finished

blog completed

Time plan for Trailer

Time plan for teaser trailer

1st October- final draft of storyboard take pictures for use in moving storyboard

2nd-have moving storyboard and location storyboard finished

3rd- film all shots other than fight scenes and freeze shot

4th film freeze shot in kingsdown

10th film fighting scenes

13th prepare soundtrack for editing

15th do any pick-up shits if needed

16th-20th editing

Research- Posters

While researching we spent a great deal of time looking at the posters from the successful fantasy action film underworld, like our own movie it has a female lead. This one in particular caught are attention, it uses a strong contrast between black and white that puts all focus on the female lead. The women is wearing black and has black hair. Black is associated with mysteries, darkness and power, this women’s intimidating appearance and the fact she is holding two guns immediately throws all gender stereotypes out of the window. The women also appear s to be at the front of a battle, all this gives her the presence of power. She is looking towards the camera, so she is in effect holding the gaze of whoever looks at the poster; this is very striking and draws you in. The poster has an all around dark and gloomy atmosphere, with its total lack of colour, dark landscape, threatening clouds and rain.

Research- Kill Bill

Kill Bill is the fourth film by Quentin Tarintino , starring Uma Thurman. Originally conceived as one film, it was released in two separate volumes due to its running time of four hours. The movie is an epic-length revenge drama, with influences from earlier film genres, such as hong kong martial arts movies, exploitation movies and Italian westerns .

The lead character, 'The Bride,' was a member of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, lead by her lover 'Bill.' Upon realizing she was pregnant with Bill's child, 'The Bride' decided to escape her life as a killer. She fled to Texas, met a young man, and on the day of their wedding was gunned down by an angry and jealous Bill. Four years later, 'The Bride' wakes from a coma, and discovers her baby is gone. She, then, decides to seek revenge upon the five people who destroyed her life and killed her baby.

The film was renowned for its over the top violence dramatic blood effects.

The teaser trailer for kill Bill begins in darkness with the sound effect of a plane coming closer, starting quiet and increasing in volume until you see the image of a plane flying over a city. The sound preceding the visual element of the advert draws the potential audience of that advert in the same way the domino teaser trailer did with the dark obscured shapes.

this advert is broken up by black screens with imposing yellow font, the colour yellow holds connotations of femininity and courage (originating from Japan) which are used throughout the film e.g. in the heroines costume, the colour of the walls in two of the main fight scenes and the detailing on the heroines’ sword, the colour yellow was also used n the advertising as the colour of the DVD cases and posters. We plan to use colours and their connotations in our own movie trailer for example red, symbolising confidence, danger, sexuality, strength, blood and anger. And also black showing death mystery power and elegance. They also use this method to inform the audience that it is a film by Quentin Taratino which will instantly attract follows of this genre of film who are familiar with his movies.

the trailer is packed with a variety of different fight scenes fulfilling the requirements of the generic iconography and attracting the target audience. We are planning to include a number of fight scenes in our own movie trailer; these will have to be planned well and choreographed to reach the believability factor that is required.

Research- Domino

Trailer beings with a distorted shape in darkness, this obvious enigma makes the viewer want to keep watching. We like the idea of the viewer perhaps not understanding what is going on at the beginning of the trailer but in a way that is interesting and likely to captivate their attention i.e. maybe close up of someone walking away from the camera.

The trailer shows the leading women Domino in her line of work as a bounty hunter. The concept of a women having such a carrier may in its self gain satisfactory attention for people to peruse this movie . This Particular shot shows aspects of the generic iconography that may attract the target audience; Guns, fighting, violence, explosions. This section of the advert is depicted in a film noir style with a stark contrast between dark and light and few areas of grey , the highest area of contrast is around the weapons which will draw the eyes of the potential audience towards them. We discussed the option of adopting a film noir style for our own teaser trailer but decided against it because we feared there may be issues with lighting restricting us from gaining the desired effect and we also wish to use colours and their connotations to build up themes and create the desired mood for the audience.

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An aspect of this trailer we particularly like is the way it freezes and the music comes to sudden halt followed by dialogue from the heroine giving the audience snippets of information about her life. This strategy is brilliant for gaining attention, when the upbeat music and action comes to sudden stop it puts emphasis on whatever the viewer is left with, in this case a close up of the heroines face in darkness with a disturbing facial expression. It is unusual to see women depicted like this even within the action genre, in Charlie’s angels the women, even though taking part in the action no less than the me always retain the immaculate looks. However when doing our research we did note than in Kill Bill there is a much more realistic portrayal of how the women would appear after a fight. The inconstant style of the trailer, the way it speeds up and slows down in a very unpredictable manner echoes the mood of Domino, and the fast editing heightens the level of excitement. When editing our film we are thinking about the shots moving slowly fist then becoming more and more rapid building up towards the end, with the music enhancing this.

Research: Angel Of Death

Angel of Death




Angel of Death is a web series of eight to ten minute episodes created by Ed Brubaker. The series stars Zoë Bellas Eve, an assassin taking revenge on her former employers, and costars Lucy Lawless. Angel of Death was produced by White Rock Lake Production and distributed by Sony Picture Television.The episodes were released on Crackle(a video hosting company) from March 2 to March 13, 2009.
The show is a thriller about the assassin, Eve, who is employed by a ruthless crime family. After suffering a severe head trauma (knife through her head) while on the job, she begins to hallucinate and becomes haunted by her victims. As a result of her injury, Eve is driven to seek revenge on those who ordered the hits in the first place—her mob employers.
This is a perfect example of a ‘non glamourous’ female lead, a breath of freah air in the world of media. The ususal female lead, nomatter how raw and realistic she is supposed to be always has an element of obvious seductive and attractive tendencies about her. Charlies Angels (2000, directed by McG) for exapmle are not much more than eye candy, they look good, but are in no way believeable as ‘detectives’ The international movie data base describes it as using ‘martial arts, tech skills, and sex appeal’ This objectifying the women as nothing more than a pretty face and a nice body, which completely contradicts the idea of a female lead in an action film in my opinion. I believe giving the lead roll in an action film to a women should give them equality with male leads. And thus making there job to save the day, and not to give the male audience something to drool over.
Angel of Death has a raw, gritty feel to it, its very dark in the sense that its made in a realistic style but has the action and gore elements of a much more eccentric film. For example when Eve gets a knife in her skull; its practically impossible for her to survive this, but we accept it because of verisimilitude, and because of the realistic style its shot in we believe it. We want to capture this style for our movie, surreal action and stunts but a down to earth appearance. Despite the fantastic style it shot in, we have chosen this to look at because of Zoes character. More than anything we want to create a character that looks believable for her line of work. A woman who the audience will accept to be an ass-kicking, heroine.


The trailer



The very first shot we get, after the logo for the production company, is of Eve with a pair of hand guns, within the first two seconds we already have a clear idea of what genre it is.
Within these few seconds, the audience has already forged opinions on what this film will be about.
Proving that the opening of the trailer is extremely important.



Then we cut straight into action shots of Eve fighting various people, another obvious element for an action genre.
These shots attract fans of the genre, they see how good the short montage of clips are want to watch more.
This part is cut extremely rapidly, giving the feel of the fast paced scenes they are showing, and also building excitement in the viewer.
Then we are shown the shot of Eve with the knife in her head, an intriguing and exhilarating image.
The shot is then joined by text, introducing the character to the audience in a very comic book style.



Various other characters are then introduced in the same way before we continue to see the montage of shots.
The trailer ends with the title of the programme appearing over the last shot, so that this is the last thing the viewer sees.
Its written in red, with obvious connotations of blood, anger, death etc.



As for the soundtrack, we are given ‘cool’ non diagetic music. A simple guitar and drums track, giving the same raw, gritty effect that the images give. Meanwhile various voices are overlaid, mainly Eves so that the audience have a connection the character, but also from other characters. This is so we are able to get a idea of what is going on in some shots. Some of the lines however are simply to add to the ‘cool’ factor, like “she blew daddy’s brains across his pillow, right after she murdered you”


The whole trailer is just 50 seconds long, even less than ours will be. In this short period of time the are may things shown to the audience, using carefully selected shots, put together in a rapidly cut montage.
The views are given huge amounts of information through this trailer, for example the genre, the style, the characters and even a vague outline of the plot.

Target Audience

The chosen audience for the film we are creating the trailer for would be both men and women.
It generally tends to be men who are most interested in action films, as it is seen a male orientated genre. However in recent years more and more female lead action movies are being produced. And it seems that the male audience also enjoy these films equally as much as the ones staring males. However, perhaps this is not for the same reasons. This is why female leads must to an extent be attractive, to maintain the population of the male audience.
The female audience (significantly smaller than the male in this genre) will be more interested in the idea of a female lead because of the empowering effect it has for the gender.
Because of the violence and gore that goes with the style of movie our trailer represents, the age range would start at 18, probably going to 35.
Giving us a modern generation of viewers, who would be interested in our film.

Costume

Our main character, is a female assassin, whom we wish to portray as realistically as possible. Her costume plays a huge role, in the believability and generic iconography of the film.
The ‘usual’ attire for a female assassin consists of tight black clothes, often including leather, and boots with large heels. For example Kate Beckinsale’s costume in Underworld (Len Wiseman 2003).
This type of costume appeals to the male audience, and quite often men with a ‘latex fetish’
This attention is not what we wish to attract from the audience, we want the audience to be attracted to her, because she is a strong, powerful character.
How ever if we take away the usual clothes and replace them with lose fitting, more masculine clothes, then we lose the concept of the film.
We are trying to point out that a female lead is just as strong as a male, by taking away her clothes we lose her femininity.
As well as this point, baggy clothes would be impractical, they would catch on things, and generally slow her down.
This is why we have chosen to keep the tight black costume, also it conforms to the generic iconography.
Besides, the fact that her costume is appealing to men is irrelevant, we want our character to be appealing for who she is and what she does, and not for her sex appeal.

Music

The Music

The music we have chosen to use as soundtrack to our trailer is called Red Tape by Agent Provocateur.
This was used on the dark, modern vampire film Underworld (also with a female lead) Thus proving it goes well with the fast paced shots of action editing.
With minimal vocals this piece of music isn’t too distracting, clearly keeping the focus on the events happening in the trailer.
It sounds very modern, mainly using electronic input as opposed to instruments.
The music starts at a slightly slower tempo, the ‘bursts’ into a faster, heavier beat, perfect for the fast paced trailer, which will suddenly break into action sequences.
The beat will go well with the transition of shots in the montage we plan to make.

Feminism in Film

The development of feminist film theory was first influenced by second wave feminism In the United States by the early 1970’s it was generally based on sociological theory and focused on the function of women characters in particular film narratives or genres and of stereotypes as a reflection of a society's view of women.
The iconic image of Sigourney Weaver, (Alien 1979) cursing behind awesome firepower (and butch hair in Alien 2), spawned a whole crop of chicks-with-ammo knockoffs. But the real leap was 10 years earlier, when writer/producer team Dan O'Bannen and David Giler were pitching their script about a monster that steals aboard a spaceship and starts picking off crew members. It was the mid-70s, and when the filmmakers heard that Twentieth Century Fox was looking for strong female leads, they decided at the last minute to make their main character, Ripley, a woman. Ripley was never intended to be a spokesman, a symbol or a poster child; at first, she was just a marketing gimmick. But when Ridley Scott took over the film and cast then-unknown Weaver in the role, he gave us one of the beautiful, powerful and believable heroines we'd seen so far: She fought to keep the ship secure, fought to keep her crew alive, and finally, in a harrowing last scene, managed to blast the terrifying alien into deepest space. Scott made very few alterations to accommodate the new gender of its star and only survivor, which was exactly the point. It was the first time I ever saw a capable woman onscreen in a way that didn't call attention to the fact that she was a "capable woman."



After viewing the well known film Thelma and Louise, I found that it was much more than a female version of the classic road film. This film also has a strong feminist perspective as these two women leave behind the constraints of their daily lives in order to find adventure and freedom. As long as they are driving on the road they are getting away from and escaping all that ties them down back home, mainly the men in their lives. Both women are in unhappy relationships and depend on each other for the only good and solid relationship that they have in life. I think this film takes on a feminist perspective as the women gain authority throughout the film, through the use of guns and violence, but these women take charge and enter what normally on the screen is viewed only as male characteristics. They become confident, assertive, and fearless.

I think the term feminism describes the utopian view of the equality between men and women in terms of what both genders are able/expected to do, in terms of personal characteristics, actions, and lifestyles. Feminism allows women to step outside their culturally created gender roles and perhaps take on a job or activity or lifestyle that is not traditionally "female", and thus allows for the freedom of choice, which is what I think feminism is at the core, the power of choice and individuality free from gender norms and cultural expectations. Thelma and Louise certainly go against cultural norms as they become violent and assertive women as the film progresses. However, much like the film "Woman on a Motorcycle" thier freedom is put to a halt when at the end of the film they die (or we assume that they die). The film recognizes them as outlaws who must be punished, which is customary in American films, however it also indicates that they must be punished in someway for their deviant behaviour and expressed the idea that the "wild" woman" will not go unpunished, and in some ways counteracts the freedom and feminist ideals that the film was promoting all along. Had they survived, which perhaps they did, I think that it would have indicated that these women, though non-traditional escaped the binds of their daily lives and societal norms and remained truely free. And if they died, (which seems more likely) we are comforted by the fact that they didn’t, nor will they ever conform to the stereotypes of women, they will be eternally viewed as strong women. They lived and died for their freedom form oppression.




Jackie Stacey’s research suggested that women could obtain a great deal of satisfaction from representations of women being powerful and in control of their lives or struggling to remain in control. So our potential female audience would gain visual pleasure from watching a powerful female lead, who is a assassin so is constantly quite literally ‘fighting to stay on top’Laura Marley while referring to the ‘male gaze’ said “The presence of woman is an indispensable element of spectacle in normal narrative film, yet her visual presence tends to work against the development of a story line, to freeze the flow of action in moments of erotic contemplation." Maulvey also speaks about the objectification of women in Hollywood cinema and how they function as unrealistic representations to attract the male audience for the visual pleasure they provide. Taking this into account we plan to portray our female protagonist in a realistic fashion. Wearing appropriate clothes for her role, and like in ‘Kill Bill’ looking realistically hurt, bloody and dishevelled when appropriate. unless you plan to totally re-create the representation of what a women is, there is no way to fully avoid the objectifying view of the male gaze. And if you did chose to portray the female lead as someone someone who isn’t powerful, attractive, confident, you would lose the female audience. Why change aspects of a women’s character in the attempt to change how men view them, surely it is the man who should change.

Taking all of this into account, we created our character, she is a strong, individualy powerful woman.
Her strengh coming from her skill and sucsess as an assassin, she uses her talents in hand to hand combat and knowledge of weapons to sucseed in her life.
She ulike other female leads, does not use her good looks to manipulate her opponents. We would like her to be viewed as a strong lead, the equivilant as a male lead. With the same tendancies as any other assassin, male or femal.
Her sex is irrelvant as it is not used as weaopn. In all our character is not 'aware' of her attractiveness, she doesn’t use her good looks to manipulate men, or to gain attention she uses her power as a person not as a woman.

Moving storyboard

potential poster and magazine photos

Poster

Magazine Cover

The plan

Plan for 1-2 minute teaser trailer

We plan to create a teaser trailer for an action film starring a female assassin, the trailer will be constructed using a montage of short quickly edited shots, showing our heroine in action. We are hoping this style of editing will heighten excitement levels and obtain the viewers interest, while fulfilling the requirements of the generic iconography to attract our target audience in the 1-2 minutes we have, the montage will be put to a backdrop of a upbeat fast pace soundtrack but will freeze at one point where we hear from the female assassin, it will then start up again as upbeat as before .The trailer will then end abruptly with a loud gunshot followed by the name of the of the film (still undecided) we are going for short sharp and to the point, very fast very loud but not giving too much away.

Evaluation question 1

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


The most obvious way out media product challenges the conventions of real media products, is

the fact that we have created an action film with a female lead.
The norm for a film of the action genre, would be to have a male cast as the star, this has been socially accepted for as long as film has been made.
Since the ‘film feminism’ movement, there has been more females taking the place of male characters, for example the character Ripely, (Alien 1979) was originally created for a male to play.
So by casting a woman as the lead role in our film, we are challenging the conventions of the action genre, thus giving the film modern edge and widening the target audience, not to mention the empowering effect this film will have on women.

As well as this, the female in our film will be represented differently than the usual female in an action film.
Usually the women are portrayed as ‘the damsel in distress’ but our dame is in no way distressed, in fact there’s not much she cant handle. We want to show just how strong she is, and so we have her fighting her own battle, needing no help form anyone.
She is in a respect her own heroine, saving herself from the objects in her path, and making a living doing what is seen as ‘a mans’ job.

An aspect of this genre we have developed, is the backdrop, or the setting for the movie.
The majority of action films are set in a urban area, the buildings surround the set, traffic is rife and the streets are packed.
Our film has this but also a large portion of it is set in a more rural area, this is to give a contrast between the different aspects if her (our lead characters) life.
We have shown this rural section, primarily in our trailer, but have kept the urban look in our posters.

With all of this change, it is important to maintain some conformity to the genre, so that it remains clear that it is an action film.
To do this we have used the repertoire of elements, showing the audience obvious things associated with action in our trailer.
For example, guns, blood, violence, and ‘a hero’ are all prominent features of the trailer.

Evaluation question 2

What have you learned from your audience feed back?

Once completed, we invited a small audience to view out trailer and provide us with their thoughts on it, thus enabling us to see weather we had achieved the desired affect from an audience. Giving us a chance to alter it if necessary.
They first commented, saying they simply ‘enjoyed the trailer’ adding that it would ‘defiantly encourage them to go and watch the film’
When we asked why they thought that was, they replied ‘It looks like a good action packed flick, and the woman was a kick ass’
We believe we created the ‘action packed’ look, with the use of short, fast shots in a montage, compiled to a up beat soundtrack, found in most action trailer and in pivotal points in the films themselves.
And we were pleased by the reaction our female lead received, reassuring us that the audience would be interested in a movie where the main character is a strong woman.
Both men and woman were asked, and obviously each had a different reason for liking the look of the film.
The woman believing it to be empowering to see a strong female on screen, and the men obviously attracted to the action, and perhaps the character.

Evaluation question 3

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

We had trouble filming in one of our planning locations because of technical difficulties and then lack of transport when these difficulties were resolved. so we ended up filming the whole sequence in our second location and areas surrounding, it hasn’t affected the quality of the film however, it does mean we haven’t got any footage of buildings within our teaser trailer , which are the location of out female assassin on the poster and magazine front cover which we produced before filming.

We were concerned this would be problematic however, our assassin being the focus of the poster and magazine front cover is effective enough in linking the texts, and the presence of a dramatic difference in landscape from the poster to the trailer adds another dimension to the film and could heighten audience interest in the going to see the movie.
The combination of the texts is effecting in creating the sense of the character and the feel of the film enough to spark the curiosity of our target audience.

Evaluation question 4

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

We conducted a great deal of our research on the internet, it proved a brilliant source of information for researching the genre of film we were creating a trailer for, using imdb we could quickly find the most successful films in our chosen genre, we could then order them from a film distributing site such as play.com and have them delivered to our door. YouTube was also very useful, it created easy access to trailers and teaser trailers which we could use to aid us in generating ideas for our own.

We used a nikonD50 digital camera when we went location hunting, it helped to give us a good idea of how we would frame particular shots. We could also then compare potential locations when we were back at school by uploading the pictures to the computer. We also used the camera to take shots for the poster and media magazine front cover. which we then edited in paint shop pro, a photo editing program, using this we could create different backdrops for our photos which we actually took in Aimee’s living room. Using paint shop pro we could create the illusion that our heroine is standing in the tops of high buildings, skyscrapers in a big city, such as is the demands of the generic iconography.

Another computer program we used but in this case in our planning was windows movie maker, although it is only basic it fulfilled the needs of creating a simple moving storyboard which we find usefull in getting an idea of the pace of the trailer and how we want the music to flow with what will be on screen.

A technology that was new to us that we used in the filming of our teaser trailer was tracks, we used them for the opening sequence of the trailer where our assassin is walking, we wanted to create the feeling that you are following and the tracks are a great help in achieving that.