RESEARCH & PLANNING - Pulp Fiction Poster analysis

Please click to enlarge image.

Lucy :)

RESEARCH & PLANNING - What are the features of a film poster?

Features
Genre
protagonist - main character
title/font and branding e.g. toy story
eye catching straight forward features
invite you to ask questions about the narrative
release date
credits/official details - cast crew - director
producers
tag line

Visual impact
title - prominent and clear
large eye catching images, clearly linked to genre, character, and setting
a tag line - catchy phrase or slogan about the film
name of the studio and production company or logo

DVD poster - often suggests extra features or awards

Teaser poster - released before the release of the film, offers little reference to narrative

Main poster - often dominated by one or two images - including key information, can be altered or changed during the campaign


e.g. the Harry Potter posters...

Lucy :)

EVALUATION - Theories applied to our trailer

Propp – Spheres of action, typical character types make up story line.

Our narrative only shows the hero, villain, princess, however in the trailer we have only shown the villain and the princess. Our narrative roughly fits this theory, however we have a postmodern twist at the end. The traditional hero aims to save the princess from the villain, and he does, but dies in the process.

Claude Levi- Strauss – binary opposites which structure plays and texts.

The theory of opposites applies to our trailer in that we have good and evil represented in the brothers in the story. Also demonstrated in the light and dark of the personalities which is reflected in the transitions in the trailer, which would be shown in the film in more depth. In the trailer we have also represented the female victim as the light/innocent element in the film and the evil character as the dark side, their costumes and lighting reflect this.

Rolande Barthes – reader produces their own meaning expanding the text from their own knowledge.

The theory of mystery/enigma is shown in our trailer through scenes such as the knife clip and also through the title "Runaway". In the trailer the character shows signs of leaving, however we don’t know why she is running away or if she escapes. In our trailer the captions suggest that Eric's character changes but the audience doesn’t know why. He argued that the audience develops their own meaning from the text; this is shown through our trailer in the audiences perception of Eric the “evil character”, and also in the narrative of the film as they are lead to believe through the majority of the film that he is the bad guy.

Todorov – equilibrium, disequilibrium, realisation, attempt at repair, restoration of equilibrium.

Our trailer shows no suggestion of equilibrium, however the actual narrative of the film does. Although it appears that the opposite is shown in the trailer it is just because the clips are mixed up, where as in the film everything starts off fine but goes downhill.

Lucy :)

RESEARCH & PLANNING - Posters Tag Lines

Most posters carry a tag line, as well as revealing something about the narrative a tag line is designed to be catchy and memorable, to stick in the mind of the audience.

Lucy :)

RESEARCH & PLANNING - Tag lines

We have been thinking in our group about tag lines. A tag line is a variant of a branding slogan typically used in marketing materials and advertising. An example of a tag line is for the film Ocean's twelve the tag line is 'Twelve is the new eleven'

I thought has our film is about someone running away a good tag line would be about someone always being one step ahead of the game.
I found this website: http://www.saidwhat.co.uk/keywordquotes/ahead
Here are a few I liked from here: Courage is one step ahead of fear
Quit while you're ahead

So other things i thought we could include in the tag line could be about deception, blind love, game (like cat and mouse), something to do with a knife, the trailer also shows the villain knocking on the door:
Walking the knife's edge
When your heart has been deceived your mind is silenced
Love can be the deadliest enemy
Deception favours those who are blinded by love
Don't forget to lock your door
Strangers are the only ones you can trust
Accidental betrayal
You stop, you die, you move and he'll see you
Fortune favours the wicked
Let the games begin
The rules have been broken

We will discuss our ideas in our lessons and hopefully come up with a catching (but also scary and effective) tag line.

Rach

RESEARCH & PLANNING - Pulp fiction poster

In class we started to analyse posters. Our group was given the 'Pulp Fiction' poster.

The unique selling points of this poster are that it is a Quentin Tarantino film, the poster also says what other work he has done (true romance and reseviour dogs), the high profile cast and the genre indicators.

The genre indicators are that Uma Thurman has a gun in front of her showing the audience that this film will contain crime and violence. She is smoking cigarettes and her body language is very confusing, she is lying on a bed with her head titled towards the camera (this could show a sexual part of the film) however her legs are crossed in a child like fashion which shows her to be innocent. The lamp in the background is off balance and the pillow is slanted, this could being trying to show how the film is different from other crime dramas and does not follow the genric conventions.

The poster is set out like a cheap trashy paperback novel, the creases in the cover show that it is old, however the creases in the bottom right hand corner show that the book have been read many times. The poster tries to look older than it actually is, like it is a film from the 70s, the font helps with this as it is old fashioned.

Rach.

RESEARCH & PLANNING - Tag lines

I have been experimenting with a number of different tag lines for our poster. In order to be in keeping with the narrative of our film i have been toying with phrases which have some reference to:

escape

love

deceit

torment

etc.

I have been asking various people which they prefer and the favourites seem to be:

learn your limits - which follows the concepts of boundaries and restrictions which relate to running away and the difficulties of escape.

Finding the truth is hard, facing it is harder - reference to Eric's discovery of what his brother is trying to do and Megan's realisation that Eric is trying to kill her

love can break more than the heart - referring to how their relationship could result in one of their deaths

broken rules are hard to follow - referring to the rules of relationships and the boundaries which Megan hits when she tries to run away and play it safe, and also the way in which Eric's brothers mind works as he tries to kill Megan.

Other ideas which i came up with are:

Hunted by the one person you thought you could trust

She thought the possession of knowledge would kill the mystery and excitement, how was she to know the lack of it would kill so much more?

who ever said no one can be in two places at once

It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows

Face the truth. Or run.

Fight or Flight

How can you run when there's no where to go?

every step she takes hes always one ahead

escaping is hard when your running from yourself

act on your instincts

deception in the name of love is a weakness of the heart
deception in the name of love is the worst kind
deception in the name of love breaks the heart

those blinded by love are easily deceived

walking the knife edge

love is deadly when it carries a weapon

live the nightmare

love favours the insecure

Lock. Your. Door

You cant run from your shadow

There is no escape

Locks don’t keep out revenge

Locks don’t stop the relentless

Our group will experiment with various phrases and discuss which we think fit the best with our film.

Lucy :)

RESEARCH & PLANNING - Harry Potter poster analysis

The design of most film posters is extremely similar where advertising is concerned, and the posters for the popular Harry Potter films are no exception. The main Characters are displayed in the foreground and the less important ones shown behind, Harry is holding his wand up towards the camera, reminding the audience of the genre of the film. The whole title of the film does not need to be shown as it is so well known but the part of the title which is specific to this film is shown clearly in the sky above the characters.

A tag line is used along the bottom of the screen just above the film information to make the poster memorable and also to draw attention to the release date shown just below it.

The overall toning of the poster is dark and mysterious, reflecting the dark nature of the narrative.

Lucy :)

RESEARCH & PLANNING - Pulp Fiction- Link trailer to poster

Both the trailer and poster for Pulp Fiction have to be well designed to grab the audiences attention and make them want to watch the film. They have to do this by being eye catching and unique from other posters or trailers so that their USP gives them a competitive advantage. Both have to give a hint of the narrative of the film, indicate the genre, and show the actors and/or the directors involved.

Nikki Stock

RESEARCH & PLANNING - Pulp Fiction Trailer Analysis

The trailer starts with an award that the film has won. This immediately suggests to the audience that this will be a good film worth watching. The first image is of a gun placed on a table. This shows the film includes action. Also the next clip is of Bruce Willis turning around. He is renound for his action films. The soundtrack then starts and it is a song, which doesn’t really fit into a serious mood. It creates a relaxed fun approach to this trailer. There is a series of short clips showing some of the action occurring. There is an image of a flashy car, gun, kissing, John Travolta, who is very famous and would attract a large audience from his previous films. A caption appears onscreen with the directors name on, which again would encourage fans of Quinton Tarantino’s previous work, such as ‘Reservoir Dogs’, to see this film.

There is then a series of short clips from the film, including dialogue to show the audience what this film’s narrative is about. Caption appears to engage directly with the audience and split up the storyline. There are captions saying ‘Loyalty’, ‘Betrayal’, ‘The Crime’, ‘You won’t know the facts…until you see the fiction.’ The trailer then has a voice over from a narrator naming all the characters along side showing clips of them, so the audience becomes familiar with all the well-known actors participating in this film. The title then appears on screen in big, bold, capital letters making it grab the audiences attention, and after another short clip of the two main characters the credits are shown.

Here is the link to Youtube for this trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPyzZk8-FyE

Nikki stock

RESEARCH & PLANNING - Pulp Fiction Film Poster Analysis

Pulp Fiction have a very deliberate film poster. It has been made to look like an old book cover. This is shown by the 10 cents sign on the right, making the cover look cheap, tacky/ trashy. Also in the right bottom corner it looks as through the book cover has been bent and damaged. All around the edge of the poster is crinkles and creases making it look old and used.

The title of the film is in the largest font making it stand out from the rest of the writing on the poster. In small font directly underneath is the name of the director 'Quinton Tarantino'. His name isn't hugely emphasised as Pulp Fiction was one of his earlier film created in 1994. Since then he has become a very established director. However Reservior Dogs established Quinton Tarantino, so at the top of the poster is "From the creator of 'True Romance' and 'Reservoir Dogs'." This will attract his fans aswell. Under this is the many names of the famous actors participation in this film. This is shown to be important as it is near the top of the poster. Using the actors names acts as a USP for the audience.

With the image used of Uma Therman lying on the bed, we can analyse her body language towards the camera/ audience. She has put down a book, leaving her hand on it, showing she has diverted her attention from this book towards the audience. As she is smoking her wrist is showing very clearly. This is a sign of flirtation towards the male audience. However, crossing her legs in the air shows her innocence at the same time of being flirtatious.

At the bottom of the poster is 'Coming soon to a theatre near you'. This doesn't give a difinitive date, but tells the audience to stay aware that it is to be released in the near future. Under that is the logo on Miramax, the production studio funding this project.

Overall, the film posters are designed to attract the audience and show them an image which represents the whole film narrative.

Nikki Stock

PRODUCTION- Our Teaser Trailer Runaway

Here is the link to our teaser trailer on Youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P70hIAhZ5Hg

Nikki

RESEARCH & PLANNING - Film Poster

We have now completed our film and the next step is to create a film poster as part of a marketing campaign for the audience. The generic convenctions of film posters consist of :

• Title of the film/ font and branding- which is predominant and clear
• Date it comes out
• Producers name
• Directors name
• Actors names
• Credits
• It should indicate the genre of the film
• A tagline- catchy slogan/ phrase about the film
• Attention grabbing features and straightforward
• Large eyecatching image linked to the genre, characters and setting
• Positive reviews from critics and the star rating
• Awards Recieved

There are three main types of film posters. These include the 'teaser poster', the 'main poster' and the 'DVD poster'. The teaser posters are released prior to the the release of the film. They are vital for the films initial publicity and have little reference to the narrative of the film. The main poster is often dominated by one or two images, which include key written information. These posters can be changed and altered throughout the campaign. Lastly, the DVD poster aims to encourage the audience to own the film and will often allude to extra features or awards won.

It is important for film posters to have unique selling points (USP's), to give them the competitive edge and encourage their target audience to take interest in the film poster, and consequently going to watch the film. The ways in creating this USP is to include the well-known actors names in the poster. Their fans would take interest in their new films. Another is to include the Directors name or mention previous work he/she has done. Well established directors can have a great influence over who goes to watch their new films. An indication of the genre can be an USP. Individuals tend to have their favourite genre which they enjoy watching. When indicating the films genre on the poster it can tell you what type of film it will be and theresore whether you are likely to enjoy it or not.

Nikki Stock

EVALUATION - Final Sound modifications

We are extremely pleased with the final product of our trailer. After much consideration a few weeks ago we selected the soundtrack "Abducted". As well as being just the right tempo and mood for the genre of our film, once we had added the music into the background it fit with our trailer perfectly. We have lined up the backing music to ensure that each climax and dramatic pause in the music fits perfectly with the actors movements on the screen and also with the transitions and cuts between shots. We were especially proud of the alignment of the music with the shot of Eric removing a kitchen knife from a draw, the climatic build of the music create tension as he inspects the blade and the height of this tension cuts off abruptly with the transition into the next shot.

We have lined up our sound effects exactly to what we hope is a perfect match to the footage, as mentioned below we inserted the chosen knocking sound three times and placed it in the trailer in just the right moments, we also positioned the phone sound to start ringing a split second before the character turns worriedly in the direction of the ringing phone.

We are looking forward to uploading the finished piece onto the blog!

Lucy :)

EVALUATION - Our film?

Our film is finished!!!

We tried to upload it on Friday but were unsuccessful, we will have to wait now until after half term to upload it onto the blog but it is done!!! We finished matching up the sound track and added in the sound effects. We added in one sound file of a phone ringing and then 3 door knocking sound files, we have repeated the door knock three times as we thought it added urgency and tension to our trailer.

We will post the trailer soon!!

Rach, Lucy, Nikki and Dale

EVALUATION - Is our film postmodern?

As you may know, postmodernism covers a broad range of topics from within a media text. Our piece itself could be considered postmodern due to the conventions that we have copied from other popular films. A large part of how we did this was by looking at various other media texts and researching how they were used and their effects.

Research was a large part of our planning stage, giving us the typical conventions that were used and how well they were executed in either representing the genre, or the scene itself. From this, we had extracted the information and applied it to our own media piece, which arguably was given a more professional look. With postmodernism in mind, we can apply its concepts to our finished piece and see how it follows the conventions. A good example is the lighting we had opted for, especially in the kitchen. As can be seen in the final few shots, the kitchen's lighting reflected the dark mood that the scene had tried to create. This 'effect' has been used time and time again in other horror/thriller films to reflect upon the thoughts and feelings of the individual in danger. Placed over the top we had music which built up to be suspenseful in the final few shots where these dangers culminated - effective in any piece which tries to develop the same sense of danger.

These are only a couple of examples, however you can see how they've used over and over again meaning we've been unoriginal in creating our piece. Theorists debate such points where they question whether postmodernism truly exists or not. Films are a bricolage of ideas (Many of the same concepts used to create something different; something new) so does unoriginality exist or deeper still, postmodernism?

RESEARCH & PLANNING - The bounty hunter - hybrid genre example

This is a link to the bounty hunter trailer :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czXE0aALfek

I found this trailer very interesting as it is a romantic comedy but it involves the main characters being shot at. Since starting this course I and other members of our group regularly check YouTube for new trailers for us to analyse and evaluate.

This film stars Jennifer Aniston and Gerard Butler. Jennifer Aniston is most known for her role in 'friends' and staring in romantic comedies, Gerard Butler has also been in romantic comedies but he has starred in Guy Ritchies British crime film 'Rocknrolla' and American crime action films such as 'gamer' and 'law abiding citizen'. This could be why they have chosen these actors for the roles in the film as then are then attracting both a female (romantic comedy fans) and male (action/crime fans) to go and see the film.

The trailer starts off as a typical romantic comedy, it has a slight twisted as Butler's character is a bounty hunter and Aniston's character is 'wanted' by the law, but overall it is very light heart. Then the two characters are under gun fire, this shocks the audience but also adds comic value.

The trailer continues showing romantic sides of the film but with props from crime drama films such has guns, handcuffs and tasers.

I thought this was a very good example of a hybrid genre (and also very modern as it has not been released yet!) film :)

Rach.

EVALUATION - Narrative theories - Inception trailer

EVALUATION- Narrative of our film

Lucy has written below the plot of our film, we chose our narrative for the teaser trailer carefully as we wanted to show genre indicators but at the same time not give away too much about the film.

I think our narrative for the teaser trailer is good as it shows all parts of the film, the equilibrium and then the disturbance. We hoped this will attract a wide audience to our film.

As shown below we have thought about the whole of our film and how it should end, we have included twists which should shock the audience and keep them interested throughout the film.

Rach.

EVALUATION - Narrative theories

There are four main narrative theories we have looked at: Propp, Claude Levi-Strauss, Rolande Barthes, Todorov

Propp's sheres of action includes eight character types which he suggests most films, books, legends etc include:

the hero (who is on the quest)

the villain (who opposes the hero)

the donor (who helps the hero by giving them a magic tool)

the dispatcher (who starts the hero on his way)

the false hero (who tempts the hero away from is quest)

the helper (who helps the hero)

the princess (who is the reward for the hero)

her father (who rewards the hero for his efforts)

In our trailer we show the princess (Megan) and the hero/villain (Eric) but the audience will assume he is the villain. Because our product is a teaser trailer we could not give to much of the plot away and therefore did not want to show to many characters or to much of the story line.

Claude Levi-Strauss theory is about binary oppositions (opposites) for example day and night, light and dark etc. Our trailer does have a lot of opposites in it; the colour contrast is one of the main things, in the flashbacks when life is normal the contrast is a lot lighter than the rest of the scenes. Eric is always in dark colours where as in once scene Megan is in white and in the others she is in a bright colour.

Rolande Barthes theory was that the audience create new meanings when they see a text becuase of their previous experiences. Also one of Barthes main codes is the enigma code. In our trailer e have tried to create enigma as the audience doe not know why Eric has changed or if he is the one who gets the knife and is outside Megans house. The audience also doesn't know whether Megan manges to get out of the house or not. We have tried to create enigma as our project is a teaser trailer is it important that we keep the audience interested. The audience will also make up their own mind about Eric, people who have been in abussive relationships will assume her is a horrible person from past experiences.

Todorov suggested that there are five stages to a narrative:

-> equilibrium (normality)

-> a disruption of this equilbrium by an event

-> a realisation that a disruption has happened

->an attempt to repair the damage of the disruption

-> a restoration of equilibrium - which may be a new equilibrium

As we have been doing a teaser trailer we have not shown all of these stages as it would have given away the plot of our film. We do however so equilibrium (Megan and Eric together) and a realisation that a disruption has happened (Megan running away as she realise Eric is 'bad')

Rach.

EVALUATION - The Genre Theory

John Hartely - "Genres are agents of ideological closure - they limit the meaning-potential of a given text"

Genre allows producers to know that their film production is economical. If a film keeps to the basic rules of a genre then they know the audience will be happy.

Neale 1980 - "One way of defining a genre is as a set of expectations"

The producers are expected to follow the majority of these expectations in order to make the film unique.

Nicholas Abercrombie - "Part of the pleasure is knowing what the genre rules are, knowing that the programme has to solve problems in the genre framework, and wondering how it is going to do so."

Steve Neale 1980 - "repetition and difference"

Abercrombie argued that thepleasure comes from "observing how the conventions of the genre are manipulated"

How the genre theory applies to our Coursework -

Our film follows the typical conventions of a thriller, whilst following the basic plotline of "problem --> questions --> danger --> solved."

The mystery of a thriller is what keeps the audience hooked. Since this is one of the main conventions of a thriller this is mainly what our narrative revolves around.

The part of the film which is individual to that film is the mystery. This is the unique part which the audience is not expecting, it sets it apart from other films and makes it worth the audience going to see it.

Lucy :)

PLANNING & RESEARCH - Plotline summary :D

Ok, so this is the narrative of our film :) I'm afraid you may have to read it several times to totally understand, its just a little bit confusing...!

• Megan is an average teenage girl of 19 who attends university, which is where she meets Eric, the male lead in our film. Megan and Eric start to date and after a few months have fallen in love.


• However after they have been going out for about a year Eric begins to act strangely, his personality changes and she is finding it increasingly difficult to contact him, even though when she speaks to him he seems to know everything shes been doing.


• Megan gets scared and tries to run away but he finds out and attacks her, even though she still doesn't know why.


• she manages to escape and contacts the police who eventually arrest him.


• Megan thinks she is safe and relaxes, but one night he comes back to her house and just as he is about to kill her another man who looks just like Eric bursts into the room.


• This second man desperately explains that he has just escaped from the police station and the man who is about to kill her is his twin brother.


• Eric had been trying to keep his brother a secret for years as he didn't want anyone to find out that his brother was mad and take him away. However one day his brother got so tired of being kept in the house he attacked Eric and locked him up, taking his place in society he planned to kill the girl Eric loved to get revenge.


• Eric is just trying to reason with his brother to put down the knife which he has them both cornered with when the police burst into the room, they are momentarily stunned by the two men standing before them and Eric's brother uses this split second to stab Eric in the chest.


• The police shoot the brother who dies instantly, shortly afterward Eric dies in Megan's arms.

This postmodern ending is a twist in what would have been a typical fairy tale. Other than this final moment our film follows the conventions of Vladimir Propps theory of Spheres of Action, with a Villain and Hero, whose reward would have been the Princess.

Lucy :)

FINISHED!!!

We have FINALLY finished the editing of our film!! today we added the music and the soundeffects and in tomorrows lesson we plan to burn our trailer to a DVD and post it onto the blog!

Lucy Nikki and Rach :)

EVALUATION - Todays Progress - Nearly finished!

Today we started adding our soundtrack to the final piece. We selected our chosen piece of music and synced it in time with the trailer, making sure that each beat is lined up correctly with the actions and the ending fits with the title.

Lucy, Nikki and Rach :)

EVALUATION - Narrative Analysis of Inception Teaser Trailer

During class we analysed the teaser trailer to Inception in terms of the narrative theories. We used Propp's spheres of action theory, Todorov's five narrative stages theory, Barthes enigma code and Strauss' binary opposites theory.


Propp:

• The girl getting dragged/ pulled away from the helicopter may be the 'princess' character, who needs saving from the disequilibrium in the narrative.
• The 'villain' could be the man who is in a fight down the twisting corridor and who is later seen in all black with a medium close-up shot.
• The 'false-hero' may be the man coughing up water, who is distracting the hero from his quest to conquer the difference between his mind and reality.
• Leonardo DiCaprio as the 'hero' as he is the main character and often portrays this hero character in other films he has been in.

Todorov:

• There was no start or end in the storyline of the trailer
• No established equilibrium at the beginning
• The progression of action events getting worse throughout the trailer as the editing speeds up
• The trailer starts with a view of the city and ends with one which is much denser and compact to show the view of this city has changed by the end of the film.
• A dawdle spins at the starts, then falls out of balance showing a disequilibrium

Barthes:

• There is a sense of mystery and a play with the mind
• Mysteries left unresolved- the girl getting dragged away, the audience won't know what will happen next.
• The time scenes are important

Strauss:

• The trailer shows the character in two states of mind- calm and then playing in action
• The mind vs reality- (this is very postmodern)

Nikki Stock

EVALUATION - Narrative Analysis

The narrative theory is a method of deconstructing the narrative of a text in detail. Narrative simply means the media term for storytelling. It is the way in which the different elements within a story are organised to make a meaningful story to the audience. There are four main theories of narrative from Propp, Levi-Strauss, Todorov and Barthes.

Propp's spheres of action

He believed in many stories there was always the same basic characters, dealing with the same basic problems. He focused on the way that characters tended to be types rather than individuals. The eight main types of characters he noted include:

• the hero- who is on a quest


• the villain- opposes the hero


• the donor- helps the hero


• the dispatcher- starts the hero on his way


• the false hero- tempts the hero away from his quest


• the helper- helps the hero on his way


• the princess- reward for the hero


• the princess' father-rewards the hero

Levi-Strauss Binary opposites

He described the world in terms of opposites. Binary opposites are sets of opposite values which reveals the structure of the media texts. There is always the good vs the evil, light vs dark, day and night ect.

Barthes Enigma Code

He was interested in the concepts of negotiated meaning between the institution and the audience. He argues that the audience of a text can create new meanings from it, using their past experiences. This means that everyone takes different meanings from each text. The cultural context of consumption is just as important as the original content itself. He described texts as networks, which relates to the different was in which people consume texts and understand them in their own meanings.

He also thought of the enigma code. This is the mystery which hooks in the audience into watching the whole film, or finishing a book for the enigma to be resolved. This is very popular to be used in teaser trailers for films to attract the audience to watch the film in the cinema.

Todorov five stage narrative

He suggested that there was a five stage narrative in every media text. This starts with:

• the equilibrium- when everything is happy and normal


• a disruption of the equilibrium by an event- things start turning bad


• the realisation of this disrupted equilibrium- people know something bad is occurring


• the attempt to repair this damage of the disruption- hero tries to save the day


• the restoration of the equilibrium or a new equilibrium- back to normal and happy again

This is easy to identify the structure of the narrative with, and shows how many stories depend upon establishing how an equilibrium is disrupted to create a good story.

Nikki Stock

EVALUATION - Genre Theory

In class we have been studying genre theories.

John Hartley said that "genres are agents of ideological closure - they limit the meaning-potential of a given text" This opinion applies to our trailer as we have been limited by our chosen genre. We have had to follow specific conventions of the thriller genre, such has building tension and mystery through editing, camera angles, a non diagetic soundtrack and diagetic sound effects. It is important for a thriller to have enigma not just in the teaser trailer but in the film itself;

"Thrillers are characterized by fast pacing, frequent action, and resourceful heroes who must thwart the plans of more powerful and better equipped villains."

Genre's give a set of expectations when the are attached to for example a film, the audience expects the film to follow a certain pattern and it to end in a particular out come. This is why hybrid genres are seem as postmodern as the audience has to mix the expectations of two or more genres, this gives the film a number of possible outcomes. In our trailer we have tried to follow the conventions of a thriller by showing both equilibrium and disequilibrium in the trailer, this shows how normal the female leads life was and then what it has become. This builds mystery for the audience as they do not know why her life has changed and as we have not shown the villain's face in the present sequences it creates enigma further.

The thriller genre has many subtypes, these are a few I have found on wikiepedia:

• Action thriller: This often includes a 'race against the clock', it contains lots of violence. It has elements of mystery films and crime films but these elements take a backseat to action. An example of an action thriller are anyone of the James Bond films. Our film has action thriller elements as it is a 'race against the clock' for the female lead as shown in the trailer(bag packing), there is also violence (knives).
• Conspiracy thriller: In which the hero/heroine confronts a large, powerful group of enemies whose true extent only he/she recognizes.An example of this is JFK. Our film has elements of this as only Megan knows what Eric is really like.
• Crime thriller: Is a hybrid type of both crime films and thrillers that offers a suspenseful account of a successful or failed crime or crimes. These films often focus on the criminal(s) rather than a policeman. They focus on the action. An example is The Killing.
• Disaster thriller: Main conflict is due to some sort of natural/artificial disaster, an example is The Day after Tomorrow.
• Drama thriller: Story consists of the elements of a thriller and drama film. These films are usually slower paced and involves a great deal of character development along with plot twists. An example is The Interpreter
• Horror thriller: The main character is put in danger and his main enemies are unrealistic creatures in which he must destroy to achieve his goal.
• Erotic thriller: In which it consists of erotica and thriller. Examples are Basic Instinct, Dressed to Kill
• Legal thriller: In which the lawyer-heroes/heroines confront enemies outside, as well as inside, the courtroom and are in danger of losing not only their cases but their lives.
• Medical thriller: In which the hero/heroine are medical doctors/personnel working to solve an expanding medical problem.
• Political thriller: In which the hero/heroine must ensure the stability of the government that employs him.
• Psychological thriller: In which (until the often violent resolution) the conflict between the main characters is mental and emotional, rather than physical. For example some of the Alfred Hitchcock films
• Spy thriller: (also a subgenre of spy fiction): In which the hero is generally a government agent who must take violent action against agents of a rival government or (in recent years) terrorists.
• Techno-thriller: In which (typically military) technology is described in detail and made essential to the reader's/viewer's understanding of the plot.
• Religious thriller: In which the plot is closely connected to religious objects, institutions and questions.

Most thrillers are a combinations of those above. ^^^^^

Our trailer is a combinations also, it does include violence but is probably more about a psychological plot line than action.

Rach.

EVALUATION - Genre

The genre of our film is thriller.
The typical characteristics of this thriller genre include:

• fast paces storyline
• frequent action occurring
• resourceful heroes, who thwart the plans of the more powerful, better equipped evil villains.

Thrillers often take place in exotic locations including:

• foreign cities
• deserts
• polar regions
• high seas

The heroes are usually "hard men" who are accustomed to danger such as:

• law enforcement officers
• spies
• soldiers
• seamen
• aviators
• ordinary citizens drawn into the danger by accident

Thrillers usually overlap with mystery and crime stories.

There are many sub-genres of thriller, these include:

• medical thriller
• conspiracy thriller
• political thriller
• crime thriller
• psychological thriller
• disaster thriller
• spy thriller
• drama thriller
• techno thriller
• erotic thriller
• science-fiction thriller
• legal thriller
• religious thriller
• action thriller

Our film matches this thriller genre as it has a fast paced storyline, with elements of good vs evil, and an unravelling mystery and twist in our narrative. It includes flashback sequences of the happy romantic times, and includes action, and a tragic death at the end.

Nikki Stock

EVALUATION - Table

In class we were asked to make a table showing the generic conventions of a trailer of the same genre as ours and to then see if our trailer has the same conventions. Our trailer is of the thriller genre with slightly romantic and horror elements. As the main genre of out film is thriller therefore that is the type of genre I have chosen to base the generic conventions from.

I found doing this table very useful as it showed us what we had down which was similar to the generic conventions and what we still needed to work on. It was originally in a table format but I was unable to copy it onto the blog so now it is in bullet points:

Iconography

Generic conventions:
• Costumes – victim innocent white clothes, villain dark clothing – dangerous, mysterious
• Tense music
• Exaggerated sound effects
• Weapons
• Disturbing images – confusing the audience
Our film:
• Megan wears white in some shots
• Eric dressed in dark colours
• Kitchen knife and pen knife are shown
• Tense sound track played throughout trailer
• Enhanced sound effect of door knock and mobile phone ring

Style

Generic conventions:
• Fast editing – creates tension – dramatic effect
• Dark lighting, dark colours to show change from normal life
• Weather is bad (rainy etc)
• Unsettling shots
• Shots that don’t show everything – leave the audience guessing
Our films:
• Fast editing – with dramatic transitions
• Shows knives but audience doesn’t know what’s going to happen
• Screen flashes white when there is a flash back sequence
• Colour contrast of the flashback shots and the real time shots

Setting/location

Generic conventions:
• Everyday settings – normality
• Isolated setting?
• Can use anywhere
Our film:
• Family home – normal
• School/ university

Narrative

Generic conventions:
• Mystery – don’t find out everything straight away
• Starts normal – gets worse
• Victim
• Villain
Our film:
• Shows the change in people, how they were (good) and how they are now (bad)
• Victim (Megan)
• Villain (Eric)
• Audience doesn’t know (understand) why Eric has changed

Characters – stereotypes

Generic conventions:
• Female victim, helpless – needs rescuing
• Male villain – in control
• Male hero – saves damsel
Our film:
• Female victim – she is the one running away
• Male Villain – he is in control, she is scared of him, at the end of the trailer without seeing him audience can see he has the upper hand

Themes

Generic conventions:
• Violence
• Psychological
• Crime
Our film:
• Knife - violence
• Eric is stalking Megan - psychological

Target Audience

Generic conventions:
• Thrillers – 12A plus general 15, gender: bit of both, mainly male
• Romance generally 12A, gender: typically female
• Horror 15 plus, gender: typically male
Our film:
• 15, gender: as hybrid genre appeals to both male and female

Audience response

Generic conventions:
• Audience gets confused – has to think about plot
• Tense – unsettled
• Makes audience think about what is happening in the film
Our film:
• We want our audience to have to think about the plot of our film and be puzzled by it at some points
• Tense
• Unsettled

Rach.

RESEARCH & PLANNING - Research and planing

Primary research:

• Questionnaire – we made a questionnaire to find out what our target audience thought of our genre, plot etc - this is an example of Qualitative data
• Interview with actors – we interviewed our actors to found out what they thought about our filming and the techniques used etc – this is an example of Qualitative data
• Facebook poll – this poll was made to find out what our audience thought was the best genre type for a film – this is an example of data Quantitative data
• Analysing trailers – we used YouTube to analyse trailers of different genres so that we could learn the generic conventions for a trailer of a particular genre. We found analysing trailers extremely helpful when planning our trailer. We have decided to use some bits of trailers and clips that we have seen in our own trailer for example: when the female lead drops her books in Freaky Friday, the transitions in Golden Compass, the bag backing scene in Twilight and the differences in colour contrast in Gilmore Girls

Secondary research:

• Google – get images, search for non copy right music, search for sound effects
• YouTube – searching for trailers so we could improve our film ideas and see new camera and transition techniques
• Freeplay – this is where our soundtrack is from – we looked at a lot of music both finding five that we thought fitted our trailer, we then narrowed it down to just two and our editing processed. We have now decided on the finale soundtrack
• OCR blog – I used this to find out information about the length of our trailer, there are common questions on here which were very helpful to us. It is from this blog that we got the idea to do a directors commentary

Storyboards:

We found our storyboards very useful when filming, we tried to follow them as closely as we could but some extraneous varibles such as the weather causd us to move away from the slightly at some points. We have to change the outdown picnic scene to can indoor scene and the letter-post box scene to a university scene. We have however tried to keep the camera angles and shot transitions etc the same.

Primary research: involves the collection of data that does not already exist
Secondary research: involves the summary, collation and/or synthesis of existing research
Quanitative anaylsis: analysing research in terms of quality
Qualitative anaysis: analysing research in terms of quantity

Rach.

EVALUATION - editing and filming process

We filmed most of our trailer early on but still had some left to do because of weather complications. It was hard to organise when the film the last bit with our actors as we had to arrange a time at school when we were all free, we were not able to film during lunch or break because of other students or after school as our actors where involved with the school play. We organised our time tables and Lucy and Dale filmed with Jen and Raf on Tuesday.

We added in the last shots but we had to cut some out as we wanted to keep our trailer as short as possible as we think it will add mystery to it. Also teaser trailers are generally very short!

We then changed the colour contrast of the shots as they are in a flash back sequence, we were careful to make sure that we changed the contrast in the same way as the others

I am very pleased with how our trailer is turning out now that we have finished our filming. We have had problems with the editing programme such has deleting audio but we have worked hard to learn how to use the programme properly so we are able to produce to highest quality of work.

Rach.

EVALUATION - Progress - filming

Today we had planned to film our final scene. However as it turned out one of our actors became unavailable at short notice, and we have therefore re-sceduled our filming for tomorrow. We hope that this time will be slightly more successful as we have left two hours available just in case and have ensured that our actors will be in school!

Lucy :)

EVALUATION - Trailer Logo

We have decided to incorporate the "Working title" logo into the start of our film trailer as we felt it needed some form of branding. We chose this company as we did a lot of research into their films last year and are very familiar with their work having analysed many of their productions.

Lucy :)

EVALUATION - Today's Progress

We have finally arranged a time for filming the final part of our piece and have planned exactly how the scene is going to look. Although it will be extremely short and only make up a fraction of our trailer we still want it to look just right in order to be effective.

We have be planning this scene for a while now but only recently did we decide to move it from outside by a postbox to inside a university corridor. The plan is that Megan will be walking along and drop her folder which will spill papers all over the floor. Just as she is about to retrieve the final paper another hand gets there first and she looks up in surprise to see the smiling face of our male character Eric, this is where the shot ends.

We have decided to firstly have a quick long shot of her walking down the corridor, then a mid shot as she drops the books/papers, and then cut to her on her hands and knees picking them up, then show her hand reach for the last paper but his get there first, we will then have a close up of her face as she looks up shocked before a close up of him as he smiles and hands her the paper/book.

This scene is only intended to be very quick as it is just for the trailer so, although it consists of a lot of shots, we will make each shot only a few seconds long with fades to black in between so that the audience can get an idea of what is going on but not have too much revealed to them.

In today's lesson we also made some final ajustments to our piece, and prepared to add the sound effects which we have found, and after much disscussion we have finally decided which to add. Once we have added in the final scene we will complete our trailer by overlaying the soundeffects and our chosen music piece "Abducted".

Lucy :)

EVALUATION - Generic conventions

Generic Conventions are the features shown by texts that allow them to be put into a specific genre.
In our trailer for year 13 we have played about with the generic conventions in that we had originally planned to make our film of a hybrid genre. From the start it was intended that our trailer would be made to advertise a romantic thriller, however since then we have further developed the story line of the film (which I will post later in time) and we came to the conclusion that it lacks enough romance to be labeled a romantic thriller and it is therefore just a thriller. This could again raise the question of whether or not our trailer could still be considered postmodern, however as Rach commented in an earlier post there are other reasons which back this up, for example the fact that the trailer jumps around in time, and shows images of a dystopian future.

Lucy :)

EVALUATION - Audience analysis

So far we have used a variety of methods to gain feedback from our target audience, interviews, questionnaires, and surveys. I believe these are extremely important for making our trailer as effective as it can be. Use of audience feedback can make the difference between a successful film and a failure. We have done our best to incorporate this feed back into our film plan and our trailer, so the audience would know what to expect were they actually able to go and see the film. We have taken into account the contributions from our audience concerning genre, narrative, and many other aspects of the film. This information has been very beneficial and has helped us to develop what we hope will be an effective trailer.

Lucy :)

EVALUATION - Our Project

We have finished editing everything so far, including the transitions and washed out colour contrast. However, we need to film the last part of our trailer - this scene is when Eric and Megan first meet in the university hall way, she drops her books, he kindly picks them up for her. This will be the first flash back sequence of our trailer.

This is an example of the colour contrast we used in our trailer:

Before:

After:



We feel that this gives a dream like quality to the image and makes it clearer to the audience that these are flashbacks.

To get this effect we went onto the 'Effects' tool bar in the top right section of the programme. We then selected the 'Brightness and Contrast' icon. We then went onto 'Edit Effects' and chose the image control drop down menu, before experimenting with various combinations of brightness and contrast. We finally decided to keep the brightness level the same and up the contrast to the maximum level.

By Lucy, Nikki and Rach.