Storyboard

Our storyboard shows our filming locations, an indication of where our titles are going to be, and where our footage is going to be set and placed in our film trailer. Below is a storyboard for the opening scene that we are going to produce:

 

(Click to enlarge)

 

Question 11 from my audience research questionnaire asked if an audience likes to see action interspersed with actor/director credits throughout the film trailer. 65% of the people in my sample answered 'yes.' Furthermore all three film trailer deconstructions I previously did interspersed action with actor/director credits, suggesting that this was a common film trailer convention. Due to the results from this question and my three film trailer deconstructions we decided to intersperse our film trailer with action/director credits which has been indicated above in our storyboard.

Conclusion:
Our audience research questionnaire and our film trailer deconstructions enabled us to gain a greater depth of understanding about what an audience wants to see in a film trailer and what is already existing in the industry. We created our storyboard for our film trailer based on this knowledge we have gained in hope to both please our audience and create a film trailer that can be compared to existing products, ensuring that our film trailer is going to be a success.

Genre Theory

Genre - "a class or category of artistic endeavor having a particular form, context, technique, or the like."


Genre can be represented to many things; for example genre painting, genre film and genre fiction. For terms of my coursework I will only be focusing on the film aspect of genre.


In film theory, genre refers to the primary method of film categorization. A "genre" basically refers to films that share similar story lines. For example the basis of a horror movie is to frighten the audience via various techniques such as characters actions and the narrative being told. Showing graphic content and sensitive narrative is a technique that works in to days horror film industry where films such as the Saw films are very popular and are notorious for there graphical bloody scenes. These films have brought up controversy in issues regarding there violence and 'gore', this is because clearly if you watch the 'scariest' film of the 70's or 80's and compare it to present day you can see that over just 20/30 years there has been a massive difference in the sensitivity of the audience, they are becoming more and more 'numb' as time progresses. 

I found this video below very interesting and has helped me develop my knowledge of film genre's  as it shows various types of films.



 The life cycle of a genre:


i. A certain number of media products that share common characteristics
ii. Neologism - Media items share similarities and come up with a name
iii. the name is accepted by the audience and a genre is born
iv. producers start to make products to fit the new genre classification
v. parodies are created
vi. Exception to these rules in case of a manifesto


The Concept of Genre in Film:


Examination of the main debates surrounding the functions and purposes of genre in film, including how, why, definitions of particular genres change according to the contexts of their production.


Media Languages Forms and Conventions:


Codes and conventions of different genres (Stuart Hall's Encode - Decode), historical origins and development over time, construction of realism and other codes, strengths and weaknesses of genre theory.


Media Institutions:


Film industries ‘Hollywood studios’ production line approach to genre associated with specific studios, pre-/post production, distribution, exhibition; genre as marketing tool Media Audiences: pleasures, expectations, audience identification, fans; cults, Media Representations: character types-stereotypes and archetypes, representations of gender, race, nationality, age, sexuality etc, ideological dominant values, typecasting and genre as a ‘reading’ device.




Genre is seen to be 'fundamental to communication' this means that a piece's genre is directly relational to how the piece communicates and what is communicated. Genre makes information more controllable, more rule-bound. Genre makes characters predictable (as they already know what type of character they are), and therefore transforming the world into something more controllable; it offers imaginary solutions to real problems. In film, genres are structures used by film-makers and audience for making meaning. To construct a film within a genre, specific selections are made:- e.g. Western Horses, guns, saloons e.g. Sci-Fi Spaceships, Robots, Laser guns. e.g. Gangster Speakeasy, the moll, black suits. These selections (or paradigms) are Iconongraphical. They are Signifiers. (Iconography/mise en scene) Genre and narrative Beyond the surface features of any genre are Themetic Precoccupations and Ideological Emphases. e.g Jurassic Park is about responsible application of science and technology, where Scream is a preoccupation with the morality of teenagers.
 ref.

Characters

Our film trailer is going to be based on one main character whom the storyline and plot is going to be based around. The main character is going to be in a relationship, the male role being played by, Hayden Simmons (group member), and the female role being played, Karen Smith.

Other anomalous characters may be used in our film trailer. These characters would be of both genders, and portrayed to the audience as surgeons and friends of the couple. These characters will not be seen in the film trailer, only heard by the use of a voice over, therefore we felt that we didnt really need to develop these characters in more depth.

Although our storyline involves a couple, our storyline and film trailer will be mainly based around the female character. We chose to base our storyline around a couple because that is one of the main themes of a romantic genre, however due to our hybrid genre involving tragedy, we made the decision to make the female character the victim in our storyline and plot, this is because we felt that females are stereotypically portrayed as the victim in films of any genre.

Above, and in our final ideas, we have outlined the actor/actresses who will be playing the role of our main character and our mains characters partner. We decided that Karen Smith was the best suited actress for the  female part because she is a very talented, experienced actress, who is a quick learner and takes good direction and is extremely versatile. Hayden (Group member) have chosen to take on the role of the male part because he has some acting experience and because Karen Smith is a close friend of mine and Hayden's; meaning we could easily create the chemistry needed between the couple, in order to make their relationship look believable to the audience. 

We felt as a group that we needed to create a character profile for our main character whom, Karen Smith will be playing. This is so we can create a fully crafted, three dimensional character, in order for Karen Smith to have a better understanding of the role she is going to be acting out. In theory we are hoping this will produce a more realistic, believable character on screen, that an audience can build a close relationship with, feeling sympathy for her, and therefore interacting with the film more.

We hope that the chemistry between our main character and her partner, as well as the relationship with the audience, will produce a more successful film trailer, as the audience will interact and identify more with the main character and her partner, letting their guard down, and making it easier to create atmosphere and tension that relates to the nature of our film trailer.

Below is a simple character profile that I have produced for our main character. There is a picture of the actress in the middle so you can visualise what the character is going to look like, as well as being able to understand the type of role our actress will be playing.

Character Profile of Main Character:


Karen Smith:

Plot Summary

Our brief states that we have to produce a promotional package for a film; one of the aspects included in this promotional package is to produce a film trailer. A film trailer is structured around the most appealing aspects of a whole film, without taking conventional narrative order into consideration. Therefore we needed to have a clear idea of what our whole film would entail, in order for us to structure our film trailer around the most appealing aspects, causing it to be comparable to existing media products on the market.

Before we wrote our plot summary, we decided to research into what the objectives of a plot summary were, enabling me to write a more professional plot summary for our audience.

The Objectives of a Plot Summary:

The objective of a summary is to condense a large amount of information into a short, accessible format. It is not to reproduce the experience of watching a film, nor to cover every detail. For those who have not seen the film, it should serve as a general overview of the major points. For those who have, it should be detailed enough to refresh their memory – no more.

Below is a plot summary for our film.

Plot Summary:

Set in England, Katy had finally found her ‘happy ever after,’ which she had longed for since she was a child. As a beautiful, smart woman, married to the love of her life – a passionate, sweet, handsome man named John. Katy felt as though her life was complete and that nothing would ever go wrong. It came as a huge shock when John died due to a rare condition known as SADS – referred to as ‘Sudden Arrhythmic Death Syndrome,’ leaving Katy broken, and alone. Subconsciously Katy refused to let go; her mind began to create life like fantasies with John in which she lives through whilst she dreams. This longing for John back in her life leads Katy to consume masses of sleeping pills and alcohol to help her sleep more, enabling them to be together again. Katy looses a sense of reality, believing that when she is in fact awake, she is having nightmares. This obsession leaves her life in ruins, making her feel even more shut off to the world than she did before. Her severe depression leads to thoughts of taking an overdose, however after failing to follow through, Katy decides its time to get her life back on track. Katy puts her past to one side as if it never happened and attempts to move forward with her life, however Katy starts hallucinating. Believing that she is going crazy and that John has come back to haunt her, Katy has a mental breakdown and kills herself.

Potential Target Audience

After completing our analysis of both our audience questionnaires we wanted to outline our potential target audience for the film trailer that we are going to produce.

Gender:

From looking at the results I collected from question 1 from my audience questionnaire. You can clearly see that the results was fairly evenly distributed between the genders; on the other hand Hayden the other group member received results from the majority being female, this has prevoked us as a group to decide our target audience would be both genders from 17-25 but we will acknowledge that females may pay more interest because of the romantic tragedy element. (explained below)

However after analysing these results we have noticed that there isn't much difference between the two genders, implying that we shouldn't neglect targeting our film trailer at only females. We feel that our hybrid genre which we created to use for our film trailer is made up of individual aspects that are enjoyed by both genders, and therefore we have come to the decision to target our film trailer at both genders

Age:

From looking at the results I collected from question 2 from my audience questionnaire. You can clearly see that most of the people from my sample who answered this questionnaire fit into the age category, '17-25.'

Final Ideas

Below is the Final Ideas Presentation, it was created on Prezi, which is a piece of online software which enables the user to create a presentation that can be very graphically appealing.
Prezi:.

Prezi is uses a single canvas instead of the traditional slide format. Text, images, videos and various other multimedia can be added onto the 'infinite' canvas. The canvas allows users to create non-linear presentations, where users can zoom in and out of a visual map. A path through different objects and frames can be defined, representing the order of the information to be presented. The presentation can be developed in a browser window, then downloaded so that an Internet connection is not needed when showing the presentation.

You have the option to view this presentation in full screen mode by hovering over the 'More' option and selecting 'Full Screen.' You also have the option to zoom in and out on selected parts of this presentation at your own will, however I recommend that you simply click the right arrow to watch our presentation step by step - repeatedly click the right arrow to progress onto the next step, or the left arrow to go back a step.

Film Trailer - Final Ideas on Prezi

(If this application does not load please press link above to be directed to its primary source)

Audience Research

Hayden and I have decided that we are going to create two types or research, one a questionnaire and one an interview of selected members of the public.


Below is the questionnaire that I have designed to retrieve quantitative data from the public, this is important in my mind because then we can see what people are really looking for in a film trailer.


We distributed the questionnaire by using a free survey creation site called Kwik Surveys, we chose this as it has many features we can use such as the analysis tools and the accessibility to embed and create links.


The way we distributed the questionnaire was by using the social networking site Facebook, we used this because me and Hayden both have lots of 'friends' that use the website regularly so that when we sent people the mail and posted a notification with the link to the survey because then a broad range of people would be able to click the link and complete the survey.


The Questionnaire:

Below are the results to the audience research questionnaire, please click the link and view:


- Results




Analysis of Results:


The reason why the questions do not match the titles, for example question 4 is under the title question 3 is because the way the questionnaire was designed a few 'questions' were actually images or titles.




Question One:

This question was to determine what age groups have answered this question as it is vital that every age group is analysed so then we have an insight into what different age groups are looking for.


Question Two:

This was a question to show what gender answered my questionnaire, this is because i asked a range of people that worked out around 50/50 so that the answered would not be biased towards one gender. The people that answered actually was nearly half male and half female so this questionnaire should be unbiased and fair in terms of gender issues.


Question Three:





This question we asked to find out if the audience likes the key points to be conveyed through titles; the results have shown that the majority do like the key points to be conveyed, this is a vital question as it gave me and my group information that we can know how we should create the first scene, this is where 'The Active Audiece' comes into play, because this is a decoding process going on among the active audience who are not just using media for gratification purposes, and they are actively accepting and refining parts of media and breaking it down and looking at the signs inside the text, this is why this question was important because it shows how much the signs in film first scenes and all media influences how you interpret it.


Question Four:





The answer for this questions were mixed but 'the same text' being used as the titles resulted in having more results, this will be taken into consideration when creating the trailer. The fact that they are all spread out is information i can use as it is obviously an aspect that there is no clear one answer.




Question Five:





This question also shows the active audience once again as clearly the majority has decided to choose that an Internal Monologue is the best for a film trailer, this deters actions of what we as a group are going to do as it allows our group to produce a piece of media that the audience have told us that they prefer.




Question Six:

This is clear what the answer the active audience want, this means that a soundtrack is vital for attracting audiences off all ages and all interests.


Question Seven:





These results were mixed and I know straight away that due to the results I should not put the film name 'towards the end' as nobody voted for that.    




Question Eight:





This question gave us mixed results, although we can see that A Blank Screen is slightly more favoured so we will have to consider this when creating our titles. Possibly the audience consider black titles as a 'normal' thing in film production as many films use this technique.







Question Nine:




This answer is clear that the majority of the people asked want the action to be interspersed with actor/director credits, this is possibly because the audience want a trailer that is fast paced and tells them everything that they need.






Question Ten:




This is another clear answer of what the audience want, this is a basic piece of information that the audience clearly want to see so that they know when they can see the film if they are attracted by it.
 Question Eleven:





This question had a clear answer, that the audience think that the use of a soundtrack and sound effects is very effective, this was a vital question is asking on the questionnaire as now I know that the vast majority of the people asked to fill in the survey likes the aspect of soundtracks and sound effects combined.




Question Twelve:







This question has provoked much contrasting ideas with me and my group member, this is because the results were varied, we decided to discard 'Their name displayed over a blank screen'. We decided to use the method of 'Their name placed over footage from within the film' because after analysis of film trailers we have noticed that typically in romantic tragedies and psychological thrillers they use this technique. 


 

Question Thirteen:





This questions results seem to suggest that people when watching a film trailer that they like to see a basic narrative structure of the film, this is so that they can engross into the trailer and understand the basic storyline to give them a good idea of what the film will be about so that they can decide after watching whether or not it is something they want to see.






Question Fourteen:






As Hayden (group member) recieved different results to me on this question we decided to research into the different types of titles being shown on the genre we are creating.

For Romantic films typically titles are shown as Their name placed over footage from within the film

For Thriller typically the titles are shown Their name displayed over a blank screen

For Action or Romance Their name joined by a shot focused on them


For Comedy Their name displayed over a coloured screen






Qualitative Audience Feedback:

This section of the audience feedback will be much more personal, it involves actively interviewing people and asking the open ended questions in hope to recieve personl opinions and answers that are detailed in which we can view and determine what the audiences opinions are of a trailer that they will be shown (Black Swan)


Black Swan:

 

Directed by	Darren Aronofsky
Produced by	Scott Franklin Mike Medavoy Arnold Messer Brian Oliver
Screenplay by	Mark Heyman Andres Heinz John McLaughlin
Story by	Andres Heinz
Starring	Natalie Portman Vincent Cassel Mila Kunis
Music by	Clint Mansell
Cinematography	Matthew Libatique
Editing by	Andrew Weisblum
Distributed by	Fox Searchlight Pictures
Release date(s)	December 3, 2010 (2010-12-03)
Running time	108 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$13 million
Gross revenue	$143,561,708

Questions for Qualitative Audience Feedback (Black Swan Analysis):

1) What genre/s do you think this film is? Please expand on your answer

2) How does the soundtrack contribute to create the right ambiance for the film trailer and reflect its genre?

3) What connotations would you create from the colour of the titles; do you feel this reflects the genre of the film?

4) What themes do you think are present in this film trailer? Do these films reflect the genre?

5) Do you feel this film trailer was successful or not? Please explain your answer

Due to time constraints and the qualitative nature of this audience research we have limited the number of responses to three people, this is because the qualitative feedback is very large and the feedback we have received from the quantitative research has given us a large amount of data that is easily analysed; whereas the qualitative data takes a long time to analyse and because of this we do not have enough time to collate any more results.

We have decided as we think it fits best in our trailer that we are going to use black screen with titles over the top as Hayden had results favouring this.