Poster: Second draft

Although I recently posted a first draft of our film poster, I decided to work on a second, improving things we felt were lacking in the first. These things included:

- The font being too simple- we felt it was boring and didn't accurately convey the light hearted tone of the film.

- The lack of a certificate or date for the film, making it look less realistic.

- The arrangement of the text on the bottom- we felt it didn't look professional and would be better central.

So, with these things in mind, we created this draft of the poster (still on the simple Paint tool, so again, the picture is not high quality).



We feel that this poster conveys the comedic tone of the film more accurately, and with the inclusion of the certificate gives a greater indication of who the film is aimed at. The font is far more suited to the genre- it is bouncy and youthful looking, and shows immediately that the subject matter of the film is not serious.

In order to get audience feedback regarding this draft of the poster, I have created a discussion board on our group's Facebook page to ask our peers their opinions on the poster.


As people reply and give their views, I will print screen them and add them to the blog.

Shooting: Problems

Although we managed to shoot some footage for our trailer in October, we have gotten to the point where we have begun to edit it and deduced that we need to refilm certain sequences. The problems we encountered were:

- Poor sound quality in a clip where our characters are running.

How we could solve it: We could either refilm the sequence and position the microphone closer to the characters, or try to use the footage we have and record the dialogue again in a voiceover, editing it into the scene in post-production.

- A shaky camera lens in a shot of our characters walking, due to our tripod being broken and thus not secure.

How we could solve it: Refilming the sequence seems the only option in this situation, as it isn't something we can easily disguise.

- Availability of actors- one of the boys we used in our trailer lives in Stamford four days a week, and this tightens our filming schedule.

How we could solve it: We could utilise the time we all have off from school and college by doing our retakes during the Christmas holidays, weather permitting.

- One of our actors, Sophie, has cut her hair since shooting, providing issues with continuity.

How we can solve it: We will have to either reshoot every scene invovling Sophie, or find a way to cover her hair in the remaining scenes- perhaps a comedy hat to fit in with the themes of the film.


UPDATE:

We need to refilm certain parts of our trailer, but have found issues with availability of actors and continuity (mainly due to our main actress having had her hair cut).

We were brainstorming ways of getting around this, and came up with an idea derived from the trailer for new teen film, Easy A. Although the plot is completely different, the dry humour and sense of parody may attract a similar audience, and a technique used in the trailer may be the answer to our problems.

Throughout the trailer, the main character, Olive, speaks directly to the camera, almost like a video diary. This would mean that we could film our actors seperately and when they were available, and it could also explain continuity errors, as it would be made obvious that the videos were made in hindsight.

Here is the trailer for Easy A to demonstrate what we mean.

Poster/Webpage Image

We have made a final decision regarding the image we intend to use on our advertising products for the film (above). We feel that the image above conveys enough about the film that it could be used promotionally- we can tell that the characters are not the so-called 'cool kids' you would find in a typical teen drama, but the bottle of vodka visible in-shot is out of place amongst them, giving a hint as to their situation. The pattern on Anthony's shirt is also visible in this photograph, and the red spatters could connote blood, implying the danger they find themselves in. Both of these indicate that the protagonists are out of their depth, and that the humour lies in this fact. We intend to use a tagline to further this humour and make it clearer to the audience.

We also liked the fact that the photograph is reminiscent of promotional material used for the first series of Skins (shown above.) Skins was proven to be universally popular amongst our target audience, as revealed by the surveys we took. We felt that this picture pays homage to the image in a way, and this will subconciously connect with Skins fans and make our film appeal to them more.

This is a very basic mock-up of what we would like the poster to eventually look like. This was only done using Paint, so the image quality is not very good and the variety of fonts, colours and effects were very limited. However, we wanted to demonstrate an idea of composition.




We also decided to make a mock-up of a webpage. Again, this image is of low quality and has all the same problems as the poster, but we wanted to demonstrate where we intended to place things and show what we intend to include- e.g. the links to social networking sites, which we found were important in promoting a film intended for a teenage target audience, and a 'Soundtrack' tab, which, to a degree, provides a ready-made audience made up of fans of the artists you have included.

Costume

My group carefully considered how we were going to dress our characters. Below is an annotated photograph of our three main actors and the outfits we chose for them.

Above all else, we wanted to both comply with and violate conventions of the teen drama. We complied with them by giving our characters a stereotype to fit into- they are 'geeks' or 'nerds' and we dressed them accordingly, in sensible clothes. We wanted them to wear simple jeans, plain T-shirts and hoodies (in Sophie's case, a lumpy, shapeless man's jacket.) However, the reason that we did this was to subvert stereotypes about the genre- typically in teen dramas, the main characters are the 'cool kids', and are highly sexualised accordingly. We wanted the 'geek' stereotype to assume the role of the 'cool kids' without taking on their behaviours, thus we wanted to convey our character's innocence and naivety through their clothes. We felt this also heightened the absurdity of them finding themselves in such a dark situation.

We also wanted to emphasise the rural setting of our trailer. Commonly, teen dramas are set in gritty, urban surroundings and feature streetwise teenagers taking on dark situations. In order to contrast our protagonists' innocence with the grit of our antagonists, we thought a country setting would be more appropriate. As noted on the photograph, the girl's jacket especially panders to this theme, as it connotes dog walking and a simple, rural lifestyle- quite the opposite to the drug dealers that our characters find themselves involved with!

Risk Assessment

My group have completed a risk assessment- we considered the possible dangers posed by our filming and came up with solutions or ways around them.

Webpage Analysis

Today, our group began more detailed research on the webpage that we have to produce as part of our brief. To deduce what the common themes were on webpagesfrom our genre of film, I annotated a few- pages for Cherrybomb, 4321 and Shank.


These are printscreens of the webpages for the aforementioned films. I have added annotations on what I considered to be relevant aspects of the pages.




(Click to view larger versions of the images and read the annotations I have made.)

Common threads throughout the pages were:

Links to social networking sites- Facebook, Twitter etc

- For the purpose of spreading information about the film- it encourages fans of the film to show their support for it and in turn, the page is more likely to be viewed by friends of the fans and so on.

A prominent photograph of the actors (the same one used on the posters)

- Cross-marketing; the same photo is used on all of the advertising material to make it more well known and ingrained into the minds of film fans. In several cases, the most famous actor (e.g. Noel Clark in the 4321 webpage) is the most prominent as big stars have a built-in fanbase.

Soundtrack listings

- The Cherrybomb webpage lacks this (perhaps due to being low-budget and not being able to afford licensing for music) but both the Shank and 4321 pages have a page with a complete list of songs featured in the movie. The purpose of this is that fans of the music featured in the film may be inspired to watch it based on it's inclusion of something they already like.

Shooting

Day #1: Cuckoo's Hollow/ Gunthorpe Garages

During the half-term holidays, my group and I came together to begin filming our project. We decided that it would be best if we used actors for the film and the three of us focused entirely on filming.


The main locations we used were Cuckoo's Hollow in Werrington and a set of garages in Gunthorpe, which we chose to use instead of a set at Walton as originally planned. The reason for this change is that the Gunthorpe garages looked less decayed, and based on the idea that our film is a comedy, we thought it would be funnier if the story was set in a very leafy, green Suburbia kind of setting.


These are our actors: Anthony Race, Sophie Wardell and Joe Stimson. We dressed them all in the similar costumes of jeans and jackets to make them look both similar and entirely plain- we didn't want them to look sexualised in any way.



This is a photograph of Dan positioning Joe in frame for one of the scenes in the trailer.

This is an image of our characters after they have been drinking in a humourous scene. We took some better quality photographs on the camera and are considering using this as our promotional image on both the poster and the webpage because it sums up the 'misfit' social position of the characters.



This is a photograph of Kayleigh, myself and our three actors after a hectic day of shooting!

Prop List

"A theatrical property, commonly referred to as a prop, is any object held or used on stage by an actor for use in furthering the plot or story line of a theatrical production. Smaller props are referred to as "hand props". Larger props may also be set decoration, such as a chair or table. The difference between a set decoration and a prop is use. If the item is not touched by a performer for any reason it is simply a set decoration. If it is touched by the actor in accordance to script requirements or as deemed by the director, it is a prop."

- Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stage_prop


For our trailer, we are going to need certain props to enhance the drama or comedy on screen.
As we obtain each prop, I will tick (✓) them off.

A sports bag ✓ filled with money
- A sports bag will not be hard to obtain. However, we obviously would be unable to use real money for the scene, so we plan to find a 'specimen'picture on Google and print off several copies to use.

Vodka bottles ✓
- There is a scene where our characters are getting drunk to celebrate the fact that they have discovered all of the money. For this, we will use empty vodka bottles washed out and filled with water.

A water gun
- For a comedic scene. We willl be able tobuy a small plastic water gun at a pound shop.

A car ✓
- For another comedic scene where our characters are overtaken by an old lady who is on foot. One of our group drives and owns a car, so we will likely use that as it is the simplest way.

A dog ✓
- We need a dog to chase one of our characters up a tree and bark at it. Again, two of our group own dogs, so we will choose based on the most obedient one (and the least threatening!)

Music: Final Decision

Based on our last-minute choice to shift the theme of the film from violent and Kidulthood-esque to a more comedic fare, we now feel that the D-Mindz song we were going to use is not appropriate. To reflect the lighter tone our film has now taken, we wanted more jovial music.

When searching for unsigned artists, we discovered Trip. We felt that his song, 'Who's That' had the perfect feel- it was fast and a little bit heavy to represent the action, but the lyrics are humourous and about a social misfit.



After hearing this song, we unanimously decided it would be perfect for the montage in our teaser trailer.

Here are the lyrics. The highlighted portion is the part we intend to use.

Who's that sitting at the bus-stop
Look at his mug shot
Looks like he's been mugged off
Woken up at night by the guard dogs
Plus he's got a pile of old broken alarm clocks


I can't even be bothered to
Read a book, write , clean or to cook
Feel like I’m Steve Mcqueen on foot
Look in my cupboards nothing but cheese and custard
My feet reek like Dijon mustard
So who's that sitting at the bus-stop
While his mums dog take a pee on his Dunlops
I lost my cherry to the solo in November rain
And I’ll always die hard like I’m John Mclane
So come on traffic lights go green
And come on STD test be clean
And pretty please Mr. Washing machine
Do your thing and take those funny stains off a my jeans
So come on mum, just leave that prick and
Come home sis at least for a bit
In school I was cool with geography and punch-ups
Picked on by the boy with the transformer lunch box


Who's that sitting at the bus-stop
Look at his mug-shot
It looks like he's been mugged off
Woken up at night by the guard dogs
Plus he' got a pile of old broken alarm clocks


Ey yo I stuff down a big fat breakfast that'd be fit for a builder
I got a crush on the waitress here a bit like Hillsborough
So when I dust I tip a couple of silvers
But I 'aint got a chance 'cos she looks like a film-star
But one fine day I’ll be a wealthy fellow
And then my piss-streak will a healthy yellow
But until then it's just me and my neighbours cello
Don't put your drinks on the table, please use my demo


Who's that sitting at the bus-stop look at his mug-shot
Looks like he's been mugged off
Woken up at night by the guard dogs
Plus he's got a pile of old broken alarm clocks


So I guess it's just me and the fruit machine
would someone please turn down the human-league
I’m trying to win some loot to get a new TV
So I can sit around all day and watch QVC

Final Storyboard

This is a final, more detailed and annotated version of our storyboard. We have cut out some scenes due to impracticality, and moved some around in the chronology, but otherwise the storyboard remains more or less unchanged.