Advertising our film trailer

Firstly we created an advertisement for the side of a bus, the reason we did this is because london is a very busy and popular place that has many tourist. We believe that putting an advert on a bus will increase the popularity of our film trailer and more people will want to see it. 

Next we advertised our film on Youtube, youtube is a website that millions of people use across the country and worldwide, so by advertising our film on there it will automatically be noticed by the people who use this website. As you can watch videos on youtube people will see the advert and then type it in to see the trailer for the film, so this way youtube was a good idea to advertise on and we hope that it will have a strong impact on the views of our film.

Finally we chose to use the film magazine website called Interview. We chose this website as we based our magazine poster on this company so by advertising it on their website it will look like it is one of their posters and films. Our magazine fits in well with the website and stands out because of the bright and florescent colours used, this is a good thing as people will notice it more and take more interest in the poster.

I think that the advertising methods we have used are very good and i believe that it will work and that it will have a strong impact on the public people who view our advertisement. Advertising is an important part of promotion as it will help increase the fame and views of the films so it is strongly advised that we advertise our own film.

Our magazine cover

Here is our magazine cover that we have created to advertise our film. As you can see we have based our magazine cover under the inspiration of the magazine "Interview"as we found that magazine the most appealing and we thought the convention were very good. We have tried to use most of the conventions to match the "Interview" magazine and i think we have achieved this. We have used very bright colours for our picture as that is the main part of the magazine cover, so by using bright blue and green it will allow the magazine to stand our from others. The text we have used is the same text from the "Interview" magazine this way it will look like our magazine is one of theirs but, we decided to change the colour of the font to orange so that it stands out from the background colours and is also bright to match our theme of colours. We chose to use the picture of Georgia as she is the main character in our film and the storyline is based on her and her love life. By using this image it will advertise our film well as people will recognise her from the trailer we have created.

 As a group we decided to use the normal conventions of most magazine cover by adding on the issue date and the film title however, our title is very small which is different to other magazine as they usually intend to be big and across the central image. But we thought we would prefer it to be in a small font so that it doesn't distract the focus away from the image. On our magazine cover we chose to add some famous actors and actress's names to interest the buyers into reading whats inside the magazine, by doing this it gives them a little taster of whats inside and it will hopefully interest them into buying our magazine. 

Once we had shown the teachers our magazine cover they were very pleased with what we had managed to produce and they thought it was very good standard. Although they gave us some negative feedback so that we can improve our cover and make it perfect. The feedback they gave us was that the text that said " Georgia White" was not very noticeable against the background and it needed to stand out as she is the main actress in our film. Therefore we re- edited the magazine cover and made it a darker font colour to enable the viewers to see the name more clearly. Below is our new magazine cover.

While taking this image of Georgia for our magazine cover we also have many out take images that we took but decided not to use. The pictures we took are all different and we varied the angles and close up/long shots. We didn't pick these images as we didn't think they were suitable for the magazine cover, so we chose one that we felt would work.

 Here are the other images from the photoshoot.

Film magazine research

Before we begin to create our own magazine cover we need to research other film magazine to get ideas and inspiration from them and to see the most common conventions that they have, so when we create ours in a group it will look like a real film magazine cover. I have decided to look at "Empire"as this is a popular magazine that get a lot of buyers. I am going to annotate one of there film covers to show the conventions that they have used.

I am now going to research another film magazine cover and this time i have chosen "Interview"this magazine appealed to me as they are quite simple but look very good. I am now also going to annotate this cover to show the similarities and differences between different film magazine covers.

Our Film poster

Above is our film poster that we have created to advertise our film trailer. Jade managed to take the image of Georgia and Jim on new years eve, we found this a good opportunity as they were all loved up. This image represents a romantic film as it is evident that these are the two main characters who fall in love. 

we then had to edit this image using Adobe Photoshop CS3, we have all had experiencer using photoshop so we new what we were doing and found it fairly easy. We used curves to lighting up the image and to change the colour to brighter shades, we then used a filter called film grain this added a slightly blurred effect to the image which looked good. however, the image was too square and did not fit the common shape convention of a normal film poster so we used the crop tool to cut the image into a rectangle. 

Once we had edited out picture we had to insert our title for the film, this took some time as we had to choose a font and background colour which was black so that we could have white text to stand our from the dark background. We found this quite difficult especially adding in the hands across the T and the I as we wanted it too perfection, so it took a few attempts. We placed the title at the bottom of the image as we believed it would stand out the most there and would grab attention of people. 

Next we decided to add on the billing block to our poster to do this we typed it up on word first as it was much simpler, we then looked at other film posters billing blocks to help us with ideas of what to write. Once we had wrote it our we had to decrease the size of some words and increase other this is to get the small squashed up look that most billing blocks have. When we put it on Photoshop we needed to change the colour as black couldn't be seen, so we chose a chalky white colour so it would stand out from the black background behind. After my group and i added on the actor and actress's name which we also chose a chalky white colour to match our colour scheme of the poster. we placed the names above each of the characters so it was evident that they are the main characters in the film. We placed the billing block and the names at the top of the poster as there was not enough room above the title because it would cover the central image, so we thought at the top would be the most suitable place.

Overall i am pleased with our film poster and i think that it looks very professional and fits most of the common conventions of a normal film poster. I also think that it represents our romantic genre very well. 

Researching film posters and our ideas

As a group we have to produce a film poster to go along with our film trailer, now that we have chosen a storyline and got more ideas for the trailer we can now start researching into film posters.  When researching we found that each poster will have very similar conventions that most film posters will have. The main conventions that a film poster will have are:

Colour scheme – depending on genre

Masthead

Tagline

Central image

Director, actresses, actors names

Release date – depending on the type of poster

All of these conventions help to produce an excellent film poster that will grab the audience attention. Instead of looking at various film posters of any genre we chose to research into just Romance film posters, as that is the genre that we are basing our film on.

The first poster we looked at was “One Day” this is a romance film that was released in 2011.  By looking at this poster you can instantly tell that the genre is romance by looking at the central image of two people kissing and it is evident they are in love. The tag line is very interesting as it doesn’t give away the storyline but it could give an audience an opinion on what the think the film could be about. This poster is very simple but stands out. The text of the masthead is in white to fit the usual convention of white and red in a romantic film poster. By looking in depth at this film poster it helped give us ideas for our own as we have two main characters in our film that are passionately in love which is similar to the character on this poster.

The next film poster we researched was “Like Crazy” this had a stronger impact on us as it stood out more than the other one.  By looking at this poster it is not as evident that it’s a romance. You can tell that it might be from the central image but there is nothing there to suggest that its ` romance as there is no evidence of people kissing or hugging. However, the setting of the image suggests it’s a romance due to them sitting, looking at the sunset which is what couples usually do. This image also has the normal conventions of a film poster as it includes a masthead, tag line and the names. We found this poster more interesting as it isn’t giving anything away and you cant even see the characters faces, this creates a stronger effect for the audience.

Our ideas

After researching into other film posters we now decided to produce ideas of our own and what we thought would look effective for our poster. We started by sketching down some different ideas on paper. The one that stood out the most was the one with both characters sitting on a skateboard looking out to the sea and sunset. we thought a good location to take this image would be St Mary's island by the river at dusk to get the shot and scenery we want. The reason we chose this is because it will create a romantic atmosphere and we got our idea from the “like crazy” poster, as it is similar. The reason we chose a skateboard is because in our storyline the character of the male has a hobby of skateboarding so this will link to our narrative.  We then had to choose what tag line we would have, however we haven’t yet decided on one but we have come up with love quotes that could match our story and may become useful.

The title we chose is intimate however we have changed it so the “ti” is behind bars and so the word will also spell “in-mate” which is another word for a person that is in prison. This will relate to our storyline and I think our idea is very clever. We will have the title at the top of the poster so that it stands out.  At first we came up with a few different styles of how to write our title and used different fonts to vary our ideas.

First title:

This is one of the first ideas we had, we wanted to show in the title a relation to prison as that is a main part in the narrative of our film. So by using handcuffs it will show this evidently. It also grabs the attention of the “ti” as they are selected. 

second idea:

This is the second title we came up with. This one is similar this time we used prison bars and someone holding onto them.  The title in this logo stand out much more and we believe that it has a stronger impact and that the idea we had of using a pun is shown more and the “ti” is more bold and noticeable.

It took us a while to decide on which title we preferred so we chose to ask other students in our class, to see which one they thought was best. By using audience feedback we noticed that the second title logo was more popular and the majority of people preferred the second one, so we decided as a group to use the second one as our final choice of title.

Researching film trailers

To help us as a group to come up with our narrative we looked at various film trailers for famous romantic films. This was to help us get inspiration and to discover the common conventions that a trailer intends to use.  We looked at films such as “The Notebook” as this is a very popular romance film and the storyline is very intriguing.

By watching this trailer it helped give us ideas for the setting and location of our film trailer. As we noticed from this trailer, they use numerous different settings and shots within the 2 minutes. We then came up with some ideas of settings and different shots that we could use for our trailer. These ideas were:

·      Park

·      Beach

·      Shopping Centre- blue water

·      Skate park

·      Bathroom –bath/shower

·      Bedroom

·      Texting – show shots of the messages

·      Train station

·      Shots of them kissing

These are some of the ideas we gathered from looking at “The Notebook” trailer as they used similar locations. All of these locations will be used to create romance within the two characters. The notebook is a very popular film that originated from a book, the storline in the film is so strong and they show the stroyline through using clips in the trailer. The music used in the trailer inspired us as its very classical and compliments the romance genre.

Another trailer we looked at was “Like Crazy” this had a big impact on our film idea, as this was the main film that gave us the most inspiration for ours. The reason we liked this film trailer is because is was very natural and realistic and the trailer was showing strong romance. The split screens at the beginning also helped include ideas for our films as we have decided to use split screens to fit the conventions of other trailers. We also decided to use a voice over as we saw from the like crazy trailer that it creates an effective atmosphere within the trailer.

                                                                                

Both these trailers had a strong impact on creating the storyline for our film trailer as well as other various trailers we looked at such as, “The Proposal, The Ugly Truth, and One Day”. From watching a variety of romance films we have noticed the main conventions that appear in most trailers. The common conventions are a voice over, slow piano and soft music, some with lyrics and they use many different locations. After researching into romantic film trailer it has helped us create a storyline and ideas for each shot and the characters movements. 

Initial ideas for our film trailer

For our film trailer we had many ideas that came to mind in the genre type and narrative. Originally we wanted to do as Rom Com as it will be interesting to create and different from last years 2 minute opening of a horror genre, so we decided by doing a Rom Com it will vary our ideas and skills.

Firstly we researched in depth into famous Rom Com trailers and watched a variety of them such as The Proposal, The Ugly Truth, Along Came Polly and many more. By watching these trailers we started to figure out the main conventions of a Rom Com trailer and saw a colour scheme in each trailer and red and white is the most common. However we soon discussed that a Rom Com was not such a good genre idea, as we believe the comedy side will be hard to script and live up to the standard of other films, so we chose to base our trailer on a Romantic Genre.

Although we had now chose the genre of our film we needed to decide on a storyline, we brainstormed using PowerPoint to write down several of our ideas. We came up with many but had to pick one. Most Romantic films have a twist in the storyline and the characters aren’t always in love for the whole film this helped us to choose our storyline.  In the end we went with the narrative of two loved up people and the man goes to prison, he then comes out a few months later and see’s her with someone else. This way the trailer will not give away the ending of the film and will leave it on a cliffhanger. I believe that our narrative matches the common conventions of a romantic film. Our inspiration for our storyline came from the film “Like Crazy” this is a new romantic film out that we watched the trailer for many times and it gave us ideas and inspiration.

We then had to make a decision and create a title for our film, we found this the hardest part as there were so many we could use. We decided that we wanted our title to be a pun; this made it harder to come up with ideas. We also wanted the title to represent prison or jail to show the narrative more clearly but we didn’t want to give it away and still needed to link it to a Romance. In the end we came up with a clever idea using the word “intimate” as the “t” and the “I” will be behind prison bars and the word will also spell “in-mate” that is another word for someone in prison. We thought this idea worked well and it was the best out of the others that we had.

After researching more into Romance film trailers we discovered that some would use a voice over to help show the storyline we chose as a group that we like that idea and we watched Rihanna music video to “we found love”. At the beginning of the video there is a short length voice over, it was about love and we thought that we could use some of the lines, as they were very effective.  This voice over was:

It’s like your screaming and no one can hear, you almost feel ashamed, that someone can be that important that without them you feel like nothing no one will ever understand how much it hurts. You feel hopeless like nothing can save you then when its over and its gone you almost wish you could have all that bad stuff back so you could have the good”

Even though we thought this quote was good we looked up various love quotes and the definition of love on the urban dictionary to widen our ideas as we may want to use parts from both. 

Here shows that i have looked thoroughly into a film poster of my choice and analysed each part with depth. I chose to look at a Rom Com as that is the genre that we thought about doing for our film trailer.