Syndicate - Final Trailer

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Syndicate Final Magazine Cover

Magazine Cover

Our film is an action/ thriller so the poster and magazine had to be dark and mysterious. 

The title is red because it stands out against the black background and could signify the blood and love featured in the film from the fights and love interest within the movie. 

Within the cover we have featured some articles that are recent, for example: the Oscars nominations happens in February so it is very near. Mad Max: Fury Road, Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Hunger Games: Mockingjay part 2 are still very recent films that are still talked about frequently over social media. 

At the bottom of the cover we have the title of out film 'The Syndicate', the slogan 'Thriller of the year' and 'The action continues inside.' These all relate to our film as they are all written in white writing and have a shine effect over them. They are also all in the same font.

To the middle right of the image is the barcode which is obviously needed to purchase the magazine. On the top of the barcode is a date and the price of the magazine.

Behind the two main characters is a strip of three images from London as a big part of our film is set in London. The two characters are central to the cover, signifying their importance to the film as they are the Hero and the Villain. They are both posed with their guns showing that they are prepared to fight each other, to the death.

We did create two more magazine covers but decided to use our original cover as it had the most information and looked the best out of the three.

Our second cover was inspired by the cover of Total Film magazine when Godzilla was on the cover. The reds of the image could signify the blood and the torture that the characters have to endure throughout the film. The London skyline is highlighted by a white mist which could signify the mysterious atmosphere that the film gives off. Our third cover was a sepia themed cover so we added a sepia filter over the black and white background. Both of the covers featured just the title and 'Limited edition collectors cover' on the bottom of the cover accompanied by two silver lines. On the third cover, we have also added 'What happened in London?' which is a quote from our trailer.

Editing Diary Day 5 - Montage and Credits

For the final day of our editing we had the music fitting accordingly with the intro, narration and main body of our trailer so we wanted to ensure the conclusion of the trailer was of similarly high quality. We decided on concluding the trailer by creating a montage as they were often seen in action movies as the increased pace and number of shots adds more onto the storyline and showcases the action qualities the movie would hold. We began by collecting the shots we had left to use which would be placed in quick succession.

The shots were placed with particular effort into contrasting the shots highlighted. We used a car chase scene we got in Dubai along with other shots which emphasised the qualities of the trailer. The protagonist was seen in most of the shots to keep the audience constantly engaged with the trailer. The shots gradually got shorter as the music got quicker until eventually both cut out onto a prolonged shot of Bill saying:
"leave it to me"
The low angle shots puts particular emphasis on the characters and we deemed this as the most effective way of ending our trailer.

Lastly we added the various actor credits in the trailer which was relatively difficult to do due to the random order of the shots. Eventually we placed them on shots which we thought would work well. With the protagonist and antagonist getting prevalence as we believed that that was important. We also added the finished titles which had been animated in Photoshop and the end credits to make the trailer seem that much more professional.

Editing Diary Day 4 - Action sequences

For the fourth day of editing we ensured to carry on from where we left off. This included continuing the action scenes we had. Particularly involving the prolonged shots we had acquired. We also decided that we should use some dolly shots we had of Dubai and Iceland which we managed to get through the use of a car. The Iceland shots were filmed with a phone so they were rather difficult to edit properly. The shots were filmed in a format which the editing software struggled slightly with as the shots appeared in the library horizontally and not vertically. To counter this we incorporated the tools available to rotate the shots and format them properly although this did lead to the shots being magnified, they were still of quality which we were happy with.

We also incorporated shots which featured both the protagonist and antagonist in a sort of standoff with the idea that they further contrast eachother and allows us to further the plot substantially as we believe the audience would be engaged with the rivalry. This also accompanied the music to a certain degree as the prolonged shots we had allowed the music to gain some sort of pace before we incorporated the montage of shots towards the end.

We were also able to engage more with the sound in our trailer as some of it was of lower quality. We implemented the shots we had onto different layers which allowed us to edit them depending on what we needed. Some shots were specifically for the visual effect to go with the music whilst other shots played a role in the audio alongside the music. There was specific focus on trimming the shots to fit the music and make the trailer more fluid as a whole.

Editing Log Day 3 - Main Body

After creating the intro previously, on the third day of editing we needed to focus on the main part of the trailer. This included placing all the various scenes into a rough order. We wanted to ensure the prevalence of shots remained on Bill's protagonist with the occasional contrast against Matt's antagonist to add emphasis on the roles the characters play in the movie. At the beginning of the sequence we incorporated shots from the scouthut, Conor's house and Iceland to make the trailer seem more dynamic as the differing backgrounds make it feel more like a blockbuster film. We wanted to make the trailer gain pace as it continued to increase tension and highlight the plot of the trailer to the audience.

After the initial shots we added the chase scene in London and various shots of the protagonist. We were focusing around incorporating scenes with guns as much as possible as to suit to the genre. We tried to ensure a range of shits were evident including a high angle shot, long shot and a pov shot. Overall we were placing the shots in a particular order as the shots of Dubai and Iceland acted as the exotic locations you usually see in action films and so we placed them accordingly with our more rural shots. We were lacking a bit in terms of these exotic shots though as we only had limited footage available to us at this time.

One of the main features of the third day was finding a suitable soundtrack to the trailer as we couldn't properly edit the various shots without the music as we wanted it to time well. Eventually we found a good piece which we deemed acceptable as it was dramatic and added tension as it went along as it gradually got quicker. It was also useful as it fit into the two minute time frame we had for the trailer. Eventually we primarily edited the shots we had with the music selected to make the trailer seem professional. The last shot we had was a long shot of Bill with a  it of dialogue. The dialogue is fairly vague and adds an enigma to the trailer whilst the music incorporates a slight drop into silence which adds much needed effect onto the dialogue.

Film Log Day 6 - Iceland and the Scout Hut

We needed a few shots more to allow us to have enough footage top complete the trailer. After we roughly ordered the intro it was obvious we were lacking in terms of time, so when Matt and Bill were going to Iceland for a weekend and so we wanted them to get some sots of the snowy tundra to contrast what we saw in Dubai. They were able to get some shots from a plane, a car and one from the hotel room to add more depth to the film trailer as a whole. Once they got back we filmed more of Matt and Bill in a scout hut located in Oxshott.

We filmed a few shots at the scout hut mainly involving both characters with the use of guns as to adhere to the action qualities expected in that trailer type. We got both low angle and high angle shots of the characters to portray the balance of power between the characters. We also got some medium and long shots of the protagonist as he is the central character of our film and we wanted that to be prevalent throughout the scenes.

Editing Log Day 2 - Introduction

After sorting out the folders we wanted to ensure we got a high quality introduction as we deemed it to be the most important aspect of the trailer as it sets the scene and allows us to explain the plot of the movie through the use of narration. We decided that the shots at the very start should be prolonged as it allows particular focus on the voiceover for the trailer. The voiceover consisted of dialogue between Conor and Bill used to mainly explain the storyline of the Syndicate, we filmed both of them for the audio and visual side of things individually, the voiceover consisted of the lines:
Conor - "Syndicate, a crime organisation responsible for multiple terrorist attacks in cities around the world, so explain to me.........what happened in London?"
Bill - "he got away"
Conor - "track him down, no mistakes this time"
Bill- "he took me all round the world, i still haven't found him"
Conor - "if you don't find him, he'll find you"
Bill - "Leave it to me"
We wanted the narration to be effective and so focused on the timing of the words spoken, the music and the images shown to try and add the best sort of effect to our production. We added in a transition along with the gun shot to add fluency to the shots portrayed whilst the production titles were placed accurately with the music to highlight the production. We wanted to ensure the narration was placed in the right area and so we created a rough time in terms of seconds for us to place the narration on, this included:
- certificate rating
- bill walking to the dialogue shot of Conor, narration; 3-14 seconds
- "he got away", shot of chase scene; 20 seconds
- "track him down...", shot of bill in scout hut; 22 seconds
- gun shot, fade to black
-"he took me round the world..." plane shot of Iceland, car shot of Dubai; 26 seconds
- low angle shot of Matt shooting, fade to black; 31 seconds

Syndicate Final Movie Poster

Our film is an Action/ Thriller film so our poster had to be dark and slightly mysterious. 

The white writing stands out against the black background because they are contrasting colours making the white writing bold and clear. 

The star reviews are slightly faded in to the image so that none of the image becomes distorted and doesn't look out of place. We haven't made all of the reviews five stars because that would be too much because no film ever gets all five star reviews. For example: the poster for Legend his a two star review from the Guardian between the two main characters heads. Each star review is parallel to each other so it does not look like a mess. 

On the top of the poster, we have included the name of the four main actors/actress because in movie posters they usually have the names of the actors/actresses to appeal to more audiences because a person may go to see a film just because of a person in a film. At the top, we also have references to our AS productions as people often see films from directors that they have seen before.

The production credits at the bottom of the poster are completely our own, featuring producers, actors and people who have helped with the film. Below the credits we have written 'Coming Soon' as there was no date we could agree on. A lot of films put out posters before their release with 'Coming Soon' written on them to get their audience exited and prepared for the film. 'Experience it in 3D' is also written below which a lot of films do now because it brings in a lot of profit for the film making companies.

Beside 'Coming Soon' and 'Experience it in 3D' we have the two logos of our companies, Triptic Films and Independent Film Making Studios, who have made and produces the film. It is common for movie posters to have the logos because it shows the audience who the creators were which may be a fact in why people go to see films, exactly like the Directors and Actors reasoning.

On the very bottom of the poster, there is links to the movies Facebook and Twitter pages. This is very common for films to do now because social media plays a huge part in advertising and promoting a film to all ages of viewers because most of the population are now on social media. Facebook and Twitter are the most used social medias today so it makes sense to advertise there.

The title on the poster is the title we created by ourselves, just like everything else on the poster. It was a simple white text of our title but is made to look shiny by having the slight black border to the sides of the letters.

The images featured on the poster are completely our own. Our main character is directly in the middle of the image with the love interest and the villain to the sides of the main character. The anti-hero's eyes are placed at the top of the poster to create suspense as you can only see his eyes and nothing else. The main character is in the middle of the poster because he is the lead role and he is featured in the movie the most. Having the main in the middle makes him seem like he is the most important character in the film. He is also holding a pistol, showing what weapon he uses in the film and also shows that he is in control of his situation. To the left of the main character is the love interest of the main character. It was important to include this character because she is what he is fighting for in the film as she gets kidnapped by the villain. To the right of the main character is the villain who is holding his gun in a downward position as he is anticipating an attack from the opposing side. On his face, you can clearly see two lines of red indicating that he has been injured on his face during the film, most likely by the opposing side.

Editing Log Day 1 - Folder Organisation

The first thing we have done is to have all shots we have taken on a dedicated storage device, which is a USB memory stick and a back up is stored on the editing computer to prevent the loss of everything we have filmed. We have many folders, all with different names to tell us what is within the specific folder, such as everything we filmed in a forest is stored in the Forest Folder. This goes the same with the multiple shots of a conversation we have in our trailer, to make a shot-reverse-shot. Another folder includes all the sound and music we plan to implement in our trailer. As we film at least 3 shots of every shot so we can have the perfect one, we make two more new folders within filming folders, one named "Use" and "Don't Use", and we look at all the shots we did and put the ones we want in our trailer in the "Use" folder and the rest in our "Don't Use" folder. With this folder structure, it allows us to easily organise ourselves when we edit, and makes us easily find the right shot we want according to our plan for the final edit.

Magazine Title Research

These are the Magazine cover titles that have inspired out magazine title.

Total Film's title has inspired ours the most as it is thick and bold so it is easily recognizable when it is placed on a rack of other magazines.

This is our logo, you can see that it is heavily inspired by the Total Film magazine logo.