Film posters influences

Before constructing my film poster it is imperative that I research around film posters from my film genres and the codes and conventions that they contain. From my research its evident that for an iconic film poster colours need to be addressed. Before researching film posters I planned to construct a film poster consisting of a editing picture that would be dark with a striking image within the picture that would draw the audiences attention. However, from my research I have discovered that to correspond with my film genre no magazines use this concept therefore it would not be suitable for me to do so. Therefore instead its evident that most film posters display more than one image. In terms of my magazine I would like 4 images a extreme close up of Giannaz (The kidnapper) an extreme close up of Jodie (Girl who gets kidnapped) and a close up of Matt (Jodie's boyfriend) with a medium shot of the abandoned house which will signify where Jodie gets taken. All four images will be striking and grasp the audiences attention. From my research it is clear that a lot of action/thriller movies use this concept as their film poster.

The film posters of "Trade" all contain four striking images that signify what to expect in the film. The poster on the left is more dominant and conveys more emotions. The poster on the right is fairly plain with similar camera shots this makes the poster less eye catching to the audience with  no real bright colours used the poster is dull.

The film poster of "Don't say a word" works very well and suggests the film may be about the girl in the top picture from her facial emotions it's clear that she is scared however the poster does not reveal a lot about the film. Micheal Douglas is in bold at the top of the poster which conveys that he must play a big roll in the film as his name has been distinctively put there. Not much information is listed about the film although this could be due to having more than one trailer, most films trailers don't display massive amounts of information about the film as this will give the narrative of the film away.

"Kidnapped" highlights a different approach to grabbing the audiences attention. Minimal information is displayed on the poster. However,  a striking image takes up the vast space displayed on the page. The picture has a lot going on and by the film name "kidnapped" its evident that a kidnapping occurs so the picture doesn't give to much away. Again in this picture editing is minimal, the font however is bold and stands out. In some respects it could be argued that the font over powers the picture, by looking at the poster the audience is drawn to look at the font first. The strong powerful phrase "home used to be a safe place" this highlights that something bad will happen from home, suggesting that the main location of the film will be inside a house.

Little white lies examples

After identifying that little white lies would be our magazine company we researched in more detail the different styles and of images and the effects that are used. It was also interesting to see how text was included to revolve around the picture. From this the draft of our magazine front cover has been established.

Looking at action magazines

Possible magazine companies

When creating the magazine front cover for our film “10 missed calls” we need research possible magazine companies that we can use. 

Impact Magazine

The first possibility was the magazine company impact. This magazine we perceived looked unsuitable to attract our target audience. Furthermore, it also lacked the codes and conventions that we were looking for in a magazine lacking an  iconic picture. Although, from this magazine we could use some ideas. For example the layout of the magazine is effective however this magazine does not reflect an action theme. 

Empire Magazine

After rejecting impact magazine we looked into empire magazine. After researching different issues it was clear that empire was to broad in terms of a specific target audience for specific film genres. Therefore this magazine company also had to be rejected. From looking at empire magazine we did like the iconic picture with minimal amounts of text surrounding the picture it made the picture stand out more and make the overall style of the magazine more effective as everything is revolved around the picture. 

Little white lies Magazine

After further research we found the magazine company little white lies. As I have already addressed the iconic picture is imperative to best attract our target audience and feature our film therefore this magazine company was perfect. We feel that with a little editing the pictures we have taken can be adapted to a white lies magazine front cover. 

What a film magazine includes

Empire is a British film magazine published monthly by Bauer Consumer Media. It is the biggest selling film magazine in Britain.

"Empire writers select the smart, arty and expensive movies that sum up the magazine for them. From the brilliant to the bizarre, Fight Club to... Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me?! Pithy writing, inspired (and odd) choices."

Features

Each Month Empire provides a wide range of different features, from full coverage from this years award ceremony, to full-length interviews and photo shoots with established up and coming actors and directors. To the previews of major films such as Les Miserables. All issues contain a one page parody of recent releases and a film interview- with a detailed chat with a casting actor or major director.

Key sections within the magazine

Dialogue
This section is about the interaction between the readers and the magazine. Where Empire readers get the change to declare what they want from specific future releases. The interaction can be from the magazine's social media followers such as forums, facebook and twitter.

Buzz
This section includes "sneaky peeks" from exclusive on set visits and videos and first look pictures from upcoming films. Also includes the latest movie news  on the latest trailers and news on actors. 

Reviews
With every new movie for that month reviewed and rated. Major releases recieve comprehensive coverage, the star rating is usually out of five. The section also includes a brief listed recommendations "see this if you liked" It also includes the UK and the USA box office charts. 

The Empire Quiz
A double page spread with questions answers and clues. Empire also features a monthly competition, entered by post,text message or online. The prices usually related to a film experience or activity. 

Production Logo

After constructing our film trailer we had to outline which production company would produce the film. As our film is based on a relatively mass audience we decided that paramount pictures would be a perfect company to use. Therefore, like most trailers at the beginning of the film we edited our own paramount pictures title sequence that we would use with the addition of background music.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIv1Em9FKZw the video cannot be incorporated into this post therefore a hyperlink is made to our edited title sequence.

Case Study- True events inspired films

Researching kidnapping films on the internet I stumbled across a film that has some similar aspects to our film trailer. The film was called An American Crime and was based on true events. What happened was a suburban housewife named Gertrude Baniszewski kept two teenage girls imprisoned in a basement where they were tortured and kidnapped. Its clear the narrative of this film is not similar to ours however certain aspects of the film were inspiring and from the film trailer, certain codes and conventions such as the camera angles used could be in our film trailer. Specifically the short sharp scenes and the use of voice over makes this film trailer effective as a tense atmosphere is created.

In terms of featured movies from this none were displayed therefore its evident that this is the only kidnapping film based on true events.

Selecting an appropriate Production Logo

As part of every trailer the unique film productions company needs to be outlined. Therefore as a group we need to design our own unique production logo. Below I have researched some specific film productions companies and these are the ones that I like and would like to get ideas from as I feel they look unique and effective. As our trailer will be for a mass audience it needs to stand out.

Target Audience- 10 Missed Calls

Addressing our target audience was a fundamental point even before we began filming our trailer. The importance of drawing up a target audience is essential for the marketing and distributing of our film trailer. Knowing who your target audience is allows you to know what the consumers want and need.

After deciding that our film trailer was going to to be an action/romance/thriller, considering the target audience was our next step. Researching similar films below I have listed their certificate and the impact that this had on establishing our target audience.

• Trade- Certificate 15
• Kidnapped- Certificate 15
• Trapped- Certificate 18
• Dont Say A Word- Certificate 18
• The Collector- Certificate 18

Here we can see that most of the same type of genre of films are 15 and over. This film will appeal to both a female and male audience as the romance and thriller aspects of the film will attract females and the action and violence aspects will attract males. However, we need to propose the question that will having several aspects put off either females or males? Asking our class they all perceived the idea as inventive and insisted that having several genres will make the film trailer more appealing and attract a wider target audience.

Looking at similar  existing films with the same concept and genres as ours. We can see that the target audience will be best suited from 15 years- 30 years old of both men and women. The concept of making the target audience up to 30 is that this film could also be appealing to couples from 25-30 years old or even onwards further than that. However, we understand that have several different genres listed may put some consumers off. 

Films like this are deemed wrong to be targeting a younger audience. Therefore, in retrospect to our film with aspects of sex trafficking and violence this film trailer is not suitable for children or teenagers under 15 years old. Although, A film trailer can be modified to a lower classification if it meets the appropriate criteria of the classification. Therefore in our film trailer if we restricted the violence and language used we could select our film trailer classification as 12A. This will then set out a greater mass audience for advertising. 

Film Stages

The process that a film has to undertake is massive. The 3 main stages are summarised as production, distribution and exhibition below identifies the 3 main stages in more detail. All 3 factors are essential when making a film.

1.Production

·        Motivation

·        Stakeholders

·        Finance

·        Independent cinema

·        High Concept

Every stage is linked with the next stage. Although it is fundamental to help make the entire process of the film go forward, money will be needed and so stakeholders will have to be put in place for this to happen. To get stakeholders, various pitches will have to be arranged to companies explaining what the films about, characters, cast etc. It's also pitched to groups of the public, trying to determine that it will either;

1. Be successful.

2. Will it appeal to the approached target audience.

If a film doesn’t appeal to the target audience the idea maybe changed or scrapped altogether.

2. Distribution

·        Unique selling points

·        Costs

·        Case studies

·        Trailer Conventions

·        Marketing Strategy

The next stage is distribution and this involves the whole marketing and advertising side of making a film. This very much links in with financial elements, this revolves around the advertising and marketing aspects which all influences how much money the project has. This will include trailers, posters and test screening all features included in making a successful film. Unique selling points are essential before preparing the marketing strategy as the unique selling points attract people to the film. This can also be evident through the cast which holds massive dividance to the success of the film. The cast are who will attract people to the film, and along with good plot selling points and a lot of money can result in financial success which will impact on a better film.

3. Exhibition

·        Cinema screens

·        Mode

·        Exit Polls

·        Audience figures

·        Audience Stratification

The exhibition stage focuses on the after math of the release of a film. The data collected focuses on a number of things including, how they heard about the film, the best of the part film, what attracted them to go see it. The questionnaire is pivotal for the producers of the film as they can see whether the film for the audience has been a success, if so could it become a sequel. 

Kidnapped

Directed by     Rafael Endeiza

Produced by    Mario Forniés

Screenplay by Vérane Frédiani

Story by          Emma Lustres

Executive producer Borj Pena

Cast                  Fernando Cayo, Manuela Velles, Ana Wagener, Dritan Biba, Cesar Diaz

Budget               £100,000 

Genre                 Realistic Thriller/Horror

Box office        £23,100,902

After discussing with the group we have come to the conclusion we wish to construct a thriller trailer movie. After researching thrillers that can relate to a kidnapped family I have chosen to analyse the marketing and advertising for this film.

Brief synopsis: Jaime, Marta and their daughter Isa have just moved into a luxurious new house. Marta begins to prepare the dinner and puts a bottle of champagne on ice to celebrate the move. As night falls, three hooded men violently force their way into the house. Panic ensues and soon the real violence will begin.

The Dark Night Case Study Research

Directed by                Christopher Nolan

Produced by               Christopher Nolan., Emma Thomas, Charles Roven

Screenplay by                Jonathan Nolan, Christopher Nolan

Story by                    Christopher Nolan, David S. Goyer

Cast                              Christian Bale, Michalel Caine, Health Ledger, Gary Oldman, Aaron                                                                                 Eckhart, MagggieGyllenhaal, Morgan Freeman

Genre                         Action/Thriller/Drama/Crime

Budget                   $185 Million

Box Office              $1,003,045,358

Brief outline of the film: When Batman, Gordon and Harvey Dent launch an assault on the mob, they let the clown out of the box, the Joker, bent on turning Gotham on itself and bringing any heroes down to his level.

Dark night was released in the United Kingdom in July 24,2008 it was considered one of the best films of the 2000s and received highly positive reviews and set numerous records during its theatrical run and made over $1 billion in revenue worldwide. It is the thirteenth highest-grossing film of all time. This is due to its use of development, marketing and distribution which built a profitable success and resulted in changing the whole effect on modern day independent cinema. Marketing also  impacted the revenue of the film, In May 2007, 42 Entertainment began a viral marketing campaign utilizing the film's "Why So Serious?" tagline with the launch of a website featuring the fictional political campaign of Harvey Dent, with the caption, "I Believe in Harvey Dent.The site aimed to interest fans by having them try to earn what they wanted to see and, on behalf of Warner Bros., 42 Entertainment also established a "vandalized" version of I Believe in Harvey Dent, called "I believe in Harvey Dent too," where e-mails sent by fans slowly removed pixels, revealing the first official image of the Joker; it was ultimately replaced with many "Haha"s and a hidden message that said "see you in December

Hurt Locker Case Study Research

Directed by Kathryn Bigelow

Produced by Kathryn Bigelow

                      Mark Boal                                                                                         

                                                                                                                              

                 Nicholas Chartier

                 Greg Shapiro

Written by Jeremy Renner
                    Anthony Mackie
                    Brian Geraghty
                  

Cast            Jeremy Renner
                  Anthony Mackie
                  Brian Geraghty
                  Christian Camargo
                  Evangeline Lilly
                  Ralph Fiennes
                  David Morse
                  Guy Pearce

Genre       War/ Thriller/Action/Drama

Budget     $15 Million

Box Office $49,230,772

Brief outline of the film: Forced to play a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse in the chaos of war, an elite Army bomb squad unit must come together in a city where everyone is a potential enemy and every object could be a deadly bomb.
The Hurt Locker is based on accounts of Mark Boal, a freelance journalist who was embedded with an American bomb squad in the war in Iraq for two weeks in 2004.  In terms of the main characters, Bigelow made a point of casting relatively unknown actors: "it underscored the tension because with the lack of familiarity also comes a sense of unpredictability”. The film was shot in Jordan within miles of the Iraqi border, to achieve Bigelow's goal of authenticity. Iraqi refugees were used for extras and the cast worked in the unmistakable heat of the Middle East. The filmmakers had scouted for locations in Morocco, but director Kathryn Bigelow felt its cities did not resemble Baghdad. In addition, she wanted to get as close to the war zone as possible. Some of the locations were less than three miles from the Iraq border. She had wanted to shoot in Iraq, but the production security team could not guarantee their safety from snipers. Bigelow sought to immerse audiences "into something that was raw, immediate and visceral". Boal's screenplay had a non-traditional, asymmetrical, episodic structure. There was no traditional "villain", and tension was derived from the characters' internal conflicts and the suspense from the explosives and snipers. The film received a score of 97% based on a sample of 209 reviews in the Rotten Tomatoes with a mean score of 8.4 out of 10. It was second highest-rated film in 2009 at Rotten Tomatoes.

What is a trailer?

A trailer or preview is an advertisement or a commercial for a feature film that will be exhibited in the future at a cinema. 

To understand the concept of a film trailer I have some examples below:
                                                                                     

Kidnapped: First trailer lasted for 1.57, and was a non linear trailer. I like this concept it works well and attracts the audience. The trailer involves both non diagetic and diagetic sounds that both anchor one another again this concept works well. The trailer does not give to much away of the film away however you know the basis of the plot.
















Safe heaven: Second trailer lasted for 2.24, a linear trailer. Gives a lot away in the film. Could be argued that this push away the target audience although everything revealed gives impressions of a successful film. Some codes and conventions from this trailer I would like to include, for example the build up of the couple works well and the characters are revealed quickly. Again in this trailer the non diagetic and diagetic sound both anchor one another for added effective however in this trailer more dialogue is used.

Taken 2: Third trailer lasted for 2.23, a linear trailer. Gives a lot away about the film. The trailer reflects the genre and the target audience of the film. From this trailer I like the voice over used, it is effective anchors the background music creating a tension. The dialogue is minimal and there is a vast amount of short and sharp shots which also reflects the genre of the film.

Film Industry Timetable

Below displays the process that a film goes through, it is broken down into nine parts. However it is evident that the process takes time and can cost millions.

1)      Idea

Where a writer, producer or director comes up with a “brainstorm” of a film plan

2)      Development Finance

Once an idea has been built, they will then go to a group of investors where the ideas are pitched. If they feel it’s a strong film and want to invest in it, this will give the writers and producers money to develop the idea.

3)      Script Development

An outline which breaks the scenes up. Sales treatment is needed for this, which is a small synopsis that gives the reader a quick/brief idea of what the film entails.

4)      Packaging Moment

The chance for possible merchandise is available for the film. From here the genre can be established, as well as uncover potential cast names for the film.

5)      Financing

Covers costs including investors and the chance for pre-sales as well as completion bonds, which is insurance that covers the film if it doesn’t get finished.

6)      Pre-Production

Storyboarding, casting, equipment, set design and editing.

7)      The Shoot

The filming side .

8)      Post Production

Editing and sound effects are added in.

9)      Getting a distributor

Once the film is finished, searching for a distributor who will release the film successfully and money can be made.

Coursework Brief and Film Pitch

For my A-Level coursework this year, I have been given two options to how I want to go about my course this year. Both can be laid down as packages, with one surrounding around a ‘5 minute short film’ and the other a ‘teaser trailer’. Each package has a further 3 options in which I must choose 2 of these to complete by hand in next April.  These are as follows:

1.      A promotion package for a new film, to include a teaser trailer, together with two of the following three options:

·        A website homepage for the film;

·        A film magazine front cover, featuring the film;

·        A poster for the film.

2.      A short film in its entirety, lasting approximately five minutes, which may be live action or animated or a combination of both, together with two of the following three options:

·        A poster for the film;

·        A radio trailer for the film;

·        A film magazine review page featuring the film.

What I think?

The Key to constructing a successful “teaser trailer” is incorporating all the aspects I have learnt from my research and using into my trailer. The trailer I shall create has to suit me as a person being something I am interested in and something that is action packed. Obtaining a well-balanced workload is also vital to the success of anything and is no different within my coursework. My main aim is to make sure I remember focussed and dedicated to my trailer. To save time I have already opted that I am going to choose a “teaser trailer” meaning that all my analysis and research shall be on trailers.

Though I am deliberating this as if I was working on my own, I am actually going to be working within groups for the film or trailer. Group work is vital the more people the more ideas and variety in the trailer leading to a successful effective trailer. My key strength lies within the acting therefore I am likely to be acting in the trailer.

Film Idea

Establishing ideas is a very important role for a trailer. With each of the group taking down possible ideas, allows us to look at a wide range of potential attributes where we can then discuss and mix and match if needs be. One idea could be as follows;

Potential trailer- ‘Live or die’

Genre-Thriller/Horror

Setting- roadside scene, school scene, house scene, abounded building scene

 Props- Plastic bag, cell phone, Pig mask, black and white picture

One key scene- Boy has a bag over his face arms tied up with a question mark on the bag, face cut with blood pouring down clothes torn and blood stained. Out of breathe falls into the road nearly hitting a car. Man rushes out of car running over saying “are you okay?”  Out of breathe man says phone please phone please, calls where’s Jodie? Where’s Jodie?

Unique selling point – The idea of a couple in love the girlfriend gets kidnapped how far will the boyfriend go to save his girlfriend.

Relationship to films-My trailer idea is based around the setup of a girl that gets kidnapped, A call from her mysterious kidnapper tells the boy the rules and how he can get her back. This setup is one similar in the film kidnapped whereby three violent hooded thieves break in their house and hold the Marta and Isa hostage while their leader goes to the bank with Jaime to withdraw money from the family bank accounts in a tragic night of terror.  Although I aim to base some scene footage around this film my trailer has a slightly different storyline that the school couple are separated by the girl getting kidnapped the rich school boy has the choice of never seeing his girlfriend again or paying £100,000 pounds.

 Target audience – My film is targeted for males aged between 18 and 30. The idea of violence and killing is something very prominent within this category and I feel strongly is the suitable age strand and target audience for my film trailer.