Script Writing

Before we start filming our trailer, we need to write up a script. We can't just start filming as we go along, we need a plan so we know exactly what we are doing and what each character needs to say. Things in the script include location, character voices and lines to say, camera movement.

On the right is an example of a script I downloaded of the internet. The script describes the scenes and the mise en scene.

Me and my group have already started writing our script. We are writing a short script for each scene. That way we can script a scene and write a storyboard for it so we have it planned straight away. 

Class Presentation

Me and my group, Kate, Nicole and Zoe had to put together a class presentation about our film trailer idea. We first talked a bit about what our film is about, the genre and the target audience. We then moved on to talk about our key scenes, together with storyboards to show the class our idea in picture form. Our teacher, Mr Morris, video recorded each group whilst they did their presentation, as evidence of planning. My group's presentation went rather well. After we finished, we used the video cameras to record two interviews with a student and our teacher. We asked them what they thought of our idea, and then we asked if they spotted any potential flaws in the idea. I will post the two videos as soon as I can get hold of them and edit the clips together.

This is the trailer for the 2006 movie ' Silent Hill'. It is a horror based on the video game series of Silent Hill.
This trailer contains certain camera shots which are effective in horror films.
However, apart from camera shots, the editing is also a good convention. The footage is de-saturated and the contrast turned up slightly to create a more cinematic look.
I plan to use this technique when editing the footage from the film Trailer we are doing.




This is a video clip showing what our presentation looked like.

Conventions in Film Trailers

Titles
Music
Voices form characters
Diegetic Sound
Captions
Revews- start ratings and quotes
Production Companies
Famous Actors
Director's previous work
Genre
Non-Linear
Voice over

Diary

This will be a weekly diary post where I talk about what I've been doing in the lessons each week.

19/09/2011 - In today's lesson, we premièred our short films and trailers to the rest of the class in order to receive feedback from them. The class like my short film ' Day in the life' and they gave me good feedback. They said they liked the camera shots, and that the music and the black and white effect really fitted in nicely with the shots.
Next lesson, we are going to start planning our Proper Productions. The short films and trailers we did were practise. Hopefully from the feedback I received form the class I can create a better quality film trailer.


20/09/2011

In today's lesson, we were given 4 days to put together a presentation as a group to talk about our idea. We were given a word document with a series of question which would help us with the presentation.

24/09/11

In today's lessons, each group did their presentation to the class. My group was up first, and our presentation went really well. Our teacher had filmed each presentation so we could upload the clip to this blog, which I will be sure to do as soon as I can get hold of the clip. We then interviewed people about their opinions of our ideas.

29/09/11
In today's lesson we studied two trailers of upcoming films and we looked at their conventions. we determined what genre the film was and what made the director or producer choose those conventions. It is important for me and my group to take ideas from other trailers of the same genre as ours and use them in our own.

30/09/11

In today's lesson we edited the videos form last weeks class presentation. I cut some parts out of our presentation which weren't so important and then edited the interviews by a classmate and our teacher.
Me and my group also started to draw storyboards and writing scripts for the 1st, 2nd and 3rd scene in our trailer.

03/10/11
In today's lesson we were looking at the theory of film trailers. We looked at how films end up in the cinema and the steps producers take before producing a film trailer. I learned about why it is important for a trailer to show us the genre and how this is established.

04/10/11
In today's lesson we finished our storyboards for scenes 1 to 4 and also wrote our scripts for those scenes. We have already filmed our first scene, which is very short but I have began editing it. We now need to create a filming schedule and then we can continue filming.

06/10/11
Today I went with my group to film the second scene of our trailer. It took us 25 minutes to film, with some mistakes made in the acting. I then uploaded the clips to my computer where i began editing them. I cut the clips to create a montage. I also edited the colour in the clips, to create a more movie-like effect.

21/10/11

Most of our filming is now done. We all met up on Friday 21st October and got the bus to Pembury where our filming location is. We were at the abandoned house 2 hours filming and we have over 6-7 minutes of footage, which we can cut the best bits from to put in our trailer. We yet still have to do one more scene of the remaining character running through the woods, so that will be filmed shortly. I have already began to edit the footage we filmed on Friday. At the moment I am only cutting the clips and putting them on the timeline. When we have filmed the last part, I will then, (with the help from my group) edit the trailer. Once I have put the clips together and in an order which makes the trailer gripping and interesting to the viewer, I will begin post-editing. This means I will add effects to the trailer, such as colour grading. I will edit the contrast and saturation of the footage, as well as add music and sound to the clips. For sound, I will to record some of the characters voices, because my camera does not pick up soound very well.

08/11/11

In today's lesson I showed my trailer so far to the class. People in the class, including my teacher, then made comments on my blog post. They left opinions on my trailr and what they enjoyed about it. After watching other people's trailers, It really got me thinking that I need to get my trailer going. We have filmed all of our footage, and now I need to spend as muchtime as I can to edit the trailer. I need to find some good music to go with it, and design a plan for the montage.

22/11/11

Today we filmed an opening sequence for the trailer. Through Audience Feedback, we realised that our original sequence didn't have much of an impact on the viewer. I have drawn a storyboard for this opening scene and we filmed it, with some Audio difficulties. The camera i am using doesn't record audio vey well, so the sound was recorded using a mobile phone, which made the audio worse.

29/11/11

I saved a copy of the trailer so far and showed it to the class. They thought the trailer looked good apart from the sound of voices, which is hard to understand. So in the same lesson we managed to get a good microphone and we recorded the voices we needed. I then put the voices over the original ones and synchronised with the footage. The result was fantastic and now our trailer has very good quality sound.

Practise Short Film

For my practise production, i want to produce a short film about a homeless person. I want to film different scenes showing parts of their day.
I wanted to film the whole thing in black and white. After watching the music video for Ed Sheeran's song 'A Team', about a drug addict with no home, i was inspired to make my film also in black and white. I think it creates a nice effect and changes the mood of the audience.

Scene 1 - The establishing shot. This is an extreme long shot showing the setting of the scene. I want to show the whole scene, as well as the homeless person sleeping on the bench in the distance.
I then zoom in to the homeless person to create a long shot, showing her sleeping on the bench. the girl then wakes up and looks around her, confused and hungover.
dissolves from long shot to close up of the her face, showing her emotions.

Scene 2 - The next scene shows homeless person begging for money in the streets holding up a sign. Pedestrians walk by and ignore her. I will use medium close ups showing the homeless girl in the corner of the shot and the streets in the background. The homeless person then receives money from a passer-by.

Scene3 - supermarket-the homeless girl enters a supermarket and buys food with the little money she has made.

Evil Awaits - Film Trailer Planning

Media Film Trailer Pitch

Film title: Evil Awaits

Genre: Horror

Setting: Forest, Abandoned House

Location: Southborough, Pembury

Mise en Scene: forest, inside house, dark lighting

Storyline: A group of friends, Katy, Jessica, Molly and Alex, go camping in a forest, only to find they are not alone in the forest. They encounter a paranormal entity during the night, an evil spirit craving for death. One by one they each encounter Evil.

Cast

Katy – played by Zoe Hilton

Jessica- played by Nicole Taylor

Molly- played by Kate Burden

Alex- played by Miguel Pilgrim

Key Scenes

Scene 2 - The 4 Friends meet up to go camping in the forest. Medium close up camera shots and medium shots. The 4 friends walk of into the forest, long shot from behind slowly panning up and showing the top of the tree line. Panning shots. 

Scene 4 - Low angle, long shot of the house, trees in the background. Alex, Jessica, Molly and Katy are walking through the woods when they come across the abandoned house. Long shots panning. the 4 friends are looking at the house in confusion, medium shot. 

Target Audience

Males and Females 15- 30 year olds. Mostly British Teenagers because the film is about a group of teens.

What trailers have offered inspiration? (part or whole)

The Blair Witch Project- A group of friends camp in a forest in search of an urban legend. They encounter something paranormal and disappear one by one. This film inspired me to create a similar trailer to it.

Paranormal Activity- This is similar to Blair witch Project in the sense that it was very low budget and filmed with ‘hand held camcorders’. 

Production Case Studies

I will be talking about 2 Film Production case studies, talking a bit about the films, their budget, profit made and why I think the film was produced.


The first film I would like to talk about is Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later. I will talk a bit about the film and included a link to the movie trailer.




Genre: Horror, Sci-fi, Thriller
Directed by Danny Boyle
Written by Alex Garland
Budget (cost to make) £5,000,000
The film is about a highly contagious 'rage' virus which spreads across the United Kingdom rapidly and devastates country. The story follows the characters Jim, Selena, Mark, Frank and his daughter Hannah as they search for safety. However, throughout their path to 'safety', they have many encounters with the 'Infected'.
The opening scene I think is the most powerful part of the film. It shows Jim, one of the main characters, waking up from a coma 28 days later after the initial start of the virus spread, in a deserted hospital in central London. He wanders around on his own, confused, wondering what is happening. Then he walks through the streets of central London, across the famous London bridge and Big Ben. The streets are littered and completely deserted. Everything is dead silent.

The film was a huge success in the UK because it was so well made. however, it wasn't just the fantastic camera work and acting that made the film worth watching, it was the fact that it was filmed on location. The shots of the deserted London streets really shocked the audiences and created a sense of fear amongst them. Just imagine yourself walking through the lonely streets of London just like Jim did in the opening scenes. When people watched the film, they see the locations it is filmed in and they think to themselves, "Hey, I've been there".
Personally when I watched the film, I experience a cold chill down my spine various times throughout the film. I live in the UK myself, so when I watched the film I just imagined "what if this really happened?"
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The Second film I want to talk about is Saving Private Ryan. The film was released in July 1998 and the movie follows the story of a group of soldiers in WW2 Europe on a mission to rescue Pvt. Ryan, the last remaining son of a mother of 4 sons who all died in the invasion of Normandy in June 1944.

Director: Steven Spielberg
Written by: Robert Rodat
Main Cast: Matt Damon, Tom Hanks
Genre: War, Drama
Budget: $70,000,000

The movie starts with a view of a cemetery in America. We then see Pvt. Ryan as an old man, walking with his family who are walking a few metres behind him. He arrives at an unknown grave in the war cemetery and he burts into tears of sadness. The movie then flips back to June 1944 and we see the main protagonist played by Tom Hanks. We see the invasion of normandy, thousands of soldiers invading the beaches of German occupied France in small boats. The invasion scene lasts a long 20 minutes, with a lot of blood and gore, a lot of war scenes such as ultra realistic explosions and mass killing.

The film was a huge success when it came and today is a modern classic. I think the movie was such a success because of it's realism and accuracy to the real life events that happened in June 6th, 1944. The camera work directed by Steven Spielberg is fantastic, using the hand-held technique to really put the audience into the action. The film shows exactly what the war was like, the bloody scenes of gore and devastation.

Film Production

1) Idea- A Writer comes up with an idea for a film, but it could also be a Producer or a Director coming up with the idea.

2) Development Finance- The writer or person with the idea then goes to a group of film investors and pitches their idea to them. If the people like it, they will give the writer some development money to further develop their idea.

3) Script Development- A script is then made for the film, and a sales treatment which will be used to sell the film to investors.

4) Packaging Moment- Merchandise for the film is made, in order to make some money before the film is produced and released. The genre of the film is also decided, in order to determine the audience for the film. A storyboard is also created with the cast listing.

5) Financing- Investors. Pre-sales. Insurance. Completion Bond- insurance in case the film doesn't get finished, so the producers don't lose all their money.

6) Storyboarding, Casting, Equipment, Special Effects, Set Design.

7) The Shoot

8) Post Production- working on editing the film, sound editing rough cut ect..