Our Actors =]

We used 3 girls and a boy in the sixth form at our school including me and Lauren Meek as the main 'Popular Girls' and Charlotte Meek as 'The Geeky Girl' within our group for this trailer, poster and magazine cover. Having us as the main characters of the trailer helped majorly with the scheduling and filming bacause we could all do the same times when it came to filming and we all took Drama as a subject which is an advantage, we also get on well with eachother which meant that none of us were left out.


'The Popular Girls'

Lauren Meek

Charlotte Piper
















'Geeky Girl'

Charlotte Meek


















'Prince's Mates'

                                Liam O'Grady

Joe Del Grosso










'The Prince'

Matt Kaal













Matt played our Prince charming as he is tall with dark hair and dark eyes. He fits with the modern day 'dreamboy' and with all these elements would capture the target audiences attention.

New Story Board

To start our trailer, in the first two shots we established the companies of our film and a certificate to say that it is approriate as this is typical in many of the trailers i have watched. We then get a medium shot of the two 'popular girls' walking together showing the stereotypical 'popular girls' in the highschool environment. This then continues with the caption reading 'They were the girls' spoke by a conventional male voice, following this the shot will go back to one of the girls sitting on top of a fence flirting with a boy until 'the one', again typical girl but also reintroducing the audience with the social status of the girls, next with the caption reading '...who always got what they wanted...'. There will then be a longshot of a guy at an office desk, he will then walk out of the office changing the shot so he is now facing the camera. With this he ignores the two 'popular girls' and we see thier reaction. To vary our shots we then see a close up of the guy followed by another caption reading 'untill...' There is then a long shot of a 'geeky girl' getting noticed by 'the guy', leading onto a close up of one of the 'popular girls' not happy that the guy noticed the 'geeky girl'. After watching a considerable amount of film trailers we realised that half way into the trailer there is a faster sequence of shots, which we decided to include in our trailer. Throughout this there are a range of shots still keeping the variety in the trailer. This is followed by another caption 'From the makers of....'. Finally we end the trailer with the title 'He's mine' and also the time the film comes out going with the conventions, but to give it a twist we have a clip of 'the guy' brushing his hair back inbetween the last two captions and also leave it on a cliffhanger. Throughout all of the trailer we have included a variety of effects, music and transitions.

  

New Developments To Our Piece

As a group we decided to change our final piece. I am improving my film as we had a very unclear and complicated storyline which our audience found confusing and did not follow the sequence. With all this in mind we looked again at different film trailers to ones we looked at before and we have altered our storyboard. For better options we kept our actors but changed one girl as one of our actors could not come to an agreement on the times and dates of our fimlimg. By using the same actors i feel that it will simplify the new storyline as we know that they are reliable and that they can all work together in a short amount of time.

Evaluation

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

From research and analysis as a group we decided that it was essential to use various forms of conventions that are typically linked to a fairytale. We also had to include modern conventions to capture modern audiences attention and convey the setting of the film.
One of the main areas we focused on was the captions. We decided that due to our modern setting, costumes and general mise en scene which conveys the typical romantic comedy genre, we would need to portray to the audience the fairytale like storyline. We used these in chronological order to illustrate the individual storyline to the audience and capture their interest in the twisted modernized fairytale. Whilst analysing other film trailers which genres parallel our attention was captured by a particular open sequence which is in both 'Ella Enchanted' and 'A Cinderella Story' which are also both well known successful adaptations of classic fairy tales.

The narrators both begin with the fairy tale line of a book 'Once upon a time..' which is a stereotypical convention of a fairytale and implies this genre to the trailer. We decided to use this opening as our own and like in Ella Enchanted, inserted the captions upon a story book. Instead of using typical fairy tale images for all of our pictures accompanying the captions, we took a selection of images of our actors to use. By doing this we aimed to create a contrast between the fairytale genre and modern pictures, which would keep our trailer different to average film teasers and make it more interesting for our viewers. 

The plot is another example of how we followed a typical romantic comedy genre. From analysis of modern trailers such as 'A Cinderella Story' and 'Mean Girls' and 'Failure To Launch' we were able to determine a typical exciting plot with some characters which paralleled to Propp's theory. The setting is one form of convention which we did challenge, as we only filmed in one key location for the majority of the shots which was at our school. However we did this not out of convenience but to again capture our target audiences attention, as they have spent the majority of their lives at school and this is a setting they we can relate to. It could be understood by some that by using one main location it would be a disadvantage and so we decided to also film in a variety of other locations, such as: at a park, bus stop, roads, and many more. Within the trailer the majority of our shots are at school as we felt that this was important for the target audiences attention as the specific location kept the plot simple and understandable. We also decided to use a  variety of  shots such as: close ups, medium shots, long shots, bird eye view shot, this helped us to keep our film teaser which are used in this present day and keep the audiences attention throughout the trailer. One example of a shot that we used was a close up of the popular girl not getting her way and that her enemy has taken her Prince Charming away from her. We used this shot to show the viewers that the character was unhappy and angry with the princess. By showing an angry face we made the character push up one eyebrow which worked extremely well.




2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?


We decided that by keeping a consistent theme between all three of our products, our trailer would be more recognizable and memorable to our target audience. Each product contains obvious parallels between them, such as the title 'Hes Mine' in the same text and colour and also the images with the main characters which appear in both the poster and the magazine front cover as well as the film trailer. Having the characters relate to the audience will gain the viewing. We completed our trailer first and then decided to create some sketch's of initial ideas of poster and magazine layouts. We also brainstormed several ideas of images to appear on the poster and front cover of our magazine which would help the typical teenage Romantic Comedy plot. To extend the link between the teaser trailer and our other products, as a group we came up with a logo which was a heart shape which was used in all our final pieces. Overall, I feel that as a group we successfully created a lot of consistency in our piece which was our target as we felt that it was important for the audience to be able to link each of our different advertisements.


3.  What have you learned from your audiences' feedback?

I have learnt a lot from my audiences feedback, that as a group, we posted our final production pieces on Youtube in the understanding that we would recieve some critical and benificial feedback. Our audience felt we had a very interesting storyline and were eager to find out the ending. Even though some of our  critics felt that some of the narrative captions didn't make sense with the voice over but they were only able to understand it from the written captions itself making our production successful. Narrative appears to attract the viewers to want to go and see this film. Other critics commented on the modern twist to a fairy tale and quick changing shots, this then made the final outcome more exciting and interesting. Even though the main purpose of all our shots was the location of the school some people felt a wider range of locations were needed and that it may have been useful to have carried out different surveys for this, by asking our target audience which locations we could have taken in account for future reference.

Stereotypical fairytale setting, although an unrealistic location for filming.

A modern setting, in London which could've been applied to the plot.

















4.  How did you use media technologies in the construction and research planning and evaluation stages?

I used YouTube to find examples of particularly effective teaser trailers with a similar genre to our theme, of a typical convention which i felt would capture the target audiences attention. I posted these on my blog and carried out focused in depth analysis's of my personal favourites in order to get a wide knowledge of the typical conventions used within these trailers. 

I also concentrated on Costume, Setting, Narrative and Mise En Scene to help inspire me in my own ideas and adaptations of different targets of the teaser. Whilst we didn't want to reuse any of the previous trailers used, we analysed a wide variety of trailers and wrote down their effective techniques i felt that we could combine and create a plan for our own trailer. I posted these on my blog and used it as a sort of diary extract to note down all my research into theory, existing pieces of media which relate to our products and the planning of our own product. By using the blog i had a clear list of all these things that could relate back to them in the planning and evaluation of the final three products. I also used YouTube to post our  final product in an attempt to receive some critical and positive feedback.

 

We were also given the resources in order to edit and complete our final products. For this stage in our assignments, we used the Macs variety of programs to suit each of our products.

 Photoshops effective tools enabled us to edit these quite easily and also to add particular individual effects to our pieces, such as the logo which we found on the 'shapes' tool, or to clone part of an image to the background as we liked the colour better than the background.

Firstly we used Photoshop to edit our captions for the trailer and to edit and complete the majority of our poster and magazine front cover. The images we used for these covers were taken by a camera. We used a tripod in order to take the best shots we could. We also used lighting in our Drama department in our school as this helped to improve the images we were taking and provided us a simple effective backdrop. All of these contained a variety of different layers, from tag lines to titles in the front cover of a Magazine and Poster, to the narrative and logos included in the captions.

To focus on the editing, we used Premier Pro, which allowed us to edit, cut and erase any footage we had taken. Through Premier Pro we added a series of effects to our trailer, such as the turning of pages as the storybook changes to the shots we had the sound effect of a book turning a page. Premier Pro also allowed us to speed up shots, slow them down or even rewind the shots among many other effective tools. As a group we also debated using some magical effects which would emphasize on the fairytale twist, as well as the captions. However due to timing we did not know whether this would be possible and wanted to focus on finishing our final three products first as these effects weren't a convention we planned on using. Tripods and video cameras were also used in filming the footage for our teaser, we tried to ensure as much filming time as possible as we felt that the shots involved were more important to creating a successful trailer than the actual storyline but still keeping it as close to the stortline as possible as the shots on the trailer are what capture the attention of the audience.

Overall the use of media technology used within our planning, research and evaluation of our products was essential as it allowed us to carry out in depth analysis, note this down chronologically and edit our products to maximum potential.

Analysis Of Film Posters

I've started off by analysisng the 'Love Actually' film poster, the first thing that is obvious about it by just looking at it is the fact that this film is obviously a festive film, made clear by the fact snow has been included and the fact the pictures are layed out in a gift wrap style. Also the colours used in this poster are very similar to the traditional colours used at christmas. Each of the pictures included of the cast, are very interesting. Each one has its own individual style or expression. By including each of their names under their pictures, a sense of personality is added, immediately we know who each of the actors/actresses are if the pictures didn't make it clear enough. The font used, along with the coors of them, adds a simplistic sense but still contrasts well with the rest of the poster. A simplistic color scheme and a simple font helps to make this poster effective in presenting this film and what it is about. However, i don't think it is clear what genre this film is, although it has a festive feel and mainly the color red is used (which represent love) i don't think it is obvious to the viewer what genre this film actually is, not from the film poster anyway. The title; 'Love Actually' is the only thing that makes it clear this film is indeed a romantic comedy. An effective film poster, but in my opinion, it would benefit from being a little less busy and a bit more clear.

Finished Products

Focused Analysis - Locations

This film is based on a modern fairytale. The house in which Cinderella lives in accompanied by her Step-Mother and her two Step-Sisters. The colour scheme that is used adds to the sunny lanscape of Los Angeles and the whites and browns go well together. The characters costumes and style contrasts with the hosue and fits in well with the genre of modernised fairytale. The house is shown that the family are a well off family, but compare the house to the size of Cinderella's room and has shown how she is very deprived. The garden includes a swimming pool and a sunbed.

The Cafe where Cinderella works is included in the trailer but not also does it show that she comes from a well off family she still has too work for herself and earn her own living spences. The round tables add a     friendly atomosphere and aswell have the counter running the whole way around the Cafe, this also makes the Cafe look stylish with the tiled floors coloured black and white which is very 80's style. 

Another Main location used in this film is the school. It is used for many things such as: A School (with lessons), A Prom, A Football Match. It is a romantic environment as it is common for teenagers to fall in love at school and meet there one true love. By including this location most of the target audience can relate to the story and engage more to the film. In the school is a shot of the library and how Cinderella spends most of her time in there talking to her 'Prince Charming' Via the computor on an internet site, which adds to the mystery. She is also shot in the library doing her work which shows the audience that she is smart and wants to well later on in life.

Also featured is the batting cage where Cinderella works on her baseball skills. This location is used as her personal space as earlier on in the story we are told that she used to play there with her dad before he was killed. The cage she is in perhaps represents the fact she feels trapped and this is the only place she feels she can let off steam.

Like every fairytale eneding the Princess always gets the Prince. The location is in the ball what we call a prom. The lighting used adds to the romantic feel and the location seems to be well style and fits the narrative well. The colour scheme used in this location adds to the enchanted feel of the ball and also adds a formal appeal to this scene. When the camera moves outside, into the garden, an arch comes into shot decorated with white flowers and beautiful lighting which sets the scene off nicely. The white fencing ties in with the white flowers which compliments the whole scene well. The fairy lights composition seem to get more compact as the camera drops down to reveal a the bottom of the arch. Overall creating a fairy tale like location.

We decided for our film trailer to be based around our school as it would be a familiar setting to our target audience and one in which they can relate to. We did use other locations such as parks and shopping centres but our shots are largly around school. Our main establishing shot was a school corridor, with this we filmed in different corridors around school as we had to make sure the lighting was at the correct levels.