Production:Film Trailers

 

            Evaluation-

Purpose-

The purpose of our film trailer ‘a light inside the darkness’ was to make an entertaining crime thriller. Whether we did that or not is questionable, because I thought the trailer was entertaining, but not a serious crime thriller. However, it was still a good body of work, whether it stayed in the genre or not.

 

Primary Target Audience-

For our film we didn’t have a specified target audience, but we did suggest it should be for teenage boys and young men due to the fact its an action packed film, filled with violence, which people of that age group find appealing in films. However, we didn’t represent this in the trailer, and it looks more like a comedy, albeit a comedy that appeals to the same age group.

 

Genre-

The genre of the film is action or crime thriller. However, whereas at the start of the project we set out to make a serious film, we ended up making a crime spoof because it was unintentionally funny, making an unexpected change of genre. However, the film was still entertaining, and more entertaining that what it should have been. Luckily, it will still appeal to the same primary target audience. Originally, we did try to stick to the conventions of the genre, filming chase scenes and lots of action packed scenes, but we found that it was a lot more amusing to edit the clips to give them a comedic twist. This made us stroll away from the conventions of the genre.

Feedback-

We had a range of feedback about the trailer, with people positively commenting on the sense of mystery created in the trailer, whilst the trailer ends with an enigma that is also a good movie tagline. There were also positive comments about the Connotations of drama and adventure. Plus there was good acting in the trailer. The voiceover levels were the main problem in the trailer.

Representation issues-

I gave positive messages in the film, as my aim was to entertain in two senses- first the dramatic sense, then in the comedic sense. My video only contained boys as the film was aimed at young males, however, the full film would be aimed at everyone. However, we didn’t convey this in the trailer as we only had white males- ignoring females and other ethnic groups. The music track added a sense of drama to the piece, making it a stronger form of satire. It was an instrumental piece, so it gave the trailer a stronger sense of tension, making it more epic to view. The locations were appropriate as the film was set in a school, making it seem familiar with the target audience of young males. Finally, the language was appropriate for the target audience as it used simplistic language, but it was used in a way that could appeal to adults among other people. However, the video didn’t look like a crime thriller, and was obvious to all who viewed that it was a satire.

 

Technical issues-

The voice levels were too low, but the music levels were at a good level, adding tension. I didn’t cut off anyone’s voice editing the film, although I did cut off a scene of Matty acting, because it went on for too long. The camera work was okay, but the scenes where the camera work looked shoddy were cut from the film- the edit looked a lot cleaner due to the excessive editing of the rest of the scenes making it feel a lot less clunky and more accessible. There was also a lot of variety in the shots- we did film similar shots, but removed them from the final trailer to keep the audience interested. The editing took longer than the filming, but we took excessive scenes and edited them down to the key points to make a trailer that was entertaining, but also snappy and to the point.

 

Conventions/narrative-

We made a clichéd film of the crime thriller genre- so we included a slow motion chase scene which is typical of crime films, and we also contained a slightly over the top voiceover sequence. In a similar professional product we would keep a lot of it the same, but use the big budget a lot more- there would be clichéd element such as un-necessary explosions and the like. The only way professional films have an advantage is they have a bigger budget, making them get away with stupid things. In our narrative, we concentrated more on making it rather than having a storyline- but we used enigmas, heroes and villains. However, these were all linked in with the same narrative, making our film a single strand narrative.

 

Self evaluation-

In making this video the only new skill I learnt was how to successfully edit a video using the imovie application. The strengths in making the video were that I took average scenes and edited them to make them better and fit better with the narrative. The weaknesses were the fact that my workmates were never here so I had to do all the work on my own. I was a god team member in the sense that I had to do the majority of the work, as I was the only person who ever seemed to be there.

 

Future targets-

If this was a professional movie trailer, we would promote it by doing a lot more than just show it before other big film releases. The trailer will be subjected to viral marketing- it will be shown on youtube, facebook, twitter, myspace etc. Secondly, we will put out giant two page adverts in newspapers like the sun or the mirror, but will also put the adverts in magazines like the nme or whatever the kids are reading these days. There would also be giant billboards, and finally we would advertise the film on TV as much as possible- during all of the most watched shows, such as Britain’s got talent- a show which gets up to fourteen million viewers means that a large proportion of that audience would want to see more and go to the cinema to see it. For the teenage audience, we would advertise during dire but successful programmes on dramas such as hollyoaks or comedies such as balls of steel. Before looking at the ofcom broadcasting regulations I guess that I haven’t broken any of its rules. Even though the ofcom rules are complex and at times difficult to understand, I haven’t broken any of them- the film trailer was suitable for broadcast, meaning it was successful on the purpose of entertainment. The code we had to ensure not to break was the depiction of young people in the film. However, as we were the only people in the clip, the representation was not an issue. We didn’t use commercial music in the film trailer, as we used non-copyrighted instrumental music from the soundtrack of a computer game I’ve never heard of, but it was successful in creating tension and making the film trailer sound, if not look, epic. This means the trailer was successful to blind people, but still maintained the light-hearted frolics for everybody else.