G324

Ideas for short film/film trailer




Dramatic war film -
 Vietnam jungle -
Props: Plastic guns/knives -
Costume - Army outfit/ camouflage
Horror film -
 Masked murderer -
 Props: Mask, Knife -
Costume - Murderer costume
Comedy/Horror -
Paranormal activity parody -
Props: Wire/Rope -
Costume - Normal clothes
Crime drama -
Missing person/Murder case -
Props: Guns -
Costume - Police/Normal/Ski mask
Mockumentary -
Wildlife -
Props: Fake blood -
Costume - Tiger costume



Research and planning



Research:



Existing Movie Trailers -


 http://www.workingtitlefilms.com/features/video/id/237/first-trailer 


Johnny English - This trailer starts off with a few 1 or 2 second clips showing an establishing shot of the place that the start of the film is set, this gives the viewer an idea of the type of place it is. It then goes on to show a man explaining what has happened to the main character, then dramatic music starts to play when he is training and it stops when he is finished training and back in England, this is called a sound bridge and it shows that the two scenes are linked. Then the text starts coming up on the screen saying "The worlds greatest spy" it then shows a few short clips of what is happening in the film with a few more titles coming up on the screen, then when it shows what he needs to do the voice over states the name of the film. The whole point of the different clips of the film coming up is so that people can see what is going to happen in the film and make them want to watch it. The last thing to come up on the screen is the release date for the film.This film like the last one also uses a variety of different shots varying from establishing shots to close ups and a few mid shots. Using the features from this trailer would make ours seem more realistic and more professional.


http://www.workingtitlefilms.com/features/video/id/240/full-trailer


Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - This trailer starts off by showing the main companies that made the film, it then shows an establishing shot of a building, this would make the viewer think that this building is going to be important throughout the film.It then cuts to a mid shot of a man looking into a mirror and then a two shot of two men talking over a desk. This is followed by a over the shoulder shot and a close up of a man that is sitting down, all of these different shots add suspense and drama to the film while making it better to watch rather than just having the same shot over and over. it then goes on to explain the storyline of the film by showing different clips from it, also in between these clips it the screen goes black and numbers turn into writing saying things like "Trust no one" this adds suspense to the trailer along with the dramatic music that gets faster as the trailer gets more intense, the reason for the numbers changing into letters is the fact that the film has safes in it and they use numbers and codes, the trailer therefore makes the writing fit in with the style of film that it is. At the end of the trailer the title of the film comes up, then the names of the actors and director involved in making the film, and whether they have won awards or not, this makes people want to see the film more because they will think it is of a better standard than others that include people that haven't been in many films and haven't won any awards and the very last thing to come up like the other trailer was the date of release.


http://www.workingtitlefilms.com/features/video/id/138/international-trailer

Smoking Aces - The first 5 or 6 seconds of this trailer shows some clips from the film, it then has text on the screen saying "Buddy" "Aces" and "Israel" after this it shows that universal pictures helped make it by showing the logo, then there is 2 more seconds of film clips and it makes the screen black and says "The target" and shows a few clips of the person who is "The target" after about 5 or 6 more seconds of that the screen once again goes black and it says "The take" it then cuts to some action shots of people shooting at each other, people waling places and some people talking after this the screen once again goes black and the text "May the best man win" is shown, this suggests that more than one person is after the same thing and they have to compete for it. after this is then keeps show a lot of 1 or 2 second clips from the film until it then says "From working title films" cutting then to another clip of two men in a lift and then showing the text "theres no smoke" then it goes back to the two men in the lift for about 1 second and shows the text "Without firepower" after that it goes back to the lift and the two men start shooting at each other, followed by a lot of different scenes involving shooting, this shows that the film is very action packed. After all of the gun sequences the names of the actors and a clip featuring them shows up on the screen, there is then about 10 more seconds of action packed scenes getting quicker and quicker and the title of the film shows on the screen.

Analysis of existing script layout -

Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me

Dr. Evil runs into the street with Austin chasing him. In
SLO
Dr. Evil, pinning him.

AUSTIN I'm going to kill you, you bastard!DR. EVIL (breathing heavily)
Before you do that, know this: Austin,
I am... your... father.

MUSIC: DRAMATIC STING

AUSTIN Really?

DR. EVIL No. I can't back that up. I was just
grasping at straws. I had nothing.
But isn't it interesting, Mr. Powers,
you really have become a product of
the Nineties.

AUSTIN How so?

DR. EVIL You're more interested in your job
as glorified policeman than you are
in love. You won the battle, but I
won the war. Love means nothing,
you've proved it.

In my research i decided to gather existing scripts from various sources, which have a similar genre to the one i am using. I have chosen this particular script because it has more comedy than the other one which the our trailer is supposed to have, our main objective was to create a "one man on a mission" like trailer, however we decided it may well be a good idea to add humour into the film to make it more entertaining for the viewer. As i was unable to gather an example of the Austin Powers movie trailer script we decided to take a segment out of the actual script, a section which contained drama and a scene that could possibly be used to create a film trailer. This particular example uses both humour and emotion to ensure the audience stay captivated and maintain and entertaining value

ON THE ROAD - NYAH (MOVING)

around curves, hair flying, she's free. Her car phone rings.
Perplexed, she lets it ring once or twice picks it up:

NYAH
(tentatively)
Hola.. ETHAN
Hi. Would you mind slowing down?

NYAH
Where did you get this number? I don't
even have it!

ETHAN' VOICE

Would you like it?

She hits the End button and disconnects. The phone immediately
rings again. She refuses to pick up. Ethan pulls alongside hers.
She looks at him. They speak through the open cars.

ETHAN
Pull over and listen to me, will you?
Just listen.. NYAH
Listen to what?

ETHAN
I need your help and I thin you can use
mine.

NYAH
Your help? What are you talking about?

ETHAN
Scotland Yard, Interpol, every Dutch
authority. I can make them go away.

NYAH
Oh bloody hell. You're a spy.

She floors it and shoots ahead of Ethan, nicking his car as she takes off.

ETHAN
(to himself)
I deserved that.

For this script research i have gathered example from movies of the same genre as mine with the same type of storyline. this on is from Mission Impossible II this is because by looking at this i will be able to see how people in these types of films would talk and how the dialogue is shown on a script. While we are filming a movie trailer this extract is from a full film, this doesn't show me how to convey drama, action and comedy to make it seem more interesting, but it shows how we could have one or two scenes in the trailer using dialogue to intrigue the audience.

Analysis of existing storyboard -

This image shows part of a storyboard from a wild west action movie as you can see from the guns scenes and the fighting scenes. There is arrows that show the movements of the characters involved in the scenes for example the first box shows two people with and arrow pointing forward, this shows that they are walking in that direction in that scene. The bottom left picture shows a rotating arrow, this means that the characters head is turning around the direction of the arrow. There is boxes around the pictures and on some of them the picture goes outside of it, this is to show what will actually be on the screen.

This image shows a storyboard from Rambo III it has blue arrows on all of the pictures to show the direction or movement of the camera, it also shows red arrows to show what the character is doing for example in the top right picture he is picking something up, the same as the other picture the boxes show what will actually be on camera, this changes in the first picture because the camera is zooming in. unlike the other one this storyboard also has annotations to tell you exactly what is happening in more detail than the picture does, it also shows what they are saying.


 Research into costumes and locations used in existing trailer's -


The type of costume used by people who play spy's in existing films are normally formal for example in johnny English he wears a suit when he is working as a spy, our main actor wearing a suit like the one he wears would make it seem more professional rather than them just wearing casual clothes. The normal places that people are in these types of films are in an office, in a street or in a car, this would be easy for us to copy off because we have everything we need for these scenes. The type of costume the bad character would wear would probably be something dark probably black and maybe a shirt but mainly casual clothing because they are drug dealers and in other crime films they tend to be dresses more casually. The props we would use for this film would be fake guns, a car, other fake weapons, a cigar,and some fake drugs to make it more realistic.



Analysis of existing film poster + magazine cover -

This is a film poster for the dark knight, the first thing i saw when i looked at it is the fire on the building in the shape of a bat, this gives the poster something that stands out and is eye catching. Another thing i noticed about this poster is the writing at the top that says "Welcome to a world without rules." this is supposed to intrigue the audience and make them want to see what a world without rules would be like. Other features of this poster are all of the writing showing peoples names, companies involved in making the film and the date it is in the cinema, on my poster these would all make it look more professional. Another thing about this poster is the way the camera is looking up at him as if he is more powerful than the person looking at it this suggests that he has more importance. The fire in the picture could suggest danger or evil this is due to the colour of the fire being red and orange. The part of the building that is broken and the sky that is cloudy and dull could suggest that a type of disaster could happen.

This is a film poster for the film Hot Fuzz it shows the two main characters both looking at the town that the film is about. Like the last poster this one also has text at the top this time saying "Big cops. Small town. Moderate violence." giving the audience a little clue as to what is going to be in this film. Unlike the last poster this one does not have lots of writing saying every company that made the film this one only has a few at the bottom left and it also says "A new comedy from the makers of Shaun of the dead" which will make people who likes Shaun of the dead want to watch this film, also at the bottom right it shows the release date.



Questionnaire + results analysis (Target audience) -

This is the questionnaire we gave out to people to get feedback on our film ideas, once we got the feedback from our target audience it helped us to decide various things about the film, things like the films title, what genre of film it should be and whether or not we should give away a lot of the plot

This is the first question from the questionnaire that i have chose to analyse, it shows that from the target audience their favourite genre is comedy followed by crime, from this we decided to combine the two genres to make a crime/comedy film, this will help us to make the film appeal to both comedy and crime film fans.

This question was made to see whether people prefered the trailer to give away a lot of the storyline, and depending on the answers the amount of our story we gave away changed, the purple represents the people that did want the story given away and the green represents the people that wanted the trailer to be more secretive, since there was a lot more people voting for a more secretive trailer we decided not to give away too much of the plot in our trailer.

This question was asked to see what the target audience think would be the best title for our film, on the chart there is one clear winner which is Ten Cent Pistol, this hasn't shown up on the side for some reason but it had the most votes from people who completed the questionnaire.







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Planning:


Script -

This is the script for our film trailer and it shows what different camera shots will be used for different scenes and what the actor should be doing aswell as what the lines for the actor are.

It is important to have the different shots shown on the script so that both the actors and the people filming know exactly what is happening and example of this is where it says 'First close up of him fixing his tie' this will tell the actor what he needs to do and how he is being filmed and the person filming will also know what they are supposed to be doing.

The music that will be playing in the background is also very important on the script because this shows people how the scene is meant to be, this could be sad or happy and will give an indicationg of how the acting is supposed to be and what the person is supposed to wear and also on the script will tell people where the scene is being shot.

And obviously the most important part of the script is that it tells the actors what to say, although we did change some of the lines during the filming because we thought that it would have made the film better.






Storyboard -

These two pictures show part of the storyboard for the filming of our trailer, it shows many similarities to the proffesional ones that i have analysed, these include the way the pictures are set out so that each scene progresses to the one next to it, the way in which the arrows show the direction that the camera will be moving as well as the text being next to it to show what kind of camera shot it will be.






Biography of main characters -


Marcus Stone - Marcus Stone aka Agent Stone is a 31 year old, English spy in MI5, Had a wife and a daughter, wife left him because he is a work-a-holic, his brother was an MI5 agent turned rogue and now as an assistant for the nations leading drug cartel. He is trying to shut down the drugs Barron for good after they killed both of his parents.


Sergio Carlos - Sergio Carlos aka El Diablo is a Mexican leader of the biggest drugs cartel in England, comes from New Mexico. Many of his mannerisms suggest a homosexual orientation due to his love of musical theatre and also his somewhat unusual behaviour towards his assistant.


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Ancillary task 1: Poster

This is the finished copy of my film poster, it includes the picture i took of the main actor in the film and continues to use the same colour scheme as the magazine cover does, this is to help people notice that it is the same film and they could link the colours with the film, an example of this is how scarface uses the same colours as my film poster and magazine and if people think of red, black and white the will sometimes think of scarface.

This is the final design of my poster before i add the actual picture i am going to use, it is pretty much the same as the other on but i have added bullet holes, this will show the target audience that the film will involve guns and  action and it also makes the poster look better.

This is my poster that has been given more detail and i have also added a colour scheme to it, i decided to go for a similar style to that of Scarface. this is because the film has a similar storyline, having the same style advertisements as a film like that could intrigue fans of the Scarface franchise and make them want to see this film. I have also added the title of the film to the bottom as well as the companies involved at the bottom this will give the poster a more professional look.

This image shows my initial idea for what i wanted my poster to be like, i have used a silhouette to show what the main character will be doing on the poster, i still need to think of what colours would be best to give the audience a sense of the type of film this is going to be. I have chosen the style of font as is Arial black this is because it is quite a formal font and this is needed to portray the idea of the film being about a spy.

Ancillary task 2: Magazine

This is my finished magazine cover after i had edited the picture of the main character so that it was all black, it includes all of the things you would expect from a film magazine, this is behind the scenes, new movies, the price and date the issue came out, the barcode and exclusivbe interviews.

 I researched into different colour schemes that Empire have used and chose red and white which is the most frequently used colour scheme by the magazine, this is also the same colour scheme as i have used for the poster. i have used this colour scheme because it is associated with other existing films of the same style and the red is associated with danger which is basically what the whole film is about, an example of a film like this is Scarface.

This is what the magazine looks like before i put the final photograph on and it also shows how i have changed the lay out from last time and that i have also chosen a colour scheme for the magazine.

For my film magazine front cover i decided to use an existing film magazine the one i chose to use was Empire, this is because it is one of the most successful film magazines around. First of all i researched into existing magazines, things like lay out, colour schemes and the style of font they use, since they don't really change the magazine around much it was quite easy to adopt the conventional format of Empire magazine, the only thing i really had to look about changing was the font, this is because normally the font’s on Empire magazines are changed to fit in with the style of film the main story is about, an example of this is the magazine in which tron legacy is featured and the writing on the front of the magazine is in neon to fit in with the sci-fi type of film. The font i chose for my film is Tahoma this is because it is quite a formal font, this would also go with the style of film i have chosen.

This image shows what my magazine looked like before i decided what colour scheme to use and just as i chose the stories that would be featured, this also shows what my primary lay out ideas.

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Evaluation

·         In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

For my media project i had to make three different media products to advertise the film we made, these were a film magazine front cover and a film poster and finally the film trailer. Before we could start to make any of these things we had to research into different existing products of the same film genre, doing this we analysed a range of products from film posters, magazines and also existing film trailers, it was important to include some of the conventions used in existing spy films so that the audience immediately knew what type of film it is and what to expect from it. we both watched three different film trailers of the same genre and analysed the different techniques used in them, including camera angles, mise-en-scene, sound and editing, we realized that in all of the film trailers the setting that they had used was quite similar, using a setting like this could help make our trailer easier for the audience to familiarize themselves with, the location we tried to use to do this was an office area which was used for the majority of the trailer. Sound also played a big part in the film trailer because this can be used to create a mood in a scene and link scenes with sound bridges, usually in these types of films dramatic music that increases in speed is used to add suspense, also camera angles and editing are used to add suspense along with the different types of music that can be used, for example the shot could change quite fast so that it looks like a lot is going on making it seem more dramatic as well as using things like a canted camera angle to show that things may have gotten out of hand and uncontrollable.
                       When researching into different film posters and magazines for the ancillary task, it was important to see what type of colour schemes these types of existing films used and how their posters were layed out to catch the audiences attention, in the music magazines they nearly always changed the colour scheme so that it is suited to the type of film that is mainly featured in it, this means that we could use the same colour scheme for the film poster as we use for the music magazine, this is done so that people automatically notice what film it is as soon as they see it, an example of this is the 'Tron' version of Empire magazine, this used the same font and colours that are used throughout the film. to make our poster/magazine cover appeal to the target audience we created a questionnaire and handed it out to people within the age range of our target audience to see what features we should include in our own posters and magazine covers, example of things we asked them were things like colour scheme and font, this helped us create an eye-catching proffesional looking poster and magazine, so my magazine cover and film poster uses the existing conventions to help make my products look more noticeable as a film from a certain genre and more proffesional looking products.

                      
I think that our trailer is quite similar to existing ones, because of the use of typical conventions of spy film trailers. mainly because of the location and how the trailer doesn't really give away too much of the plot, but it also challenges the forms and conventions of the same genre of film because we have added some comedy features into our film so that it appeals to other audiences, this could mean that our film can be put into a sub-genre.

 How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

 I think that the effectiveness of the combination of our main product and our ancillary tasks is good, this is because like in other films of this genre, the main character is the one that appears in the magazine and the film poster, we have used this to ensure tat the audience knows who the main character is, this is also very easy to tell because of the way we have represented him as a stereotypical 'spy' character that is in most spy films, this was done using the way he dresses and the way he acts to represent his personality stereo typically and to link everything together he was used on all of the different products, this means that when somebody saw the poster they thought straight away of the trailer or the magazine, this works with all of the products because they are all promoting each other. something else that effectively combines the poster and the trailer  is the setting being the same in both of these things, this is the office and was specifically used on both poster and film trailer so that people would recognize it. the magazine cover is also effectively linked with the other things because the issue we made was a special about the film we created and it uses the same colour scheme as the poster including the same font which after time would be recognizable to the target audience.

·         What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Audience feedback was a big part in our project, without it i don't think that we would have made our ancillary tasks as good as they are, before making the ancillary products we had to do some research, this included a questionnaire for specific age groups to see what people of different ages and people who like different genres of film would want to see on our poster/magazine cover, we tried to incorporate as many different things into these products as we could to try and make our film appeal to a wider audience. In the questionnaire we asked the target audience what existing film magazine covers they preferred, this helped us be able to design our own that will look similar to that one and one that the target audience of our film would like the best. we also asked whether or not we should include music in our trailer to add different types of feelings, all of the things we learned from the audience feedback helped to make the trailer, poster and the magazine cover as good as the could be. without knowing what the target audience preferred i think that the tasks would have been less successful and missed out a few of the typical conventions typically used in these types of products.
                        After we had made the products we also asked for more audience feedback to see what they actually thought of our finished products, the feedback that they produced, both positive and negative helped me be able to change different aspects of my coursework and after these changes had been made i asked the target audience again for feedback to ensure that it would appeal to them and there wasn't anything on it that look unprofessional or stopped it being interesting, most of the feedback was positive but on things like colour scheme and font different people had different opinions so in the end i just decided to go with the one that i though suited the genre best and looked the most proffesional.

·         How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

In my coursework i used a vast range of different media technologies that included, cameras, computers, programs, the internet and a few others, The main technology that was used in this project was software on the computer, we used various different programs to help during the planning, research, construction and the evaluation stages of the project. most of the work that was done in this project was done on the computer then converted onto blogger, applications like Microsoft publisher were used to make things like my questionnaire in my planning using the scanner was also quite a big part of this because without that i wouldn't have been able to upload the pictures of my storyboard to look at while we were editing the film. Youtube was used to find different film trailers to analyse and google was used to find existing film posters and magazine covers. the main program used in this project was iMovie, this was used during the editing process of the film trailer, all of the features of iMovie helped make it easier to edit the clips we had filmed and add music and sound to them, previous to this i had not edited any type of film on the computer so after learning on iMovie it seemed quite simple and was easy to get used to, but due to an injury that i got i was unable to attend school meaning that i could not be there for the final stages of the editing process. During the research part of the project the internet played the biggest role in helping me find different existing trailers, posters and magazine covers, this made it so much easier to use the existing conventions to make mine look more like existing ones that the target audience liked and in the evaluation stages blogger made it quite easy for me to do this is because i only had to look at one page to see all of the work i had done, this made it easier for me to find and analyse. A few other programs that i used are Photoshop and publisher, i used these programs to create my ancillary tasks, they both had different features that helped me a lot to construct both parts of my project. And the camera that i used to film was obviously one of the main parts of the construction of the film because that i what was used to film the trailer and take the stills for the ancillary tasks. the main part of media technologies for my evaluation was blogger, this was because after i had uploaded all of my coursework onto blogger i could find my full project on one page making it a lot easier for me to find different aspects of my project to evaluate. 

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Film Trailer