Film Poster Initial Ideas

I've now started to look at my ancillary products, and began thinking about what kind of things my poster needs to have to meet conventions. Because the poster and magazine article aren't worth as many marks as the main production, I don't want to spend as long on them. However, I must still plan them well and think about how to gain maximum marks on them.

As you can see from the screenshot above, there are a series of different posters from a variety of different films with different genres. To find these posters, I simply went onto Google images and typed in 'film posters'. These are the first ones that came up. From looking at these, I can note down some conventions that occur on each one:

• The main character/s are nearly always on show as the centre of the poster.
• The background of the poster usually relates to the main location of the film.
• The font style is considered and used in relation to the themes and genres of the film.
• The actors named who featured in the film are somewhere on the poster, along with the release date of the film.

For my poster I'm going to match these conventions, as well as adding something to try and make people realise my film is modern just from looking at it. Because the plot from my film is built around the conversations my main character has with someone online, I'm going to look at including some sort of computer related image onto the poster. Below, you can see one of the posters for the film 'The Matrix' and 'Untraceable', which is all about the idea of computer coding. I could use something similar on my poster to represent the use of computers in my film.

Reflective Comment:

As a starting point for my ancillary tasks, this post was very needed to begin talking about the initial ideas and research I'd come up with and done to begin thinking about the poster. Although this post appears quite basic, I only intended it to be a rough idea on some of the things I had thought about with the ancillary tasks. My next plan in relation to the poster is to decide exactly how I'm going to create it and carry out some research on the best ways to do this.

Reflective Blog Entry

During the week we had away from sixth form due to half term, I spent some time adding reflective comments to a lot of posts as well as improving on them as much as possible. When we return tomorrow, I'm going to start with some initial ideas for my ancillary products of a poster and film review. My plan is also to sort out my actors, create a post with the probable location I will use, and also create a script for my film. Generally, their will not be a huge amount of speech as most of the development of characters will be done through conversations had online, but their will still be some I will need to include, and I will probably include what is said in the online chat room in my script.

Short Film Textual Analysis

I've decided to look at some already existing A2 media films to gain some inspiration and some possible ideas. One film that I found featured something that I thought worked really well, and would fit with my film because of the modern theme. The whole film itself does not relate much, but one scene in particular does. The whole film is embed below with a screenshot of the scene I like:





















As  you can see from this scene, the computer screen he is looking at is visible on the screen. Its a camera angle from inside the computer, showing the characters face as he works. I think that for my production, this would work really well because my main character will be spending a lot of time talking to a boy in a chat room, and a lot of character development will be built around these conversations. However, I have absolutely no idea how to do this, and so a lot of research would be needed to look into how to edit a piece in this way. As the editing process approaches, I'm planning to carry out a lot of research on these type of editing techniques to see what could work for my film.


I also went on to look at another A2 film. This one doesn't relate to my film in terms of the plot, but most of it has been filmed in the dark and the lighting still remains good, so it relates to mine in that way.

The genre of this film appears to meet mostly thriller, with the girl being followed home by a random person. This is how I want mine to turn out, and so watching films similar to them has helped me picture mine. I'm going to have to do a lot of research into the lighting to ensure that if I do record my film in the dark it can still be seen. Also, the general feel of this film is good, and makes it all appear very sinister and strange. This is exactly how I want mine to turn out, and so creating a dark theme is very necessary.

Reflective Comment:
This task was very useful as it allowed me to look at products that are similar to mine. The first short film helped me to gain inspiration about how to best modernise my film. The second one was good to look at in terms of the lighting, because its something I'm worried about and watching a film utilise the lighting so well gave me faith that in can be done.

Assessment Criteria

This is the assessment criteria for our coursework:

Level 4 16–20 marks 

• Planning and research evidence will be complete and detailed;
• There is excellent research into similar products and a potential target audience; 
• There is excellent organisation of actors, locations, costumes or props;
• There is excellent work on shot-lists, layouts, drafting, scripting or story-boarding; 
• There is an excellent level of care in the presentation of the research and planning;
• Time management is excellent.

During the course of the year, I will need to constantly refer back to this to ensure I am meeting the criteria to progress my grade.

Text Message Editing Techniques

For my final production, I'd really like to edit text messages/online messages onto the screen just as you can see from the images here. Because my film has a very modern theme, I think that this feature would enhance that modern theme and make the young audiences relate to the film more. It would also be very useful when it comes to the character development of Tom, the boy that Clare meets online. By the messages he sends her appearing as an extra on the screen, rather than having to show her laptop screen, the audience will also be able to see her reaction to each message as they are sent. Although this is a good idea for my production, the process of doing it well could be challenging. From looking online, I've found that one of the best ways to do this is through Adobe After Effects.

However, this is not a free tool, and would cost a fair amount of money to do. Because of this, I'm going to look at doing it in more simple ways, such as through iMovie. Having said this, I don't want to do it without it looking real, so when the editing process comes around I plan to look in more detail about ways to do this.

Reflective Comment:
Coming up was this idea was something that has helped my visualise my film in my head a lot more. I'm really keen to do more research into this when it comes to the editing process, and will definitely look into how I can make this happen in my production. To improve this task, I could of included some of the research I did into the Adobe programs that help make these text effects possible. Having said this, I did mention in the post about the Adobe After Effects and the cost, I when I come back to do more in depth research on this editing technique I will be sure to include it then.

Hiring Actors

For my production this year, I had originally planned to hire actors from a website online called StarNow. However, after looking into the website I'm come to realise that you need to be 18 years old to apply to hire actors, which is obviously a problem for me as I'm not 18 years old. Below is a link to the terms and conditions from the website along with a picture that states the requirement of being 18.

                                       http://www.starnow.co.uk/terms-and-conditions/

Obviously this is an issue for me and has set me back slightly. To get past this, I'm going to start speaking to people I know about possibly acting for me. I will do another post later on as an update on who will be featuring in my production.

Character Profiles

Now that I have the storyline of my production planned out and I understand it in more detail, I've decided to move on and talk about the characters that I plan to have in my film and how I want them to be portrayed.

The film will focus mainly on one character, but there will still be others that play a big part in the development of the story.

Main Character:
The main character is a girl who I've decided to name Clare as of the descriptions in my storyboard. She lives with only her Mum. Because she is the main character and has some terrible stuff happen to her, I want to portray her as being a very vulnerable and weak character. The stereotype of her being a female adds to her vulnerability as in films female characters are generally looked at as being more weak, although I think this role could have worked with a male actor but I've decided to have it lead by a female. To show her weakness, I'm going to make it very clear that she doesn't have a good relationship with her Mum and is generally a very miserable and alone character with nothing to do in life. Therefore, she spends most of her time on her laptop where she eventually meets someone online and her naivety causes her to agree a meet up.

The main films I looked at that relate to mine were Unfriended (2015), and Trust (2010). The main female character in Unfriended isn't really shown as being vulnerable and weak, and is only made to look it by the horrors that happen to her in the film. However, the main female character in Trust is shown as being very naive just as I want my character of Clare to be.

In Trust, 14 year old Annie gets a laptop for her birthday and begins talking to people in an online chat room. Soon she begins talking to a boy she believes to be a similar age to her, but meets up with him to find he is a 30 year old man who ends up ruining her life. I've never actually seen this film, however from reading the plot description online it seems that some of the inspiration for my film actually was used in a similar way in Trust. I plan to watch this film in the upcoming weeks as it could give me some ideas on how to present her female character in a vulnerable way. Obviously the character I will create will be different to the character in Trust, but because they play a similar role in the trust they put in a random person online, research into how this character is portrayed could be very useful.


Susan (Clare's Mum):
Clare's Mum isn't a vitally important character, but I must ensure I portray her in the correct way in order to show the audiences the kind of relationship she has with her daughter. This will further develop the vulnerable character of Clare, and make her situation seem worse because of the lack of connection she has with her mother. To do this, I plan to show Susan sitting around all day doing practically nothing whilst Clare goes to school and comes back. There will be a lack of dialogue between these two to further show the lack of connection they have with each other. This will be most effective at the end of the film because when Clare is murdered, Susan will feel even worse as a Mum because she was never there for her. This will also make her death more sad, and hopefully have a greater effect on the audience.

Tom (Chat Room):
Tom is the character that Clare meets in an online chat room. His character will be mostly developed through the conversations they have in the chat room. I haven't planned at how I'm going to edit my film yet, but in order to develop his character without actually meeting him, I have to make sure that the conversations they have online are clear to see for the audience. In terms of his actual character, I'm going to try and make it clear to the audience that he is lying about what he is saying, but Clare is too naive and broken to realise, and the attention he is giving her is so new to her. By doing this, the audience will straight away take a dislike to him, and be equally as shocked when he emerges from the woods to find Clare's dead body.

Police Officer:
The police officer appears at the end of the film to tell Clare's Mum that her daughter has been found dead. His role isn't very big or important, and we won't actually be able to hear what he's saying as sad music will be playing over any dialogue.

Reflective Comment:
Creating in depth character profiles from my production was a very enjoyable thing to do and has moved me further forward with the planning of my film. As you can see, I analysed a similar product in relation to my main character (Clare), and also created profiles for the other characters that will feature. Analysing the film 'Trust' was very useful. Because it is a similar film with fairly relatable events, I looked at how the main character in that is shown and used that to develop Clare. To improve this task, I'd of like to look at more similar products, and plan to add a post on this later on.

Reflective Blog Entry

Last week went well and I made a lot of progress, however there are some things that didn't go so well. The update I posted on my film plot was a good thing to get done as it meant I now have a full understanding of what will happen in my film. It meant I could move on and begin a storyboard that didn't go so well. I did it was a lack of detail and description so it is just a very very rough version of a storyboard. I'm not going to remove it from my blog as it is good to look back on and compare when I eventually get my proper storyboard done. As you can see from the reflective comment on my storyboard, I'm going to improve it greatly by making a new one with actual locations and characters and camera angles.
For this week, I'm planning on improving some of the secondary research I've done and perhaps doing some more in greater depth. After that, I'm going to begin developing some characters for my film.