Evaluation Question 1

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

Evaluation Question 2

Evaluation Question 3

Evaluation Question 4

Kitchen Sink

Kitchen Sink - A term which can have multiple interpretations - we read in to be a metaphor to explain the typical conventions of a Social Realism film. The sink being the pristine visible representation to cover up the dirty, grimy scene which actually occurs underneath.

We believe we followed this conception within our story line - giving an insight into what actually might occur for young unprivileged and misfortunate people and family's in todays society.

Iconic Sounds implemented into our Trailer

Within post production we looked at adding accompanying sounds to layer into our trailer in order to compliment certain shots and scenes.

 

The two sounds we felt we could use were the sound of a train passing by at the very beginning of our trailer. In addition, near the end, when the state of equilibrium becomes unsettled, we added a police siren to help represent the connotations of danger and give reason for the characters state of vulnerability and discomfort.

 

we used a sounds similar to the ones below:

 

Narrative Theory

In order for our trailer to feel believable and conventional we followed the guidelines that theorists use to explain a narrative.

A few Theories that I believe we have either conformed to are:

Todorov's theory of Narrative - He believed that all conventional narratives are structured in five stages:

• A state of equilibrium at the outset.
• A disruption of the equilibrium by some action
• A recognition that there has been a disruption
• An attempt to repair the disruption
• A reinstatement of the equilibrium 

This type of narrative structure is a universally implemented framework for many film narratives. Out trailer would mostly conform to this structure however would differ from the general structure in order to create the difficulties and exponential life problems our character faces throughout.

Propp's theory of Narrative - Vladimir Propp studied and critiqued Russian Folks tales. He identified a theory about characters and their actions - He said the typical characters found were:

• The Hero - as character that seeks something
• The villain - who opposes or actively blocks the hero's quest.
• The Donor - who provides an object with "magical" properties
• The Dispatcher - who sends the Hero on his/her quest via a message
• The False Hero - who disrupts the Hero's success by making false claims
• The Helper - who aids the Hero 
• The Princess - acts as the reward for the Hero and the object of the Villain's plots
• Her Father - who acts to reward the Hero for his efforts

 

Most of the characters displayed here can be applied to those within our trailer. The examples may be slightly tenuous however can share the same attributes. for example:

• The Guitar that enables our character to earn her money could be the prop that descends from Propp' character - The Donor
• In our case, Propp's Princess who is saved by the Hero, our main character, is her ill father

 

Facebook Instagram Twitter

F A C E B O O K

Our Facebook page is shown below. I have used the ending images with the title

 I N H E A D L I G H T S

I have used this image as i think that it is professional and simple. it makes a good logo for the film as it shows london at night and blurry, which represents the unseen sight of london, which is the basis of our film. 

T W I T T E R

For our main picture we have use the ending shot of our trailer to match the photo on the Facebook page, i have also made a small simple edit of 3 pictures of our group. I have used this image and the end shot of London as a theme throughout to link them together.
We used the pages to promote our film, and to gain views on our trailer to receive audience feedback.

I N S T A G R A M

Final Poster

 

This is our final poster for our film trailer 'In Headlights'. This is an evolved version of Poster Idea 1 and 4. Overall, we felt this was the most effective poster because of its aesthetic presentation and link to the conclusive promotional package (e.g. Website). Below is a diagram displaying the evolving process of creating our poster.

 



Poster Idea - Illustration (cont.)

Above is our final poster representing our illustration idea. Overall we are pleased with the result and below is a more detailed display of the different elements that brought it together. However, we have decided not to use it our final poster because it does not correspond with the website and lacks any clear relation to our trailer. Furthermore, because of its illustrative style it is a stark contrast to the live-action style, our trailer depicts.

 

 

1.  Firstly we inserted a misty/foggy London image onto a black background on Photoshop

2. We then faded the image to opacity 10%, this would provide depth to our poster

3.Added was a smaller, illustrated cityscape  that was created using the final shot of our trailer as a template and an added glow effect to give the lights a rougher, illustrated style.

4.The illustrated deer was cropped so only the head and neck remained, we decided to d o this because it suited the poster compositionally aswell as providing a more visually impacting display.

 5. The title has been placed as not to interrupt any other elements of the poster, through this the contrast of black and white gives it striking presence, this is effective because it means the viewer is in no doubt of the films title.

6. The actors names were added above the title in the same font by smaller size. This acts as part of the promotional package, for example, if the actors have a large presence in the film industry, this would attract a big audience to the film.

7. At the bottom left awards were added, Cannes: Official Selection and Sundance. Similarly to displaying the actors names, this would act as part of the promotional package of the film. Festivals such as Cannes and Sundance are highly regarded in there review and promotion of films.

8. At the bottom right reviews were added, this again supports the promotion of the film. We included review sites such as Film Review and The Guardian. Both these sites support the type of film we are promoting; low-budget British social realism.

9. Adding the credits at the bottom/centre depicted a professional finish to the poster. Also using the 'Universal' Font; a font used by the vast majority of film posters to display their credits, delineated its relation to the film industry and its purpose as a film poster.

 

 

 

 

 

Final Teaser Trailer - 'In Headlights'

Inspiration for shots

TRAIN SHOT

This close up shot of our main character is used on both our poster and our website. We felt that this shot shows a lot about the film as it shows the main character and that she is on a journey. This shot is similar to the shot in Birdys music video for 'People Help The People.' The close up shot allows the audience to connect with the character and see the emotion of the character and we felt it was really effective in our trailer.

TRACKING SHOT

 The tracking shots in our trailer were influenced from the film 'Fish Tank'. We took inspiration from this film because it is a film of the same genre and we liked the look and feel of this film. We also felt that this look was achievable as it was not a high budget film. In the film tracking shots of the main character are used frequently to emphasize that the viewers are following the characters story, which is one of the reasons we used this shot. It also means that the audience are 'behind' the character during these shots and this makes the character seem vulnerable and helps the audience to feel sympathetic towards this character.

STREET SHOT

 This shot shows that the main character is sleeping rough whilst in London trying to make money to look after her dad. This shot was influenced by the music video for Ed Sheerans 'The A Team'. Both of these shots take the 'Rule of Thirds' into consideration in the composition as the main characters are placed to one side of the shot. This type of shot allows 'normal' people to be seen walking past, which demonstrates the loneliness and vulnerability of the character.

MAKE-UP SHOT

This shot is inspired by the film 'London to Brighton'. This film was a significant influence to our trailer and helped us to introduce the prostitution storyline to our film. We especially liked this scene from the 'London to Brighton' trailer as it showed that the girl is in distress and trying to wash off her make-up. We felt that this scene was a good climax to both this trailer and our trailer because it showed the emotional effects of their life.

In Headlights - Font Choice

Target Audience

   

The certificate rating for our film would be an 18 because some of our content in our film would not be suitable for below this age because of the prostitution storyline.

An 18 film can contain issues such as:

-Very strong violence

-Frequent strong language

-Strong portrayals of sexual activity

-Scenes of sexual violence

-Strong horror

-Strong blood and gore

-Real sex (in some circumstances)

-Discriminatory language and behaviour 

This would allow our whole film to include any of these aspects which would be appropriate or our social realism film. Having an 18 certificate rating would mean that it would limit our target audience to aged 18 and above. 

Website Comparison

Awards / Festivals / Review Websites

As part of the promotional package of our trailer (website and poster), we have decided to carefully select certain awards, reviewers e.t.c. The ones we select to promote the film need to match to the type of film we are promoting. For example, our film being a low-budget British social realism film would not be suited to a mainstream award ceremony such as The Oscars. 

Awards

Cannes Film Festival, is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films of all genres, including documentaries, from around the world. We decided to use this festival because  it has awarded prizes to films such as the british social realism film 'Fish Tank' (2009). We felt that the award most suited to our film trailer would be the 'Un Certain Regard' because it celebrates young talent.

 

 

Sundance Film Festival is an American independent film festival that takes place in Utah. We decided to use this festival because it celebrated British social realism films such as 'Tyrannosaur' (2011). We decided show in our trailer that film is part of the 'Official Selection' for the festival.

 

 

Review Websites

 



 

The Guardian, a British national daily newspaper review a wide variety of films, with its own production company GuardianFilm and a weekly film review show. As widely read and respected film review paper and website we felt it would be suitable to put it in our trailer and poster.

 

 

Little White Lies, is a bi-monthly, British independent movie magazine. This magazine is a more indie source of film news and culture and we felt that because of its smaller, British status, it would be right for it to celebrate and promote a small, British, amateur film such as 'In Headlights'.

 

Poster Idea - Illustration

We were inspired by TYRANNOSAUR's unique illustrated poster design. The visual metaphor in its poster evokes a poignant motif. The image enforces the titles possible connotations. My initial interpretation of the poster is that the T - Rex under the ground denotes another more dangerous side to the small insignificant, in terms of scale within the poster, man holding ta bunch of roses in the foreground.

Myself and Oliver knew that the idea of a Deer in the headlights was a great metaphor for our trailers story. A girl, out of her comfort zone, stuck in the very apparent series of events which will determine her fate. We also felt that for the background of this potential trailer, a city road could help reiterate the Deer ( being our character ) out of her comfort zone.

Poster Idea 4

I wanted to use a still from this particular shot due to its ability to express the motion of the character.  Naturally being a Close Up shot, it enables the viewer to share the experience with the girl. Within one frame this poster captures a binary opposition that would feature in the film - Country vs City.

I featured both the original scenic landscape in the background of the shot however in addition i placed a still from another shot taken looking out from the train. This shot, featuring the more industrial scenery of our characters journey, captures a sunset; adding to our trailers artistic feel and mentality. This could also serve to give insight into the story of our character - going up in the evening - to earn the money her family in the most unfortunate of circumstances.

In Headlights - First Draft

Titles And Text

Shown here are print screen from a power points I made to show the titles and text I thought we could use in our trailer. I looked at many different other trailer for social realism films and other genres such as drama and found that the titles used in their trailers are as follows.

- Production Company

- From the makers of...

- Names of main actors and actresses

- Quote from magazine etc.

- Name of film

- Credits

This title says the names of the films that we used for our film opening for AS. I don't think we should use this one as they don't relate to the genre we are doing this year as they are all horror or thriller themed.



we have chosen a them of changing the size and capitals of text and words to make them look more interesting on the screen. For these names we have made the first names in small letters and large size to contrast and the surnames in capitals and smaller size.

Here we have used the same technique in the text, using capitals and non-capitals in the same text to create a more interesting piece of text rather than a basic and simple quote. 

The font we have chosen is called Franklin Gothic Book. we decided to use this font because it looks thin and professional, which is the look that we want our trailer to have. Also it fits really well with our end shot which can be seen bellow. 

This is the end shot that has our chosen font have picture on. The test simply reads 

I N  H E A D L I G H T S 

We have spaced out the letter to make the wording look wider, as i would look like this

IN HEADLIGHTS

We preferred the look of the spaced out lettering because it makes it look more cleaner and different, also it looks more modern which portrays London and business, which related to the business she has got into. 

Poster Idea 3

For my poster idea, I decided to use a collage format. This denotes many motifs of the film to the audience, as each image portrays a different element. I was inspired my the 'London to Brighton' poster, it also used a collage effect. However, the poster was titled at an angle, evoking ACTION and fast DRAMA. This was not the response I wanted to create with my poster, so I resulted to keeping it at a horizontal angle. I used a 'Bebas Neue' font for the title and review quotes, I felt it depicted a simplistic but striking presence, drawing the viewer in to question its meaning. I then used a 'Universal Accreditation' font for the film credits. This is a font used across the film industry and helped give my poster a professional look. 

Poster:

Inspiration:

Our Final Website Screenshots

http://271381.wix.com/inheadlights

Here are some screen shorts of our final website. After showing our target audience our draft of our website they gave us constructive criticism in order to improve it. As shown in our prezi, one piece of feedback we got was that it did not match the poster as well as it could. From this feedback we decided to change the background image of the home page to the same image as the poster in order to create consistency throughout our products. Also, from further research into websites we discovered that many film websites did not have the trailer on the home page, they only had a link to it. We felt that this looked more professional and so removed the trailer from the homepage.

Poster Idea 2

For this poster idea I have used a screenshot from the trailer, the original image can be seen below the poster idea. I choose to use this image because it shows a lot about the film. The main actress is the focus of the image which follows the typical conventions of a film poster. From this image you can see that the main actress is a young female who is sleeping on the streets which may lead the audience to question why and it suggests that there is a story behind as to why she is on the streets. There are also people  and traffic lights in the background which shows that she is in a busy place which makes the character seem even more vulnerable. I have included the typical conventions used in a poster, including the title, production credits, release date, awards, actors and a quote.