Ideas for Film Production Company Names

For my production company name, I wanted a name that reflected closely on the horror genre. Because of this, I decided to choose a name that resembled the psychological horror theme that I was aiming to replicate with my film/film trailer.

Insanity Productions
This name seems to suit the theme I was aiming for, however appears to be a bit too 'blunt' as a choice for my production company, perhaps emphasising the theme or genre far more than is required. Because of this, I will attempt to soften the emphasis on the genre, but still make it apparently clear that it is a production company that focuses primarily on the horror genre.

Straitjacket Films
This name is a lot more practical, as it implies that the films are primarily horror and/or 'psychologically orientated' however never explicitly states this. It leaves the audience to think of a straitjacket and make the connection themselves. I like this name, but in my opinion, it is still a bit too 'forceful' and emphasises the concept too much.

Night Vision Films
This name is far more reminiscent of the type of name that I would like to name my production company. The 'night vision' concept does not necessarily refer to horror films, but these are most certainly a convention in certain horror films such Paranormal Activity. Despite this, however, I would like a more playful and memorable name, and this name simply does not have that memorable element about it.

Loose Screw Films
The name 'Loose Screw Films' seems to blend this balance of playful, memorable and psychological horror. It is not too serious, but also not too informal, as well as being a name that is reasonably memorable in my opinion. Accompanied with a logo helping to emphasise the name, this could be a possible contender for the name I eventually choose.

Silent House Productions
This name seems to also give that idea of playfulness and memorability; however, much like the first name, is far too blunt and obviously a production company that will specialise in the horror genre, something which I would far rather the audience figure out for themselves instead of being explicitly hinted at by the name of the production company themselves.

Progress Update - 11th February

Currently, I have finished my two print tasks (the film poster and my film magazine front cover). I believe that my final two versions are of a high quality, and suit the brief which I had chosen at the beginning of the task. The poster has a dark, empty and lonely feel, and also matches the style of the movie in regards to the theme put forward and the fonts used. The magazine deliberately does not include these conventions because typical magazines do not tend to follow the conventions of the products, and tend to adopt their own brand.

In my opinion, there may be a few minor improvements I could make to the poster, such as changing the positioning of the text, but this may or may not occur depending on how my thoughts change about it in the next few days.

Red Band Trailer Intro

Traditionally, trailers with intense content which may be suited more to older, mature viewers or audiences would have a 'red band' at the beginning of the trailer, before it is shown. These trailers are known as 'Red Band Trailers'. They differ to the perhaps more well-known 'Green Band Trailers' because of the fact that the content in these trailers are not suited to all audiences, and may contain swearing, violence, horror etc.

Because of the nature of my film trailer, I will add a Red Band to the beginning of the trailer as a precautionary measure regardless, ensuring that audiences are aware of the possibly frightening content within the trailer itself before viewing it.

Time Management Post - 17th December 2013

At the moment, I am happy with the way that my poster has turned out, and do not believe that I need to modify it any further than it is now. I can now focus all of my attention on my magazine cover which I am also working on.

This is the current progress of my magazine front cover. I am becoming happy with the way it is turning out. Today, I hope to fix the layout issues involving the text on the left hand side of the page, as well as the text in the lower half of the image. I believe that the text and colour scheme could be improved slightly, with some of the slanted text being straighter and some reds being substituted for other colours to reduce the heavily-red appearance of the magazine front cover.

Progress Update

Regarding my current auxiliary task (the horror movie poster), I believe that I am almost done with regards to the final poster. I have reorganised the layout and structure to a design that I think is far more simplistic than my previous designs, however is, in my opinion, far more effective.

I have removed the use of reviews and quotes from the poster. While these were effective, I felt that they did not help with the simplistic and refined design I was aiming for. They added too much text to the image for my liking, and created a cluttered and cramped effect on a poster that would benefit from a lack of objects rather than an abundance of objects.

To improve, I think I am happy with the design and layout, however the picture used for the background could be improved in terms of quality and clarity. The facial expression of the subject in the image is not immediately obvious. To rectify this, I will retake the image to a better standard of quality, ensuring to use a bright enough light source to emphasise the expression of the subject.

Production Company Logo Creation

1. This is my first design idea for my production company logo. I based this idea on a fairly simplistic design concept, focusing mainly on text, with the exception of perhaps changing one or two of the letters, much like the logo for film production company Pixar, featuring the lamp as the letter 'I'. In my opinion, this first logo design may be fairly appealing, but looks too 'childish' or 'kid friendly', which would therefore not fit in with the target audience for my films, which are aimed predominantly at 17-35 year olds.

2. For this design, I drew a regular screw, with the company's name 'Loose Screw' running down the sides of it. I think this logo is fairly simplistic, however quite effective. It emphasises the fact that there is a lone screw, perhaps 'loose' as the name implies. Despite this, however, it is not quite the design I am looking for, as this appears too simplistic.

3. This design utilises the same concept as design number 2, showing a screw somewhere within the logo to coincide with the name. Because of the fact I felt the second design was a bit too simplistic for my liking, I modified the screw to take on a more warped look, further emphasising this 'Loose Screw' idea. Despite this, however, I feel as if the lightning bolt shape does not reflect the full concept of the 'warped' and 'crazy' theme of the company and films it produces, with a lightning bolt perhaps signifying strength/power instead. Despite this flaw, however, I feel that this is quite a strong contender for the final version of my production company logo.

4. For my fourth design, I decided to go back and attempt an even simpler version of design number one, by making the text slimmer and removing the finer details of the eyes such as eyelids and eyelashes. This does reflect the simplistic and slightly 'warped' theme that I am going for with my logo, but I feel that the simple logos simply are not working, and do not appear to stand out compared to the more detailed ones.

5. For my fifth logo design, I decided to utilise the detailed eye image from my first design, and attempt to create a logo using that. The result is a fairly interesting logo, however the logo does not appeal to me. Perhaps the font is too thin, or perhaps the eye seems out of place - either way, this logo does not appeal to me, and therefore I will not be developing it any further.

6. For my sixth logo design, I got the idea of a brain showing a large amount of screws inside of it, with one screw in particular appearing to come out of the brain, emphasising this 'Loose Screw' concept, with the brain helping to emphasise this theme of 'madness' which I plan to channel through the psychological horror movie which I will be creating a trailer for. Despite all of this, however, the logo is far too complicated. In my opinion, developed and sized down, this logo would not look very good on something such as a poster where the production company logo would be quite small and hard to read anyway. I will aim to use one of the more simplistic logos, however, as discussed, not one that would come across as too simplistic.

In the end, I decided to further develop my third logo, as it was fairly simplistic, however also not too simplistic so that it looks child-like or unprofessional. The one main bad point which I picked up on with this was the fact that the lightning bolt design of the original logo did not fit in with the 'madness' theme I was aiming for. To rectify this, I decided to modify the shape into a spiral, trying to create a 3D effect my making the screw bend behind itself. Upon trying this, I realised I could make the spiral/warped point of the screw a letter 'O', and modified the rest of my logo around this concept.

This logo was made using Adobe Flash. I picked out the key points of the first logo by making a letter an object (e.g. the Pixar logo changing the letter 'I' into a lamp) and the third logo by not making it too simple but simple enough to be effective. I used Arial Black text as the font, a thick text, but also a simple, sans-serif text. The only thing I would change about the logo would perhaps be the colour, with the top and middle screw colours being slightly too dark.

In this second version, I have modified the colours slightly to a lighter set of colours for the screw. In my opinion, this looks marginally better than the previous one, giving a more interesting look to the logo. As well as this, these lighter colours would work well against the dark background of the horror poster. This will most likely be the version that I use in my products such as movie trailer, poster and possibly the magazine front cover.

I decided to create a square version of my logo. By creating this square version, I will be able to upload a version of my logo to social media sites that require a perfectly square avatar such as Twitter or YouTube.

Setting up the Social Media Webpages for my Production Company

I have successfully set up a YouTube channel for my production company at: http://www.youtube.com/loosescrewfilm

This will allow me to upload any videos relating to the horror movie (such as trailers, excerpts etc.).

I have also set up a Twitter page for the company, which can be found at: https://twitter.com/loosescrewfilm

This will give me a platform to advertise my film and reach out to many different audiences to allow me to attract as wide an audience to my company and, more specifically, my movie as I can. It allows people to follow the page so they can keep informed about any new developments regarding the film or any exclusive offers or distribution methods regarding the film.