Planning: Storyboard

Above, is the storyboard for our trailer: B36.

A storyboard is essential for planning the types shots and the arrange them in an order that would look appealing. For example, in the beginning of the trailer we decided to take account of the location by using a wide range of camera shots/angles/movements. By using this footage at the beginning it introduced the audience to the location and gave a insight to what the genre could be.

We generalised many shots that we would include; medium, tracking, close up, high angle, long shot. This should appeal to an audience because they are not just watching the same camera work which can sometimes look repetitive by using an array of shots/angles/movement the audience will be kept on their toes.

The location shots will consist of different areas of which the characters live in which also informs the audience more about the characters making them already have a stereotyped judgement i.e. working class, poor housing and low income families. The display of signs such as 'Remove your valuables before the thieves do!' will notify the audience on what the trailer might entail.

Therefore, the audience will be addressed as to what type of area the characters live in, from then on they will be introduced to the characters receiving a deeper understanding of their personalities what they will bring to the film.

Planning: Script

Above, is our script: B36.

This was developed after our initial ideas map as we were certain to what we wanted our dialogue to portray. For example, we wanted each character to use a restricted code of language and use simplistic phrases to develop their character in to the stereotype i.e. troublesome, deviant, criminal and anti-social. Our main focus was to represent the working class and sub cultures we have in today's society. Marxists would argue that society's inequalities are to blame for these types of groups in society. They believe that economic and social issues arise from the exploitation of the working class (proletariat) by the ruling class (bourgeoisie). This is something I find important in exercising as the trailer may make the audience question why are some groups in society experiencing a life like this?

In addition, the characters use body language which portrays anger and independence; this was of importance as it helped develop their presence within the trailer, creating the ideal character type. For example, the first scene shows the group intimating a neighbour, this was a theme of anti-social behaviour we wanted to represent. It created more impact having it as the first scene the girls were introduced in because it took insight immediately to their character type and made the audience consider the genre of film we were representing. With this we have subverted against the Feminist view of women being exploited and undermined in society, as we have included a strong, immoral group of girls which rebel against stereotyped traits that girls have i.e. caring, kind, polite and sensitive. We have also included sensitive and controversial issues within our trailer; we thought this would build on our themes in a more in depth approach because it gave the trailer a more sensitive, emotional and epic feel. The issue we have arose is suicide - although we haven't featured a death in the trailer we have touched upon attempted suicide as we think this an important issue to be aware of as many young people are involved in situations such as these and sometimes have nobody to support them.

Primary Research: Questionnaire & Charts

To gain ideas on what our target audience expects from a trailer, we handed out questionnaires (pictured below) to 30 participants with age reflecting our target audience- 16-25 years of age. This gave us first hand knowledge about what we may consider to include in our trailer with this additional information from our target audience.Through this we analysed the data and converted it to a number of charts to further iniatialise our ideas on the basis of this information. The first chart (pictured below) diplays the question: 'How do you prefer the background music to be?' The majority vote finalised as parelel. The music we are using is parelel to the story that the trailer prevails, it is a urban/grime track which is the type of music this sub culture stereotypically listens too. With this, the target audience will be familiar with this type of music and may be more enticed to watching it due to this factor.

The second chart (pictured below) displays the question: 'Where do you view most trailers?' The most popular answer was the cinemas, this is understandable for this target audience as they are at a young and very socialable age.

The third chart (pictured below) displays the question: 'What is your favourite genre?' The feedback from this question suggest that the this target audience's favourite genre is comedy; however a close second would be social realism. With my trailer I will aim to convert the target audience to that they favour social realism more. In addition, I have taken this information on board as i hope to include comical diologue into my script to satisfy my target audience.

The final chart (pictured below) displays the question: 'Do you prefer trailers to be fast paced or slow paced?' The results show that the majority preferred fast paced trailers. This is something to considered as the themes within my genre are extreme and deviant having a fast paced edit will add to the excitement. My partner and I have concluded that the editing will begin slow while location shots are shown; however the development of pace will increase as the themes are portrays making it dramatic for the audience.

Target Audience

In order to promote your film you must discover who your target audience is- what type of audience your film is aimed- this will help the popularity of the film as you can use codes and coventions that would satisfy them. The target audience for our Social Realism film would be teenagers or young adults, because the themes within the trailer will be those they may have experienced or may know someone who has experienced them; this means they would relate to trailer and would be interested in watching it. Knowing this, I have to make sure my trailer would please this target audience in everyway to increase the chance of them wanting to watch the film.

However, Frank McConnells theory is based around the idea that instead of basing genres around visual clues, it is more meaningful to split texts according their themes, plots and leading characters. He came up with five genres which specifically refer to typical events in the history of any society and the characters who play parts in them. He believes that since films reflect society, they will always involve these kinds of typical events:

• The King- establising the state- epic


• The Knight- consolidating the state- ad venturous romance


• The Pawn- trapped in the institutional state- melodrama


• The Fool- responding to the madness of the state- the satire


• Apocalypse- the collapse of the state which leads to a new begining- no single hero.

Considering this perspective our genre would fall under 'The Pawn'. This would mean that we would have to satisfy the audience using themes, plots and leading characters to show that they are trapped in their state. We have tried to create this by creating a gang of females who have suberted stereotypes (boisterious, strong, rebellious), who are trapped by a controlling ideology to rebel against society through deviant behaviour, such as, drug taking, alcohol consumption, crime and anti-social behaviour. Using these themes would thrill the target audience as they would understand that this behaviour is wrong and would be intrigued to discover the outcome of their actions.

Planning: Location

To establish the idea of our film we need to plan the basic location. After deliberation we decided to set in a local place in Birmingham called Bromford. The majority of this area is a council estate which highlights the stereotyped presumptions people carry about these types of estates i.e. high crime rate, gang culture and intimitating residants.

These are photographs I acquired through 'Google Maps' this function allowed me to access a 'street view' whereby I could view possible places around the area that would be suitable to shoot. I gained these images as to left is the house we will film outside. A character will walk past these houses using a tracking shot. Also a scene will be filmed outside the house where the gang of characters terrorise a resident of the house.

This image portrays another area we will film; this important shot will exercise the message on the sign, 'Remove your valuables before the thieves do!' This reinforces the deviant behaviour displayed by the characters within the trailer.

This is another potential area we may use in our footage. Either, a location shot or one that consist of the character.

Planning: Film Trailer Ideas

To initiate and gather ideas about our film trailer we produced a mindmap of ideas. Using different sub titles we were able to suggest certain elements and coventions we wanted to include within a film.

Previously, we conducted research into existing film trailer featuring the social realism genre. This research helped develop our ideas and made it easier to actually put pen to paper.

For example, through watching Adulthood and anaylsing the behaviour they use we able to learn that they often use a restricted code with bad language, we thought this would be a good covention to use within our own film trailer as it shows the type of socialisation and culture that our characters come from, making it easier for the audience to be able to identify with them.

We are also considering not to portray at storyline so obviously; however represent themes often found in the social realism genre, such as, gang culture, violence, promiscuity and drugs. This would also not give too much of the storyline away as this can often spoil it for the audience.

Case Study: Shaun Of The Dead

The case study I have chosen is Shaun Of The Dead, it uses synergy because it released promotional materials at the same time to promote the film; combining a film trailer, poster and magazine cover which all promote the film's popularity. Shaun Of The Dead falls into a horror and Rom com genre which add credibility to the film because it falls under a number of genres making it unique. To find out more about the film use this link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0365748/

For my case study I will be analysing a film poster, magazine and trailer.

The Magazine Cover

Shaun of the Dead is being promoted by Total Film magazine above. The conventions within the magazine cover highlights the genre of the film. The title of the magazine is in red and is bold which reflects the convention of blood within the film- which is iconography often used by the horror genre. The main image denotes the main character 'Shaun' who is a man determined to to get his ex-girlfriend back, redeem his relationship with his mother, while fighting his way to safety through an entire community that have returned from the dead to eat the living.

The magazine cover promotes this story as he is wearing a ripped shirt covered in blood, holding a baseball bat and a bandanna. The denotation of the character is that he has a hungry look in his eyes and is determined to win his losing battle. The magazine image successfully portrays his strive and makes audiences want to discover what his determination is dedicated to.

The background is quite bland which makes 'Shaun' stand out more and become the centred focus of the page, which would in turn make readers want to read about Shaun of the Dead boosting its popularity. The clothes in which he is wearing is his work clothes which shows the difficult time he has had with added element of the amount of blood he has on his uniform. You can easy identify the genre of the film because of the imagery used, it could also be identified that the genre also falls under a comedy because of the description beneath the image.

The description on the magazine is less focused on the film, which doesn't make the film stand out in its excellence as much as the strong imagery does. This can have a negative effect on the influence it has on audiences because it does not praise the film but infuses other features within in the magazine to the audience.

The Film Poster

This is film poster for the Shaun of the Dead. It is clear that the convention of the colour red is used in all platforms of advertising the film, which gives the film a trademark. The tag line 'Ever felt like you were surrounded by zombies?' -This adds a comical value to the poster because it is almost pokes fun at what happens in the storyline.

The denotations of the image shows 'Shaun' holding a bouquet of flowers stuck between a crowd of zombies. This adds further comedy aspects because he conveys a puzzled face, this makes this amusing due to the fact he is surrounded by man-eating zombies; the connotation of this is that the zombies around him symbolise the problems he is dealing with in reality, breaking up with his girlfriend, his relationship with his mother and the hatrid towards his step father.

The connotation of the position of the character shows how he is trapped and isolated in the film because he is feeling lonely after being dumped, and he is isolated because of the zombies. The title of the film 'Shaun of the Dead' has a hand that creates the image of an 'A'; this feature is highlighted and used throughout the promotion of the film and is almost a logo for the film title. When filming our trailer, creating our magazine cover and film poster we could convey this type of promotion by using a key feature throughout to make it representable.

The Trailer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfDUv3ZjH2k

The production company is shown at the start of the trailer which is useful to know as they invested the money to create the film and distribute it making them have presence in the promotion. The screen becomes static when a voice over starts, this connotes a sense of confusion within the storyline as the voice over stresses, 'this message is for your own safety'; this makes audiences anxious as to what he is referring to. The fast editing shows a montage of imagery consisting of zombies and the general public. The constant flickering, static and pixalating confuses views and makes them feel on edge as to what is happen in the footage.

A medium shot is shown of the two main characters listening to the voice over with dumb stricken looks upon their faces as they look at one another, the voice over warns 'Do not panic' they act contrapuntal to this as they realise there is a zombie in their home. This connotes a comical element to the trailer as you are already introduced to their character traits as they have stupidly left the front door open. They act panicked in a comical way as they scream 'Oh he's got an arm off!' This amuses viewers as puts light on the harsh reality that they could be eaten any minute. The voice over continues throughout the trailer to give advice to citizens which the characters fail to follow, this behaviour is amusing to audiences as they are not acting correctly to protect their own safety.

The diegetic background music is contrapuntal to what is happening in the scene, it is upbeat and almost child like while the scenes show far from child like behaviour as the characters savage man eating zombies in order to stay alive; this adds further to the comedy genre because it is almost poking fun at the situation and how much danger they could potentially be in. The behaviour throughout is comical to watch because they are using inappropriate behaviour like having a phone call in front of the zombies while they are inches away or trying to kill the zombies with music records; however although they are acting this way through pure determination they do succeed only using a few people along the way.

The editing slows down as a scene is shown whereby Shaun reverses to see if the person he has just ran down in a car is alive, the realisation that it is a zombie shows relief on his face this denotes his affectionate side even though thousands of people are dying around him he still stops putting himself in danger to help another person. The title of the film 'Shaun of the Dead' is used again with the logo of a hand in the letter 'A'; this use of a trademark can help with the promotion of the film because it can used within merchandise for the film, displaying it on t-shirts, mugs, DVDs etc.

A parallel diegetic sound is used at the end, which is quite eerie, this portrays the seriousness of the ending in a way, because the trailer reflects a quite successful mission; however lives are lost during the course of getting to safety but this not highlighted within the trailer, this can be seen as positive thing as the trailer does not reveal the whole storyline and leaves a cliff hanger. This is something to be considered when planning our own trailer, we are interested in conveying the themes that will be shown within the film but not revealing the actual storyline as we think this would be more successful when populating an audience.