Animatic

Social Realism Conventions

1. Realistic portrayal of British society
2. Use of unknown actors
3. Working Class setting
4. Realistic/gritty location
5. Controversial themes: drugs, crime, sex, prostitution, poverty, alcoholism, homosexuality
6. Themes of political or religious views
7. Social or racial injustice
8. Economic hardship
9. Age: typically for teenagers or young adults (15 - 30)
10. Believable storyline and filming techniques

Location

Through our previous research into social realism, we began to realise how important location is within this genre to build a realistic image, as well as highlighting social class and economic status. Stereotypical examples of this are 'The Full Monty' made in 1997, directed by Peter Cattaneo, and is set in Sheffield, England about 6 unemployed men after the steel mills have been shut down, showing their low economic state and working class culture. Another is 'Trainspotting' created in 1996 and directed by Danny Boyle, set in a poor working class area of Edinburgh, reflects in the characters. This is shown through their attitudes, night life, social interaction and ways of earning money.


We are lucky enough to live in a wealthy part of the country where the majority of families would consider themselves middle class. This is great for our storyline as it goes against the social norms, and hopefully making it more unique. As main character, Cally, has also come from a wealthy background, with horses and private school etc, so our geographical location could not be more key. We have both also noticed that due to the fact the location plays such a role in these films the trailers often have many establishing shots so the audience can relate to the event in a more realistic way. So we decided that we should also follow this theme in our trailer. Therefore we will need to shoot some scenes of the wealthiest areas in our society, conforming to the stereotypes.

Filming Schedule

Two Completed Magazine Covers

(A gradual red tint has been added over the "rough" Cally. This is to distinguish between the stages of her life, as she is still the same character. The other cover could suggest they are different characters)

Ideas for Magazine Cover

Magazine Cover Continued...

We used the programme Gimp to help with the layering and editing of our Magazine Cover, above are a few ideas for the text to build up the cover.

More Film Poster Research

Saul Bass (1920 – 1996) was a designer, photographer, director, film maker and illustrator. He created visual identity through symbolism and simplicity for both film and other consumer corporations. Working with Directors such as Alfred Hitchcock, Otto Preminger Stanley Kubrick and Martin Scorsese and created many film posters and title sequences through out his life, as well as writing a children's book, and being the person responsible for the shower scene in 'Psycho' (1960)
His name is associated with Modernism, experimental film making, visual metaphors and original and advanced design.

Bass directed the short dream sequence in the Hitcock movie 'Vertigo' as well as working on the poster campaign for the film. Using primary colour schemes and minimalist symbolic images, like the sinister spiral on the bloody red background he created new and revolutionary illustrations. It was not customary, until Bass' era for American poster designers to be credited for their work. By signing all his work, he made it possible for the designers to lay rightful claim to their work, and continued the changing status of the artist.

Ideas for Magazine Cover

Poster Research

Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire

This poster grabs your attention through use of bright, bold, block colour. The word 'Precious' is written in white, on the red background making it stand out and the use of the colour red could be to suggests the idea of blood. The large woman in the centre is created in black jagged shapes and has the siloutte of a hand cleverly disguised into her profile. The use of the colour black creates mystery, and the pointed rough fragments highlight that she has been hurt, and her body shattered. From this powerful image we can tell that the subject matter of the film itself may be explicit and graphic through the placing of the hand maybe she has been sexually abused? This female figure is obviously the protagonist, taking up a large amount of the pictorial space and the viewer can tell she is woman through the outline of her hooped earrings.

The names of the films actors is placed at the top of the poster, emphasising the star quality, including popular and well known artists such as Mo'nique, Mariah Carey and Gabourey Sidibe. Also positioned at the top of the poster are the successes the film has had, including awards at the Sundance film festival. Winning awards for acting, audience and a grand jury prize.

Marketing Plan

As with every film, we have to decided to think about a detailed marketing plan with objectives to raise awareness of our film, create visibility, and engage audience interest. Obviously, we have been concentrating on the creation of a trailer as the main force aiming to see the film. However, there are many other ways to do this such as 'word of mouth' as social recommendation is a key factor to creating 'buzz' and we would want pur audience to be persuaded that this is an especially entertaining and must see film. Both negative and positive interest can be useful as it is argued that there is no such thing as 'bad press' for example, a provocative film will gain high levels of awareness sometimes resulting in the film being seen just to see how terrible, scary or shocking it genuinly is.

Another way of reaching our target audience could be through advertising such as a poster. However, there are often a dozen or more different posters on display in a cinema at any time so we much be vreative and work hard to make each one stand out. Ours should include: a main image or artwork making the film appealing, as well as names of its stars, genre, credits and a tag line.

Film Title

We choose the name "Dazed" to be our title after audience research determined this as the most popular from a list of:

Dazed

Cally

Perplex
Confused
Differences

More Storyline Ideas

Cally is your typical teenage girl who comes from a traditional British family and area, who enjoys hanging around with friends and having fun but there is a new boy at school who she falls for and gets into the wrong kind of crowd. Cally's school and home life start to seem insignificant and her new love interest becomes a bad role model - getting her into lots of different trouble like drinking and stealing. Eventually everything around her begins to spiral out of control, and the couple begin robbing banks together. A sort of 'modern day Bonnie and Clyde'

Mood Board

Storyline Ideas...

Cally is a 17 girl who has had a passion for riding horses, which she has done her whole life. Unfortunately her friends love to party! This means Cally is often smoking, drinking, taking drugs, having sex and staying out late most nights. But what happens then her two worlds collide? Our film follows the life of Cally in a realistic drama showing how her family reacts to her antics and the consequences of her actions. How far can Cally go before a tremendous time turns into a horrifying time?

Grave Encounters

1. Theme - Thriller/horror
2. Cinematography - slow documentary style, shots gradually build up in speed creating tension
3. Lighting - stark, dark, set in the night time, day shots are all natural lighting
4. Editing - long scenes, not many transitions
5. Narrative - Produciton crew for a television show investigate a mental house that has become subject to many paranormal activities
6. Sound -  natural sound, spoken word, diagetic, emphasis on clang and bangs in the mental house
7. Characterisation - crew = not given any personality, see more of them as the trailer progresses

Cloverfield Analysis

1. Theme - Thriller, action, sci-fi, documentary
2. Cinematography - wide shots, so you can see all the action, birds eye view, helicopters etc, special effects
3. Lighting - Dark, mysterious, conceals information
4. Editing - faced paced, quick cuts
5. Narrative - destruction of NewYork, catostrohic atmosphere, sense of serious danger
6. Sound - at first realistic and normal sounds, then later - emphatic sounds, sound cuts out
7. Characterisation - normal everyday citizen

Genre research continuted

We began to to study, label and easily recognise the conventions that exist between genres in film, used in producing, distributing institution and audience. Dudley Andrew says: "Genre is a contract between audience and the film" so with this in mind we began to analyse two films from different genres. Concentrating on mise en scene, lighting, cinematography, narrative, representative of characters, themes, sound and editing.

The first film we looked at under the genre social realism was 'Sommers Town' a British black and white film directed by Shane Meadows.

1. Theme - a story of a poor London environment, showing teenagers facing their troubles, 'coming of age'
2. Cinematography - Documentary style, independant movie so the framing is not always perfect but is effect when done properly.
3. Lighting - black and white, dark stark shots, natural lighting, stark
4. Editing - straightforward, eye level, slow paced
5. Narrative - realistic storyline, isnt a big action adventure, just your typical gritty English setting, ordinary people in an ordinary setting
6. Sound - Diagetic noises, simple soundtrack, leaving room for dialogue, characters have strong accents, soft - low production value
7. Characterisation - working class, non-profesional actors, no big A-listers

List of possible shots

• Teenage girl - close ups of face
• Party scenes
• Running
• Riding footage - past and present
• Emphasis on riding costume/ clothing
• Flashing lights
• Taking drugs/drinking/boys
• Two contrast shots - one of the girl looking good and healthy and one with her looking a mess/ill
• Dinner table scene with family?
• Sunrise or Sunset
• Passed out - birds eye view
• Doors being slammed
• Crying
• Parents revelations
• Bubbles

Vox Pop Evaluation

After filming our Vox Pop there were many ideas mentioned that we should include in our trailer. The people we used to take part in the question and answer session were, we decided, our target audience - Young adults/teens. (16 - 25 years old?) Therefore it would be very sensible to follow what they want to make our trailer as successful as possible. 

A major issue that was noted from our audience research was that the storyline should be relevant to topics young people our age are often faced with. Our interviewees then went on the suggest issues we could use, such as drugs, sex, drinking, parties, family problem, money issues, gun crime, bullying, and relationships to mention a few. Now we are able to be more specific to what issues our film is going to tackle due to audience interests. Another key question raised was that the trailer should be mysterious. This would mean lots of questions being asked, that would be answered in the film, making our target audience want to find out the answers by going to see the film. Although this is a regally used concept in trailers, looking back at previous A2 Media Studies coursework sometimes too much information is given away and therefore there is not much point in going to see the film. Music is another crucial ingredient for our trailer to be successful. Our target market mentioned that they should also be able to relate to the music in the trailer as this should be representing the style of music throughout the film. The music also relate to the pace of the trailer, which should, according to our research, build up to a climax, peeking our audiences’ interest making them excited and wanting to see your film.

Thank you very much to all contributors who participated in our audience research.

Vox Pop

Film Trailer Conventions

1. Voice overs - used to tell the story and give credit information
2. Stars of the film need to be showcased
3. Key points - sometimes conveyed through titles
4. Conversations between characters - consisting of one liners
5. Dramatic camera angles - used to show events or characters
6. Action - inter spread with actor/ director/ credits on screen
7. Music - plays an important role in creating atmosphere
8. Film title - appears at the end
9. Climatic build throughout the whole trailer
10. Include montage to highlight drama, comedy, and other fast paced aspects of the film

We also researched multi-modal texts to develop a better meaning and knowledge of them, so we can introduce it into our own trailer. They are a feature that create meaning through a powerful combination of different modes of communication, including:

• written text on screen
• spoken language
• moving image
• sound effects
• music

Genre

When concentrating on genre, me and my partner narrowed it down to the two we enjoyed most and thought would be most interesting to focus on. These two are thriller/horror and social realism. When studying horror/ thriller we looked back on our previous media coursework to gain inspiration and possible ideas, as well as looking at many current and past movie trailers.

To help me out with the research on film, I recently watched Mark Cousin's 'The Story of Film' television series. He discussed the beginning of horror movies in the 1920's and 30's, and reveals how horror movies get closer to the nervous system than any other film genre. I realised that this is exactly what we want our movie to do also - as connecting with the audience is one of the most important aspects of creating a trailer.

Two examples he used stood out to me the most. Firstly, 'The Golem' made in 1920 directed by Carl Boese and Paul Wegener, this German expressionist film is unique in its storyline as well as its composition. Forming diagonals through interesting use of lighting and setting. Obviously our film will not be as emotionally deep and stark in plot as this film as its subject is based around a mythical creature protecting Jewish families. But I chose to look at it for its unusual sets, the contrast between black and white and the fact that it is a silent film intreeged me.

This film is said to have been an inspiration for James Whale's version of Frankenstein (1931) as we was fond of German cinema. This movie showed a new style and mood, at the same time as being melancholy, but still allowing the monster to be visusually repulsive.  The movie also became the starting point for Universal as horror movies quickly became their trademark. Cousin's discusses how fear became a pleasure for the average movie goer and how Universal began to exploit this.

'Anonymous'

New Activity

After our practise run of making a short advert, we began to concentrate fully on the creation of our short movie trailer. We began with researching into many different types of film genre, as well as trailer conventions and analysing genuine trailers.

Water Advert

Story Board

Shot One: Businessman in his office receiving stressful news

Shot Two: Businessman becomes more stressed and agitated

Shot Three: Businessman spots a bottle of “#1water” on his desk

Shot Four: Reaches for water and goes to take a sip

Shot Five: Cuts to the Businessman driving into a swimming pool

Shot Six: Swimming/ water montage

Shot Seven: Cuts back to Businessman who has now sipped the water and is refreshed

Shot Eight: Close up of water with name and slogan on screen, along with voice over

Product

Our next task to complete in this brief was to choose a product from the choices we were given, which were: trainers, perfume, water and chocoloate/ snackbar. We decided on water because we believed it fitted with business people well and were able to come up with the best ideas in that area.

Our brand name became #1Water and our slogan: 'Be The Thirst'
We chose these because we thought they were catchy, but also so we could include hash tag as a form of further advertising for the product by mentioning the fact that we want our audience to ‘trend’ us on twitter.

Advertisement: Target Market

This activity is to create an advertisement for TV or cinema, crossmatching one of the following audiences; 'yummy mummies', football fans, business people and cinema goers, and then develop and shoot an advert for a certain product. Our first stage was to create a plan and analyse the audience groups.We then narrowed it down to the two groups we thought would be best to work with. We chose'Yummy Mummies' and Business people. When looking at 'Yummy Mummies' we thought about your sterotypical charcter profile...

Their interests - appearance, health, children and fashion
Priorities - the same as above, plus cost
Finance - they might put choice before cost?
Age group - 20 - 40 years old
Aspirations - to be seen as attractive and healthy, but also a good mum
Role models - Davina McCall, Gwyneth Paltrow

Business people:
Their interests - money, gadgets, sucess, appearance
Priorities - repuatation, business competition,
Finance - economy, good value, latest technology
Age group - 20's - 60's, 30 to 50 years old being peak.
Aspirations - to be successful, the best, being your own boss, planning a secure financial future.
Role models - Mark Zuckerburg, Bill Gates, Lord Alan Suger

After looking carefully at both, my task partner Max Hill and I chose Business people

This Term

This term we will be creating a short sequence advert, around 1-2 minutes long, concentrating on creativity within shot composition and framing. We will also be focusing on edting and the rules of continuity, how to match shots well and if they sufficently trimmed.


We will also be making a short movie trailer of our own. Main focuses being: story-line, genre and the target audience for our film. Our production will show a range of different technologies, include typical movie conventions, and exemplify our skills in filming and editing.