Practise poster 3 (By Murray Wilson)

This practise poster was created by another person in my group. The poster was created using ‘Adobe Photoshop C3S’. Similar to the second practise poster that I had done, a lot more time and effort went into to producing this. In this poster there is a faded image of London which helps the audience to identify where the location of the film will be. This image was from the internet and was copied into ‘Photoshop’ where it was then edited. The colour and fade of the image gives the impression that London is evil and is home to many criminals due to the darkness of the image. In the background of this poster there is also a faded image of what appears to be the main character in the movie. In the first poster are group had done this same group member was in ordinary college clothes and was not in costume, but in this poster the costume is more realistic to what we would want for our final poster as he is wearing a suit and tie. The facial expressions of the character and the background behind however do not fit the genre of crime thriller as the character is smiling and the building behind appears to be a school. For our real poster the facial expressions of the characters will have to look serious and the background will have to be taken into more consideration.

Location scouting: Waterloo

Waterloo is a district of London, England, and part of the London Borough of Lambeth. It is a location that we will strongly consider as one of our filming locations. It has a wide range of architecture and is located in the centre of London. Waterloo is also located next to the river Thames which means we will be able to get maybe some shots of boats or the river. Another very good aspect of the location is the differences in buildings and atmosphere in the same area. There is a very public area near the river which has a lot of grand and bright buildings and close by is another area of dark and dingy buildings which is a lot more rural and will create a dark atmosphere if we filmed there.

Filming date set (Wednesday 30)

This coming Wednesday as it’s the day of the teacher strike; I and my group are going to use that time to film for our teaser trailer. We will be aiming to travel by tube to central London to get a wide range of shots. These will include wide angle shots of traffic scenes and buildings. We will also aim to get some shots of the river Thames for example which will give us some shots of water. Street scenes are also a possibility for this filming day and we could also include some groups of people or particular individuals.

Inspiration for filming: (BFI Film Institute)

Recently I had been on a school trip to the BFI film institchute in Southbank. I had learnt a lot of new and interesting things which has given me a lot of inspiration on the filming process of our trailer. We were shown various clips of very different films and discussed what made them good and bad. There were a lot of cinematic techniques used in the extracts we looked at and in astonishing to look at how much detail filmmakers put into their films. Another very interesting part of the trip was listening to a producer from ‘PATHE’ Film Company and what she does when producing films. The trip was very interesting and will give me a lot of new ideas and thoughts on how we will do our teaser trailer.

Audience Feedback - Practise Posters

After completing our practise posters we wanted to get some feedback from students in our college. We had showed our two practise posters to a class of year 12 students and asked them for their thoughts and ideas on how we can make them better. This type of direct audience feedback was very helpful as we were able to get detailed answers as opposed to getting feedback from a questionnaire. We will aim to do this type of audience feedback again when we complete more parts of the coursework as this had given us a lot of positive ideas that we can use to make our posters better.

Problems with filming

Magazine Introduction (Initial Research)

In today’s media lesson we were introduced to magazines and were told that we would have to make one of our own based on the trailer that we were producing. As you can see below are two magazines which were kindly provided to us by our teacher, these professional magazines will help give us an idea of what we would like are final magazines to look like. Magazine covers are a great way for films to gain advertising and promotion so they must make the cover eye-catching and colourful. The two film magazines provided were ‘Empire’ and ‘Total Film’.

EMPIRE:

‘Empire’ is a British film magazine published monthly by Bauer Consumer Media. It is the biggest selling film magazine in Britain, consistently outselling its nearest market rival ‘Total Film’ by over two-to-one and is also published in Australia, Turkey, Russia and Portugal. As you can see in this issue the primary focus has been on the new movie ‘Mission Impossible 4: Ghost Protocol’. The magazine demonstrates this straightaway through the bold and bright title and the images of characters in the film such as Tom Cruise. The bright red title has also been the magazines trademark and is very eye-catching for audiences. At the bottom of the magazines you can see a sub-section which usually shows some of the other big films in cinema. This particular issue has focused on the 10^th birthday of the Lord of the Rings franchise and is also very eye-catching and appealing for audiences. Empire magazine at the moment is the magazine that we like the most and one that we will try to adapt into our own personal magazine cover.

TOTAL FILM:

‘Total Film’ is a British film magazine published 13 times a year by Future Publishing. The magazine was launched in 1997 and offers film, DVD and Blu-ray news, reviews and features. It is the second-biggest selling film magazine in Britain behind ‘Empire’. The magazine cover has a very similar layout to ‘Empire’ film magazine. It uses one big film as its main selling point for the issue, in this case ‘Sherlock Holmes:  A Game of Shadows’. The cover shows a big image of the two stars in the film (Robert Downey JR. & Jude Law) and the title which again is very bold and eye-catching. By having huge pictures of the stars on the front of the cover this immediately draws the audience’s attention as they may be fans of the actors. The sub section is again used to present some of the other big films in the cinema and enhanced the colour and therefore makes the magazine cover more eye-catching.

What are Film Magazines?

Day 1 of filming: (Test shots)

For our first day of filming we wanted to get some test shots which will help us in the future. The aim of this was to familiarise ourselves with the camera work and cinematic techniques. We had aimed to go to two different locations London Bridge and Canary Wharf. Establishing and environmental shots was our focus and as we didn’t have any specific characters in mind this is what was easiest for us to do.

London Bridge was our first location and we had set up our first point of filming on the London Bridge get some establishing shots of Tower Bridge, The Gherkin, neighbouring buildings and boats on the river. Establishing shots were very important as they would not only set the scene for your audience but depending on what location you had shot we could give of a wide range of atmospheres and effects on the audience. Whilst on the bridge we were able to get all of the shots we wanted it was just quite difficult as there were so many tourists on the bridge. We started filming at around mid- day which may have been the reason as to why the bridge was so busy. In the future we should probably film slightly earlier to avoid rush hour. Below are some images of me and my group filming on the London Bridge.

Are second location was Canary Wharf which was allocation we had used last year and we had really liked it. The main reason for this location was the very  tall skyscraper buildings which reminded us of money and business. We were able to get a wide range of establishing shots but we also wanted to try to get some shots of character so one person in my group wanted to be that character. We had filmed some very simple shots of him walking around sitting on a chair and this was good practise for us as we had taken a wide variety of shots. Although Canary Wharf is usually very busy we had started filming there in the early evening so there were far less people around whilst we filmed. Previously we had filmed in Canary Wharf and there were a lot of people who looked into the camera constantly and ruined our footage so we were a bit optimistic about filming there again, but there were not that many people and were able to film very easily.

Below is a video of some of the test shots we had taken. We will not be using these shots in our final teaser trailer so this was good for us to familiarise ourselves with the camera and the types of shots we can use for our final teaser trailer.

Filming: Date set for filming

Me and my group have decided to start filming this Sunday coming. We will aim to spend the majority of the day getting most of the establishing and environmental shots of London landmarks and people. We will aim to go to numerous locations such as London Bridge, Canary Wharf and Wapping. To get to these locations we will use the tube which will allow us to travel quickly and easliy. It may get difficult if it gets too dark so wewill probably start filming fairly early to avoid any danger of it being to dark.

Practise Poster 2 (By George Robinson)

As you can see in the image above is a film poster that I had personally created using ‘Adobe Photoshop CS3’.To create this basic poster I had first used another member of my media group to take a picture of me standing infront of a plain grey wall. As the genre we have chosen is a crime thriller I had to avoid smiling so I had looked away from the camera and aimed to have a slighty serious look on my face. As you can see the mise-en scene in this particular poster I have created is not up to par as the clothes I have on in the image were clothes that I just happened to wear on that particular day we took the picture. When we create are real poster I will aim to be in a suit which was the decided costume of our main charatcer in our teaser trailer. The fonts I had used for the poster in my opinion gave a very bold and demonic feeling towards the audience. From the number of real movie posters that I had researched one of the factors that made a poster good was firstly, how eye-catching the writing was and also the effect that style of writing had on the audience. I had used a bright red font to give the audience a sense of danger and to also make the writing eye-catching. The faded London skyline behind me on the wall displayed to the auidence where the location of the film was and also made the film poster a lot more interesting for the audience. The tagline I had included ‘One man, One mission, One chance, I felt was good a it not only creates an increased sense of anxiety for the audience but also relates to the tilte of the film which is deadline. Both the title and the tagline both refer to in some way the aspect of numbers and time.

Prop Ideas: Briefcase

As you can see in the image above, is a briefcase that could be a good prop in our teaser trailer. The main protagonist in our trailer is a business man who is on his way home from work. We could use this briefcase to help tell the audience that this man is involved in business by including various shots of him in possession of this briefcase. The case is dark blue which is a colour which is frequently used in thriller movies. A briefcase is a commonly used prop that is good for not only giving the audience an insight into what kind of character a person is, but it is also a very effective way of drawing the audiences attention and creates a sense of mystery and anxiety for the audience as they do not know what is inside. Usually in films things inside briefcases are of great value in the movie for example, a large sum of money or high priority documents.

Practise poster 1 (By Mejan Zaman)

This poster was created by one of the people in my group and is the first practise poster we have done. As you can see the poster is very simple and not much detail has been included. This poster was created using ‘Adobe Photoshop C3S’. To create this poster another person in our group had there photo taken of them on the phone. The person in my group then uploaded the photo onto a computer and opened it into ‘Photoshop’. Firstly, he had cropped the character from the original photo away from the background and located it onto a blank canvas where he had made the background black. The black background gives a very dark and sinister feeling towards the audience and matches well the targeted genre. However, the black background would be perfect for a horror film but as we are not doing that this would not work as a background for our real poster. The title font in this poster is very bright and bold which makes it eye-catching for the audience. The red colour symbolises death and violence which is properties that we aim to include in our teaser trailer. The date shown on this poster is wrong as that date has already passed to on our real poster we must make sure that the date we advertise is realistic. The costume that are character is wearing is does not match the thriller genre and we will definitely have to get our actual costume when we do our real poster. In the future, I and another person in my group will aim to do our own practise poster and make it a little more detailed. We will aim to show progression from this poster as not much effort has gone into this poster.   

Audience Research: Focus Group (Posters)

Today my group and I had decided that we wanted to do some more primary research which involved us talking directly to various people and asking their opinions on four different film posters. We had previously conducted a similar form of primary research when we had asked people about what type of trailers they liked and why they liked it. We felt this research had helped us immensely and had given us a better understanding of what people like.

The four trailer posters we had presented were Taken (2008), Gun (2010), Limitless (2011) and Inception (2010). Each of these film posters were very different and we felt this was important as it would give us a better understanding as to what type of film poster design we should focus on creating. The two posters that received the best feedback overall was Gun (2010) and Limitless (2011). The main reason for this is that both posters were very eye catching, colourful and were also very good at grabbing the audience’s attention.

These are the film posters that we had displayed to various people. As you can see the posters are very different from each other and all do a good job of drawing the audience’s attention.

Film poster analysis: 'The Usual Suspects' (1995)

The Usual Suspects (1995) are a crime thriller directed by Bryan singer and stars Kevin Spacey, Gabriel Byrne and Chazz Palminteri.  A boat has been destroyed, criminals are dead, and the key to this mystery lies with the only survivor and his twisted, convoluted story beginning with five career crooks in a seemingly random police line-up. The film poster displays five of the main characters on a police line-up. This image immediately informs the audience that this movie is about crime and violence but also more importantly it highlights the fact that the main protagonists in this movie are criminals. Each of the characters appearances is unique and interesting this therefore creates an increased sense of avidity for the audience. The differences in costume, body language and facial expressions can help give the audience an inkling as to what type of criminals these characters are. The first protagonist on the left is wearing very casual clothes which could symbolise that this character doesn’t like to stand out and commits crimes that do not necessarily result in a lot of money due to his very casual cheap clothes. The second man is dressed in all black and has a big leather jacket. The costume of this character could show the audience that this character is very over confident and can make rash decisions. Also, his body language tells the audience that he is very outspoken as he has his chest out and head up demonstrating his overconfidence. The third character is wearing a casual suit with his top buttons undone and collars up. This could show the audience that he takes pride in his appearance and maybe that he is a bit of a ladies man. The fourth character looks very unhappy due to his facial expressions. We see this character in a quite cheap suit and tie which could represent he has been trying to stop being a criminal and become a good citizen. The final character looks very unconfident his body language suggests that he maybe has a disability or some sought of mental illness. The plain white background combined with the almost demonic shadows behind the characters help emphasize the fact that these characters are not nice and bad things will happen in the movie. Furthermore, the height measuring lines included on the police line-up could exemplify the fact that these characters are crooks as they are similar to the bars of a prison. The title of film is in a very bold font which draws the audience’s attention.

Film poster analysis: 'Heat' (1995)

 

‘Heat’ (1995) is an American crime thriller directed by Michael Mann and stars Al Pacino and Robert De Niro. The film follows the lives of two men on opposite sides of the law - one a detective; the other a thief. Intense bank robberies, gun fights and a very suspenseful ending is what is great about this movie. ‘Heat’ is considered to be one of the top crime thrillers ever made. The film poster displays the main characters by using images from the actual movie. The poster primarily focuses on the contrast between the blue background and the characters which have been blackened and shaded. The technique of shading creates a sense of mystery and deception as the characters are hardly visible and the dark colour of the characters could give the audience the impression that they are immoral and ill-fated. The blue background is quite contemporary facilitating the audience’s attention of the main characters and also shows the audience that this film is a thriller as blue is a colour that is quite frequently used in thriller movies. Blue is a colour that can represent the police therefore telling the audience that this movie with include the police as well. Close ups of the characters have been used to highlight their facial expressions and convey their emotions; this immediately tells the audience that this film is serious and will definitely contain violence and criminality. The font used to display the film title is very bold and in a white colour to make it eye-catching for the audience. The simplicity of the title font not only matches the simple title of the movie but is also very effective as it does grabs the audience’s attention to the poster. The same font is used to highlight the actor’s names and this is also a very effective way of maintaining the audience’s attention on the poster. Al Pacino and Robert De Niro are two very prestigious actors who have had much success therefore immediately making the film a lot more interesting and appealing. The names are placed at the top of the poster to make it even easier to spot. This film poster does not conform too many of the other film posters whereby they will rely on including a lot more content on the poster such a tagline or ratings of the film. Heat has kept is very simple but also very bold and eye-catching.