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A promotion package for a new film, to include a trailer, together with two of the following three options:
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a website homepage for the film;
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a film magazine front cover, featuring the film;
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a poster for the film.This is my chosen brief, to create a film trailer along with a film magazine front cover and a poster for the film. I have chosen this brief because I find the idea of inventing a creative story line, yet only having to film the best parts to make an exciting and capturing trailer very interesting, fun and challenging. In the micro production I focused on producing a music video, however, it wasn't very exciting as I found it difficult to match a video to a song with a good storyline. However with a trailer I am able to choose any storyline I want. Also, with the trailer I don't have to show the trinity (a start middle and ending) to the film. Trailers are best to be left on a cliffhanger and to make people want to watch the film meaning I can show all kinds of camera shots and genre conventions to draw people into the film and inform them without having to think of a believable and good way to end the film.
These are the initial ideas I had for my film trailer. I wanted to do something more deep and dark such as fighting, disasters and end of the world as apposed to a comedy or romantic film. The reason I have chosen this is because I believe I will be able to make a trailer with high production values. I also think it will be different and unique to many films that are around at the moment. These are the first ideas of genres and ideas I might include in my film trailer.
After looking at my mind map and having a think I have decided the genre I want to do is a disaster thriller movie. I liked the idea of producing a film based around the last man on part of the Earth where everyone else has been evacuated due to some kind of disease or supernatural beings. I thought this would be a good idea as it will be something exciting to try and do and since I only have to show a few select parts for the trailer I think I will be able to film some good clips and leave it on a gripping cliffhanger where not too much is given away. It is also a genre that I believe many different types of people would enjoy as it's a storyline where anything can happen. Also, films like this have not been done in a while as currently there are many action based films in cinemas such as Jurassic World, James Bond and Furious 7. Therefore creating a film involving only 1 character with a lot less action may interest people as its different to recent films they will have been going to see.
The narrative for my film will be based around a disaster movie where there will be one man left living on part of the Earth. The equilibrium of the film would include a normal looking city where everyone lives happily however, with the disruption of a supernatural being or deadly disease everyone will be evacuated. To resolve this the man who is left to save the city will be seen as the hero. According to Propp's theory the city is seen as being the damsel which needs saving. My film is based around films such as I Am Legend, Oblivion, Contagion and 28 Days Later which have all inspired my idea and I have taken aspects from each in order to come up with an idea for my trailer. The trailer will be non linear as events that are seen won't necessarily be in chronological order. The film will also have multiple intertwined plots running within the main storyline of the one man being left behind. The music in the trailer will have to be quite creepy to connote the idea of the supernatural beings there and will also have to build up tension as it leaves the audience on a cliffhanger and wanting to see the film. This is a mood board of my ideas.
This mood board will help me with ideas for my trailer as they show what kinds of settings and lighting will be good. The majority of images on the mood board are shot with low key lighting in dark mysterious settings such as woods and empty deserted and dirty streets.
I believe the target audience for my film trailer would be very broad as I believe both males and females of aged from 15 right up to around 50 would enjoy the film. However, I believe the formal audience my film would mainly attract would be males aged 15-35. My film would be certificated 12 due to it having no content such as strong language, drug taking or sexual references but anyone younger than 15 would be an informal audience as the film won't be targeted at them. When looking at the socio-economic scale, the demographics, I think the target audience are those from C1 (supervisory, clerical, junior administrative or professional) down to grade D (semi- and unskilled manual workers) because they are the kinds of people who I believe would afford to see the film and get lost in it and believe the storyline. I believe people higher than this may think that its an unbelievable storyline and therefore may not enjoy the story as much.
In order to gather more ideas for my trailer, poster and magazine front cover I first looked at and analysed products from films of a similar genre or storyline.
The first film I am going to analyse is I Am Legend. Here is the full trailer for it.
The target audience for this film would be the socio economic groups from A to D as it is a film which would attract many people as its an action film with lots happening in it. It would be affordable for all of these groups to either go to the cinema or buy the DVD. With the ITV sales categories groups I think the film would attract the group A3 (adults aged 16-34) as they are the most likely group to go to the cinema and consume films. The film is age certificated as a 15 therefore anyone under this age will be an informal audience as the film is not targeted at them. The sci-fi thriller genre is more aimed towards males than females as they stereotypically prefer these types of films. Children younger than 16 may not fully understand the film and adults much older may not find the story as enjoyable.
The next film I'm going to analyse is Mad Max Fury Road. This is the full trailer.
The final film trailer I'm going to analyse is Oblivion
A producer and director, known for The Hunger Games Catching Fire, The Hunger Games Mockingjay- Part 1 and 2 and I Am Legend.
He is influential to me because he directed I Am Legend which is what has inspired me with ideas for my trailer. The storyline of my film will be similar to I Am Legend because I think the film contained many exciting ideas (e.g the last man in the city) of which some I can use and some I can change to create my own unique storyline. The Hunger Games are another thing quite like my film trailer ideas and also inspire me because they are about a group of people trying to survive on there own knowing that they are in serious danger from other contestants. This has inspired my trailer as I can use the ideas of the last one on Earth hiding and hunting to try and survive.
A cohesive marketing campaign is a campaign that links different media products together through the use of branded identity. An example of this is in Harry Potter products.
One area of cohesive marketing which is key in helping products to link together and look alike is the colour scheme that's used. By looking at the selection of Harry potter product images I have chosen you can see how the colour scheme is mainly a dark grey/black colour with hints of greens and blue. The colour of the typography stands out on the dark background as it is a white/ silver colour. The colour scheme reflects the genre of the movie as it is seen as a mysterious, fantasy film involving a dark storyline involving voldemort, dark colours often indicate mysteriousness and bad events. There is also flashes of white in them connoting there is hope. The colour scheme is key to get right across all products to not only fit in with the storyline but to also link and market the products together.
All of these features help to create a cohesive marketing campaign for Harry Potter meaning fans of Harry Potter, or anyone who has seen Harry Potter in the past will instantly notice any product which is Harry Potter related due to the colours, typography and images shown. Harry Potter is incredibly big and had 360 degree branding, especially at the time when the final film in the franchise came out. Anywhere you looked there were posters and magazines advertising the final film and games and accessories were being produced.
In my final media products I will link my main and ancillary products together using cohesive marketing. I will ensure that all of my products, like the Harry Potter products will have the same typography, colour scheme and actors. I will also make sure the main images on the magazine and film poster are taken in a setting that is similar to the setting used in the trailer to furthermore link them together. I will also consider the connotations on the film magazine such as the typography used to ensure that I follow magazine connotations but also include clear links that allow an audience to know that its my film being advertised.
This is a trailer made by a previous media student that I have found on the OCR Media Weebly website and am going to analyse.
The genre of my film trailer will be a hybrid of action and thriller. Thriller is defined as: a genre of literature, film, and television that uses suspense, tension, and exciement as its main elements. They heavily stimulate the viewer's moods, giving them a high level of anticipation, uncertainty, surprise, anxiety and terror. When looking at thriller as a genre you can see many other sub genres within it. Some examples are:
PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLERS
SUPERNATURAL THRILLERS
CRIME THRILLERS
SPY THRILLERS
MYSTERY THRILLERS
CONSPIRACY THRILLERS
The sub genre I will be focussing on will be a supernatural thriller because my film will include some kind of supernatural being which is the reason that everyone fled the city in the first place.
Action is defined as: a film genre in which one or more heroes are thrust into a series of challenges that typically include physical feats, extended fight scenes, violence, and frantic chases. Sub genres of thriller include:
SPY MOVIES
DISASTER MOVIES
SUPERHERO MOVIES
ACTION ADVENTURE
ACTION COMEDY
ACTION WAR
The action sub genre I will be doing will be an action disaster movie as it will be a disaster that first caused everyone to leave the city.
Here are some conventions of thriller and action films I have found...
Thriller and Action Conventions - Created with Haiku Deck, presentation software that inspires
Link 1- https://youtu.be/Y69kGmPeHw0
Link 2- https://youtu.be/5ISaajQF0eM
Link 3- https://youtu.be/eZ_Ki2yfkKQ
The product I am creating will be a film trailer. After analysing 3 trailers earlier and also researching and watching more trailers I have found many conventions that are seen in almost all trailers.
In order to gain more knowledge about what would work the best and give my film the highest possible production value I have emailed professional film companies to see what they think of some of my ideas and to see what they suggest for certain aspects of it.
The first company I emailed was Big Talk who are a UK company and have produced films such as Shaun Of The Dead. I thought that because this film is also based on diseased zombies and people leaving the town that they may have some helpful feedback for me. Here is the email I sent.
I also emailed a company called patchwork productions who are a UK based independent film company. I thought that emailing these would be helpful to me as they are only a small independent company and so may be more likely to spend time looking at me email and giving me some helpful feedback. Also as they are small they will have relatively low budgets compared to big complains e.g Universal studios and therefore there help may be more related and helpful to the trailer I am producing. When looking at some of their previous work I also saw how they themselves had produced a thriller film about a man who finds himself sealed in his flat and who finds out he is in danger inside of it. I thought this idea of a man being trapped alone and in danger was similar to my idea and so believe the company may have some good ideas and suggestions for me.
Unfortunately, none of the companies I emailed got back to me. Although this does mean I will miss out on having a professionals view of my ideas I do believe that I will gain enough feedback from asking my target audience questions and also gain ideas from looking at professional trailers, posters and film magazine covers that have already been produced by big companies such as Universal.
From my genre research and form research I have found many conventions that are typical of trailers and action thriller films. Some of the conventions will be very fitting to my trailer and I will include them to give the trailer a high production value. However, some of them may not be possible as some are more useful in films rather than trailers. Here is a summery of the main conventions I have found and how and why I intent to either follow or subvert them.
When researching apocalypse's there is a lot of information about what they are, how they could happen and facts about them. On one website I found some reasons that people believed apocalypse's could really happen. There ideas were mainly focused on parasites, poisons, virus's and scientific things such as stem cell research. I also found facts about how diseases and infections from zombies for example could spread. These 2 maps show the area (the red circle) that would be affected in a 8 hour time scale (16-24 hours after the infection started)
My research also suggested how people would be better off living further away from people as this will give them a better chance of surviving and avoiding the infection. I can use this research I have done in my trailer as I can have a believable reason as to why the infectious beings are there and it can also help to explain why everyone has left. I can also use the time scale of how quickly infections spread to have an idea about how the infection in my film will spread and about where people will have to evacuate to.
Here is a copy of the questions I have used in my questionnaire on survey monkey in order to see what my target audience think of my ideas for the film and to gain an insight as to what they think would work best and be most enjoyable.
QUESTION 1:
This told me how most of my target audience would enjoy the film. I think this amount is very successful as you cant expect 100% of people to enjoy it as even though there all similar in factors such as age they still have differences in likes and dislikes. Therefore, I'm happy that 80% said yes.
QUESTION 2:
These results show where my audience would most like the trailer to be filmed. The most popular response was inside a house, therefore, I will include this setting. As its a trailer I also need a montage of shots from other places therefore I will choose some of the other high rated options such as a field, housing estate and down a lane with fields either side.
QUESTION 3:
These results told me what my audience thought the creature in the film should look like. The most popular response was to only ever see the shadow. However, with it being winter I may struggle to have the correct lighting for this. The fact that my target audience only wanted to see a shadow connotes how they don't want too much to be given away. In the others section some people also commented how they wanted the trailer to bring the fear of there being a creature but didn't ever want to see the creature. I will consider this in my filming and try to show shadows or nothing to not give too much away.
QUESTION 4:
Do you believe that using a woman as the last person in the city would be more interesting than using the stereotypical man? Please state your opinion and why you think this.
My target audience replied to this one all saying either yes or that both would work well. Some comments were that it would be a good twist, interesting, new, that it would be good to subvert the stereotype of women being the weak damsel in distress and that it would be unconventional.
For these reasons I think I will use a woman as I want my trailer to be new and not a copy of anything else as this makes it more interesting and will attract a larger audience as it's something new people haven't before seen. Also I think it will be good to be able to link the final girl theory in and to subvert stereotypes.
QUESTION 5:
These results show that the evening during sunset and mid afternoon are the most popular times of day for the trailer to be filmed. I will take this on board however may also film at other parts of the day as the trailer will include a mixture of shots of which some could be morning and some night time as well. I will however mainly focus on afternoon and evening.
QUESTION 6:
What do you imagine the main character wearing?
Results for this also didn't vary much as everyone said normal casual clothing. A few people left suggestions such as dark clothing or worn out clothing and I will consider these ideas when choosing the costume for my actor/ actress to wear.
QUESTION 7:
These results show what my target audience thought about what music should be played in the trailer. Almost everyone wanted music to be played and more than one track to be played along with some silent parts throughout. The highest demand was for fast paced music but a lot also wanted slow pace music therefore I could have one of each within my trailer. A creepy mysterious track was also seen to be quite a popular choice followed by a fast action sounding track. I could therefore have my slow paced track sounding quite creepy depending on the narrative being shown at that stage and if it would fit in well or not. Another suggestion in the other section was to start the music off slow then have it speed up and get louder when the antagonist is seen. I like the idea of this and so may try to incorporate it into my trailer.
QUESTION 8:
What age do you picture the main character being?
This question produced quite a variety of answers ranging from 13-28. Many people thought that anywhere in the teens was good as it would make the film scarier as the character would be younger and more easily scared. Others said depending on how scary the film is it may be better to have an older character in their 20's. As I'm not making it too scary I think I will go with an age in the high teens as if their too young it may not appeal to everyone and also it was the most popular answer to have someone aged 15-20.
To easily reach a large amount of my target audience I wrote a status on facebook asking for peoples opinions, ideas and answers on the questions I proposed. I thought Facebook was good to use as most of my target audience are on Facebook and frequently use it. It's also easy to write statuses and for people to comment back and there is no character limit.
This is the status I wrote:
In response to my Facebook status I got a few really helpful long responses to my questions.
After looking at the results I got from my social media questionnaire I can see how they are quite similar to what I found from my on line questionnaire. They agreed that having a girl was a new interesting idea and that she should be quite young. The same locations (fields and streets) where also mentioned. I also got a lot of feedback about what to include in my trailer such as the idea that I should first set the scene, show some exciting parts but not give too much away and also how panning the area to show how empty it is may work well. Also, the idea of different paced shots edited together with the use of titles is an idea that I like and I could also edit the appropriate paced music to each. I will take these ideas into consideration when designing my storyboards and filming the trailer.
This is a recording of the focus group I did with two people of my target audience. I decided that since I was thinking of having the main character as a girl, that it would be good to include a girl in my focus group to see what she thinks. I also think that having a girl in my trailer broadens my target audience to both males and females. I conducted my focus group with Lewis and Evie who are both 17 years old doing there A levels at college.
Here is a script showing what my target audience said during the focus group.
Here are some fonts I have found on the website www.dafont.com. The font I choose will be the one I use throughout my trailer for the titles and will also be the typography on the poster and magazine I create. I think they are all very relevant to my trailer genre as they all link in well to a thriller genre and look mysterious and creepy. My favourite 3 are Dead font walking, Face your fears and Horror sketch.
I like this one because I think it is quite plain and easy readable however also has a thriller look to it as some of the letters are slightly blurred and distorted. I also think that the fact it's all in capital letters connotes danger.
I like this serif font because it looks quite horror like as some of the letters have been distorted and look as if blood or something is dripping from it. I it also looks more written rather than typed making it look more creepy. The capital letters again connote danger.
I also like this font as it is much thinner and creepier than the others which complements my creepy storyline of the last woman in the city with some kind of beings. The capital letters connote danger and the fact that it looks more handwritten adds to the creepy thriller look of it.
I think that out of the 3 I will choose Dead font walking as I believe it stands out the most which will be very important on the poster. Its also quite plain and easy readable but does have a hint of thriller to it. I think face your fears perhaps looks a bit too horror like and horror sketch is too thin meaning it wouldn't stand out well at all on the poster or on the film trailer.
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