Film/age Certificates

Film ratings are decided by the British Board of Film Classification and they have been since 1912. Before this there were no agreed rating standards and local councils came up with their own. For cinema releases the British board of film classification have no legal power and the council decide who should be admired to a certain film. Each film has a film certificate, this indicates who the film is aimed at and who is able to watch it. If a film has the certificate of U this means it's suitable for everyone to watch, from babies to old people. If the if has a certificate of PG the it means that if a child is to watch it then they should be accompanied by an adult. If a film has the certificate of 12a then this means that under 12 year olds need an adult. If the film just has a 12 then this means it's only suitable for those who are over 12 years old. If it has a 15 then you must be 15 years old or older and an 18 means you must be over the age of 18. 

Harpers Island

After doing some independent research about different films in the thriller genre I have found out that there is a film that is similar to what we are doing our film trailer on. The plot we came up with is that there are a group of girls who go camping and they all go missing one by one and it turns out that it's one of the girls who is killing/kidnapping them all. After reading the back of the film case I found out that this film is based on a group of people who go on an island for a wedding and it's an island where people had previously been killed and whilst they are on the island they go missing one by one and the person killing them turns out to be one of the men that went to the island with them and was friends with us. After realising this I decided to find the trailer to the film to give us a bit more inspiration. 

Gone Film Reviews

I decided to do some more research into thriller films and decided to look at different reviews people have left about the film over all. I thought this would be useful because then we can see what people look for in a thriller films and take on board all the criticisms people have left. Both the reviews above that I found for this film both say how good they thought that the film was. One critique that people left about the film was that it's a really simple plot and that the name of the film gives away straight away what is going to happen. Also people said how they thought it would be a better film if they thought of a better ending for it. Over all people said this film was a good film and from watching the trailer to this film I would agree with what people are saying. 

Idea for Our Opening

We have decided on an idea we think we might use for the beggining of our trailer. We have been looking at a few different trailers from the same genre we are using, thriller. We have took a few ideas from trailers that already exist and think that they would work well when we create our own trailer. The idea we have come up with is that the opening of our trailer will be a shot of the girls packing things into the boot of the car, afterwards we will see the boot slam shut and then we will introduce our instiution. We got this idea from looking at different thriller trailers as many of them do this and we thought it worked really well. An example of a trailer that does this is the trailer for the film 'Gone'. In this film they introduce the main two characters and you see them talking, then they bring in the institutions and then move on to the rest of the trailer. This was the first idea we came up with when we were storyboarding our trailer and we think we might use this when we start to make our trailer.

Locations and Characters

We came up with a few ideas where we are thinking we might locate our film trailer, these aren't for definite they are just ideas

These are:
Forest
Woof
Road
Car
Tent
House
Field
Bedroom
Living room
Park

Also we have decided that we are going to have about 4/5 characters in our trailer, 1 main character who is the killer and 3 others who will be in it.

Questionnaire results

Once we handed out our questionnaires we were able to collect them back in once been filled out and see what results we got. After they handed the questionnaires back in we made graphs of the results so that we could clearly see what people liked and didn't like. We wasn't able to create a graph for every question because some questions were open and others were closed, the closed questions were easy to be able to make a graph for. Above we have made a graph for questions 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8 and 9. The first question was a basic question asking if they were male or female, from the graph you can see that there is a bigger percentage of females who answered the questionnaire. The next question was asking which age category they fall into, this is a useful question because this way we can see who our main audience will be. From looking at the graphs you can see that the bigger amount of people were only 16-18 and then 22-25 and 26-29 had an equal amount. You can also see from that graph that there was no one over 30 who filled out a questionnaire. From seeing them results we can see that its mainly people who are aged 16-18 that will be interested in our film trailer. The next closed question that we asked our audience was if they prefer thriller or horror films, from the graph you can see that most people prefer to watch a thriller film. This could be because thriller films don't show much blood or killing etc. This was useful for us because it meant that we now know if we should make ours a thriller or a horror.

The next question we asked is who they would prefer to be the victim in a horror film, the graph we created shows that most people prefer a female to be the main victim. We thought this was strange but true because most horror films have the females as the victim which is a main convention. This was useful for us because we can then make a female in ours the victim so that it fits in with the normal conventions and its what the target audience like to see. From looking at the graph it shows that no one would like to see an old man as the victim. This is probably because its very rare you would find this happen anyway so most people wouldn't want to see this. The next question was to find out what had the best effect on the audiences emotions. From the graphs we can see that most people said it was music that effects their emotions the best. This was useful because now we know when we make the trailer that we need make the music a strong part as we know it will effect our audiences emotions best and make them carry on watching it and want to see the actual film. The next best answer was setting, this might be because most thrillers are set in a dark place such as a wood/forest, people might prefer this because they know its already a convention and would be expecting to see it anyway. From looking at the graph you can see that no one said that the narrative would effect their emotions the best, this might be because in a thriller its not normally the narrative your looking for.

Another question that we asked our audience was how often they watch films, the graph shows that most people watch them either once or twice a week. This shows that the audience are a active audience and watch films quite often. The last question was asking if they like to see blood and gore in a film, most people said yes, this shows that many people watching these films would prefer to see it in them, this is useful because when we make our trailer we know we need to add these in because this is what our target audience will be looking for.

Questionnaire

Above is a print screen of the questionnaire that we created to hand out to people to help with the planning for our trailer. We decided the questions by ourselves as we thought them particular questions would help give us some ideas on what to include in our trailer and also find out about our target audience. The second question on our questionnaire is 'What is your age group?' This question will find some things out about the person doing our questionnaire and also tell us what age would then be suitable for our film we make. We asked a range of questions, open and closed. A few of the open questions were helpful because one of them was asking what there favourite horror film was, this was useful because we was able to search some of the films people said and watch their trailer to see what ideas we could get.

We also asked people what things in films have the best effect on their emotions, this was useful because we could see if music was a main thing in films that bring out peoples emotions, if so we then knew that we should make sure the music was really good if its what people like in a film. Also we asked if people liked to see blood and gore in films, this was useful because if our target audience said that they did then we would add this into our trailer as it would then attract them more. We handed this questionnaire out to 10 different people to find out more about audiences and what they like. If I was able to make this questionnaire again I would probably add more questions and also have more closed questions because they are more useful when it comes to finding out what they prefer etc.

Possible Titles

We came up with a few titles that could be a possibility that we might use, these are:
Pitch
Pitch Pyscho
Pitch survivors 
Abandon
Hidden in the silence 

We haven't actually decided what we are going to call our trailer yet but the ideas we had we will think about and see if we are actually going to use them or if we are going to think of something completely different. We came up with the idea 'pitch' because in our trailer they are going camping and we have a tent in our film so it fits in well. 

We also thought of a slogan that we might use on our magazine cover
"The truth is hidden in the silence..."

Font Research

I decided to do some research on different fonts we could use when we think of a title for our trailer. I have found 5 different fonts, the first one is a word package font and the other four are from a website called 'da font'. I chose to have a look on there because I saw they had some really interesting fonts that would probably fit our trailer. The two I really like out of these 5 are the 3rd and 4th ones. This is because I think they are suitable for the idea we have for our trailer where as the last one probably isn't as appropriate as it would probably suit a horror trailer not a thriller which is what we are doing. The third and fourth just look really spooky and thriller like so they fit really well with out genre. The first one I think is too plain and simple and doesn't really fit in with the thriller genre we chose.

Film Trailers

Plot

A group of friends go on a road trip camping, at night they sit around the fire telling ghost stories. That same night the friends start to go missing one by one, throughout the film one friend seems different to the others like a tag along to the group they seem to go slightly mental as the film processes, this will lead the viewer to believe that this friend is the kidnapper/killer. But in fact it is someone they least expect it to be.

Inital Ideas

Above is a mind map we created to show some initial ideas for the film trailer we are going to make. We have decided to look at different genres, thriller, horror and comedy. These are the different genres that we might consider making our film trailer on. As we made a thriller film opening for our AS last year, we thought about being able to use the skills we learnt and know and develop them and apply them to the work we will produce again this year. We came up with a mind map idea as it's an easy way to plan out our ideas, we decided what we would have to consider when making the trailer, for example the different settings, we have decided we will need a lot of different settings compared to the amount we had in our film last year, also we decided we would need quite a few characters, at least 2 main characters and other ones as well. After coming up with this mind map we have decided that it's made our ideas a lot clear and we can decide from there what we are actually going to do.

Thriller Film Poster Collage

Conventions of a film poster

Promotional Package

Harry Potter
From watching the film trailer for Harry Potter there were a lot of main characters, there were over 30. There were also a lot of different film settings, over 40 and they have a lot of cuts, over 84. The film institution that they used was Warner Bros. The film trailer had a dark setting throughout and had fast cuts. From watching the film trailer you can see who the antagonist and protagonist are.

Film poster:
They have a number of different film posters for Harry Potter. The picture on the film posters always have a main image of a main character even if its not actually Harry.
The film poster that has Harry as the main image is the main poster, this is because it shows the main character straight away. The main image takes up the whole of the poster and the character is looking directly at the camera. This might attract the audience more and make them want to watch the film more. Also in the bottom left corner it shows another character which you can see straight away that he is the antagonist as he is a much smaller picture and in a bubble type thing. The background of this poster is quite dark which fits the conventions of most thriller film posters. However the title on this poster is quite small and doesn't really stand out especially as the colour of the title doesn't stand out from the background. This doesn't really fit the conventions because normally thriller films would have a big bold title that would stand out and draw the audiences attention. However I think this Is a good film poster but the thing I would change would definitely be the title.

Magazine:
Harry Potter has been on the front of the magazine 'Empire'. Harry is the main image on the front of the magazine and its a long shot so it includes his whole body. This image shows Harry looking directly at the camera which shows that they are trying to catch the audiences attention. This would get the audiences attention because people might see it and want to buy it, especially if they are Harry Potter fans and they see him on the front of a film magazine.

Other promotional methods:
There are also another number of different things that they have used to promote Harry Potter. You can buy different Harry Potter things such as games, props from the films, posters, books, a website, duvet sets etc. These are all ways to promote Harry Potter, this is because a number of children that are into Harry Potter will see all these things and want them because they are Harry Potter. Also all the games might interest children, especially if they haven't seen it before and if they get the game and play it, they might then want to go see Harry Potter for themselves. I think all these ways are useful because lots of people will buy them, adults will buy them for their children if they want them. Props would be a good thing because adults might take their children to the Harry Potter studios where they can buy things that are used in Harry Potter.

I think all these are good ways to promote Harry Potter and they will help attract a bigger audience.

Trailer Presentation

My FIlm Posters

I decided to re create a film poster of my choice. I decided to choose the film 'The Vow'. I picked to do this film as it is one of my favourite films and I thought the original film poster was quite good. I made two different posters as I couldn't decide which picture I wanted to use for the background.  Both posters I decided to find a full image of both of the main actors as I thought it fitted in well with the main conventions of a film poster. The second film poster was the first one I came up with, I really liked this one because it looks simple but still stands out. I like that fact that the title I picked had a love heart in the middle of the O in the 'vow'. Also I added a little quote under the title saying 'inspired by true events'. This is because this film is based on things that really happened to real people. Also I added in star ratings, actors names and an institution, this is because these are all conventions of film posters.

 The top poster is the second one I created. I deiced to make a second one because I wanted to see if I could improve from the first one. This one has colour on it as the picture I found of the two of them was in colour compared to the other one as it looks more black and white. I like the second one as well as it still looks like a proper film poster. The only thing I don't like about this one is it's quite boring and plain and doesn't have much on it to stand out. Also I didn't add an institution or star rating on this one because couldn't find anywhere to put it to make it look right. If I was to pick the one I prefer out of the two I would pick the bottom one as I think it's more realistic and has more of the conventions. 

Conventions of a Magazine Cover