WELCOME MODERATOR

WELCOME MODERATOR

FREDERICK HOWE

CANDIDATE NUMBER 1230

CLAREMONT FAN COURT SCHOOL 64680

I worked with Oliver Macnaughton 1243, Harvey Gillett 1225 and Tamara Rudd 1258.

I hope you enjoy my blog which contains all of my work from my G324 Advanced Portfolio.

My chosen brief was Brief 2, the construction of a film trailer with the inclusion of two ancillary products: a film poster and the front cover of a film magazine cover

My evaluation questions are in separate pages at the top of the blog. 

Below is my finished film trailer, poster and magazine cover, along with my research, planning and construction of my film trailer.

The pages 'MY FILM POSTER' and 'MY FILM MAGAZINE COVER' above show my research, planning and construction of my two ancillary products.

MY FILM TRAILER

To help viewers know who wrote the annotations on the trailer we came up with the idea of colour coding the annotations to ensure the person in the group who write it receives the credit for it.

Annotation Colour Key:

• Frederick Howe 1230 - BLUE
• Harvey Gillett 1225 - RED
• Oliver Macnaughton 1243 - GREEN
• Tamara Rudd 1258 - PINK

The button highlighted in this screenshot allows the viewer to turn annotations on and off.

MY FILM POSTER

MY FILM MAGAZINE COVER

CONSTRUCTION: PRODUCTION COMPANY IDENT

The production company ident was very difficult to make. We had a very set and solid idea in our heads of how we wanted it to look. But unfortunately when we tried to make it our idea was almost impossible to create. Our idea was to have a snake prop slither across a snakes and ladders board several time before the title then appears. 
We planned to create this as a stop motion animation using iStopmotion but this proved too difficult. 
After trying and failing we moved forward and continued with the rest of our practical project. We left the ident until last to give us time to think of a new idea.
Our idea then evolved into having dice roll across the board and a hand come into frame and pick them up and as the hand moves away the production company name appears from behind it. To create the ident we printed off a snakes and ladders board to save money instead of buying one, gathered two dice and set up a tripod with a camera for a bird's eye view of the board. We then took several takes until we got one we liked. We then imported the footage into Final Cut Pro and created an effect that makes the title look as if it appears from behind the hand and viola! We have a production company ident.

FUTURE LEARN: GUERILLA VFX COURSE

During half term I started a Future Learn Visual Effects for Guerilla Filmmakers. I decided to start this course because I really want to expand my skills as a filmmaker and this is a perfect way to do so. I have never fully worked with proper visual effects until I started this course. 


The first week was incredibly interesting with a few short videos from FutureLearn explaining what I would be covering during the four week course. Most of the first week was reading different articles on a variety of different techniques and filmmakers. Towards the end of the week I got a chance to practice my first piece of visual effects using a free software that FutureLearn provided called HitFilm 3 Express. I followed a very simple and easy tutorial video that taught me how to create a fake flare effect. This sort of visual effects is very helpful for filmmakers as it doesn't endanger anyone on set by lighting a real flare and it also means that there is no need to go through hundreds of flares and them constantly burning out. 

I haven't yet started the second week but I am very excited to start and learn even more about visual effects.

Here is the effect that I created whilst following the course tutorial:

        (INSERT CLIP)

RESEARCH: TRAILER CREDITS

Nowadays trailers are the biggest part of the marketing campaign of most films. Every trailer is differently suited to each film and genre. Trailers end in many different ways, some showing just a release date and other giving a list of cast crew and directors. I think it is very important to look at all the different ways that trailers can end before coming up with a decision of how to end my trailer.                              

In this collage I have chosen six different ways in which very recent film trailers end. This makes me very skeptical when it comes to learning the codes and conventions of film trailers and deciding on how to end my trailer. There are so many different ways that professional filmmakers end there trailers that it is all a matter of personal choice and what suites the overall theme of the trailer the best. If it is a very detailed trailer showing off a lot of the film then there is usually and lot of detail in final part of the trailer. If it is a short simple trailer there is usually very little detail in the final screen of the trailer. This is also the case with a lot of trailers for comedies, they usually end with a very simple end slate. But reiterating my first point it all boils down to decisions on the parts of the editors and the studio on how much detail there should be in the end slate.

Also recently there has been a lot more emphasis on social media in the end slate of trailers. This is evident in the end slate of the trailer for the new film in The Divergent Series: Allegiant.

In this end slate they reveal the month that the film will be released in and then the rest of this end slate is entirely purposed at connecting people to their social media accounts. They show that they have an account on all of the major social medias, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat. They also introduce a hashtag for the film that is a perfect model for viral marketing as it can be used on all social media by anyone with an account to spread free awareness of the film across the internet.

CONTRUCTION: INSTAGRAM

Social Media as a Distribution Tool

Filmmakers should use social media to help distribute their movies! This is because 74% of people in the age range of 18-65+ are on Social Media, including Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. They can use these social media not just to connect with audiences of different ages but different types of audiences that are interested in different things. This is a very useful way of distributing your project as it spreads your film to a huge range of people for free! Instead of just uploading your film to YouTube or Vimeo, you can tweet about it, make a Facebook page and even use Instagram to give your target audience some behind-the-scenes insight. 

Our group has used Instagram in two different way; the more traditional platform as away of linking our audience to our film and then in a more imaginative way we have created Instagram accounts for each of our main characters who post as if the character is real, to be specific the character of Ular and Eve. I understand how vitally important it is to create synergy across all platforms to build our audiences.

A significant benefit of using social media like Instagram is the fact that it is interactive, that is a two-way street of communication, with the chance of going viral. 

I researched case studies such as Liongate's clever marketing for a popular song "The Hanging Tree" to spread the word about The Hunger Games - Mockingjay Part 1 which resulted in over 20 million views on Vevo's YouTube channel. A second case study involves a low budget Indie film "It's a Disaster" it was decided to release this entire movie in Vine in six second segments, according to the jokey press release. This stunt got everyone talking. A third ingenious way of connecting with audiences is the marketing strategy of using Alternate Reality Games, these create a fictional world in which people can interact with each other across different platforms of Social Media. 42 Entertainment have created several popular ARG's for films like The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.

Our choice was to use Instagram as well as Facebook and Twitter. Below is a screenshot from our Instagram feed:

Source: Movies and Social Media: Marketing Films with new media by Caitlin Neely (03/06/15) CLICK HERE FOR ARTICLE

PLANNING: INITIAL IDEA FOR FILM POSTER

I have been mentally brainstorming an idea for my film poster ever since we finished our initial ideas for the film trailer. As one of our main characters is a very mysterious man who is inherently sinister I decided that he would be the main subject of my poster. 

My idea is to have Ular in the centre of the poster with his sunglasses on the tip of his nose, snake designed contact lenses in and scowling at the camera with an evil smile on his face. I will then edited in different screenshots from the trailer around him and in the lenses of the glasses will have profile shots of Adam and Eve.

I think that this idea will be hard to pull off as the editing will be very difficult to make sure that I do not overload it with different images and that the images don't look out of place. But I look forward to this challenge as I really enjoy editing and expanding my skills as an editor and this task will give me a great chance to improve.

Here are two examples of a similar design to what I hope to achieve.

Although neither of these two films are related to my film trailer whatsoever, these poster have a similar look to what I want my poster to look like. The Ferris Bueller's Day Off poster works best to try and show of how I want Ular to look in the poster and the positioning of his glasses, but the poster for Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amelie Poulain is a great example of the angle I want to take the picture.