Trailer : Youtube Tagging

Question 3 : How effective is the combination of my Main Project and the Ancillary Texts?

FINAL PIECE : Website

{ http://web.alleyns.org.uk/Alleyns_Media_2010/Ben_Rogers_Website_Black%20Box/index.html}

the picture above is a picture of the website in working order

Question 3 : How Effective is the Combination of your Main Project and Ancillary texts? - Director's Commentary

Website : Conventions of a Film Website

Below, I am going to explain the Conventions of a Film Website and how my website keeps to them. For this, I am using the example of Avatar. The image of the full website is below, it contains a hyperlink to the actual website itself.

The first thing that we are drawn to is the large image in the centre of the website that auto-plays when you go to the website. This is present on every film page, because there is no better way to convince the audience that they want to see the movie than through showing us part of the movie. My website has this, except not in an absolute preposterous widescreen.

The second thing that the eye is drawn to is the title. This is always a recognisable font, admittedly Avatar's font is the subject of controversy, due to the fact that it is a 'cheap' font installed on Mac and PC called 'Papyrus' and many fans were distressed at the use of such a cheap font for such an expensive movie. However it noticeable among the market to have a font associated with your film, for example, films like TRON and the Godfather have their fonts mimicked in many things, yet people will always associate the font with the film.My film uses 'Faith Collapsing' font which doesn't have any real associations, meaning that my film can stand alone with it's own font.

The next important aspect of a page is the importance of networking and word of mouth, there must be someway of your website encouraging people to share it among themselves. Websites like facebook, rotten tomatoes and myspace have sites for individual movies that people can 'like', which in itself, makes the movie look more popular and also the reaction of one person to seeing that their friend enjoys a movie, is often to go. My survey, pre-making any of my projects, suggested that people listen to friends' 'word of mouth' more than any form of advertising. So having symbols associated with, and linking to these 'social networks' can only increase success.

One of the final, mainly visual aspects of film website is the background, often comprised of parts of the poster or of the film itself, depending on the suitability of the footage and whether the colour scheme works. I presume that this one for Avatar, is an unreleased poster or just a freeze frame from the film (which is probably much easier to get in a film that it almost entirely HD animation). Mine is just the poster but horizontal with a section of shadow in the centre to emphasize the Text in the middle and to generally make it smoother.

Poster : Technology

Despite the fact that I am going to make a video on this same subject, I thought that I would make a list of all the Software/Technology that I have used to create my advertising package.

In terms of Software I have used :


Adobe Photoshop CS5

Adobe Flash CS5




Final Cut Pro




Adobe Dreamweaver CS5




Livetype





Microsoft Excel






Microsoft Word





Apple Iphoto





Websites and Online Technology that I have used:

Website: Website draft

This is a draft of the final appearance of the website, though some of the levels have to be sorted and the youtube clip is not attached to it, and the links to facebook and potentially myspace are non-existent. It is designed off the aspects of the poster, that I have made previous to this. This tends to be the norm with websites, the poster design is in some way reformed and animated, but the general gist of it still remains.

Poster : Conventions of a Teaser Poster

A Teaser Poster must always contain a few things, otherwise it will not appear so much as a teaser trailer, as a mess of images. Teaser trailers often have a textured or dark background, with an image in front. The reason for this is, unlike actual movie posters, they are made during production and their aim is to make something that gives away little, and so thus, they do not show a screenshot of a movie or something clear. For Example the poster below is for a movie called Exam, a low budget Mystery Thriller (thus perfect to use to help with my Poster) :

There are no actors shown in this poster.

Only a 'high concept' idea of a plot

It also chooses to highlight that it was on the 'Official Selection' for Edinburgh Film Festival

In fact, many teaser posters don't show actors, just mere symbols representing the characters or plot points. The Black Box itself is the central image of my poster, what it does is highlight the fact that the Black Box is a mysterious object. Below are a few posters that use objects to connote certain things

This poster for Conan (yet to be made) , for example contain a giant sword, which would suggest a great warrior or hero, in the same way that the Black Box would suggest mystery. However as well as this...

There are posters that lure you in with a brand, for example, this new up-to-date 'Batman' poster which shows the painted nails and tattoo associated with the character Harley Quinn, whilst my poster cannot quite do this, it can at least advertise using it's name. The name 'Black Box' and the image 'Black Box' are easy to associate.

Here are a list of conventions that I believe that my poster sticks to:

1)There is a general colour code throughout the poster, of greys, blacks and reds

2)Bold title in a colour that contrasts the background colour, and compliments the look of the poster, whilst standing out.

3) One dominating central image, either representing Mystery (in mine), Action, Conflict or Love

4) A particular font that re-occurs all over the poster. In my case 'Faith Collapsing'

Poster : Final

Above is the final poster, it has added notations on Flickr.com

Poster and Trailer Work : Fonts

My aim with the fonts was to get a vaguely gothic font that appeared primarily creepy and mysterious, as opposed to action orientated.

MAIN TITLE

I decided that for the main title, I wanted a germanic/Old English font but with modern effects. An early favorite was "Deutsche Zierschrift", however it reacted badly to having effects such as 'bevel' applied to it, due to the fact that it was designed to look physically shaded. In the end I chose ''Faith Collapsing" over it, due to the fact that it looked better with editing than the other one. Also, its faded look made the title look more like dried blood which was a more effective look that just a gothic font.

NAME

Next to the title was my name, and to make this look effective, I wanted something that looked like a signature, in the end, I rejected "Bickham Script Pro" (No hyperlink, this font is pre-installed on Mac) on the grounds that it looked too much a font and not like a signature that I would have. I also rejected "Angel Tears", because it looked too much like the 'Coca Cola' Logo, which would look gimmicky. In the end, I chose the font "Quid Pro Quo" because of it's actual similarity to my handwriting, it made the poster look hand-signed. I wanted a level of personalisation, the Ben Rogers' gives the impression that it has been sent by me to the audience as a gift of sorts. I also did this because it reminded of directors like John Carpenter who put their name at the beginning of every title

BILLING BLOCK

When it comes to the billing block, there are two main fonts. I used both of them, but only one of them for the billing block. "Steel Tongs" appears on first glance to be more associated with action, whilst there is more subtlety in "Universal Accreditation". The reason for this is the fact that "Universal Accreditation" is slimmer and rounded slightly, whilst "Steel Tongs" is square and thick. As well as this, it, as a font is more versatile to editing, I was able to achieve a more metallic effect on the wrting than with "Steel Tongs". However, I did use "Steel Tongs" on the rating next to the 15 Certificate. As well as this, on the poster, next to the Billing block there were two little blocks of text, written in "Bordeaux Roman Bold LET" (Installed on Mac), I saw that on the internet this was considered a graphic design font and thought that if it was being recommended by the experts, I might as well use it, it works very well to the metallic effect I applied to it

OTHER FONTS USED

I used the remaining fonts on the award on the poster. Again two of these were described in a different article (here) as Professional, and I thought that Trajan had the Grandeur I was looking for when it came to writing 'Winner', it is a useful font. Helvetica (Installed on all computers) wasn't really used all that much, due to the fact that it is quite plain. I used Metropolitan for one of the Awards because it is an instantly recognisable movie font, and so Film Awards might choose to use it. Justice by Dirt2 is just used to write 2011, and it is a nice looking font I had installed.

Poster : A few drafts and the up to date poster

Whilst I was constructing my poster, I came to the conclusion that it would show you my train of thought, if I was to upload a few of the many drafts of my poster. Currently my poster is yet to receive it's central image, which is a picture of the box itself rested upon a table, in darkness. Many of these looks are experiments and not all of them work, but each one helped me progress...

^ The first attempt to create the poster is very minimalist. ^

I used the word 'Title', instead of a title, whilst in development, so that I could display my font

The Awards are simple laurel jpegs found on the internet, as is the American R Rating

The Black background is not particularly adventurous, but then again, I was creating a very minimal outline of what the vague theme of the poster would be.

The colours and font have both stayed due to the fact that they are visually appealing.

To be honest, the second poster is similar to the first, except I began to personalise the poster more. The inclusion of my name, 'Ben Rogers' Title' in a handwritten font serves to make me appear an important director in the same way that directors often label their work e.g. 'John Carpenter's The Thing' and 'Peter Jackson's King Kong'. As well as this inclusion of a tag-line area denoted by the fake tag-line in the top left corner. This poster served as a way of making the poster look better.

The third poster was an experimental idea, created around the same time as poster 2 and possibly previous to it, I decided to scrap the multi-coloured lettering presented in the other posters, for a singular white colouring, the big difference was the inclusion of some bloodied, cracked glass and a cultist symbol to both suggest a violent struggle and a conspiracy. As well as that, I was planning to use this effects on a photo of the daughter (my sister), which we also had out-takes from the filming of the photograph. This idea could have worked, had the clip been used, but sadly, I discarded the clip due to the fact that it was essentially quite difficult to fit into a teaser trailer

As I was ahead on my trailer work at this point, I needed to create a title and did so, the title 'Black Box' became my title, and using a filtered texture of granite, with a few, drawn flower drawings. I made the following... included in the image, is what the text would have looked like had I not used layers and filters to attain the appearance of dried blood.

This background was very good and I decided that I would use it on my poster, so I copied the format of the trailer's title over to the poster and the best poster so far is the one below, which incorporates the best aspects of both.

This poster has a nice background, the font looks like dried blood and looks quite gothic, this inclusion of my own film award, The 'Raven Film Festival' and a matching font for coming soon, are all things that make this poster look vastly improved. I am still having trouble with constructing a tag-line, due to the fact that to truly work, they often have to have clever wording or a pun of some sort and that sort of thing takes time to think of. Any way, I will soon upload the actual poster itself

Audience Work : Screening

At long last, I have finally shown my trailer to an audience of twelve people as well as, potentially, an upcoming online audience via. youtube and facebook. Here are some pictures of my screening...

From this short questionnaire given to my audience, I have learnt what I need to do and I have already re-cut the trailer to accommodate some of the ideas that were put forward, certain issues were difficult to change, and so some things remain unchanged, but then again, no product is perfect. Underneath are my findings from the questionnaire. As well as this, I will make a Wordle of words (I assume this is the way you refer to a Wordle) out of the summaries put forward by the group.

As a whole, the focus group came back with some pretty solid recommendations.

They conclusively said that the titles needed to remain on screen much longer and so I have edited it, so that the titles write themselves quicker and stay on screen longer, so this should hopefully please the audience, the re-edit has positive feedback on youtube. As well as this, some brightness issues were brought up, and they were dealt with instantly... and also some sound balancing issues which were improved.

Here is a Wordle of Words that were included by the focus group in the questionnaire, the larger the word is, the more times it was repeated. For example, interesting was one of the most common words used.

What became clear from the focus group is that people around the age of 18 would usually go to to movie with their friends, but not alone which would suggest that it is a film that they are partially interested in, but would prefer to go with their friends. A majority of people said that they had friends who would go to this movie. The success within this age bracket is quite surprising, I was sort of aiming at a little higher, with a potential niche audience of older middle aged watchers.

Trailer : FINAL Trailer

Here is the Final Trailer.

Question 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products : trailer pt. 1

The final basic convention of a trailer is that of the narrative, the narrative of my trailer is that of a kidnapping and the potential revenge. My trailer is shot in a low key way, in which the real action of the film is not shown, this being a convention of film that I am personally not keen on, I found that personally it would intrigue me more, if the ‘hook’ were a little more subtle. In terms of subtlety, I think that what I would have done, if it were allowed by the Exam Board, I would have gone for a trailer with a copyrighted song and the finished product would have more of a minimalist art-house feel such as the ‘Confessions’ Trailer , which even Hollywood Films like ‘The Social Network’ are aiming to mimic. However, my narrative is presented through intercutting to violent flashbacks like in the trailer for (and the movie itself) ‘Memento’, other aspects that are similar to that trailer are the displacement of narrative and the fact that nothing is in its natural order. The narrative also has a undetermined briefcase which is left as a mystery, both the films ‘Pulp Fiction’ and ‘Ronin’ used a briefcase as a crucial MacGuffin in their narrative.

Finally, as per usual, the links to the films mentioned above are below.

The Social Network http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lB95KLmpLR4

Memento: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rq9eM4ZXRgs

Confessions (Japanese, No subtitles): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1gBAbI8UQQ

Pulp Fiction: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFhadqrMPiU

Ronin: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFhadqrMPiU

Question 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products : trailer pt. 2

The next convention in a trailer is to establish a leading character/s. I believe that I did this well. Whilst my trailer is meant to be short, we are meant to get the impression that the Father is a ‘no-nonsense’ character, he is out to protect his daughter from those who have kidnapped her. This character is reminiscent of Liam Neeson’s character in ‘Taken’, however unlike Neeson’s character, he, from the trailer, appears to call assistance which would suggest he may be taking the law into his own hands similar to Michael Caine’s character in ‘Harry Brown’. The character archetype is deeply rooted in many 70s Vigilante/Crime movies such as Charles Bronson in ‘Death Wish’ and Clint Eastwood in ‘Dirty Harry’, hopefully an audience will recognise an attempt to hark back to this rapidly disappearing genre of movie (However, the various resurgences of this genre e.g. ‘Taken’ and ‘Old Boy’ have been wildly successful). The other aspect that he fits in with characters of this type is in his age, the character is meant to be around 40 - 55.The daughter, on the other hand, is tightly in-line with kidnapping victims in movies, she is blonde and wears clothes that denote that she is probably wealthy, films with characters similar to this are ‘Man on Fire’ and ‘Ransom’. However, my character is older than the usual character in a kidnap movie, usually the daughter is around 5-9 years old, whilst the daughter in my film is 15.

Once again, the links to all the film trailers mentioned above are below...

Taken: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvUxdQ4q-Lg

Harry Brown: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2S3SraFmI0

Death Wish: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GieK_55uyY

Dirty Harry: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6Ro0Wiq6v0

Old Boy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLn1y9v6yno

Man on Fire: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4kLizDXLY0

Ransom: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BL4fNkypfdU

Question 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products : trailer pt. 1

Certain conventions and clichés embed themselves in the collective mind of the audience, and in the following piece of writing, I will explain how my trailer strives to become reminiscent of, whilst not mimicking, trailers of the same genre.

Beyond the mere genre of the trailer, my trailer keeps to many of the key structural points of a trailer. Throughout the trailer, certain important aspects are established. In general, a trailer must simply outline the location, in my trailer, the location is established through the clearly British accents and the recognisable London suburbs. I chose not to really turn the fact that it is based in London, due to the fact that the plot is not really affected by the fact that it is set in London, in my trailer the location is apparent and not actively demonstrated. To be honest, whilst it is Film Convention to establish setting, in Thrillers, the concept behind them often needs to be strong enough that you could set the film anywhere. Due to the fact that Thrillers, Horrors and Action Movies are in their nature, High Concept e.g. The U.S. Remake of British TV Show, ‘State of Play’ as a Political Thriller movie and the (often line-for-line) remaking of Asian thrillers such as Korean romantic Thriller ‘Siworae’ as ‘the Lakehouse’ and Chinese Crime Thriller ‘Infernal Affairs’ as the ‘the Departed’. These are all examples of a plot transcending cultural barriers, and proof that the plot of a thriller far exceeds the necessity to associate a particular culture to it. Very often in thrillers, there is some form of criticism of certain social status, for example there is often criticism of Bourgeois culture which is an area of society that appears internationally and thus the criticism retains its strength worldwide. However in certain films, such as ‘127 Hours’, the setting does essentially define the film, it provides the real centre-point of the plot. There are also films that are specifically made to portray or critique a particular culture e.g. ‘City of God’, ‘Kidulthood’ and so-called American ‘Hood Films’. My product is aimed not to be specific to British culture, it is meant to create a plot that is recognisable to a multi-national audience.

This will be continued in another blog post. Links to all forementioned trailers are below.

1. State of Play: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ME87tEX9Qw
2. Siworae/Il Mare: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRe7E5GIq_M
3. The Lake House: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V02lqEpbk2Y
4. Infernal Affairs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jO4RLrNVbd4
5. The Departed: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGWvwjZ0eDc
6. 127 Hours: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlhLOWTnVoQ
7. City of God: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJdW1TevoyA
8. Kidulthood: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vliupa-zi8

Changes to the Plan

Due to the fact that my original plan was somewhat dull and unambitious, I have felt the need, rather late on, to revamp this project. Various changes have been made to the narrative, actors, general concept and length of trailer.

First, the narrative seemed boring, yet unachievable. The amount of actors needed and the nature of the action scene, meant that most of the shots would have ended up as an incomprehensible mess. What was originally a regular married couple with a daughter, seemed a poor idea, because they are not the sort of people who would be attacked. The idea of a random attack limited the plot and drove the narrative nowhere, it made the villains faceless and unremarkable. The general plot was blunt and predictable, the trailer appeared to lead nowhere, outlining little of the plot, without creating the required mystery, there was no Unique Selling Point. Nothing made this story watchable. I have now improved aspects of this trailer, to encompass the single father and his daughter, the attack is not planned and is even forewarned with the case sent to the house. There is now a mystery in the plot, about the father and his connections, the item in the briefcase and why they have kidnapped his daughter. Also the kidnap of the daughter as opposed to the murder, means that I have more motive to go after the villains and it spares me having to make what would be undoubtedly a poor death scene, something that is frankly impossible for a student to produce. The briefcase also adds a face to the villain/s.

In terms of actors, the characters that I had, external to the main three, whom I have kept, would honestly have distracted us from the main plot of the film. The role of the mum and Dad's friend were actually just a waste of time, and due to the fact that I am incurably awful at finding actors, I set myself the job of finding these actors, when I could have just got on with filming. I changed the father from being some awful Dulwich dad into being a character who potentially had connections to criminals, because it was implausible that he would be able to take revenge otherwise. Also the daughter has changed from an aggressive character, to a more regular character, the reason for this change is that it was a needless subplot, and subplot has no place in a thriller trailer. The dad's friend, again was a character who I had no actors for, I don't know anyone who lives in this country who could play this part.

The General concept of the trailer has changed, it is no longer quite the revenge trailer it was, because I realised that movies of this sort aren't made on the budget that I have, and also they are a genre generally more associated with huge actors e.g. Michael Caine, Liam Neeson or even action movie guys, whom I don't know, thus basing it on a formula that it is not associated with amateur/newcomer British cinematography. I have decided to make it more of a plain thriller, with aspects of mystery. The idea of action movie aspects, when I don't have the use of after effects, basically means what I film will look awful. I need to make it a bit more low-key and a bit more subtle and symbolic, less physical and blatant.

As well as this, the final aspect that needed a review is the timing of the trailer, the montage idea did not suit the pace of the trailer that I have decided on. The timing of the first scene was really slow and seemed to hark back to last year's opening scene task, and thus I needed more pace and at the same time far less. So I decided to create a mysterious trailer by intercutting multiple scenes at the same time as opposed to playing a straight scene which will bore the audiences senseless. As well as this, it will allow me to cover up the limitations that I have as a student, without intercutting, a kidnap scene would look poor, but flashing action at an audience will really pump them up as opposed to showing them the action, thus removing the element of surprise that audiences really want when they go to the cinema.

As you can see, I was incredibly critical of my original trailer-concept and thought I would somewhat obliterate it, to show my thought process, one of the reasons I wasted so much time is that I passionately wanted to make an original trailer, and I did not want to make the one that I had first thougt up, because it was bad.

Audience Research : Opinions on movies

At this moment in time, my initial survey has had 39 replies and this allows me to analyze a wider audience to see potentially which audiences are interested in my film.


Gender

56.4% of replies were from Males, 43.6% from Females
There was little to no real difference in tastes in movie from the audience selection


Age

We have had

Under 16s: 3

16-25: 7

26-35: 8

36-45: 12

46-55:9

So, as a whole, I have a range of statistics from the everywhere from Under 16 to 55

Genre

As a whole, the most popular genre was Comedy, which 13 Votes / 33.3% of people ranked in their top 3, however my trailer fits, potentially, into Thriller and Action which received 11 Votes/ 28.2%, both at joint third behind Drama. The definite popularity of these two genres is reassuring to me, showing that there is a large potential audience



I also chose to put a second Audience question about Genre that would help expose what audiences thought about each other. My question was "My reasoning behind this question is that it would potentially help me see whether I was latching onto a niche audience or whether I could capture the Mainstream audience, however there was anoter motive behind this question, to discover whether audiences felt un-catered for, for example Andy answered my questionaire and said that he believed that people his age's tastes were 'less diverse' and this opinionof his was probably triggered by the fact that the films aimed at people of his age range (36-45) did not contain enough 'Action' and 'Arthouse', the two forms of film that he specifically mentioned. So essentially, in theory there is an untapped audience, there was an overwhelming 1/3 of people answering my survey stating that they felt that many people their age enjoyed Drama, when they themselves enjoyed Action and Thrillers.

Regularity

The regularity with which people visited the Cinema showed that a resoundingly large figure of 56.4% of people visited the Cinema twice monthly, this would suggest to me that people go and see films pretty consistently and this may suggest that people aren't too picky about going to see films and they, due to the regularity of their schedule, might want to go and see something odd. The 7.7% of people who go 3-4 times a month, and the 2.6% who goes weekly or more, would in my opinion go to the film sheerly because they enjoy the cinema experience or they are very interested in film, at which point they would be willing to go and see up coming directors.

As well as this, the quantity of DVDs bought per month is quite staggering, with a vaste majority of people buying, renting or downloading films, 2 or more times a month, this probably means, unless my audience are incredibly wealthy, the price of the DVD on release should be low, because with low-budget films, there is no way that you can ask for a large price, and people will be much more likely to take a risk buying a new director's film if it costs £5 than if it costs £16-20

Effective Methods of Advertising

Conclusively people ticked the box for 'Word of Mouth' 69.2% of the time and Reviews 56.4% of the time, no-one who filled in the survey did not fill in either of these two boxes, which means that these are the two most effective ways of advertising to people, other than perhaps the Trailer itself. Suggestions as to where they got their information were places such as: Rottentomatoes.com (3), Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo (3) , Empire Magazine (1), The Guardian (8), The Metro (1), Youtube (3), facebook (2), Time Out (3), Twitter (1), Observer (1) and the New York Times (1). This showed that actually newspaper and radio were still an effective way of reaching the audience and people still trust written review over youtube, facebook or twitter.

What people look for in a film

This was one of the few questions where there was a spread of answers with over 10% of people voting for each diffent section; 'Famous Director, Famous Cast, Storyline, Genre, Trailer and Nominations' - However Storyline won conclusively with 41% of the vote with Trailer and Nominations both as 15% or so, however if you think about it a Trailer is meant to express a storyline and show nominations and reviews, so I took that trailer is actually the most important way of demonstrating the aspect in question

Poster Work: Gone Baby Gone

I like this poster because it highlights the single, central character, due to his pose, he looks like he is potentially mourning. The gun in his hand shows that he is willing to go to extreme lengths for vengeance, and also the background and the way that the sun is rising suggests that he has limited time. This of course fits in with my theme. The simpleness of the font and the use of a simple tag line means that not too much is going on in the poster, often posters try to have too much in them, this however gives little away as to the plot of the film. The rising sun also provides rich colour, so there is a contrast between the light at the bottom of the screen and the darkness at the top.