here is the summary for the initial meeting that took place. Here we discussed the parts. Due to JF being quite tall he was cast as "The Intruder", as we could easily make him appear menacing. HF was then cast as "Chris".  We decided we would purchase the balaclava prop from a ski shop in the city centre and we would look online to purchase a realistic prop knife. Transport for everybody was arranged and costumes were confirmed to already be owned.

The filming location was confirmed after a very successful location scouting that showed that the location had everything we needed and was also a very safe location. We settled on all props that were needed and discussed food possibilities. For the food, we realized that there were many takeaway restaurants and general shops nearby, so we could easily get something to eat.

This was the final meeting before shooting took place. All of the props were finally confirmed after the arrival of the knife prop that was ordered from Amazon. We then decided to begin shooting at 3pm later that day, giving us another few hours to simply practice different scenes before everything was settled and shooting began.

Media Campaigns Research

In 2018, Marvel released their biggest movie yet, "Avengers:Infinity War". Due to this, they invested a lot of time and money into advertising for the movie. The very first teaser for the movie was revealed in 2014, 4 years before release, at a Marvel event. The trailer was made up of clips from all the Marvel movies so far, with the ending showing the movies main villain, Thanos, and then the reveal of the movie title, Infinity War. This was just a small teaser, but it created a large amount of hype after fan recordings from the crowd were leaked to youtube and other social media sites. Many articles were written about the trailer, but besides from the reveal of a fan-favourite villain, there wasn't anything else to go off.

In July 2017, Marvel revealed more teaser footage for Avengers:Infinity War, far in advance to the release date. Before Infinity War, Marvel were releasing Thor:Ragnarok and Guardians Of The Galaxy Volume 2. Due to this, they featured the main characters of these movies together in the trailer in a very prominent scene, implying you need to see all three upcoming movies for certain things to make sense, and making them all seem important and monumental. This ensure fans of the other movies will see Infinity war, and people planning on just seeing Infinity War will feel the need to watch the other movies for context.

Things for Infinity War went quiet for a while, as Marvel focused on marketing their other movies to be released before it. When all those movies were out of the way, people were expecting a new trailer. On November 28th 2017, Marvel released a very simple yet very effective teaser poster, done similarly in style to the previous teasers for the other 2 Avengers movies.

This alone started a lot of media coverage and online buzz, as the release date to the film had now been made official. Then a day after, Marvel released their first International trailer for Infinity War to YouTube and television. In its first 24 hours online, across all sites, the trailer was viewed 230 million times an the YouTube upload of the trailer currently sits a 219 million views.The trailer was posted on Marvel's site, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and more, ensuring that many people saw it. Marvel took advantage of their massive online presence to really push the trailer, and it worked. Then theres the fact that it was also shown on different popular TV spots. Regardless, the trailer was a success and was one of the top trends worldwide on twitter upon its release, with the majority of people talking about this specific scene shown in the trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZfuNTqbHE8

Shortly after the release of the trailer, Marvel decided to release many individual character posters. This was done to show the cast members in an effective and unique way. It showed the sheer size and spectacle of the movie, since there was 22 main character posters released. Each poster shared a similar layout and aesthetic style to make it obvious that they shared a link, and it also made them mesh well when put together.

To go with this, Marvel went on to release the official movie poster for the release of Infinity War, featuring all main characters from the individual posters and more. The poster was stacked with many recognisable actors and characters, yet presented cleanly. This allowed it to be clear for children, adults, and older people, making it accessible to everyone. In the centre of the poster is Robert Downey Jr as Iron Man, arguably both the biggest actor and biggest character in the movie. Him being front and centre is due to his recognisability, so people will know what the poster is for simply from a glance, and they will be attracted to it if they are interested. 

In the lead up to release, Marvel released a lot of merchandise for Infinity War. One of the most notable things they released was a line of Pop Vinyl figurines. This was effective since pop Vinyls are very popular items, and are always featuring different figures from all around pop culture. This is aimed well to a specific part of the audience, who will likely be pop culture fanatics. The figurines also appeal to children due to their cartoonish nature and resemblance to toys. Main characters were used for the figurines, once again showing off the roster and ensuring people will purchase the merchandise by making it feature recognizable properties.

Another type of merchandise released to generate hype for the movie were clothes, most commonly T-Shirts. T-Shirts are effective for marketing since they feature recognisable characters, therefore attracting fans to the shirt design. People wearing these outside is also good advertising for Marvel as they are keeping the film in peoples minds when they see it.

Overall, I would say that the marketing for this film was immensely successful. This is due to the fact that the film made $2.048 billion at the box office. While the budget was estimated to be a whopping $350 million, the box office still absolutely blows it out of the water and brings in a huge profit. The film was also a massive critical success, with an 8.5/10 on IMDB and an 85% on Rotten Tomatoes. These scores would't have been possible if not as many people had been to see it, which is a direct result from the media campaigns and advertising leading up to the films release. 

Risk Assesment Form