Evaluation 1

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

My finished media product is very similar to other films of the same genre, notably the British films “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels,” “Snatch”, and “Layer Cake”. Playing with Fire, the fake film for which we made the trailer, borrows ideas from a variety of different films, building on some whilst mirroring or dismissing others. It also shares more than a passing resemblance to films such as Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, essentially American versions of the films previously mentioned.

The crime setting is a core theme, with illegal card games, bank heists, murder, drugs, and mugging playing crucial roles in the story and the trailer. Ideas such as the illegal poker game stems from the film “Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels,” as a way of introducing the main character to the world of crime and also trapping the main character, forcing him to raise funds in increasingly dangerous and illegal ways in order to pay off his debt with his criminal contact.

The film does challenge the typical conventions of some crime films, however – often, there will be one crime boss in control of the whole criminal underworld, or at least the crimes going on in a certain city or country. This is challenged when a whole group of crime bosses from across the city converge in one room to play an illegal poker game. The main character is right in the middle, and loses it all. The crime bosses themselves are dressed in expensive suits, and more closely resemble businessmen than criminals. Whether or not the main character loses due to luck or due to one of the crime bosses cheating is unclear – what is important is that he loses, and is basically screwed from that point on.

In Pulp Fiction, Bret and Butch are the two different characters that screw over the main crime boss in the film (Marsellus Wallace). Of the two characters, Bret is murdered, and Butch is forced to flee the city and to never return – and that’s his reward for saving the crime boss from a horrible fate. The general idea behind all crime films is that if you mess with a criminal, you’ll probably get yourself killed unless you either make it up to them in some way, or kill them. This convention is displayed in Playing with Fire, where the main character owes one of the crime bosses a considerable amount of money, and is forced to commit crimes of varying degrees in order to pay back the debt they owe. The trailer shows off what could possibly be the character failing to pay back this debt, as they are confronted by the crime boss, tied to a chair, and held at gunpoint.

In terms of the form – a film trailer – it borrows from many different examples, mostly from action films where there are a few short scenes where the characters talk in order to inform the audience of what the plot is, followed by short, quick-cut shots of the action sections in order to pique the interest of potential viewers and excite those who are into action / crime films. Interlaced with these quick shots are titles and names of those involved, including the names of the actors and the director. Commentary over the top explains more of the plot as the action continues, and the title is left until the end. Establishing shots of urban environments are used in order to give some sense of location for the trailer, so the audience knows where the action is set. Basic shot transitions and few visual effects are also used; something small-time action films and crime-based movies are notorious for.


However, the trailer does challenge a few conventions of famous theorists - Vladimir Propp's Character theory, for example, is not followed in the trailer. While there is a hero, the hero is not aided by any kind of donor or helper. The only person who could be considered a donor or a helper changes to fit the role of the villain halfway through the trailer, being the main antagonist the main character has to defeat. There is no "princess" to be "saved". This subversion of conventions makes the characters more streamlined towards specific roles, taking on more than one role in the story. 

In conclusion, the film trailer borrows several different ideas from similar films, using conventions in order to give meaning to the events and allow the audience to understand the events occurring without giving an unusual amount of detain through commentary, dialogue or text. Some aspects of these conventions are challenged, mostly in the narrative and the plot of the trailer, but most of the trailer is relatively standard stuff.

Final Edited Trailer

I kind of forgot to post the final version of the trailer. It's been edited down, taking into account advice from viewers and criticisms we ourselves had about our work. You can find it here;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOhMPjeYd1Q&feature=plcp

It was edited down a little to fit within the time constraints, and in such a way that it didn't feel like it was dragging on or too much like a short film rather than a trailer. It was also edited by someone else this time, not me, so the general tone and feel of the trailer was different to the original.

Finished film magazine cover thing

For the second part of the task, we were required to create the front cover for a magazine featuring our film. Since I'd spent so much time on the film poster, I decided to simply use a variant on the music magazine that I'd created last year. If anything this meant that a) a great deal of research and design was skipped, as I'd already done all the work, and b) my A2 work linked back to my AS work, meaning that the two portfolios, instead of being completely separate, were now linked through one piece of work.

Anyway, here's the magazine cover;

As you can see by heading over to my AS level blog ( http://www.evlbzltyr.blogspot.co.uk/2011/04/basically-finished.html )  the magazine cover shares a variety of similarities with the original music magazine. The general aesthetics are very similar, the fonts, the colours, and the style are all essentially the same. Even the titles are relatively similar - whereas the music magazine was called "Amplifier", I decided to call the film-centric edition "Amplifilm". This magazine, although from the same publishing company, was centred on films rather than music. It also meant that I was able to choose a relatively original sounding name for my magazine, something that couldn't have been done if I'd tried to come up with a new style.

The only real changes to the aesthetic style are to do with the film it's supposed to be featuring within its imaginary pages. The photo I chose to use for the front cover was originally going to be in the centre, but a combination of the text being hard to read when over the character's suit and the character looking to the left of the magazine meant that it looked better to move the photo over to the right. The text was a little hard to read at the bottom, so I used a "drop shadow" effect to add some 3d elements to the text and make it easier to read, essentially giving it a dark outline. There's a little bit of blank space at the top, but that can't be avoided. I tried making the gradient in the background darker to make it seem like there was more to the cover than there really was, but this didn't do much.

The text at the very bottom of the cover (the "playing with fire" text) I decided to type in the same font style as that of the film poster, to link the two pieces together and imply that the font used (Rockwell bold, or something like that. Don't worry Future Tim, I've got your back) was the one that the film was going to use throughout the entire marketing campaign, probably in the opening or closing credits for the film itself, and possibly eventually on the DVD case after it came out on DVD. The reason for the change in the colour scheme, however, was simple - wheras on the poster, the text for the film title was yellow, to match the warm reds and other colours on the poster, as well as fitting in with the Pulp Fiction conventions, the text on the magazine cover had to fit in with the rest of the aesthetics, and making the text yellow would have simply ruined the aesthetic look of the magazine.

While not as technically advanced as some of my peers, I was hoping to go for a more aesthetically pleasing design, rather than a technically brilliant yet ugly mess, which I knew would be the outcome if I tried some of the more advanced editing techniques I had previously planned. In order to keep the simplistic look and ensure that the text wasn't too hard to read or see against a cluttered background, I had to sacrifice a perhaps more technically advanced look and instead focus on making sure the basics were there and looked good, resultng in a simple, yet striking and original look.

If I had more time, I probably would've gone and done some further research on film magazines, but the fact is that I was running out of time and had to make some sacrifices in order to meet the deadline. At least it looks remarkably different to the film poster, giving two completely different designs based around the same subject.

The Finished Movie Poster

Okay, well, I've done the movie poster. I think it turned out pretty good.

The poster was heavily influenced by the "Pulp Fiction" poster;

It's easy to see the similarities between the two, from the lettering, colours, and general feel of the posters. However, there are a few differences. Even the titles are vaguely similar, although this was genuinely a coincidence rather than a conscious decision. The colours in my poster, for instance, are far brighter than those in the Pulp Fiction poster, which have been faded slightly in order to give the impression of a front cover of a magazine (amplified by the inclusion of the "10c" below the title to the right of the poster). The Pulp Fiction poster also goes further with the idea of a worn piece of paper on the right, with creases and tears far more obvious than on mine - the only reason I used the "ripped paper" look was to give a clear division between the main picture and the title of the film. I do think, however, that I may have made it a little too transparent, making it difficult to see. If I did the poster again, pretty much the only thing I'd do is make this effect easier to see.

The title of the film is also below the characters, rather than at the top. I did this so that the human eye is drawn to the top of the poster and then looks down, hopefully seeing the title of the film last. I did this so that the tagline - "When you play with fire, you get burned" - is the first thing seen on the poster. The fact that one of the characters is then placed slightly in front of the tagline makes the viewer then look down, drawing them to the characters in the poster. The names of the actors involved in the production are on top of the main character, meaning that the viewer will see them straight after seeing the main character, before being led downwards further, seeing the "winner of over 30 awards", and finally the title "Playing with Fire". The inclusion of the Director's name to the bottom on the far right is so that it is the last thing the person sees - it's the least important thing, but is still necessary to include on the poster, perhaps attracting fans of the director's previous works, but not alienating members of the public who aren't familiar with them.

The reason I laid the poster out this way was so that the experience of seeing the poster was akin to watching another trailer - the information the viewer needs to know is spread out around the poster, with the image of the main characters and the setting making up the majority of the space available, and the tagline acting as the dialogue. It is also an unconventional poster, with clear divisions, contrasting colour pallettes and two main characters rather than one central character being put on show.

The main image is actually made up of four different images - one of Farai, one of Josh, one of the London skyline, and another of a body of water the same colour as the water in the London skyline picture. The two characters were slightly tilted towards each other to give the impression that they're both converging on the camera, rather than standing still. I chose an image of Farai that had a little more movement than the other photos, and one of Josh with no real movement at all, to make the two characters seem more individual, rather than having them both in similar positions and therefore seeming like a team, or friends - something that isn't in the film. However, the inclusion of both of them means that the viewer has to ask themselves whether or not they're friends, enemies, or simply don't know one another. This intrigue, I hope, would cause them to perhaps seek further information, by either watching the trailer, or simply going to watch the film.

If this doesn't work, the fact that they're both holding guns will give the average viewer an idea of what the film is about. Other than the clear connections to Pulp Fiction, the guns, the suits, and the London skyline all indicate a crime / action film set in the UK.

Speaking of which - the London skyline, with the houses of parliament clearly seen in the background, means that any casual observer instantly knows where the film is set. The reason I used two images for the background was simple - the London skyline that I liked was too small, and I needed another one behind them to complete the illusion that they were standing in front of the Thames - here's what the backgrounds looked like without the characters and title in front of them;

The blue stripe was necessary due to a few pixels of difference between the two images - rather than move the other components around to compromise, I instead decided to just colour it blue and leave it as it was. Hopefully, due to the characters and the text overlays, the fact that I use two different images will be overlooked completely by any casual observers.

The colours in the background image are in complete contrast to the text overlays, and the colours of the other components of the image. This creates a striking look, completely different to the usual colours used by contemporary film posters, and therefore hopefully eye-catching and intriguing.

Thinking of how the trailer challenges social norms, the fact that the two characters are clearly British-based teenagers or young adults holding guns seems to indicate that they're obviously hardened London criminals, but the fact that they're dressed in suits and seem to have a bit more class than your average shoplifter also gives the poster an air of mystery about it. Harkening back to Pulp Fiction, the resemblance to the characters of Jules Winnfield and Vincent Vega are very clear - both duos consist of both a black man and a white man, both wearing similar suits, both being criminals, and both wielding guns. Whilst there are a few differences, the resemblance to the two most well-known and well-liked characters in the film would also serve to attract the desired audience, as well as anyone who have heard or know anything about the two characters, even without having seen the film. Whilst not so much the main characters in Pulp Fiction itself, they are still integral to the plot, and are widely regarded as the best characters in the film, mainly due to the comic relief they provide throughout an otherwise violent, serious film, involving drug overdoses, robbery, rape, and murder.



Jules Winnfield and Vincent Vega

Magazine Cover

Okay, now that the movie poster's done, I just have to do my magazine cover, a bit of evaluation, and I'm basically done.

I'm basically going to design the front cover of a magazine that will have a feature about our film, but to make it quicker my basic design has already been covered by a past version of myself - considering that music magazines often have features about films and things, I figure that if I just make another cover for my fictional magazine I made last year, "Amplified", I can effectively cut down the amount of time spent designing the look of the magazine, and just make a slightly updated version of the cover I made last year. Bit of a cop out, I agree, but considering that time is definitely not on my side concerning this project, the fact that I have something to fall back on is a great timesaver, and one of which I intend to take full advantage of.

Because I didn't go into enough detail in last year's blog, I had to do a bit of guesswork in order to locate the right font I'd used for the magazine last year. However, I eventually found it, and I've set to work on replicating the style I'd come up with last year, but updating it slightly in order to make it feel like the magazine's gone through a number of changes since the one I made in 2011, as well as to indicate that I've gotten a bit better at Photoshop since then. Hopefully.

The font style is "Gill Sans MT", in case there's a future version of me trawling through my old blogs desperately trying to locate the type of font I used in these two magazines. I've learnt from my mistakes.

I also decided to change the title to "AmpliFILM", in order to give the impression that it's still related to the old music magazine, but is focussed on films rather than music, and is made by the same people who made Amplifier. It's not the greatest idea in the world, but it means it looks more like a film magazine than one for music that was paid to advertise a film they didn't particularly like or whatever.

The Final Poster Ideas Thing Blog Post Yeah

I decided against going with the idea of a poker-themed poster. My basis for this is that chances are, if the poster looks too poker-orientated, then people going to see the film would be expecting a kind of “21” style film, with poker being the main theme behind the film, when in reality, the idea is of gangsters, guns, violence and crime. Poker takes up a relatively small part of the storyline and is only actually played once, instead of something like, say, Casino Royale, where poker is played at several points in the film, despite it being primarily a spy film, and thus the poker theme is warranted (the film is named after the casino the poker games take place at, for instance).

Instead, I decided to hark back to the original basis for the film, and attempted to imitate an old-style, Pulp Fiction-like poster, heavily influenced by the bright colours on a dark background style of the original Pulp Fiction poster, with similar fonts and words adorning the poster. The poster also looks very aged, as if it is from a magazine or something similar, perhaps the front of a magazine actually entitled “Pulp Fiction”, with details such as a small circle advertising the fact that the “magazine” is actually 10 cents. Another effect is that the poster seems to be ripped slightly, which is an idea I tried incorporating into my own poster.

The photos used are vastly different, using photos of the two main characters for my poster rather than in the Pulp Fiction poster, where most of the advertising is of Uma Thurman, despite the fact that she isn’t present for the entire movie and in fact spends most of it either being waited on by one of the more interesting characters or almost dying after overdosing on heroin.

Instead, I took inspiration from a Reservoir Dogs film poster, with the image of the main characters, the gangsters, standing at angles above the title of the film. This was as far as the references went, as I thought I’d found “inspiration” enough from the Pulp Fiction poster, and if I ripped off the Reservoir Dogs poster as well I might as well just copy and paste one of the posters over.

That’s not to say I don’t like the films. I do, quite a lot, hence why I pressed so hard in the planning stages for it to be similar to Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs, as well as the British equivalents such as Snatch, Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Layer Cake.

But yeah, the poster, when finished, will more than resemble the Pulp Fiction poster, as it will not only appeal to fans of the film, but will also hopefully attract a wider audience than those who simply like films about poker, instead attracting fans of the crime and action genres as well.

My decision to use a picture of a cityscape in the background that is quite obviously from London was also in mind of attracting an audience, driving the point home that this is a film that takes place in the UK rather than somewhere in the US, which would hopefully attract fans of films such as Lock Stock and other UK gangster films mentioned previously.

Altogether, hopefully the finished poster will be eyecatching and will attract fans of films such as Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs, as well as fans of British gangster films as well.

Ideas for the poster – aka, “Poster Ideas”

For the task following our film trailer, we have to design a film poster, and either a web page or a front cover for a film magazine featuring our film. Most of us have elected to do a front cover, since that’s a part of what we did last year, and will therefore be easier to do than a web page (of which many of us have little to no experience in doing). But first, the poster.

At the same time as I’m doing the poster design and ideas and whatnot, I’m also writing up an evaluation of the finished film trailer. However, since the film trailer is not entirely finished (the first draft of it is done, but we’re currently re-cutting it and adding other details in order to make it fit the time constraints and certain other conventions including the name of the studio behind the film), and until then I won’t be able to provide a proper evaluation. So until then, I’m working on getting the other tasks out of the way.

The first stage of doing this is obviously the planning. Instead of doing sketches with a pencil and pen, I instead spent a little while just messing around in MS Paint to come up with some basic ideas. They all had a similar theme – based around the image of playing cards, with a white background and colours mostly limited to either red or black, with a few of the main characters in the foreground, and the name of the film also visible in an eye-catching area of the poster, differing from poster to poster depending on the imagery in them.

The playing card symbols (spades, clubs, diamonds and hearts) are also important, as they are easily recognisable symbols and have obvious connotations with the act of gambling, and also mean that the actual image of a playing card is not needed in order to draw attention of the intended audience towards the central theme of gambling.

The fact of the matter is, however, that the ideas I’ve got so far are just that – ideas – and I still don’t know exactly what the final poster will look like. This is kind of a big deal, considering I don’t really have a lot of time to get it done. Well, I don’t have a lot of time to a) come up with an idea, b) relearn how to use Photoshop, c) get the photos I need, and then d) actually make a poster and magazine cover advertising a film that doesn’t exist.

The Trailer

Shooting the Film Trailer

With the planning done, I worked on a couple of variations on the script until I had one that I was happy with, and not long after that it was time to shoot the trailer. We planned out the first three days of filming, but the last quarter of the trailer was still to be planned as we could only find three days in the same week where we were all together without anything else getting in the way.

On the first day, we decided to do the interrogation scene. This was going to be the last scene of the trailer, but it seemed like a relatively easy scene to shoot, so we decided to do that one first. We didn't really have any problems except for the window in the room we chose to shoot the scene in didn't have a curtain, which meant that there was no easy way of stopping the light from getting into the room, which kind of went against the idea of the room being completely dark until the antagonist turned the light on. We overcame this by just piling up bags in front of the window to block the light. Other than that, we didn't have any serious problems, and the filming went ahead as planned.

On the second day of filming, we planned to do the opening scene and the confrontation between the protagonist and the antagonist, since the antagonist and the protagonist were in both scenes, and there was only one additional actor required. Since these scenes were to be shot after dark, we had to wait until the end of school, and them some - but since the school closed at six o'clock, we had to work fast. The only problem that came up was that the protagonist and the antagonist were both wearing the same clothes in both scenes, despite the fact that the two scenes were supposed to happen on completely different days. While we figured that most people probably wouldn't notice this, we decided to make sure that the characters looked like they were wearing different clothes - I lent one of the characters my jacket, and the other turned their coat inside out so it looked like a different piece of clothing. It wasn't exactly ideal, but you couldn't tell when watching the footage back, so we figured it'd look fine in the finished trailer.

Day three of filming was the day where we decided to do the more technical scene - the poker scene. This would be, we thought, the most difficult scene to shoot, so we went a little overboard with the planning to make sure nothing went wrong. We also gave ourselves a whole day in which to get everything ready and shoot the scene. We put together a relatively realistic looking poker table by putting together a few tables and a large green cloth that we borrowed from the textiles department, and the actors were all ready in time to start filming. In the end, the planning and preparation was worth it, and we shot the scene with pretty much no hassle. I'm pretty sure that if we'd decided to shoot the scene on the first day instead of the third, we'd have encountered a lot of problems, but since we left it until day three and had experience from the previous two days of filming, it went by pretty smoothly.

The fourth day of filming happened a week after the last day of filming, as we had to find a day where we were all ready to film and didn't have anything else in the way. Thankfully, this day consisted of the crime scenes we'd have in the montage, and the filming went by relatively smoothly. A different member of the group directed these scenes, but since it was a montage, we thought that it wouldn't be too difficult to make them fit in with the other scenes and decided we'd risk it. The scenes themselves were technically very easy to shoot, not really requiring more than three or four different camera angles, except for the bank robbery scene, where I had to act as a bank robber with a plastic shotgun (the way that the scene is edited, you barely see me anyway, so I'm cool with that). Like the day of the poker scene, we filmed everything with basically no problems at all.

After all the scenes were filmed, we had to edit it together. The first version of the trailer was put together quickly as a kind of proof-of-concept type deal, but was obviously not well edited enough to be our final product. For one thing, the timing was off, with characters appearing to instantaneously move across the screen when a camera angle was supposed to change, and we accidentally used footage we'd intended to scrap rather than the actual takes that we were happy with. Instead of going back and making changes, we simply scrapped the whole thing and edited it again.

There were still a couple of things we hadn't decided on, as we had decided to wait until the footage was almost edited together into a final draft until we decided on a couple of important things. The first was the song we were going to use as a soundtrack. After watching the trailer back, we decided that the song "POWER" by Kanye West would suit. Although I'm not particularly fond of West's music, I do have to admit that I like the song, and it definitely fits with the themes of our film trailer - the whole idea of the protagonist rising up to gain more and more power and wealth until it eventually comes around to bite him and he ends up in more trouble than he'd anticipated, etcetera. After we'd picked this song, we went back and did a little more editing to make some of the cuts and the scenes suit the changes in the music.

The last thing that we had to decide on was a pretty big decision - we had to come up with a name for the film the trailer was for. We'd decided to leave this decision until the end as we decided it'd be easier to make the product and then find a name that summed up what the trailer was about, than make up a name and then build a trailer around that name. We got together for a brainstorming session (well, two of us did - the third didn't actually show up) and took advantage of a whiteboard in one of the Sixth Form's rooms to write down ideas. Eventually we came up with several ideas, but the title for the film was sent to us by our absent team member through a text - "Playing With Fire".

We liked this idea a lot, most of all because it sums up the basic idea of what our protagonist goes through, playing dangerously until the tide changes and everything goes wrong, and also because we realised that our protagonist actually uses the phrase (wrongly) during the voiceover. At one stage during the crime montage, the protagonist says "when you play with fire, you get beat" - this is a deliberate misquote, meant to inject a little black humour into the film and make the protagonist seem flippant yet weary of his predicament.

With the title and the end credits basically sorted, the film trailer was finally finished. We were all happy with the way it turned out, and the general feedback from the other actors involved in the production was positive (probably because, well, they were in it, but whatever).

Film trailer scene ideas: Interrogation scene

One scene that a member of our group was eager to implement into the trailer was an interrogation scene. As the main character gradually becomes more and more of an important figure in the criminal underworld, his cousin (and former employer) realises that the main character is making far too much money to just let him go, and resorts to kidnapping him and holding him captive in an unknown location. The main character is tied to a chair, a bag is put over his head, and a member of the cousin's gang guards him as the cousin talks about how the main character is giving him problems.

This scene will require a darkened and plain room, as well as a small selection of props and another actor. The main focus will be on the main character and the cousin, and will involve, at the most, four or five different camera angles, but most likely will only need two or three different angles, as the scene will be relatively short compared to the rest of the trailer, making up around 5 / 10% of the trailer, perhaps less. The camera angles will not have to show the main character actually being tied to the chair, and will therefore only have to pretend to be captive.

Altogether, this scene will perhaps take around fifteen to twenty minutes to shoot, with the dialogue already written and the scene planned out in its entirety. The scene will be at the end of the trailer, before the teaser credits, and will end with a shot of the cousin pointing a gun at the main character's head, ending on a cliffhanger without the sound of a gunshot or anything to indicate what might happen in the actual film.

Of course, there is no actual film and therefore the cliffhanger will never actually be resolved, but that's not the point.*

The scene was originally supposed to be directed by another member of our group, but we realised that the different styles might be evident in the direction and therefore decided to have the same person directing it that had directed the rest of the trailer, in case the scene felt out of place with the other scenes.

Thinking along the lines of symbolism, the scene taking place in a cramped, unknown area will symbolize the feeling of being suffocated by the darkness and the unknown, and also the lost feeling the character will be feeling as well. The scene starting out dark but then brightening as the cover over the main character's face is lifted will be a reference to what the character sees as the veil is lifted, both literally and metaphorically, as he sees where he is and simultaneously realises that the person he trusted before has become his enemy. Essentially, the main character "sees the light" both metaphorically and physically, the veil is lifted, it all becomes clear... That sort of thing.

*In the story, the main character does actually survive, as it turns out that one of the cousin's collegues was actually working with the police the whole time. Spoiler alert. To maintain an air of mystery, however, I won't actually say who it was. Except that it was someone in the first half of the trailer.

Film trailer scene ideas: Poker scene

This scene will probably be the main focus of the entire film trailer. The idea behind this scene will be that the main character, Joel, will be involved in a poker game in which he bets a lot of money and ends up losing everything.

The poker game will be between Joel and a group of crime bosses. The crime bosses will be made up of different actors wearing clothes that look fairly business-esque, much like CEOs of companies or something, but obviously these will be wealthy leaders of crime syndicates or similar. They will be reasonably wealthy-looking, with their phones out on the table, and a stack of chips in front of them all. The direction for these actors will be fairly simple - they don't actually speak throughout the poker game, and instead just look vaguely menacing in front of our fairly innocent protagonist. The protagonist, at the same time, will look ridiculously out of place, wearing just a shirt and a hoodie.

We've decided try and find a way to make the poker table green, in order to make it look as genuine as possible, and we'll also have a lamp in the middle to act as the only light source; the rest of the room will be shrouded in darkness (unless it makes filming the scene difficult or impossible).

The only place we have access to that is simultaneously big enough to hold a poker table, yet has enough room to have the rest of the room shrouded in darkness, would be the study room in the St Marks Sixth Form block. To have it dark enough would also mean that we'd have to shoot at night, which means that we have to wait behind after school with the rest of the crew until we can film. This is fairly manageable, and with some luck we should be able to film the entire scene in one night. There's not much to it - a few different camera angles, close-ups of the crime bosses, and the cards that they have. No dialogue at all is necessary, and it should all be done reasonably quickly.

The poker table completely set up, with props and a few of the actors

Film Trailer Proposal Or Something

With the analysis out of the way, we got into our groups and started working on what we were going to do for our own film trailer. We did have the choice of either making a documentary or a music video for our final piece, but we all decided that having done the work on Film Trailers more recently, as well as having already done a music video and finding documentaries downright boring to make, we decided that making a film trailer for a fictional film would be the best course of action.

After a short brainstorming session, we had decided on a basic outline of the story of our film - a young man, Joel, would go to his cousin, a psychotic drug dealer, and tell him that he didn't have the money to afford University. His cousin would enter him into a poker game, which Joel would then lose after betting all the money that his cousin lent him. In an effort to pay off the debt, Joel would commit several crimes and eventually end up becoming so good at criminal work that he'd begin to work for his cousin full time. After being given a job with a rival crime boss, Joel's cousin would be uncomfortable with the thought of Joel working with anyone other than himself, as Joel had been making him a lot of money. Joel's cousin would kidnap Joel, hold him captive in a place far away from anywhere else, and either interrogate him, employ him, or shoot him. By that point we hadn't thought of an ending, and decided to just end the trailer with a cliffhanger as Joel is held at gunpoint by his cousin.

This was the basic idea we had for our film trailer. We decided that we'd try and inform the audience of the basic plot, considering that we'd been too vague concerning the fate of the protagonist in our music video and wanted to make sure that the audience knew enough of what was going on as far as the plot of our fake film was concerned. Since it was a realistic action / crime oriented fim, we'd have to make sure it was realistic to the point where it wasn't too far-fetched, which meant that we'd have to make sure the props and sets we used were at least halfway passable as possible locations for the scenes we were shooting to occur in. We knew it'd be difficult to make our scenes look like we wanted them to, considering that we'd only really be able to shoot at locations around the school, as the school would obviously be an easy place for us to organise ourselves and meet up with everyone we needed to make the trailer, including the various actors we'd need to make the film (we figured it'd be easier to have a lot of actors than to just have the three people in our group somehow do all the roles).

The genre of the film would be action / crime, but we'd only have flashes of action, with most of the content of the trailer being on the crime angle of the film. This would not only make the production of the trailer much easier, but also mean that it would be obvious that the focus was on crime rather than the usual "good vs evil" idea of action films.

Had we been making a film trailer for an actual film, we would've been making it for distribution in multiplex cinemas, before a similar film was shown, and also through internet mediums such as YouTube. The film would be aimed at ages 18 and up, due to the level of violence, the perceived "glorification" of firearms, and the dealing of illegal substances. Gambling would also make up a large part of the plot, contributing to the 18 rating. As far as marketing is concerned, none of us involved are particularly well-known like Ridley Scott or Quentin Tarantino, and we won't be using any particularly famous actors, so we'll be giving the illusion that we're famous by having the names of the main actors flashing up quickly at the end of the trailer. We would've referred to our music video by claiming the film was "From the director of 'Raindrops'", but we agreed that it might be a bit corny so in the end we decided not to.

Analysis of a Film Trailer - Prometheus

Analysis of a Film Trailer: Prometheus

With the Documentary finished, we moved swiftly onto our next area of study - film trailers. We began by picking a film trailer that we were interested in and analysing it, picking out what made it interesting and therefore marketable.

The film trailer I decided to analyse was the trailer for the new Ridley Scott movie, Prometheus.

The title of the film is revealed at the end of the trailer.

Essentially, Prometheus takes place in the same universe as the Alien films, but set before the events in the film occur. Created by the director of the first Alien film, the film explores some of the mysteries surrounding the original film, and this is how it generates intrigue and attracts fans of the original Alien films, whilst also defying many usual film trailer conventions in order to stimulate some kind of curiosity in others who are perhaps not fans of the Alien films, or perhaps have never seen the Alien films at all.

Marine Corps technology, similar to the tech in the second film.

However, it's obvious from the many subtle references and general themes that this will be a film aimed primarily at fans of the old films. The title, first of all, gradually comes into view, with parts of the letters fading in one at a time, in the same way that the title to the original Alien film does. In fact, it does this in such a way that you could be forgiven for thinking that the word that forms at the end would turn out to be "Alien" or something similar, until you realise how many letters are actually forming.

The way the title forms is remarkably similar to the way the title forms in the original Alien films.

Another subtle reference is that, after a few seconds of panicked, unintelligible dialogue, where the actress refers to something being "old, so old", and desperately gasps that she's "sorry," the rest of the trailer has no dialogue at all, and instead simply has the actors either screaming or silent. The soundtrack to the trailer also consists primarily of instruments that sound like a human screaming. It can also be linked to the insanely recogniseable music in the Alien films, in particular to an unnerving track that sounds like the echoing of something lightly tapping the surface of some kind of artificial material. Subtle, but obvious to a fan of the series. These could all be seen as references to the original tagline to the first Alien film - "In space, no one can hear you scream."

A bunch of innocent urns? We all know these are EXACTLY like the eggs in Alien.

Other references to the original Alien films can be seen in the technology - very retro, very much "bright lights and big buttons", as seen in the original films. This extends to a view of cryostasis pods from the original films, and the military hardware seen being driven out of a garage-type area, which look remarkably similar to the vehicles used by the Marine Corps in the second Alien film, Aliens. Another visual connection is the image of a man screaming and clutching his face, which, although covered by a space helmet, seems to be damaged - a reference to the Facehugger of the first film, which attaches itself onto the face of a member of the crew despite the glass casing of their helmet. This is seen directly after a scene of a huge roomfilled with urn-type objects that greatly resemble Alien eggs.

"MY FAAAACE!"

However, the biggest connection to the original Alien film is a sight that is perhaps the biggest mystery in the Alien films entirely - the Space Jockey ship. This iconic spacecraft is seen twice in the Alien films - first at the beginning of Alien, when the crew where the heroine Ripley pick up a strange signal and go to investigate, finding the ship and accidentally becoming exposed to a Facehugger after finding the eggs in the ship, and a second time in the second film, Aliens, where a member of the human colony on the planet from the first film is sent to investigate the coordinates sent to them after Ripley defends her decision to destroy the ship she was on in order to kill the Alien.

Aww yeah, retro technology for the win.

As you can probably tell, this ship is awfully important to the entire storyline of the Alien films, but the fact of the matter is that the films have thusfar been VERY vague about the origins and history of this ship.

omg it's the space jockey ship

And then the trailer for Prometheus appeared.

Showing the Space Jockey ship in the trailer was obviously a decision made on behalf of the director in order to generate the buzz needed to market his film to the correct audience. Though the editing in the trailer is very quick, a few images are easy to pick out, including the seat the original Space Jockey is seen in from the original Alien film. This Jockey was found with it's chest burst. We never saw where the Alien went after it presumably hatched out of the Jockey. Hmmm.

omg it's the seat the space jockey was in

We see the ship crash.

Oh Jesus Christ it's crashing and there are explosions and this can't be good.

And this isn't a small ship either.

"RUNNING RUNNING RUNNING RUNNING RUNNING RUNNING"

This trailer, when it was released, would've probably been the most exciting thing an Alien fan would have seen in many, many years. Sure, Avatar was directed by the director of Aliens, but as far as anyone could tell, it was set in a completely different fictional universe. This film is obviously set in the same one, before the events of the first film, directed by the director of the first film, and explores the mysteries of the film sagas. It even involves actors that resemble the Seargant of the Marine Corps in Aliens and Ripley, the main character of the films. Perhaps the film will unveil the origin of the Alien species? Perhaps Hadley's Hope, the planet the aliens are found on, houses more mysteries than first thought?

As well as this, towards the end of the trailer, the words

"They went looking for our beginning. What they found might be our end."

are shown. Which are fairly interesting. Fans of the Alien series will know that humans do in fact survive afterwards, but that's not the point. It's not the destination, but the journey, that counts when it comes to these films. And from the looks of the trailer, the journey is gonna be a great one.

Documentary Stuff And Things - Finishing The Documentary

Because of the previous problems we'd encountered, the editing process took considerably longer than expected. The footage we had shot was much more basic that the footage we'd hoped to shoot, and the script had to be adjusted to fit the video on screen. Fortunately we had enough footage to make the entire documentary, and we didn't have to go out and capture more footage or anything like that.

Farai would be the one editing this one, despite the fact that he had only used the program maybe once or twice before. However, once he understood the basic principles of using the program, the editing was a fairly quick process. The only problem we encountered in the editing was that, for some odd reason, the images the others had taken on their phones would appear upside down. The process we used to turn them the right way around was fairly inconvenient, so we eventually ended up just not using as many stills as we had originally planned.

Due to the problems we'd had with filming, we were very much pressed for time, and as the deadline approached, we ended up rushing the final product. This gave it a very rough feel, something that wouldn't have happened if we'd perhaps managed our time a little better than we had done.

The documentary was eventually finished on time, and the entire process did teach me some valuable skills I'd need if we were to make any progress in the future, including time management and methods of pre-production planning.

Documentary Stuff And Things - Shooting Problems

As far as I can tell, our group had problems with shooting the documentary right from the start. Firstly, the camera our group was using had also been used by the other Media class, but hadn't been put away to charge properly. We had approximately one or two minutes of recorded footage before the camera died. The exact same thing happened the next time we were supposed to film, so a large amount of time was spent charging the camera rather than actually using it. This single-handedly destroyed our shooting timetable, meaning that we had to improvise and shoot as much as we could as quickly as we could.

Eventually, it was decided to just shoot all the footage we could at the time, and use mobile phones to capture and images we would need to use in the documentary. However, another problem arose - our group was apparently told that filming footage and taking pictures was prohibited inside the Harvey Centre - despite it being a designated public place, and it therefore being completely legal to film footage inside - which meant that the vast majority of our footage was from outside the Harvey Centre, on the High Street, and around the Water Gardens. This in itself wasn't much of a problem, but it did mean that the documentary would lack the variety that we'd hoped to inject with the usage of footage from within the Harvey Centre.

It could have been worse, though.

Documentary Stuff And Things - Research and Planning

Of course, we weren't going to gain a great understanding of the conventions of modern documentaries from only watching one. In fact, "One Day in September" was very different from any documentaries we'd seen in the past, but it was because it was so different that it would be easy for us to pick out any similarities we saw while comparing it to other documentaries. We all went away and watched a variety of different documentaries - mostly nature documentaries, since they were the most widely available and easiest to find, but there were a few variations of subject (Farai, a member of my group, watched a wide array of astronomy documentaries, for example - his blog is located at http://www.blaquamana2.blogspot.com/ ) - and looked closely at how they presented information in an educational, yet entertaining manner.

The main point of this was to see how we could incorporate the basic ideas seen in most good documentaries and apply it to our own. While all the documentaries we saw focussed on vastly different subjects, they all incorporated the same basic principles such as voiceovers and visual elements that we thought would be easy to replicate at a basic level, once we fully understood them. Camera angles, voiceovers, text - all were vastly different from the conventions of music videos that we'd studied, so research into the basic documentary theories (as well as a lot of planning) was necessary in order to produce a half decent documentary.

The planning process took quite a while, but eventually we had a basic idea of what we wanted to do, as well as a rough script and a shooting schedule. We all did small, rough plans, covering different parts of the documentary, before eventually having the final plan written up in one book to keep things organised.

With the research and planning stages done, it was just a matter of shooting and editing the footage together. We were still doing a lot of work in lessons, so we decided to shoot the documentary outside of lessons, where we wouldn't be constrained by time restrictions. At least, not as constrained as if we had an hour to walk to the town centre, shoot the footage we needed, and walk back before the lesson ended.

The other members of my group decided to do it as soon as possible, so we would have all the time we needed to edit the video and get it in before the deadline - however, this meant that for the most part, I would not be on location to assist with the shooting, due to differences in timetables. However, as I mentioned before, this wasn't a great catastrophe, as it had been said from the start that I had had a large part in the production of the music video, and therefore it would make sense for someone else to have a go at directing when it came to the documentary.