COMPULSARY QUESTION 4: how did you use new media technologies in the construction, planning and evaluation stages?

- youtube (700 views on trailer) (audience feedbacks) (compulsary questions)
- phone cameras/video (pictures of locations, characters, props etc)
- apps (blogger app for iphone)
- camera (high definition, good quality) (movie footage, audience feedbacks, film pitch)
- Imacs
- Imovie (allowed us to share trailer onto youtube) (edit camera footage- transitions, voice-overs, contrast)
- Itunes (music soundtrack, held all potential music soundtracks in libary)
- photoshop (character photoshoot for magazine front cover and poster)

COMPULSARY QUESTION 3: what have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Our audience feedback was exceptional and helped to push us in the right directions. The feedback given to us allowed us to create new ideas, follow suggestions, edit current ideas and I think it made a substantial difference through listening to other people's opinions.

We used several types of schemes that allowed us to receive audience feedback, these schemes were:

• Film questionnaire
• Audience interviews on film poster
• audience interviews on film magazine front cover 
• Film pitch Q & A

Each of these schemes were useful and allowed us to receive a wide range of opinions from not only from our target audience but also from other group members who provided us with their on media views and experiences. 

We asked our audiences different questions about different film categories. I have included categories spoken about with our audiences and how I valued their opinions and how they valued our trailer and projects:

GENRE

When confronting our audiences about genre, the feedback was extremely positive and allowed us as a group to know we were on the right track. When asking people to try and recognise our genre by looking at our projects E.G. film poster and magazine front cover, they were able to identify all three of the genres included (gangster/thriller/social-realism). This allowed us to know that we were creating the right images for the correct representation. 

WHAT THEY LIKED 

The main aspect that was liked about our trailer and projects was the 'cliff-hanger' effects and the progression of tension throughout. I personally feel we did well to create tension in our trailer and keep our viewers on the edge. 

WHAT THEY DIDN'T LIKE

We found that the preferred viewers of our film were male-dominated. Females tended to dislike the use of weapons and violence and that the use of curse words in the voice-over were 'cheesy'. Some feedback also commented on the way females were portrayed in the movie, some comments stated that Ruby was seen as an 'object' and that a lack of female power was represented. Our trailer does portray women as vulnerable but that was the only way possible we could create a kidnapping scene of a gangster's deepest love. 

WHAT TYPE OF CINEMA

Our personal opinion did not necessarily tie in with our audience feedback seeing as the majority of results suggested that they would expect to see our film in a 'multiplex' cinema E.G. cineworld. This is probably due to our commercial genre types of thriller/gangster and expensive props. We decided that our film would most likely start off at an independent cinema such as 'broadway' and eventually make it's way up to multiplex. We came to this conclusion by bearing the social-realism aspects in mind. 

WOULD YOU BUY IT ON DVD

Besides one person, everybody said that they would buy it on DVD. seeing as all the feedback for this section was anonymous, we are pleased with the honest results and feel as though we have created a great teaser trailer.

COMPULSORY QUESTION 2: how effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tasks?

As you may well know, creating a film or movie teaser trailer requires promotion. The teaser trailer being the main task and the ancillary tasks being forms of promotion. The combination of the main task with the ancillary task is a film being promoted by its promotion schemes.





As you can see from the above images, both the poster and the magazine front cover work in-sync with one another; both of the products work to portray the same codes and conventions. Both of the products contain  the same colour scheme because these colours connote the gangster genre through the use of RED, BLACK & white. Red is used to connote danger and love whereas black is used to connote evil and darkness. Both products allow an audience to know that our film is based mainly around an independent man who will clearly be facing some concerns. These assumptions are readable through facial expression and use of log lines. I think by keeping both images extremely similar to each other we have created two effective products that would interest audiences who enjoy gangster/thriller/social-realism genres. The images used interest a reader enough by including correct iconography and the use of enigma codes E.G. suit and tie, the gun; I also think we have done well enough to not give anything a way and leaving our target audience thrilled but wishing to see more.

DISTRIBUTING OUR FILM

Although our film is only a trailer, if we were to make it into a feature length film we would need to decide just where we would distribute it. The most obvious place to distribute it would be any UK film festivals, this is because it is such a common place for independent british films to be distrubuted and recognised.

Any of the following UK festivals would be most relevant for our film:

 

QUESTIONAIRE RESULTS

Before producing our film we ran a questionaire which would help us understand what our audience would be looking for within our film. The questionaire has been added to my blog already a few posts back and this is simply a blog dedicated to show you the results for the questions asked. Below are pie chart graphs to give you clear indication!

TOMMY GUN PRODUCTIONS CAST & CREW

This is all who taken part in our film. We appreciated everyones time and efforts in the time of making this teaser trailer, we couldn't of done it without you! From Tommy Gun productions.

(From left to right)

Ivana Babicova, Michael Foreman, James Noble, Tom Teece(me) & Alice Kerry.

AUDIENCE INTERVIEWS ON FILM FILM OUR FILM POSTER

Questions  such as 'can you spot the genre' and 'how do you portray the main character in this poster' were used to see if people could identify the aspects of our creations. The fact that our codes and conventions were recognised means we have done well to create a successful film poster and film. Our projects are all easily identifiable.

AUDIENCE INTERVIEWS AND FEEDBACK ON MAGAZINE FRONT COVER

This is the link to the audience interviews and feedback for our magazine front cover.

In this we asked different people questions about the magazine such as 'Do you know what this is?' and from this we could see if we suitably got the conventions of the magazine correct, from an outside perspective.

Doing this really helped us realise what we did good about the magazine, and also what we could of improved on. 
 

FILM STORYBOARD

• As you know, every film is not just created on the spot. Each film has a set of guidelines and steps which are thought through separately and placed into the best order. As a group we devised a story board which would allow us to follow a structure of ideas that conjured up our film trailer. 
• A lot of storyboards are illustrated through drawings or created through the use of similar imagery to the images used in the film/trailer. Our story board has been created through the use of still images taken from our actual trailer because it has a realistic effect and makes our storyboard relevant to our trailer. 
• Once we shot all our necessary footage, I then created still images of all the shots we thought were best and intended to use and put them in sequence order. By doing this we could then follow a storyboard guideline in the editing room and it gave us a clear head start. Below is several images of our storyboard:

WHAT YOU HAVE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR...

Although the blogging isn't finished, the teaser trailer is! We have now edited and produced our 'SNATCHED' movie teaser trailer. Be prepared to hold onto your seats as you watch our gangster/thriller teaser trailer! linking together the genres of gangster, thriller and social realism we have created the one of its kind teaser trailer:

SNATCHED MAGAZINE FRONT COVER ANALYSIS

After creating the magazine film cover, i have analysed the main aspects to give you a brief description of what was included and why it was included. Hopefully through my descriptions you can understand why everything was used and how the aspects work to attract all types of film lovers who have an interest in today's movie news:

OUR FILM MAGAZINE FRONT COVER AND CREATION PROCESS

Our magazine front cover has now been created and i have attached the creation stages below just to give you an insight into how the cover was created. Each step adds a different aspect and effect to the overall image which helps create a detailed design of what a film magazine front cover should like like in order to attract the correct target audience:

STAGE 1:

 1. Raw photo


















STAGE 2:

2. Adjusted colours, brightness and contrast to make the photo darker and the light stand out more















STAGE 3:

3. Added bar code
















STAGE 4:

4. The name of the magazine added – Font Arial Heavy, font size 1000px















STAGE 5:


5. The title moved behind an object (head), using the selecting tool to create an extra layer of the main object (Michael) and moving the ‘FILM’ layer behind the main objects layer.















STAGE 6:

6. Website, issue and price added – Font Impact Condensed, font size 75px
















STAGE 7:

7.  Sell line in a circle, use of different fonts, and colours to make the name of the film stand out. Shadow dropped on ‘Redemption’ and the circle















STAGE 8:



 8.  Titles added and shadows dropped to make it look professional, the colours are matching the main films colours
















STAGE 9:

9.  Main title added, font is bigger (more catchy), no shadow dropped to make it different from the rest of the titles.
















STAGE 10:


10. An Oscar trophy added next to main title – relates to main title

COMPULSORY QUESTION 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media?

MUSIC FOR SOUNDTRACK

Researching online has allowed us to stumble across several websites with free music sountracks. After using the 'garageband' application on the iMac, we decided that this application wasn't siutable for us, we then came across www.freemusicplay.com . This website provided us without a variety of soundtracks that we took an interest in. After playing the soundtracks against our trailer, we picked the one we thought most suitable.

The following link will take you to the webpage which will allow you to preview our music soundtrack: http://freeplaymusic.com/search/keyword_search.php

This sound track had been created to build tension; although the whole beat has a 'racey' vibe, it starts mellow and gradually increases in volume and speed. The gradual increase suits our trailer because our trailer also increases in speed and tension. As our trailer progresses, the transisitions become shorter and the clips become quicker and snappier to create a similar 'racey' effect just like the music. The music will help emphasise the tension in our trailer and will work to create that hear-racing affect for the audience as the scenes become more action filled.

Here is the iMovie application which we use to edit our film. The green section is the our soundtrack which we have applied over 3/4s of our trailer; we have not paplied it from the very beginning because it does not suit our mellow start. The sound waves included in the green section allow us to adjsut our volume of the music, this came in handy because some of the clips include diegetic sound that we wish to hear in the trailer; for example, when Johnny is on the phone we want to hear what he is saying, therefore we turn the music lower and make his voice louder.

This is the iTunes library that we strored all the interesting soundtracks on, this way we could simply flick through tracks and play them against different parts of our trailer to see if they work correctly to create the correct mixture of image and sound to interest our audience and make most effective.

DIRECTORIAL INFLUENCES

Below is simply a list of directorial influences that have helped me create my own gangster genre ideas/codes/conventions based on their own work. There are many gangster films but the greatest ones stand out by a mile and are recognised by people all over the world. These films are so great because they have been created by some of the world's greatest directors. Here are the ones i personally researched and show an interest in:

1. Brian De Palma (most famous work: scarface, mission impossible, the untouchables)


Brian Russell De Palma (born September 11, 1940) is an American film director and writer. In a career spanning over 40 years, he is probably best known for his suspense and crime thriller films, including such box office successes as the horror film Carrie, Dressed to Kill, Scarface, The Untouchables, and Mission: Impossible.

2. Francis Ford Coppola (most famous work: The godfather sequel, patton)

Francis Ford Coppola, born April 7, 1939 is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. He is widely acclaimed as one of Hollywood's most innovative and influential film directors and he epitomized the group of filmmakers known as the New Hollywood, that includes Martin Scorsese, Terrence Malick, Robert Altman, Woody Allen, William Friedkin, Philip Kaufman and George Lucas, who emerged in the early 1970s with unconventional ideas that challenged contemporary film-making.

3. Guy Ritchie (most famous work: lock, stock and two smoking barrels, Snatch, Sherlock Holmes and  Rocknrolla)

Guy Stuart Ritchie (born 10 September 1968) is an English screenwriter, film director and producer, best known for directing Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Snatch, Swept Away, Revolver, RocknRolla, Sherlock Holmes and Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows.

THE SCRIPT

Our teaser trailer footage is now complete and has been sequenced correctly using iMovie. We have also added in all our transitions and adjusted colour contrasting to make our trailer flow correctly. the final adjustment is to create the voice-over and input the recording over our trailer but at the same time we must match the recordings to the correct scenes. Below is the script that we have created that we think will help emphasise our trailer and help create gangster conventions. The voice-over helps to tell our story and gives describes each scene to prevent confusion for the audience. We have decided to use Johnny for the voice over because the stroyline is from his point of view. Below is the script for the voice-over:

"As far back as i can remember, I've always wanted to be a gangster."
(used over the beginning lake scene)

"Mansion, beautiful wife... and the money."
(used over the mansion, wife and money scenes)

"With the money, come the problems."
(used over the first scene of Ben waking up in bed)

"When people owe me money, i expect it back... sharpish."
(used over the scene of Ben lighting a cigarette and the following scene of him checking his phone)

"Me and Mickey run a firm business, and we do not tolerate fuck-ups"
(used over the scene of Johnny and Mickey at the lake and the scenes of them getting out of the car)

"Noone has ever been stupid enough to double cross me."
(used over the beginning kidnapping scenes of Ben and Aaron creeping up on Ruby)

"and involving my family, could be life-threatening for them."
(used over the actual kidnapping scenes)

"Noone will ever double cross me and get away with it!"
(used over the final kidnapping scenes and the phonecall scenes between Ben and Johnny)

"Being a gangster is not just a job, it's a way of life..."
(used over the final movie scenes of Johnny and Mickey approaching Ben and Aaron with Ruby hostage)


Below is a quick analysis of the voice-over options provided by iMovie, I have simply identified to key aspects which allowed us to create and adjust our voice-over:

FILM POSTER STAGES:

Below is step by step stages of the order we created our film poster and how each step brigns a different aspect to the poster:

STAGE 1:

1. (pic ‘p1’) raw photo on a black A3 format background

STAGE 2:

2. (pic ‘p2’) Billing block added using various font sizes + the production company logo, website and age restriction added

STAGE 3:

3. (pic ‘p3’) release date added in red

STAGE 4:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

4. (pic ‘p4’) main title added, bigger font size (easy to notice) colour matches release date

STAGE 5:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

5. (pic ‘p5’) age restriction added

STAGE 6:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

6. (pic ‘p6) colour, brightness and contrast adjusted, image size extended and blended into background + tag line added

 

 

 

 

 

MAGAZINE FRONT COVER ANALYSIS

After finishing with the film poster section i have decided to start analysing magazine front covers. Here is one i have done today after researching online and viewing other analysed covers. I have tried to include as much infomation as possible that i think is useful when creating a front cover:

ANALYSING SNATCHED FILM POSTER

After analysing several other film posters, i finally managed to analyse our own. I have tried to describe every step we made whilst creating the poster and also give you the reasons for doing what we have done. I feel our poster is an excellent design and would attract our intended target audience:

ANLAYSING FILM POSTERS

This post was created before the creation of our film poster but it was drafted because i wanted to create several examples of analysed film posters before uploading it. Here are the film posters that i analysed to which helped me get an underdstanding of how ours should be created:


Poster 1 (Batman- the dark knight rises)

 



 

POSTER 2: (Adjustment Bureau)

 FILM POSTER 3: (Red Sonja)