Top 5 post apocolyptic films

Post apocalyptic films are a sub genre of films which feature a certain amount of time after a cataclysmic series of event on a massive scale. The main locations of these films are the ruins of modern civilisation, taking  advantage of the depressingly dramatic effect of urban decay. Main characters are normally ordinary people simply trying to survive, however it is not unheard of to include some ridiculously over the top action hero just to be different. The antagonists of this genre generally comes in two forms:  The same thing which destroyed the world as the main antagonist (e.g monsters, enemy soldiers or , most popularly, zombies)  this has the "we have to stick together to survive" type of vibe, having a clear enemy can make the film much more simple, also if the antagonist is interesting enough, it can attract a large audience on it's own, without the film needing anything close to a good story structure or convincing characters (we see this particular effect in World War Z). The other type of antagonist is that of the other survivors, specifically looters and bandits, these antagonists are less interesting but they serve to deliver pseudo-psychological messages about the "duality of man" or something like that. Either way, my group and I all have great respect for the genre, which is why we decided to choose it as our film genre, to show this here are my 5 favourites:

5.  CarriersCarriers is a film set in rural America struck by a deadly virus, it primarily focuses on the main character's decent into disease and madness. It is somewhat different to other films within the genre as it is less focused on the world around the survivors and more on the deterioration of the human mind during a crisis. Normally films can't really pull this off, but in my opinion this film had quite an accurate message until the disappointingly anticlimactic ending. Our film will have a few similarities to Carriers, mainly the whole atmosphere that the world is always working against the characters.


4. Zombieland
    
Although this film has no real relevance to my coursework, any list of my favourite post apocalyptic film has got to have this ridiculous masterpiece. Zombieland follows a teenager trying to get to terms with the the new, zombie infested wasteland that was once the world. It is the typical action film with over the top fight scenes and many comedic ways of zombie killing. It is not exactly a unique film but it is certainly a classic within the genre.

3. Book of Eli


The book of Eli is about one man wandering a ravaged, war-torn wasteland in search of a sacred book which he hopes can restore the world back to it's previous state. The film is full of elaborate fight scenes with impossible stunts as the main character is seemingly invincible. It breaks the trend of the normal man in a destroyed world which is the general basis of many post apocalyptic films. Unfortunately this is a trend we hope to follow, with our main character being a relatively normal man instead of the over zealous super human in The Book of Eli. One thing we hope to take from this film is the style of the antagonists, as there are no zombies, normal run of the mill thugs and bandits take the role of the main enemies. There are many "colourful" individuals used in the film, we hope to take note of certain traits in the characters and add them to our psychopathic antagonist.

2. I Am Legend

I Am Legend is a staple among zombie and post apocalyptic films alike, it is widely considered the best to come from it's genre in the past 10 years and for good reason. I Am Legend follows the story of a researcher in New York who is the sole survivor of a deadly virus which has ravaged New York, killing most of the population and turning many others into cannibalistic ghouls which have decimated the remaining population. The film focuses heavily on the empty shell of New York, with the backdrop being an amazing example of urban decay after the apocalypse. This film has many themes in which we intend to capture in our film, primarily the lone survivor protagonist which features heavily in this film. We intend to model Will as somewhat of a twist on Robert Neville,  however this film is much more glamorous than what we hope for, so we will add more of a gritty aspect to this protagonist.

1. 28 Days Later

28 Days Later is a British film in which we have gathered the most inspiration from, this is mainly because of its similarities with our initial idea, the obvious exception to this is the lack of zombies. The film is about a virus which afflicts England known as "the rage virus", a pathogen which turns the infected into ravenous psychopaths which only want to spread their infection. The film features a group of survivors trying to get out of London to any form of civilisation, through which they have to face the infected, as well as the newly formed paramilitary. The film is done in a gritty, hyper realistic way, which we hope to replicate throughout our film. It is my favourite post apocalyptic film mainly because of the grittiness but also because of the zombies, although we don't have any in our film (as it is extremely over done) I like the concept and this film makes the zombies genuine threats.

Poster design 2

Magazine design 1

this is the first draft of our magazine cover, as you can see, the main feature of this cover is Will's face, with the background being somewhat inconspicuous in comparison. This gives the effect that Will is emerging from the shadows, adding to the shady, mysterious and stealthy aspects to the character. As little is known about the film upon it's early release, these subtle hints and clues are extremely  important within all of our designs, as it helps the audience get a good feel of the plot without revealling anything significant. This enveloping darkness around the character also accentuates many of the features of the main character's costume and face, imprinting some of the main details of our protagonist in the minds of any readers. This type of advertising is very effective when done correctly, when one character within the film is well publicised and celebrated beyond all of the other aspects of the film, it can make the film instantly recognised by the public through this character. A few good examples of this effect in action are Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Carribean, Jason from Friday the 13th and, most prominently The Joker from the Dark Knight. We hope, by having Will's face accentuated throughout all of our productions, we can replicate this effect to a smaller extent.

The position of Will on this magazine cover is facing the reader, however he is not looking at the camera. This duality is extremely helpful in displaying all of the effects we hope to represent our film. On the one hand Will is completely visible in the centre of the cover, making it clear he is the star of the film and fully intergrating the effect discussed above. His full visablity is also helpful in provoking the interest of the audience, as there is a large centeral image to the cover, it can quite easily stick out from the other magazines. It also provokes much more interest to the film, as this is the closest look that they have had of the main protagonist, giving full visability will provoke much more interest of the film and ensures the audience would not get bored waiting for our trailer to come out. However at the same time Will's eyes are averted from the camera, looking at the floor, this sounds like a relatively small detail in comparison to the rest of the cover but it makes a very large difference. As it makes it seem as if his attention is not completely with the audience, as if he has more important things on his minds. This combined with the distrust that comes from averting your eyes from someone adds to mystery of the character

When the viewer has stopped looking at the image of Will, their eyes will inevitably drift to the first headings they see. Due to the pronounciation of this text, the main text that will be noticed is the Empire title (due to it's bold, red letters) this is good because it means that any reader of the magazine is already interested in the film. The other piece of text that would grab the reader's attention is the title of the film "Her Majesty's Wasteland" is in the dead center of the magazine cover, in the original font of the film (The same which has been applied to our poster) this consistency in font choice has helped to make our film name much more recognisable. Also, as it is in the centre of the page, there is nowhere on the cover that someone could look without the title being in perfect view, this enlarged precence of the title combined with its constant repetition, succeeds (in my opinion) in making the title much more recognisable.

All in all I like our magazine cover so far, it works very well in conjunction with our other media due to the reoccuring themes which are present in all parts of the production. Aspects such as the attitude of Will's character  and the font of the titles have been kept the same throughout the production. Relatively large aspects such as this  have been present in every publication we have created, linking the entire production together through these aspects. All of the publications represent the film very well, however the magazine cover is the one which looks the best so far.

Filming Diary #4

Today we filmed some of the last scenes needed for our trailer, mainly the gunfight scene between Chris, the henchmen and Will, we did this in Will's garden. The conditions were temperamental at best, with random heavy rain showers causing us to stop filming to protect the camera, this made the entire session extremely inconvenient, however the weather was not disruptive enough to halt filming altogether so we were able to get all of our planned shots and more. Aside from the weather, there was a few problems in getting all of the extras we intended, as most people were busy around the time we asked, therefore we were only able to have one extra. However we managed to adapt the scene to fit the reduced number of characters, as all we actually needed was Chris, Will and one other gunman to give the feeling that Will is outnumbered. While altering the scene to accommodate the new circumstances, we decided to play around with the scene structure, as we had a few ideas come to us throughout the day.

Most prominently of these changes is that we have now filmed 3 different endings, all of which lead to the same conclusion (Will gets captured). The first ending was slightly cliche', Will turns a corner at the same time Chris does and they point their guns at each other before the scene fades out. The second ending we made, had a little more sense to it, the events play out similar to the first ending, however instead of giving up, Will prepares to take his chances against Chris, however as soon as he tenses, Muhammad would put his gun to the back of Will's head, Will would then surrender. The last ending we filmed was when Chris runs out of ammo in the gunfight and Will corners him, Chris puts his hands up and laughs, Muhammad then appears behind Will and puts a gun to his head, looking dejected, Will surrenders. Any of these endings would work with the trailer, however we have decided to see what looks better in conjunction with the rest of the trailer before making a definitive decision

What went well
We finished every shot we intended to do
The weather was not unbearable
Muhammed showed up
We have a large amount of alternative, usable footage

What went wrong
While not entirely bad, the weather was still disruptive and made filming inconveniant
We did not even get half of the extras that we wanted

Poster Design 1

This is the first complete draft for out film poster. As you can see it is not 100% complete as there are a few things that are i am debating on whether or not to change them or not, those things include the position of the film title, the colour of the font both for the font itself and the colour of the crown logo and i am also questioning whether to return the image in the background to colour but that is going to take a little thought. As of right now this is how the poster is but like i said i am not 100% happy with it and the chances of it being changing soon are high.

Brief evaluation and decisions for the draft poster as it is now:
One of the main questions is why does the character have their back facing us, and that is the exact reason, it raises questions. I have done this as it promotes curiosity in the audience and will hopefully result in them watching the trailer and ultimately, watching the film. The second reason is because of the nature of the character. The character in the film is a stealthy and extremely skilled survivalist ( at least by the end of the film he is) and this poster with the characters back facing away from the audience helps to promote the stealth side of the character, not having his face visible helps to do this as well.

The logo and font colour was chosen as it is the same colour used in the revenue and customs logo. As this is a British film we decided that using the logo and colour from HM revenue and customs would help the audience identify that the film is completely British. We has abbreviated Her Majesty's to HM which is also a direct link to the British revenue and customs, but the actual name of the film is the full 'Her Majesty's Wasteland', This abbreviation might also park the curiosity of the audience who don't already know what it means, which will hopefully lead them to the trailer for the film after they have found out what HM means.

You may notice that the clouds are the only part of the background image that are in colour. This is because it is supposed to represent the chemical war that left Britain in the mess that is shown in the film, however this will be hard to identify to without watching the trailer or reading the synopsis of the film.

The text at the bottom of the poster is the institutional information and some of the main credits for the film, typical of many film posters.

Poster Idea

This is one of the first drafts of our poster, we have settled on the name "Her Majesty's Wasteland", the poster accentuates some of the themes presented by this name. Given the large, regal crown in the middle of the poster, the reference to the royal family (an iconic sign of Britain) is obvious, this further outlines the British touch which we are trying to display as one of the main focus points of our film. The character on the poster is looking away from the viewer, this is a nice change to the conventional theme of characters giving a direct look  towards the audience. This makes the character look much more real and gritty, as if he doesn't really care about the fame of the cover. The fact that he is holding his gun in his hand closest to the camera is an obvious hint to the violence within the film. The gun also compliments the character's distraction, it makes it seems as if the character is distracted by something dangerous enough that he may need to use his gun. The font of the poster is very grand, in the way that the viewer's attention is immediately attracted to the title, however at the same time the font also looks gritty and brutal. The themes presented in the font are exactly what we attempt to portray in our film; a grand, melodramatic piece with gritty, cruel undertones. The only thing I don't like about this poster is the lack of background (which is mainly due to it being a rough draft) and the bullets coming from the title, the bullets in my opinion look very tacky and unnecessary. All in all I like the look of this poster as a draft, it needs work but I like many of the features present on it.

Coursework update

We've had some problems with the completion of our coursework in these past few days, mainly due to the rain, as it creates extremely inconvenient conditions for filming. This difficulty has also been accentuated by the fact that our camera man/director has been away in Sri Lanka for the past week and a half. Therefore we have only had a brief window in which we can work, the majority of this time the rain has been intense. To top this off, I have had quite a major technical problem with blogger on my computer, when I try to connect to Blogger it comes up with this message (pictured below) and does not let me write posts. I have searched for a solution to this problem on the Internet, however none of the solutions listed has been successful in helping my problem. I am currently writing this on my IPod, however it is extremely frustrating to use it in the long term due to it crashing unexpectedly. We're going to have to work as hard as possible in order to make up for this huge loss of time