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TAMARA RUDD

CANDIDATE NUMBER: 1258

CLAREMONT FAN COURT SCHOOL: 64680

I have been working Harvey Gillett: 1225, Fredrick Howe: 1230, and Oliver Macnaughton: 1243.

I hope you have enjoyed looking through my blog on my G324 Advanced Portfolio

I chose brief 2: construction of a film trailer for Welcome To Eden including two ancillary products promoting the film: a film magazine front cover and a film poster. 

My evaluation questions are above.

My research, planning and construction process is below, along with my final finished FILM TRAILER and two ancillary products. 

For my two ancillaries is above in MY MAGAZINE COVER and MY FILM POSTER

OFFICIAL TRAILER

This is my final cut of my Film Trailer : Welcome To Eden.

MAGAZINE COVER

This is the final product....

Below is the product I thought I had finished, until I got really good feedback from my teacher and my peers. I made more improvements to how you can read the text as it was hard with a blue writing and a black background.

The comparison 

My Feedback

This is some foodback I got to tell me to change my title from green too yellow. I am happy I listened to this advice as I think the title looks much nicer in yellow.

This is a draft of my magazine cover that I wanted to achieve. I sketched out the idea before I made the magazine cover as I wanted to make sure it was going to work before wasting my time making a magazine that won't fit together properly. 

CONSTRUTION: WOODS

I am pleased we did this shoot. It allowed us to do some more 'happy' scenes in a different environment. The lighting was perfect in the woods. It was very sunny which added to the effect of the happiness we were trying to portray.

This is an image we took when filming in the woods. As you an see the lighting was the perfect orange along with the perfect setting. I am pleased we went to an actual woods to film this scene and didn't choose somewhere like a field or a park. This made the scene more realistic and added to the perfect lifestyle. 

EVALUATION QUESTION 1

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

After reading an article by Mark Kermode on 'Cinema 2015: A way of change and renovation' I realised that a lot of his article was relevant to the film me and my group our producing. This article is all about the many ways in which we can watch films, and how smaller independent films are getting more and more views due to the many ways we can watch. It discusses how people are getting bored of the big box office superhero films. Even Dustin Hoffman a hollywood star declares 'Its the worst that film has ever been'. 

Our trailer is a fast paced moving trailer. We are trying to include key scenes that the audience will be gripped by as this will entice more viewers. We have filmed lots of scenes, some being better than others. So as we know the hollywood fascination is superhero fast slick moving edits, we want to make sure when it comes to the editing stage that everything looks slick and the scenes are being used in the best way. In order to keep up with the current audience fascination we need to make sure the editing is perfect. Mark Kermode has said 'The most significant movies of 2014 were Transformers: Age of Extinction, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, X-Men: Days of Future Past and The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1' After watching all of these trailers its obvious the editing is very well done and has been deliberately had a lot of time put into it to get the audience gripped.


I am an actor in my film and I play quite a big role in the whole trailer as I am 'Eve' the one who is choosing money over my love for 'Adam'. By reading a lot of articles about film I can see that the role of women is increasing as before no woman ever would feature as a main character. I found a good website called 'Film School Rejects' The Bechdel Test is a benchmark for movies developed by Alison Bechdel in 1985. For a movie to pass The Bechdel Test, it must contain just one thing – a scene in which two or more named female characters have a conversation (that is, back and forth dialogue) about anything besides men. It could be anything, even if it’s something stereotypical, like shopping or shoes. I thought this was an easy test too pass. It shocked me that only half out of 2500 films passed the test. There is a slow uprise of Woman coming into films as Mark Kermode mentions in his article: 'with Geena Davis headlining a symposium on gender imbalance in the media' But later says: perhaps we can take heart from the fact that so many of this year’s most exciting films have been helmed by women. Maybe the industry’s long-established gender bar is finally starting to crack. The role in woman in my trailer even thought it is a small low budget film is very important and almost puts the film together. We are following the story of Adam and Eve who both hold a equally important part, but as this is a film we have made the woman role more import to create more of a story.

I think smaller film industry will increase because of the large platforms we can watch film on. Different tables (nearly every tablet) allows you to watch films. This means films can be watched anywhere. Having thinks like netflix and amazon prime means a lot more films that not as many people will have heard of can be streamed. Films have to be very popular to make it to cinema, and making it to Netflix isn't such a hard achievement to reach. Mark Kermode says this : 'with the rise of “on demand” services such as Curzon Home Cinema and the BFI-Player, viewers are becoming increasingly used to the idea that they can choose whether to watch a movie at home or in a theatre'. This is stating that everyone is use to knowing that movies can be watched wherever and not just in a cinema.  'A field in England' produced by Ben Wheatley was a film released on free-to-air TV, video-on-demand, DVD, cinemas) “enabling viewers to decide how, where and when to view the film”. 

FINAL SCENES

These are a few images I took whilst filming our final scenes in our trailer. We went to a local curry house called 'The Fetcham Tandoori' Who where all very nice and allowed us to use there restaurant before it opened. We got a really realistic mise en scene that worked perfectly with our scene.

ANNOTATIONS ON TRAILER

MAGAZINE ANAYLSIS

I am trying to pick different fonts and ideas for my magazine called 'Hashtag'.

These are a few fonts I tried...

I think its important to have the perfect font, so that the magazine attracts the right viewer and works the best for the magazine.

MAGAZINE COVER

When studying film posters I realised the name of the film and the main character is the main feature of the cover. The title stands out in bold, big font to capture the attention of the audience who might be interested in this film. The magazine covers also stick to a colour theme based on the film. For example I found a magazine cover with the title 'CAPTAIN AMERICA' The background colour for this cover was an american flag, which is very suited for the theme of this week's magazine.

I had a few ideas for my magazine cover... these images below. But asking my peers and my teacher for some advice she reminded me that no magazine cover was landscape. So I had to retake my images of Ular, which I think look even better than the ones I originally had.

RESEARCH

POSTER

Harvey -
Negative
- Too much black
Positive
- Likes vines and font
- Likes it all apart from black

Freddie -
Negative
- Too wide
Positive
- Chosen font and vines

Ollie -
Negative 
-
Positive 
- Font, tag lines

CONSTRUCTION: HIGHSTREET

Our group went into Esher High Street to do some more filming for the 'happy' scenes. We wanted to get through the idea of the happy couple looking through expensive windows of shops to things they can't have.

Adam and Eve where holding hands as we wanted to show the audience they where happy. As soon as Ular came into the picture we made sure the couple stopped holding hands to show that Ular is a divide in their relationship and he is the reason they are breaking apart.

We had tobe clever when filming because we didn't want to be filming inside any shops or including the name of the shop as this is illegal and is something we want to have in the trailer. We tried using the reflection of the shop window but it didn't work as there was too much in the background. The cars and other shops made the scene look messy.

RESEARCH TRAILER CREDITS

I am doing some trailer research too see what the new trailers put at the end to show the information of the release date, and actors and so on. I have found that most of them just include the date or month that the film is coming out. Bad Neighbours was so vague it only said 'summer 2016', Only one of them had the names of the actors, which shows that this is old fashioned and doesn't really appear anymore. The main information is the only thing that appears at the end. All of them include the production company at the side, which is a must for the end of the trailer. 

Only 3 of the trailers I analysed had a social media link or icon at the end, which was interesting. I think it looks more effective when there is a Facebook page or website that the viewer can click on.

Noticing the short endings of trailers I wanted to look at older trailers to see if they have changed. They use to be much longer and much more detailed. I much prefer the new style with the shorter and the more important information to just be featured at the end. With all the across names it looks to busy and to long to read.

QR CODE

DECONSTRUCTING THE CHARACTER OF ULAR IN MY FILM POSTER

Roland Barthes is a theoretical theorist who looks at the denotation and connotation of visual codes such as our representation of the character Ular.

'Denotation' tends to be described as the 'literal', 'obvious' or 'common sense' meaning of a sign. In the case of linguistic signs, the connotation meaning is what the dictionary could attempts to describe.

- On a denotative level Ualr wears a leopard print hat of the kind favoured by men who like to look on themselves as being in the avant garde of fashion. On connotative level, this suggests his flamboyance and his showy character. He is someone who draws attention to himself, is very self confident and favours quite eccentric clothes. The animal print design nods towards his bestial nature: in our film he represents the id of human psychology, that is, the animal urgings and need for satisfying primal desires at the expense of spiritual qualities.

- On a denotative level Ular wears sunglasses all the time in the same way that film stars do. However, this is less to do with the need to protect his eyes from ultra violet rays than his need to look the part: he needs to look cool, mysterious and powerful. Equally, he needs to hide himself because his eyes would betray aspects of his nature that he wants to keep hidden such as his snake like nature. We plan to buy snake contact lenses to complete the picture.

- On a denotative level, Ular's red coat and brown fur coat are luxury items that are thick, warm and heavy, the sort of expensive fashion object that most men would not wear because they are so showy and brightly coloured. However Ular does not wear thick fur to keep warm. The connotations of fur relate to the bestiality of his nature. In our short film he is the agent of destruction for the two innocent romantics who find themselves embroiled in a downward spiral of consumer consumption at the expense of their peace of mind. In our modern day version of Paradise Lost, Ular represents theserpent in the Garden Of Eden.

I made this using the collage tool Pic Monkey. This helped me present the images nicely.

Adam Character Interrogation

On the website film escape, I was alerted to the existence of a book on film making.  This was written by Pen Densham who is an oscar winning film maker. In one chapters in the book he gives a checklist showing a various number of questions every writer or director should ask themselves when making their characters. You will then get a better idea of who your character is by asking these questions.

My source was : http://filmescape.com/get-to-know-your-characters-by-giving-them-a-questionnaire

I was really pleased with the success of this extensive piece of creative work because not only did we really develop our characters, but the stylish shoots yielded a number of excellent stills which we are currently using for our Instagram feed. We think that these interview would also work well on the film website. This is an example of my understanding of the synergy required in distribution processes.

Ular Character Interrogation

Eve Character Interrogation

POSTER

I am really pleased with my poster, as before I wasn't sure how it was all going to come together and I was worried it would look random and unorganised. After doing some poster research I was able to get the things a poster needs to make it look realistic. I have added vines on my poster as there are references in my poster about a garden, and the whole theme is Adam and eve, who grew up in the garden of Eden.

I had to adapt my poster so all the institutional information could be added and there was space for it to all go. I created my poster in Photoshop.

INSTAGRAM

Social is a really good distribution tool

74 percent of adults age 18-65 are on social media including Facebook twitter Instagram and many other sources of social media. Movie makers everywhere should be using social media because of the wide age range.

Although you reach the large age range you can also meet different types of audiences. instead of making my movie trailer, I have also tweeted, put my stills from my interview onto Instagram and posted images from my film on my account.

Iv'e used Instagram in many ways: I have used it in a more tradition platform by linking our audience to our film and also in a more creative way I have created a Instagram account for the persona in our film who post as they are real people. To be specific the characters are Eve and Ular. I understand how import it is to create synergy across all of our different platforms to build our audiences.

A centural benefit of using social media like Instagram is the fact that it is interactive, that is a two way street of communication. With the lure of going viral. I researched case studies such as Lion Gate's clever marketing of a popular song  'The Hanging Tree' too spread the word about the 'Hunger Games Mocking Jay part 1' which resulted in over 20 million views on Vevo's youtube page. A second case study involves a low budget indie film 'Its A Disaster' it was decided to realise its entire movie in vine in 6 second segments, according to the jokey press release. This stunt got everyone talking. a clever marking strategy is using ARG's (Alternate reality games) this create a fictional world that real people can connect with across number of platforms. 42 entertainment has created several ARG'S for films like 'The girl With The Dragon Tattoo' 

(Source of date Movies and Social Media: Marketing Films With New Media. By Catlin Neely
03.06.15)


My choice of social media was to use Instagram.

These are some screenshots of my Instagram accounts for our film. The first one is for my character Eve. She is a typical girl who just wants to post pictures of her life and her boyfriend. I want to make this account as normal as possible as this is a representation of a normal teenage character.

My other account is for our film. Here I can post images of our film set and some insiders of the actors so the audience can get excited for the film release.

Social media accounts are all about attracting audiences and getting people to hear about the films. This is a really good method of distribution, as it is completely free, anyone can post their views or ideas and things can go global if you get the right people to retweet, share or like a post.

Its very important to have social media to show we want the audience to be interested in our film and to show we have good understanding of the importance of social media networks.

Filming in the Christmas

In the Christmas holidays me and our group filmed a lot of scenes. We thought as we are all quite busy we would take advantage of the time.

We did a romantic dinner scene which we knew would take the longest time. We had to decorate the room with a nice table layout, bottles of wine and candles to make the scene look perfect. Freddie (the camera man) made sure everything looked perfect and realistic. I took some screenshots from the footage we had of the scene. Our scene has been made made to look slightly creepy, as the whole effect of Ollies character is meant to be eccentric, he wears a leopard print hat and a fur coat which shows his wealth.