group 76 a2 media practical

Creating our film Poster

2009-12-16T07:11:00.001-08:00

When creating our poster for our film, we used a two shot of the main chracters and again changed the tones to be like sepia and very contrasting to keep our trailer and poster connected. This helps keep in sync with our genre of Arthouse. We also used the same font as our trailer again to keep the connection. We made our poster look professional by adding the detail at the top including the directors name and writer etc. We kept our poster quite simple and just had the date it was out; we also added some logos at the bottom of it as our sponsors, including Film4, Festival de Cannes and our production company logo Gonzo the cat. This adds a personal twist and makes our poster look professional.
Below is our final design.

Evaluation

2009-12-16T07:09:00.001-08:00

Question One: In what ways does your media products use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media?
· Codes are visual or audio elements that the audience can see or hear.
· Conventions are stereotypes that the audience expects from characters in a particular genre; in our case this is Arthouse.
· Form is a basic structure of media text includes, camera, sound, editing, mise en scene; and our structure is a teaser trailer, magazine cover and a poster.

Our teaser trailer used these different elements from other Arthouse films:

Visual Elements
· Birds eye view shot and the spilt screen from Requiem of a Dream; which shows contrast between the characters. Also, the extreme close up of the eye changing pupil size is also from Requiem of a Dream.
· The canted angle from Donnie Darko
· Graffiti as a background from Volver.
· Sepia tones from Amelie and Delicatessen
· The Brighton beach long shot was used to show the location and connection between the characters.

Audio Elements
· From our sound research we discovered that most Arthouse films use string instruments as the soundtrack. Therefore our soundtrack was a guitar which emphasised the warm feeling. The rhythm builds up to create enigma and then fades out.
· We used the Spanish language as an inspiration from Pedro Almodovar films.

Conventions
· Our storyline contains untouchable taboo like events in childhood for example rape. We got the idea from Pedro Almodovar’s films.
· Strong contrast between and within the characters, which applies to most Arthouse films.
· Romance and drama

Forms
· Split screen, canted angle
· Sepia tones, luminance and channel map (overlay between shots)
· Backgrounds, costume, make up and prop

Developed and Challenged
Visual and Audio
· Subtitles in different places on screen
· Jump cut
· Reverse shot
· Jaw harp
· Typography in titles – got from dafont.com

Conventions
· Superstition; mirror smash, black cat instead of normal cat
· Bubbles – childhood memoir

Question Two: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
· The cat logo was used on our poster and the cat was mentioned in the trailer and appeared on screen too.
· Colour – sepia tones are featured in our magazine cover, poster and trailer.
· Two shots – suggesting the main characters of the storyline.
· Lighting – used in all of our products.
· Setting – warm feel. Graffiti was used in the trailer and magazine cover background.
· Typography – unique font in our products link together.
· Costume – complimentary colours.

Question Three: What have you learned from your audience feedback?
· From the audience feedback, we improved the storyline as we changed the order of shot, to create enigma.
· We received comments about the level of background noise which we were unable to change.
· Addition of the black cat at the end of our trailer to create quirkiness and to connect to superstition.
· Changed the font in the trailer to suit our genre of Arthouse.
· We cropped the edge of our production company animation to make it less jumpy.
· We developed our magazine cover, we changed the background, and the typography to suit the magazine we chose Little White Lies.
· Pearl and Dean – looked at the comparable profiles for Amelie and Donnie Darko to have an idea of the structure of the audience.
· We are aware that our audience is an older generation.

Addition of Gonzo

2009-12-03T13:04:00.000-08:00

We got suggested that adding a black cat into our trailer would have a quite quirky and dramatic effect. That’s because in the trailer the character Iva mentions black cats and superstitions. Coincidentally I happen to have a black cat at home, called Gonzo, so I filmed him walking across the screen and we edited him into the end of our trailer and added a motion blur on top so it looks a bit unreal and dreamy.It worked and looked well and this is how Gonzales became a superstar.

Creating the Magazine Cover

2009-12-03T05:35:00.000-08:00

First we started creating a magazine cover everyone else is doing. A total film magazine cover with a realistic whole body shot of our main characters. Than we realized that our kind of art house film would not be on a film magazine cover, which is based on Hollywood blockbusters.

This is why we decided to use one our our really strong close up photo as a main image on the magazine cover of little white lies, which is an independent magazine focusing on quirky, art house films. We used Photoshop filters to create a not realistic high contrast cartoon style picture. We choose the colour brown because we often used sepia in our film, and it would be something to connect the poster with the film. We used a nicely contrasting blue background, we overlaid the Spanish flag's logo in the background to add something that relates to Spanish but it didn’t work well.

After we changed the background colour to something warmer to suggest a romantic story, and we got the sunrise effect idea from other covers of Little White Lies. Than the complementary colours of green titles were added, but it just still was not right and also the sunrise effect didn’t fit with our story.

This one is the final magazine cover. The background is purple which is between the warm reddish and contrasting blue. There is a part of graffiti in the background to relate to our shots in the trailer. The main picture colour is changed to black to emphasize it and give it more characteristic, so the background doesn’t take off the eyes of the actors. The title 'The Desire Issue' matches the colour of the background and has a quite quirky font. The smaller titles are white so they stand out and they are easy to read. I think we did a good, developed job on this magazine cover and it fits in with the style of 'Little White Lies'. Maybe the background should be paler and a little gentler, but we tried playing around with different colours, intensity and saturation, but this looked the best.

Little White Lies Research

2009-12-01T04:12:00.001-08:00

We looked at the magazine 'Little White Lies', as it was quirky and we liked the idea of an extreme bold magazine cover. This independent film magazine is also specialised for arthouse genre films. The signature of this magazine is the white stamp with the title of the magazine along with the title and price of the magazine. The magazine specialises in a particular film and the magazine is based around that issue. Also the magazine has won awards for graphic design and the magazine is so bold and stands out on the shelves. That is what we want our magazine to do. All covers and actually the whole magazine is beautifully designed and requires highly photoshop skilled designers to create it. We decided to create our magazine cover up to this standard. We need to use sharp contrasting colours, photoshop manipulations and quirky fonts. We chose this magazine due to the types of films it specialises in, to start of with, we used the Total Film magazine,but it didn't suit our genre; so we therefore switched to this one.

Animatic

2009-11-30T04:55:00.000-08:00

This is an animaic of our trailer. I took print screens of the shots we used in our trailer. It starts at the bottom and works up to the top.

The title of our film

2009-11-30T04:44:00.001-08:00

Desire.
We thought of the title 'Desire' as it carries connotations of passion and love .On the other hand, it is wanted by so many, yet not everyone can always have it. We thought this works for our teaser trailer as the two main characters, Iva and Adam, have a hidden secret. Their love and passion for each other is so strong, yet a childhood secret may deflect from their love.

Bibliography

2009-11-27T08:33:00.001-08:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_house

http://www.empireonline.com/

http://www.totalfilm.com/

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/index.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/

http://www.dafont.com/

http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:hu:official&hs=faQ&resnum=0&q=art%20house%20films&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi

http://www.drafthouse.com/winchester/admin/Images/new-moon-poster2-692x1024.jpg

http://www.igadgetlife.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/04/total_film_cover.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donnie_Darko

These are the links from where we collected our information or pictures for our research.

Colour Corrections

2009-11-27T08:27:00.001-08:00

Using Photoshop I did some colour corrections and effects on our best photos, just to get me started with the editing and putting together a final design solution. I played around with the brightness/contrast to create great contrast we were talking about earlier. I also desaturated some photos or used treshold to make it unique and cropped unnecessary bit out. I kept it all simple and natural.

The Photoshoot

2009-11-27T06:15:00.000-08:00

We used a studio in college and used one of the photography teachers to help take our photographs. Lucy was the creative director, and our actors, Viki and Josh were our models.

Viki was very photogenic, and we got some great shots of her alone. The images themselves were powerful, yet romantic to suit our genre. The chemistry between the two was really good. We looked at previous photographs to try and get ideas for ours. We used different angles, poses and focuses during the shoot. Also, Josh and Viki had different costumes for some of the photographs, so the portrayal of their character varied. We also paid close attention to little detail, such as Viki's jewellery, of a little black cat as her earring. The shoot took nearly two hours, but we had good results. We took roughly 200 photos, and we have narrowed it down to about 30. We need to pick different images, one for the poster, and one for our magazine cover. We may make a collage of the different photographs to make one or the other.

Here are ten of our best photographs.

Individual Magazine Analysis

2009-11-27T00:43:00.000-08:00

I decided to analyse this film magazine cover. I think the image is very powerful and creates a sense of mysetery to the new film , Spiderman3. The typography on this poster varies. There is the main title of the magazine 'total film' and it uses a a simple yet extremely bold font to identify the magazine. 'Total' is small and a bold red and fitted inside 'film'; 'film' is large and white and again helps identify the magazine. The text in the bottom left hand corner is helping to identify the film. It uses red ,yellow and white white stands out against the image. Also, the text is on a solid black block which surrounds the text and makes the typography stand out. The colour saturation on the background has connotations of mystery and possible death; yet the yellow sunrise in the distance signifies hope. The dominant character on the cover is Spiderman, the use of a building in the image and the fact that it is reflecting back another image of Spiderman shows that there is different side to this character. The costume is a mix of black and red and signifies the contrast betweem the two characters. The red giving out connotations of love and wanting to help, yet black carries connotations of mystery and death. In the top right hand corner, there is the date and price of the magazine, it is small and white text, so it doesnt ruin the central image on the cover. You cannot see the main film star on the cover, yet it makes the identity of the character Spiderman. The positioning of the character seem angry and the clench in his fist seems to reflect the mood of the image. Also, the connection between the opposing images of Spiderman is through the eyes, this connects the two ,yet contrasts them also; as they are enemies.

The image is the focus of the magazine cover, and the text is postitioned in the bottom right hand corner to act as a story teller when opening the front page into the magazine. It is a block ot text which stands out to the audience of the magazine.

Poster Research

2009-11-26T13:25:00.000-08:00

I researched lots of different style posters for inspiration and also as a template to look at how to create a good and interesting designs for film posters. These are examples of the very best ones.

The poster for the film called blow up on the left is very-very power full, because of the block red background. There is very quirky also disgusting black and white photo on it. The black and white and red creates a good contrast between the red which is the first thing to get the audiences attention and it still doesn’t take your eyes off the main grotesque picture of a photographer sitting on a dead women to get a good angled shoot.

I liked this poster because of the idea of the montage on it. Black and white shoots of the film are used with some black blocks to create a silhouette of a man with a gun. The title stands out because half of it is red and because of the size.

Very famous image of the poster of "the Silence of the lambs" There is close up of the main character with high exposure light and high contrast, the eyes and the butterfly kind of bug stand out of it, because of the colours. It also has a contrast between that the eyes suggest that the person is open and want to tell something, but she can not.

This is an award wining poster of the film 'Full metal jacket'. There is a very strong message shown using only simple things and clever combinations. That is the camouflage soldier hat and the words born to kill writen on it giving a horrible meaning to the picture, and than the white peace simbol as contrast next to it, suggesting that not even 'the soldiers who where born to kill' want war.

This poster I chose to talk a bit about because it is recent, it has a two shot on it and it also suggests something of the film. The features suggesting some kind of a reverse thing is the main title written as a backwards mirror image. The facial expressions are also very interesting. There are a bit of warm colour to it on a block black background.

For the film 'Spirit' they created a series of posters several main ones, but i chose the first one because it has all the characters on it. The others show the women around the main character in the film and they give a hint of their personality by having a line of theirs from the film, on their face. The colours suggest the colours of the film, which is similar to the ones in sin city as they were both created by Frank Miller. They created interesting lighting and contrast. The title stands out everywhere because of the bright red colour.

Overall I think the possibilities and creativity behind creating a film poster is endless and only limited by the content of the film. I choose these particular ones to show a range of different styles and approaches.

The Photos

2009-11-26T12:51:00.000-08:00

Best Photos of our best shoot for our trailer.

Titles

2009-11-26T12:49:00.000-08:00

We made our titles in Livetype and then transferred them into Final Cut HD. We played around with the fonts and colours and shadowing. When we wacthed back our trailer with the original font, it didn't seem to fit with our genre of film; so when changed them and they work alot better now. The font is called Jellyka Castle's Queen (from dafont.com) , and our titles has with a bold black background, we used white typography with a red outline. The titles do not move across the screen, when we added an effect it didn't seem to match our genre, so we thought it would be best for it to just fade in on the screen. It is immediate and stands out. Our original Titles had a voice over, but it did not sound good and when we changed to content, we decided not to use it. We thought this font suited our film the best because of the quirkyness. It stands out against a dark background with a bold coloured outline it looks very effective.

Photo shoot

2009-11-26T12:02:00.000-08:00

We decided that for our film and poster we will not have images cut out from our trailer, we will organize a photo shoot. We will have access to a studio with lights and a high quality camera to achieve good resolution pictures, a plain background so it leaves us the creativity to design a background using Photoshop as we are both comfortable using it, from our graphics background.
The idea came from our previous magazine cover and poster researches, that usually they have separate pictures for them and not images from the film. We also looked at pictures with two shoots of couples on it, to get some inspiration for how to pose our models.
The clothes and makeup will be similar to the ones we mentioned before and used during filming.

Font Research

2009-11-26T12:01:00.001-08:00

We researched different fonts from dafont.com for out poster and magazine cover. Unfortunately for the magazine cover one our hand are a bit tied, because most real magazine covers have plain, simple san-serif fonts. We could try to make it fancier but should really try to keep it simple, at least we will use colours to highlight things and that will make it look more interesting. Although with the poster we have all freedom to play around with different fonts so here are some examples of the ones we like the most the only thing we need to be considering is that it’s legible and works from a distance.

We like this font but it is quite hard to read, and as we have got Graffiti as a background in on of our shots, it would seem to much and over the top.

This font is quirky, and with the white fill it looks effective and like it has been scratched into a surface.

These cracked fonts are effective, yet we think that the mood it creates shows anger.

Some of these fonts are a bit too fancy and strong so it would not really go with the mood we try to create and this is the reason why i think they would work well, it would create a huge and powerfull contrast. Some of them are more plain, we could use on the magazine cover.

Spanish

2009-11-26T08:47:00.001-08:00

These are the lines that we planned to use in the trailer, translated to spanish. We found someone who spoke Spanish and asked them to translate our lines. After looking at other Arthouse genres, we thought using a different language would add to our genre and support it to being an Atrthouse film. Our actors will have to learn these and some are to be recoded as a voiceover, but content might be changed or we might not use all of these:

"Pienso que la superstition es verdad pero la superstition sobre gatos negros no lo es, porque que es la diferencia entre un gato negro y un gato blanco"- I believe in superstiton but i disagree with the one against black cats, because whats the different between a black cat and a white cat?

"No le entiendes que tu eres mi hermana?" "No lo soy"-Don't you understand that you are my sister? No I am not!

"Siete anos de mala suerte"- Seven years bad luck

"Cinco estrellas"-Five stars

"En cine en abril dos mill diez"-Out in April

"Votada la mejor pelicula en el festival de Cannes"-Voted best film on Cannes Film Festival.

We didn't use all of the Spanish as we thought it didn't work so well with our genre and teaser trailer; but what we did use was effective.

Magazin and Poster Ideas

2009-11-24T04:11:00.001-08:00

I think we should organize a photo shoot and take separate pictures from the stills from the trailer. The pictures should have the main couple on it, and they should show an intimate, romantic relationship. The colours should be warm, which would be adjusted later and also apply designs and filters using Photoshop to make it look professional. The mood should be romantic and we should try to create some kind of contrast either between positions, colours or anything, like it is done one other art –house film posters, we researched. We may also would want to you drawn designs for background, just to have a quirky effect.

Individual Poster Analysis

2009-11-24T04:10:00.002-08:00

I decided to analyse this poster because of the same reason as the magazine cover I choose. It has a two shot on it and the delicate style is appealing to our story as well. It also has good and interesting Photoshop editing on it, which is something we are aiming for too.
Although the film itself is not classified as an art house film the poster has several quirky elements. The film is actually a romantic love story, but it contains foreign elements as he main character goes to Japan several times. So therefore some parts are subtitled and maybe that’s a reason why not many people know about this film, although it has Keira Knightley in it. If Hollywood would be making art house films they would be like this one. There are quite a few secrets that unfold at the end of the movie just like in our story.
The poster as it is, is simple, it is not overcomplicated or too much. This is because the light cream, peach colour of the background. There is a Japanese girl’s delicate face on it edited as it seems like she is looking down on the main couple. It is interesting that the couple is not in the centre of the poster, but because they have higher saturated colours they become the main focus. What stands out the most is the title of the film: Silk, which is because, the red background of it, what I find interesting is that it is written in a different way. It is vertical instead of horizontal, which might suggest the foreign touch of the film as in Japan they write vertically. There are also little writings on the poster quoting a line from the film and telling about the director and his previous film.
It is very good about this poster that it has three different elements to it, all arranged on different part of the poster. The girl’s face, the couple and the title and they all create a big part of the poster, but they still managed to meagre them in together and create a balance within the poster. The elements kind of divide the poster to an upper and lower level, the bottom with the couple and the title and the Japanese girl on the top as a form of illusion or dream.
I think this poster is brilliant and it would be great to achieve something similarly good and quirky, although it has not got elements such as contrast, which we found a very big part of the graphics of art house style.

Individual Magazine Cover Analysis

2009-11-24T04:06:00.006-08:00

I choose this magazine cover to analyze among the much more attractive ones, because it has a two shot on it, which we will be probably using on our magazine cover. Therefore analysing it will help create good standard magazine to our film.
The main characters of King Kong are on the centre of the cover. The picture of the couple shows a connection between the characters also they are frightened and that gives an idea about the film and the setting. The man holding the woman in a protective way suggests that he doesn’t want to lose her and he is willing to protect her. Their clothing and the whole pose of them clearly tells that it is an adventure movie set in older times.
The warm clothing and the dark colour background suggests autumn/winter time and the issue on the top justifies that as it is an October issue.
The yellow colours of the huge block capital titles makes them stand out, and also drags the audience’s eyes to wards the central image. The ‘King Kong ‘title is clear it shows the main focus of the content and drags a certain type of audience. The smaller yellow titles contain other attractive aspects such as the title of a well know films and director ‘Lock Stock’, ‘Goodfellas’ and ‘Tarantino’ and the word ‘sex ’, which is attractive to all age and audiences (even if they don’t admit it J).
The smaller titles with white against dark colour stand out as well, makes them easy to read. They give some hint about the content of the magazine. These hints might be about films that are not as new as the one written with the bigger titles or only apply to a smaller audience e.g.: Domino, Harry Potter and Narnia.
Still the largest the one of the most important titles on the cover is the icon like Total Film Magazine title. It is usually white on all issues. It also has persuasive qualities which make the reader want to buy the magazine, because it acts as an assurance of quality and interesting content.
There are smaller things on the cover such as price, barcode, logo of sponsor, issue number are all such things that we have to pay attention not to miss out when creating out own design.

Script of teaser trailer

2009-11-24T04:06:00.005-08:00

We wrote our script (dialogue and voice over) for our trailer before we went out filming; this therefore allowed us to change it if it was necessary. We then translated our script into Spanish, and our actors had to learn it. By using the Spanish language and including English subititles, it made our trailer unique.

In the opening of our trailer, we had our production company (Productio Gonzo) animation, with a soundtrack coming into identify our company.The sound of a jawharp was slected from Soundtrack to match our quiky film. Then the green screen of approval (used in in all trailers), which made our trailer be portrayed by the audience as if a real film coming soon. Followed by the opening shot split screen of a close up of the two main characters feets, contrasting their worlds. Adam as a bussiness man and Iva walking bare foot on grass. Fade into a close up of Iva (main character), this particular shot had a lot of head room, so we could add the subtitles into this particular shot. 'I believe in superstition, but I disagree with the one against black cats. Because whats the diffherence between a black cat and a white cat?'

Followed by the jumping shots from a long shot to a close up to identify the other main character Adam; the contrast between the two characters worked well as we paid close attention to little details for example props,make up and costume. We then faded into a wide handheld shot of a woods to set the scene. Faded into black and faded in an extreme close up of Iva's hand holding her medication, followed by a luminance map into her taking her pills. The lighting was low key, and this helped create a 'dark side' to her character. Another luminance map into an extreme close up of her eye whilst her pupil changed size. This shot was then reversed to give proper illusion of pupil change when mediacation is taken. Fade out to black and fade into a wide shot of the two characters sitting on the beach, the shot seems very peaceful and shows the connection between them. Over this shot, there was a voice over of Iva 'feels like I've known you forever!', which gives a window into the story and again reflects their connection. This is followed by an effect called box slide which continues into a mid shot of Iva on a bench blowing bubbles, we reversed this shot too which makes it quirky and effective shot as it helps to portray her personality. A hard cut then brings in the framed shot of the two characters holding hands and swinging them, this helps shows their happiness. Another luminance map cuts into the birdseye view shot of the couple lying on the beach; we filmed this in Brighton and I hung over the pier with the camera, it was very hard to keep it steady. Originally, we panned off into the sky, but the shot was too unsteady,so we used a freeze frame. We got the idea of this shot from the film Reqieum of a Dream, and they used a crane to do the shot, unfortunately we didn't have a crane, we had a pier and me, but the freeze frame works well. Its a shame that the panning off didn't work as well.

Followed by a canted mid shot of Adam,'I remember this' holding a childhood memorabilia of a teddy bear, and this gives an insight to the story line of a possible relation between the two. Another luminance map into the over the shoulder shot of the couple laughing together, which reflects their happiness. We found some graffiti in Brighton and filmed two shots there, a mid shot of Iva blowing bubbles and a long/wide shot of the two kissing. The colours in the mise en scene works really well and would work well for a poster or magazine cover. A hard cut into the over the shoulder reflects the jult in their relationship realising that something is wrong. 'Don't you understand that you're my sister?!' followed by the reaction over the should shot 'No I'm not!' We placed the subtitles in different places on the screen to help adapt to our genre of quirky Arthouse. Another hard cut to a long shot of Adam smashing a mirror to show his anger at the truth; he found a true connection with Iva, could it all be destroyed? We faded into the close up shot of the ground with the smashed pieces on the floor 'seven years bad luck' was also a voice over to show Iva's belief in superstition. Followed by a hard cut into a canted long shot of Iva being upset; and the final shot a close up of tears rolling down her cheek leaves a cliffhanger on the story. The titles 'Desire' and 'Coming soon' at the end writen using the font we chose before and downloaded.

Magazine cover research

2009-11-24T04:06:00.003-08:00

Few of the world's leading movie magazines are Empire and Total Film, their style of cover layout is the leading model and inspiration for other film magazines. In the following I will be discussing an overall view of their style.
The first two things that catch the eyes of the audience is the title, which is always big and bold, and most of the time it is the same, so it creates a logo for the magazine, these features make it stand out even if the title is behind the main image. The second element is the large, main image; this is always a newly released film’s main character(s). This trend went through changes over the history of film magazines, as before they used to have lots of images, like a collage, whereas now it’s always one main image possible some smaller ones on the side. Other titles are on the side too, not interrupting the main image, usually they are arranged around it, and these techniques further emphasize the central picture. The middle image has an important role, it has to be able to communicate from a distance so people would pick the magazine up and have a look at it, only after this the reader reads the smaller writing that suggest the content. These little hints should be interesting or funny so the audience would want to read the magazine. These little titles often include names of famous actors or movie makers to create an attractive view of the content.
The picture, the colours the titles and everything on the cover always suggests the mood and genre of the film; sometimes for this the title is modified, but only a bit. The images are always very strong this usually comes from the photo itself, could be the angle, the position of the character on it, or the colours. Some examples are shown below to prove myself.

This one has has more than one characters but still there is a big image. It has smaler pictures as well, but again on the side. Th title are slightly changed a bit of blur applied to make it misty and fit with the story of the film.

On this cover they used a very strong image shot from a lower angle, to give power to the character. The gun comes out a bit towards the edge to give a 3D illusion. The picture even covers the title, the smaller title's font is modified to adjust to the action style.

This one shows cold, icy colours that suggest the mood of the film. Narnia covered in snow for an everlasting winter.

I find this one different from the other because the title for one is front of the picture, but thats because the picture is a close up shot. Note how the black and white image creates a contrast with the block red titles.

On this one the whole colour of the title is changed to give it a silver tint suggesting that this character is changing the look of the magazine, but what is important that it still stands out.

This image is a perfect example how to combine photography of main charcters and colour to create and increadibly strong image.

On this the main title of the magzine is slighly modified to create a hot feeling to match the character and the genre of the film.

Pose of model makes the image intersting and eye catching to all audiances.

This is an example of the title wraping around the main character, that is emphasized. Also that if there are other pictures on the cover they are small and on the side.

These are the main ponts, we should try and achieve on our magazine cover. These are big effective central picture, maybe changed main title. Carefully selected fonts and colours to show the mood of the film and suggest the genre. Other smaller intersting titles and maybe gifts that come with the magazine.

Editing

2009-11-24T04:06:00.001-08:00

When editing our trailer, we used various effects to adapt to our chosen genre.We changed the colour balance to sepia and changed the strength of this for each shot. We were inspired by the colours used in Amelie and Delicatessen, this made the feel of the film warm and romantic. Also,we changed the brightness and darkness of the shots to link to our genre, quirky.
We also used effects to fade in and out of each shots; we used luminance map and fade in fade out dissolve. When editing our production company (Production Gonzo) it was hard to get each photograph the same length so make it run smoothly; we also had to crop each image, top and bottom, due to the photographs being taken at different heights. We done this by adding a black bar top and bottom, and this helped the titles run more smoothly. We also added our subtitles in English in Final Cut, by simply adding text onto the image/shot on screen, we were able to pick the font, whether it was bold or not and the colour. On a particular scene (smashing mirror) we slowed it down, this helped when matching the sound. When we added in our soundtrack, where we recorded someone playing the guitar, we cut out the image and just used the sound; we had to render every time we added an effect or add titles in.
We made our main titles (the name of the film, Desire and film by Pedro) in Livetype, we found a new and quirky font on a website, www.dafont.com and installed it. We made sure the font, colours fitted with our genre and our film.
Overall, our editing was the main part of being able to adapt to the genre of quirky and being able to pass for an Arthouse film. I think it worked well.

Magazine&Poster Ideas

2009-11-24T04:05:00.000-08:00

An idea for our poster is a photograph I took whilst out filming, with the bold,bright graffiti in the background with the harsh contrast of the black costume would work well. We could enhance the colours to really make the two main characters stand out. I'd research a descent font to match the genre as well as the photograph. I also like the photograph of the wide shot of the two characters sitting on the beach with the pier in the mise en scene. We could have a black and white image with their costumes being really bright; the red and green together work well yet seem very bold contrast also.

For a magazine cover, we could use an existing magazine for example Total Film or Empire and add an image to it. We could adapt the font, colours to match our film to make the cover stand out. We could have a 'photoshoot' and pick a photograph and edit it to suit the genre. Also, like Donnie Darko's poster, we could make a collage of images to give an insight to our film.

Feedback from Rough cut

2009-11-24T03:31:00.000-08:00

After our class looking at our rough cut trailer, we recieved, overall good feedback. It was clear that our trailer was an 'Arthouse film' due to the subtitles. Yet there was a possible danger of the trailer being a music video, as the order was laid out wrong; after receiving feedback, we have changed our the order of our trailer to create suspense and leave a cliffhanger to make people want to see our film.
Most groups thought our editing was excellent, as we used alot of effects and colour change/balance to adapt to our genre. Our shots were imaginative and fitted well with our genre Arthouse.
Also, our use of mise en scene received good feedback, and the overall camera work averaged out as good. Although, our soundtrack didn't necessarily fit with all of our images used, overall, now that it is complete, works well. By doing our film in Spanish and having subtitles made it unique. On the other hand, some people thought the subtitles were hard to read, and so we have made the font bold to make it easier to read. We also struggled with reducing certain background noise on a particular opening scene, we can rude it, yet we wouldn't be able to hear the actual diaglogue. Overall the feedback was positive, yet our continuity of a particular scene (smashing glass and then the pieces being together) didn't work as well, yet the image is effective. Some people thought our titles were hard to read, so we are going to change the font to another to make it bold and stand out.
Since receiving feedback, we have added a voice over and the final titles. Also, we have changed the order of the trailer to make it seem an actual teaser instead of a music video.

Inividual Poster Analysis

2009-11-23T03:05:00.000-08:00

I am going to analyse the Twilight, New Moon poster. This image features the three main characters, Edward, Jacob and Bella and it is a long shot. The positioning of the three characters, shows how Jaco is portective of Bella and Edward's jealousy shows through due to his facial expressions. The colours are dark and add a sense of mystery to the poster. The background of the image is also dark and features the woods with the daylight shining through, this portrays a connotation of hope in the storyline. The costume, is also feautures dark colours which again creates a sense of mystery or a dark side in the characters.

The typography is quite simple, with little details such as the extended lines and a little moon indentifying the film 'new moon'. This is the anchorage on this image, to highlight the identity of the film.It features the most important thing, the date, showing when the film is out. This helps promote the film and creates word of mouth. There is no intertextual references as it is simply just advertising New Moon.

Additional Ideas

2009-11-04T06:40:00.000-08:00

We added in this green screen of approval to make our trailer more realistic and professional.

We had the idea of translating a few lines of the trailer into Spanish and have the characters speaking in Spanish. This was to create a foreign atmosphere and reflect our inspiration from the director Pedro Almodovar, from his film Volver. We would than add english subtitles to it.

We drew an animation for our production company using a cat, and then edited it on the computer. This will appear at the opening of our trailer.

We also have our titles in Spanish, as well as our voiceover. This will create an authentic twist on our trailer. When editing our trailer, we created a warm mood throughout by adapting the colour balance to be sepia; we were inspired by the warm colours in Amelie. Also, we ued effects to emphasise the genre of arthouse and create a quirky aspect to our trailer.

For the soundtrack for our trailer, ou actor Josh could play the guitar, so he played for us, and we editied it into our trailer. We tried to keep a warm film , yet make it quirky to keep in the genre of arthouse. It worked well.

Stopmotion - is when a photograph is taken of a particular image in various stages or movements to make it appear as if it is moving on its own. We used this in our animation titles, by Viki drawing the cat in particular movemnts and then taking photographs, we then put this together in Final Cut. This creates a unique effect.

When looking at sutitles in films, they seem to appear at the bottom of the screen mainly; but we wanted out film to be different and quirky. We struggled when positioning the subtitles, but now that it is finished, it works well and adds a unique effect to our trailer.

Make up

2009-10-29T08:31:00.000-07:00

For the character Iva, her make up was very simple and plain, this helped portray her innoncence in our trailer. We used mascara and eyeliner and a little foundation.
Yet when taking photographs for our advertisement of our film, we will use harsh bold make up to make the character stand out.
On the other hand, Adam didn't need any make up for this character. Our actor, had nice skin and this helped indicate Adam's cleanliness and show how he looked after himself.

When looking at our Arthouse films we researched, the make up was realtively simple For example, in Amelie, Amelie had basic red lipstick which identidied her character. Also, she had simple eyeliner to make her eyes stand out. Yet in Donnie Darko, the main character was male so he had no make up. Overall they do not usually use any significant make up, only natural, everyday make up to make the characters look naturally radiant on the screen.

Location

2009-10-29T08:23:00.001-07:00

We went to Brighton beach to film some parts of our trailer, and then moved onto a near by park to use the graffiti as a strong background for photographs, aswell as some scenes in our trailer. We used the pier to get a birdseye view shot as Steve and I filmed characters below. We practiced this shot in class as well as on the day. It took a while to get it correct; we also used the surroundings of the beach to get a relaxed mood between the two characters, and show their connection.
The weather wasn't as bright as we idealy wanted it to be, and therefore we will have to change the lighting to high key in the editing. Also, the day went so quick as it started to get dark, therefore, we are going to have to visit either Priory Park in Reigate or the Memorial in Redhill to complete our filming. Furthermore, we will have to film two particular scenes in someones home to create a homely effect, aswell as getting the correct lighting for our genre.
We also filmed in Castle grounds in Reigate, as well as in a house for particular scenes, to create a homely and comfortable feel to our trailer.

Graphics Research

2009-10-16T01:30:00.000-07:00

Art house films have serious content and therefore usually strong massages to get across to the audience. Most of this is to raise awareness of an untouchable subjects, a topic that’s a taboo e.g.: homosexuality, rape, drug abuse etc. Sometimes this is put in an entertaining context; which shows big difference within the subject of the film. For this reason is why most art house films are not belonging to one genre. Of course there are exceptions like Amelie, and Little Miss Sunshine, the subject of these are not that ‘heavy’ but the graphics of the posters contain similar elements. These graphic elements of the campaigns, has to be shown all throughout the images of the film. This is often achieved by big, outstanding differences on the pictures, or the strong, complementary colours.

These two, is the poster and a picture from the film; Requiem for a dream. This poster has an extreme close up picture and a long shot on it, this is creates an interesting contrast within the poster, it grabs attention and suggests something being stretched beyond its limit in the film. The image from the film has a big colour contrast between the black and the white.

Almodovar’s Volver is about a heavy rape subject, put into a comical context. The most obvious element on the poster is the happy, very strong colours; everything on this poster is a bit over the usual. Still the colours are happy; the face expression of the main character is quite dark and serious, this is crating the contrast. The other picture I chose because it shows the clothing in the film, every piece that Penelope’s wearing is quirky and unusual.

Almodovar’s Bad Education is also about a heavy subject in comical context, but this one is about child abuse and homosexuality. I find the posters both interesting, because they both different for others and from one another. One is a black and whit picture of the child that has been abuse with a red circle in the background, to emphasize him and in a way make him a target. The colours have strong meaning but are not that contrasting. The other poster is the same person shown as a man and dressed up as a woman, which is a huge difference between the actual meanings of the picture.

Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s fantastic film Amelie, has a surprisingly simple poster, it is the main character, Audrey Tautou with a quirky look on her face. The ‘rule’ is still followed by the complementary colours of red and green. The other picture is from the film, similar kind of look and the red umbrella give an interesting and different image. I like this because Amelie id different from the others as it has an entertaining purpose. The feature that gives the film away to be an arthouse film is the warm colour filters on the whole film and of course the quirky story.

Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s other amazing film Delicatessen, which made him famous has a simple poster too. It just has a gold pig hanging and a red background, which is quite quirky itself. The colours are highly saturated. The other picture is a scene from the film, it is very weird as the characters playing music on the roof, and on of them is using a saw for that. The colours are very warm and have a sepia effect as the colour balance is more to the red and brown colours and also it is highly contrasted as well. Because of these colours the films looks old and that it was set in the past, but little hints of the film tell that it is set way away in the future.

Little Miss Sunshine is a bit more known arthouse style film than the others, probably because it is in English. Maybe that’s why that the poster is a bit more ‘Hollywoody’. Although the family bus and the block yellow background suggests a bit of weirdness, but not that strongly. With this film are the story and the odd characters that make it weird and quirky. There is also a shot from the film that shows a similar kind of contrast than the other arthouse films. On this shot there is the contrast between the two different characters the happy little sister and the miserable, ant-social older brother, and that they are very close to the camera while the rest of the family is far in the background. Lastly there is a high contrast between blacks and whites again.

Ethernal Sunshine of the spotless mind is an incredibly clever and weird film, packed with Hollywood starts such as Jim Carry and Kirsten Dunst which is unusual already. The poster is weird but again in a more Hollywood-like way. The couple on laying on the surface of a frozen lake, with the crack anther them and the women with the blue hair seems like it is all in Jim Carry’s head. The layout of the poster is very interesting, the orange and blue are complementary colours which leads back to the idea of contrast. There is something different in this film, but so as al arthouse films, that is another proof of why they can’t be categorized into one genre. The whole film is very weird and confusing but brilliant. The other poster is more normal, shows a connection between a couple as they are holding hand in a close up shot, the background is out of focus, we had the idea of creating a similar shot in our trailer.

Donnie Darko has a whole different atmosphere present on its poster, that’s because it was marketed wrong. It was classified as a thriller, but most certainly it I not, these is another proof that these film are not really fitting into one genre. Donnie Darko’s poster and editing still show elements of the posters previously looked at. It has high contrast and strong colours the only problem that it is too dark, so it suggests a horror movie.

Quentin Tarantino’s best movie, Pulp Fiction can not be categorized into one genre, due to the complex, overlapping stories. This is why there are not all the important characters on the posters, only the strongest ones. The first poster is a legendary poster with Uma Thurman; it has not got any special features like all the others. The only unusual thing about it is the posture of the actress on it. They all suggest violence with the guns. The other one is an image from the film that became a poster; it has high contrast and also a contrast between the black and the white character.

Analyzing all these poster and different types within the same genre, our team should aim to pick up on some of the main elements of these posters and transform it into our marketing campaign. This involves using strong, contrasting colours, scene that hint a bit of the genre and the story of the film. Maybe some romantic elements and some contrast between comical and serious. I also think we should create a series of posters product designs. We should also pay attention of what our characters are wearing, so the colour of the clothes should contrast and outstand or be unusual.

Sound Research

2009-10-16T01:12:00.000-07:00

In the teaser trailer, Donnie Darko, they released a soundtrack called 'It's a mad world' by Gary Jules. We like the use of the piano and therefore we'd like to adapt that into our trailer. Yet, majority of the trailer is sound effects put through a filter; in the background there is an ongoing string instrumental motif that has been distorted throughout the trailer. Many of the synthesised sound effects have been reversed to create a unique sound to suit the genre. At the beginning, the pace seems relatively slow; you can hear the dialogue clearly. The sound effect of thunder and lightening overtakes the non diegetic track. The general dialogue is louder than the non diegetic sound so the audience can understand the storyline. The pace of the sound increases and then a conumdrum of glass intensifies the distruction in the trailer. Again, the sound effect of wind is used to create a mysterious and scary amosphere.

In the Amelie teaser trailer, the non diegetic soundtrack sounds magical and happy, this reflects the atmosphere of the trailer. It sounds like there is an ongoing xylophone or a glockenspiel is being used to create this effect. I like how it connects with the particular genre. As the main character is introduced in the trailer, an accordion plays. Sound effects are also used in particular black and white scenes when marbles fall out of a pocket,a burst of what it seems thunder to create a dramatic effect. Roughly 45 seconds in, the non diegetic sound dies down, so you can hear the dialogue. After, a piano plays in a slow tempo, then the pace ups when strings play in time with Amelie's heartbeat. Again, the accordion comes in, with a faster pace, which matches the change in clips from the film. A diegetic scream is highlighted as the track dies down. The pace of the accordion gets faster and faster and overall the dialogue is relatively loud, and there is a voiceover when the titles come up.

After looking at the soundtrack for teaser trailers, we thought we would make our own one for ours. We used a guitar and recorded Josh playing it, and in final cut, we took our the image. When we had dialogue or voiceovers in our trailer, we changed the volume of the track and made the dialogue or voiceover louder. The tempo of our soundtrack starts of slow, as if to draw the audience in, and the pace increases throughout. Towards the end of our trailer, we faded out the volume and the tempo slowed right down perfectly with the final shot of Viki crying.

Preperation for Filiming

2009-10-15T12:17:00.000-07:00

Shots that we are going to use in trailer
Close ups and extreme close ups - to show strong emotion
Wide shots - to show scenery/setting
Long shot - to show the character and there personality
Two shot - to show connection betweem characters
Birds eye view - to adapt a new look on a particular scene
Point of view - help the audience to understand the character

Costume
Iva - plain clothing, yet bold colours to show contrast between the two characters, bare feet to again contrast the two, dressing gown and geneally quirky clothes.
Adam - a suit, and smart shoes to show his profession later on more ordinary and everyday confortable clothes.

Props
Watches for Adam
Bubbles
Mirror
Camera for taking photographs of our filming for the animatic

Audience Research

2009-10-13T03:16:00.001-07:00

This is the comparable profile for Donnie Darko; as you can see the audience is male dominated, and is mainly seen by class C1. Most people who are interested in this film is aged 15 - 24.

This the comparable profile for Amelie. As you can see, the film is dominated by females and seen by the higher class of AB. The dominant age for seeing this film is 45+.

The art house genre requires more intellectual and open minded audience than other more popular genres. This is because of the unusual content, which includes weird stories that might even disgust others, or requires a cultural background understanding. Some have subtitles which limits the audience appeal. Most people used to Hollywood blockbusters that is only made for entertainment, while quirky films might have something more to say.We have created a questionnaire to research audience’s opinion on art films and if they would be interested in them.

Audience Research Questionnaire
Age:
Gender:

Job title:

What genre(s) do you like to watch at the cinema?

Do actors or directors influence your choice in seeing a film? If so, why?

Do you know what an Arthouse Film is?
What do you find interesting about Arthouse films, why?
Do subtitles put you off from watching a film?
Can you name any examples of Arthouse films? Who influenced you, what did you like about it?

We collected some results and majority of people knew what an Arthouse film was; people who didn't know, once we explained it, they realised they had watched an Arthouse film with out realising it. They enjoyed the film because it was quirky and interesting. Some people thought that arthouse films were based on untouchable subjects, and this was unique yet some thought it was a little odd.

Genre Research

2009-10-08T03:36:00.000-07:00

Quirky, Art house films.

An art film is typically a serious, noncommercial, independently made or a foreign language film that may have these qualities, but may have been made by a major company in its home territory and achieved popular success. It may thus be aimed at a niche audience, rather than a mass audience, or the use of subtitles in foreign language films may limit audience appeal.
Film critics and film studies scholars typically define an “art film” by those formal qualities that mark them as different from mainstream Hollywood films.” "Art cinema itself is a genre, with its own distinct conventions."- David Bordwell. Art film producers usually present their films at specialty "arthouse cinemas" and film festivals. The term "art film" is much more widely used in the United States than in Europe, where the term "art film" is more associated with " national cinema"
Art films are aimed at small niche market audiences, which means they can rarely get the financial backing which will permit large production budgets, expensive special effects, costly celebrity actors, or huge advertising campaigns, as are used in widely-released mainstream blockbuster films.
Furthermore, a certain degree of experience and intellect are required to understand or appreciate such films; This contrasts sharply with mainstream "blockbuster" movies, which are geared more towards pure entertainment. For promotion, art films rely on the publicity generated from film critics' reviews, discussion of their film by arts columnists, commentators, and bloggers, and "word-of-mouth" promotion by audience members. Since art films have small initial investment costs, they only need to appeal to a small portion of the mainsteam viewing audiences to become financially viable.
Art House films are those of a high intellectual content that do not have a wide distribution.

Art films were also influenced by films by Spanish avant-garde creators such as Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dalí.
In the 1920s, film societies began advocating the notion that films could be divided into an "...entertainment cinema directed towards a mass audience and a serious art cinema aimed at an intellectual audience". In England, Alfred Hitchcock and Ivor Montagu formed a Film Society and imported films that they thought were "artistic achievements," such as "Soviet films of dialectical montage.

The 1960s was a crucial time in art film, giving rise to the European art cinema. The early 1960s saw the release of a number of groundbreaking films. Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless (1960) used innovative visual and editing techniques such as jump cuts and hand-held camera work. Luis Bunuel's Belle de Jour (1967) shocked audiences with its masochistic fantasies about floggings and bondage. Dariush Mehrjui's The Cow (1969), about a man who becomes insane after the death of his beloved cow, sparked the new wave of Iranian cinema.

In the early 1970s, directors shocked audiences with violent films such as Stanley Kubrick's brutal exploration of futuristic youth gangs in A Clockwork Orange (1971) and sexually-explicit and controversial films such as Bernardo Bertolucci's taboo-breaking Last Tango in Paris (1972). Another feature of 1970s art films was the return to prominence of bizarre characters and imagery, which abound in the tormented, obsessed title character in cult films such as Alejandro Jodorowky's psychedelic The Holy Mountain (1973) about a footless, handless dwarf and an alchemist seeking the mythical Lotus Island.

In 1980, director Martin Scorsese shocked audiences who had become used to the escapist blockbuster adventures of Steven Spielberg and George Lucas with the gritty, harsh realism of his film Raging Bull. Robert De Niro took method acting to an extreme to portray a boxer's decline from a prizewinning young fighter to an overweight, "has-been" nightclub owner. Other directors in the 1980s chose a more intellectual path, exploring philosophical issues. Andrzej Wajda's Man of Iron (1981) is a critique of the Polish communist government which won the 1981 Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Meanwhile, in the UK, Channel 4, a new television channel, financed in whole or part many films released theatrically via its Film4 subsidiary.

In the 1990s, some directors created bizarre, surreal alternate worlds, as was done in the 1980s with Blue Velvet and The Cook, the Thief, His wife & Her Lover. A number of films from the 2000s with art film qualities were notable due to their use of innovative filmmaking or editing techniques. Ethernal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) is a romance film directed by Michel Gondry about a man who hires a company to erase the memory of a bad relationship. The film used a range of special effect techniques and camera work to depict the destruction of the man's memories and his transitions from one memory to another. Several 2000s-era films explored the theme of amnesia or memory, but unlike Memento, they did so using narrative techniques rather than filmmaking and editing methods.

These show a development in arthouse films during time the storylines became more complex, the editing and camera work developed a lot to show bizarre effects. Arthouse films are all have exceptional genre, that can’t be put under one a genre. The arthouse title refers to this kind of weird, not every day style. As the films mentioned before have all different mood, it can be dark and something that makes you think, or happy and romantic etc. The similarity in all is the intellectual content, which people have to learn to appreciate. The special care at making, to pay attention on the tiniest details, hairstyles, colours and clothes, make up, face expressions, everything has to be perfect. There is not a recipe for these details of costumes, because all arthouse films are different depending on the mood the director want to create.

Synopsis

2009-10-06T03:23:00.000-07:00

Characters
Iva - Mother (who died of childbirth)
Iva - Named after Mother, who has mental health history
Adam - 'Son' A high classed, wealthy, business man with a disturbing secret/childhood. Very lonely person and hard worker
Harvey - Father
Extras - Caretakers of Iva, friend of Harvey who gave them Adam general passers by in the street

Comparison of lifestyle's between the two; unknown to each other they are brother and sister. Iva's mother died during childbirth and Adam, was an adopted child as Harvey's friend couldn't cope with the pressure of a baby, and thefore gave Adam to an experienced father. Yet, the secret will unfold. - Flashbacks of childhood will be reflected throughout the film. (Adam remembering a younger sister; his disturbing secret, and Iva and older brother)
Harvey, is the biological father to Iva, but not to Adam. Adam was sexually abused by Harvey; and this has there on affected Adam throughout his lifesyle. Obviously, this is unknown to Iva, as she thought Adam was her biological brother. They got seperated at a younger age.

Whilest travelling to work, Adam see's Iva at a distance, being carried away via her to carers. By the expressions on his face, you can tell he cares and feels for her immediately. Adam is determind to see Iva again. Adam does evntually find her, and he tries to help her get out of her mental health hospital. They start to chat over the phone and meet up regularly for dates. Meanwhile, reflection on their childhood lingures in their minds (flashbacks). It clicks. They research into their past where weird and yet wonderful things happened.

In the end, they discover the truth of how they got seperated and abandon their father. It turns into a beautiful love story.

Donnie Darko, Individual Marketing Campaign

2009-10-02T01:15:00.000-07:00

Donnie Darko is a 2001 psychological thriller written and directed by Richard Kelly. It depicts the reality - bending venture of eponymous chracter as he seeks the meaning of his troubled visions.

The DVD release was in March 2002 by New Market films and a director's cut was released on DVD in 2004.

Word of mouth was created at the Sundance Film Festival on January the 19th in 2001, there on it was debuted in America in October 2001, where it had a tepid response. Then, The Donnie Darko book was written by the director Richard Kelly in 2003

NECA released a 6inch figure of Frank the rabbit and later a talking Frank figure.
Awards:
2001 - Richard Kelly won 'best screenplay' at the Catalonian International film festival; also best audience' award was won at the Sweden Fantastic film festival.'
2002 - Won 'special award' at Young film makers Showcase at the Academy of Science Fiction. Also Donnie Darko won 'Silver Scream Award' at Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival
2003 - Jake Gyllenhaal won 'Best Actor' and Richard Kelly wond 'Best Original Screenplay' at the Chlotrudis Awards.
2005 - Ranked in the Top 5 on 'My Favourite Film', an Australian poll conducted by ABC<>

Donnie Darko Trailer (did not have a teaser trailer, so analysed normal one)

- A canted camera angle for a opening shot of the main character Donnie, which reflects his confusing world/mind
- Voice over of teacher reading a novel in the classroom
- Low angle long shot fast forward again reflects Donnie's mind and the city life
- Panning of classroom which shows boredom in their faces
- Hard cuts into action (fast pace)
- Panning cut, high angle which shows the result of the damage; 'They made me do it' followed by a close up of the statue dog with axe in head
- Two long shot of 2joggers which represents the neighbourhood/ pan of Donnie o his bike; a long wide shot which shows the neighbourhood of his hometown.
- High angle two shot of couple on trampoline (Voiceover of them two talking about when she moved to the neighbourhood; high key lighting, shows she brings him happiness)
- Fade to black between shots which shows disconnection
- Shot reverse shot between Donnie and psychiatrist with a voiceover of Patrick Swayze telling a story about 'A young boy who's life was completely destroyed by these instruments of fear' referring to Donnie in this particular trailer as it shows flashes of Donnie when he is saying this
- Flashes of Donnie picking up his medication
- Fade to black into him talking to his girlfriend, shows reaction shot
- Mysterious music in the background, violins
- Fade into a canted angle of Donnie reflecting his crazy mind
- Mid shot of Donnie showing him connecting with his visions, then title of 'visions' comes up
- Fades into a long shot of him walking to his sister at a chair and then a fade into his rabbit friend 'Frank' at the cinema and the a ahrd cut to the cinema screen (Dialogue: have you ever seen a portal?)
- Mid shot of Donnie looking up directly into the camera with thunder and lightening, diegetic sound of the wind
- Wide shot setting the scene of a hurricane
- His psychiatrist voice over in this particular shot talking to his parents about his friend 'Frank' A two shot of the parents toegtehr shows an emotional connectionm between them
- A mid shot of the rabbit Frank in Donnie's visions pushing into his 'bubble', into our world, reaction, mid shot of Donnie being pushed away by the force of Frank pressing on the bubble
- A title comes up saying 'time travel', fade to black then avoice over of Donnie and a close up of a book about time travel
- An over the shoulder shot of Donnie talking to friend (Dialogue: If you could see your path or channel then you can see into the future right?)
- Hard cuts of various scenes to anticipate pace and excitement in the film to make people wanting to see the film. The non diegetic music becomes a faster pace and seems like it is zooming along; it seems to change the clip in time with the music
- Reaction shots to the accident of the plane crashing into a room , the wide shot of the bookshelf, mid shot of dad in chair and long shot of sister at the door
- Fade to black, an over the shoulder shot relying to Donnie's previous question about your path (Dialogue: i think i'm going to have to stop the conversation there)
- Voice over of Frank telling Donnie what to do, a low angle wide shot of the sky and the clouds changing (Dialogue:You can get away with it)Hard cuts of results to the damage, close ups used
- A zoom close up of his calendar and then a hard cut to a 3shot in the cinema of Donnie, his girlfrind and Frank
- Long shot of Donnie on his own, looking at scenery/park sitting on bonnet of the car; close up to show his emotion
- Repeated first shot of the canted angle, showing his confused state of mind
- Hard cut reaction shots of results to damage, with title saying 'Darko' A final image of Frank the rabbit to stay in the audience's mind
- Final voiceover, Donnie: When is this going to stop? Frank: You should already know that. Final titles of the films name and the actors names, along with the date it hits the cinemas

Individual Marketing Campaign Research for Amelie

2009-09-30T09:11:00.000-07:00

Investigation marketing Campaign for Film

Case Study: Amelie (Original title: La fabuleux destin d’Amélie Pulain)

Director: Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Release date: 5 October 2001
Cast: Audrey Tautou, Mathieu Kassovitz
UK Distributor: Momentum Pictures.
Genre: Romantic, Comedy, Foreign film, Quirky, Art-house

“Amélie is a young woman who had a decidedly unusual childhood; misdiagnosed with an unusual heart condition, Amélie didn't attend school with other children, but spent most of her time in her room, where she developed a keen imagination and an active fantasy life. Despite all this, Amélie has grown into a healthy and beautiful young woman who works in a cafe and has a whimsical, romantic nature. She decides to step into the lives of others around her to help them out.”-Worldcat-

In 2001 Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Amelie generated a huge buzz among the film world. After its début in Paris and France, its fame quickly stepped beyond the borders of France. It was nominated for 46 awards and it had 51 win; these include an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Film, won Best Movie audience award, won a Czech Lion Best Foreign Film Award, Golden Trailer, Best Production design and Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography in Theatrical Releases award and lots more. This quirky romantic-comedy appeared on lots of international film festivals like Cannes and Edinburgh Film Festival. The director’s previous successful films for example Delicatessen and The City of Lost Children also helped to create word of mouth for the film. All these recognition by the public media had a big impact on the marketing and distribution of the film.

Mostly every well known newspaper had several review and critics on Amelie. These are for example Times, The mail, Guardian. All of them had interviews with the director who is very proudly talks about his film: “I love critics when they are good and with this movie I've been very lucky because I have had 400 very good critics and six bad. One bad critic was amazing, he wanted to kill me.”

The film also appeared on TV and became a “box office smash in its native France”. It has also appeared on TV in the UK on BBC and Film4.

These successes contributed to the marketing in the after life of the film.

In 2001 online marketing was not as common as today, but it has been marketed online; the film has an official film website. Online marketing mainly includes the afterlife of this film. The DVD is marketed on several previously mentioned websites and the film’s reviews and critics are up on the internet giving a huge amount of information and advertisement to the target audience.

Mobile marketing is not available.

Marketing under complementary media means advertising and promoting the film on online social websites such as MySpace, Facebook, Bebo etc. Also this kind of marketing was not widely used at the time of the film, obviously a minimal amount might have been, but it can’t be mentioned as a form of marketing of this film. The other problem would be that the target audience of this film is not necessarily a part of this online community, therefore this kind is not suitable for the genre of the film. On the other hand, nowadays there are lots of fan clubs for the film on most of these social websites.

There is four different posters promoting Jeunet’s film; Amelie.

This one is a main poster for marketing. There are several quirky aspects on it that all suggests the art-house genre of the film. These are the strong colours of red and green, the quirky face expression of the main character. The strong colour contrast on the face, the stars on the background suggesting a dream-world kind of setting. Also having nothing else but the main actress on the poster has a big impact on the audience, it is eye-catching and gives the impression that the whole film revolves around the main character.

The second poster suggests the same quirky atmosphere. This effect is achieved with the same techniques which is colour and light and again Audrey Tautou’s main image. The same picture is used as on the other poster. Her look is trying to attract the viewer to watch the film; it is quirky, flirty and suggests a secret. Her picture is emphasized with a circle around the picture, which reminds the audience to a full moon. The main difference between the two posters is that this one has the café where Amelie works as the location of los of scenes in the film. The café’s warm colours, in the dark surrounding give an inviting contrast. The sky has been digitally changed. Digitally changed sky often appears in the film, to give an ideal picture of suburban Paris.- said the director to Empire magazine.

This is the official UK poster. It has the same features as the other European posters; Audrey, the café, the warm, dream world like colours, starry background. It aslo puts attention on the titles, a brief comment of the movie, and a clever tagline. All these aspects attract the audience to the cinema.

This is an official Japanese poster for Amelie. It is very interesting because it doesn’t put as much attention on the names and titles. It just gives a very art-house style picture from the film. Amelie reading at the evening with the cat on the bed and her surrounding; pictures, wallpaper, colours, lights give a very quirky impression. The centre of this poster is not as obviously the main actress but her life.

All these posters are sold in a variety of sizes in different shops, online shops and countries. There are some limited edition posters on blogs and forums where people shear it.

Teaser trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1ULQA0jRCo&feature=related

This teaser trailer is in French. It shows a variety of pictures from the film. Most of these shot are of Amelie. In the film after each character introduced, the film lists the things the character does and doesn’t like. In this teaser trailer it first introduces her character, saying that she likes “dipping her hand into sacks of grain, cracking crème brute with a teaspoon and skipping stones at St. Martin’s Canal.” All of these pictures are shown; the most interesting shot is when she is skipping stones at the Canal. It starts from behind her showing the waterfall, and it goes over her head and finishes showing her from a distance, as in the foreground the stones skip. The director’s comment on the bits when introducing the character’s likes and dislikes are all a bit of him; “A lot of stories have come from my life. Everything, in fact. I am Amelie. A confession. I am Amelie!” For example: Amelie’s dad dislikes peeing next to someone else, he like peeling large strips of wallpaper. Amelie’s mum dislikes having her hand touched by strangers, and likes polishing the parquet. The end of the trailer just credits listing the starts in the film.

This teaser trailer is very different than other genre’s ones. Usually they have much more shots in them, than this one, it has about ten. The reason for that is because the award winning voiceover tells information so not as many pictures are needed and the main reason for such dramatic difference is that it is an art house genre.

Official Trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sECzJY07oK4&feature=related

The official trailer is much longer and contains more shots. Basically it introduces the characters and shows interesting images for the film, and some of the special effects they used.

There are more various length and language trailers on the internet, which shows the verity of the marketing. It has been shown in different countries creating a big buzz around the film, in its own style Aemelie has been very well marketed this way.

Film magazines, which target only film and this kind of media had reviews about the film, and interviews with the director and main characters. All these had fantastic comments on the film, which added more to the marketing campaign. Examples of these magazines are Empire, Sight and Sound, Film maker magazine, Observer and others. “Amélie doesn't just get under your skin, it climbs right inside you and wraps itself about your heart.”- Dan Jolin, Total Film. Ray Pride talks to Jeunet about making one of the most successful French films of all time. The magazines also gave information about the shooting, the attention that the film got on film festivals, more comments from the filmmakers and lots more interesting detail.

http://www.filmmakermagazine.com/fall2001/features/magnificent_obsession.php

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2001/dec/20/news1

http://www.empireonline.com/interviews/interview.asp?IID=101

http://www.premiere.com/Review/Movies/Amelie

The premier of the film was in Paris and later on they had premier screening on film festivals and cinemas worldwide. It had a huge success everywhere. “Celebrity guests at the screening were expected to include Trainspotting author Irvine Welsh, Glasgow band Belle and Sebastian and Ricky Ross of Deacon Blue. “ Celebreties on premiers generate great publicity.

Award winning soundtrack of the film was released soon after the film release, the soundtrack is still sold on the internet on websites like Amazon and it is also available for download. The music, the music editing and the voiceover all won several awards.

Overall Amelie’s marketing campaing was very sucsesfull, the most effective was propably the word of mouth and that’s how most people know about the film. The buzz around the film was mostly generated by the awards and the worldwide huge success as most film critics consider it to be the “best French film ever made.”