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.
