Storyboards

Actor Release Form

For the more dramatic parts of the trailer, we came up with the idea of including a flashback of Ruby as her younger self. Because we were looking for someone below the age of sixteen, we needed consent from the girl's parents and therefore had to send out an actor release form. 

Treatment

Seventeen year old Ruby Thorne lost her father in a car accident at the age of seven whilst he was trying to save her. Ever since she has felt to blame for his death and her mother's depression. It is Ruby's passion for photography and two quirky friends who help her see the light and find closure.

Room Tone

We plan to use an external microphone whilst filming in order to achieve a high quality sounding product. We will be editing in sound bridges and cutaways throughout our trailer so we want the dialogue and diegetic sound to be as crisp as possible. One thing we were told to consider when recording a scene with sound was background noise. Every room or location (including different dimensions within the same location) has it's own unique background noise, so to avoid the issue of differing aural signatures during editing, this silence is normally recorded at a location for usually around 30-60 seconds. This is known as room tone. Once this is done, the editor can insert the room tone under any cutaway shots and you are left with a smooth soundtrack. Here are a couple of videos I researched to help me understand room tone.

Sketch Productions Journal

For the past few weeks we have been keeping a notebook of all our ideas for our trailer. From product research and location availability, to cast details and bits of script, we try and get everything down on paper to keep a track of what we're doing and make sure we're always moving forward. Below are a selection of pages taken from our journal.

Audience Research: Results from Questionnaire

Questionnaire Results

Age Range- Our target audience was mainly aimed at the ages 16-20 but we gave our questionnaire out to other age ranges to have a wide range of answers from the audiences. This will help us consider other viewers that May like to watch our film.

Comedy Sub-Genre- We gave the audiences a number of choices which they select to fit in with the Comedy genre. As a result, the majority favoured Action to fit in with Comedy. I consider Action to be a very popular genre but as a group we were surprised that drama was not as popular. Therefore we decided to keep Comedy Drama and hopefully at the end of project, will allow more audiences to favour drama and not just action. Action is hard to work with as it relies on editing to create special effects, therefore as a group, drama is a great way to work with as our school environment and is filled with wide range of problematic situations.

Preferred Film Poster- We had three different film posters for the audience to select. Submarine as our independent film with a close up of the protagonist, The Heat with two female characters which subverts the stereotypes towards women, and lastly The Hangover as the mainstream film with three men with a mission they need to solve. Most people chosen The Hangover, a mission the protagonists have to complete but consist of humour along with their actions. Audiences' may want to see more than one protagonist which themselves can relate to themselves and their friends. The Hangover consist of very strong, successful actors which means the audiences are looking for good actors to help carry out the humour which they can find it amusing.

 

Preferred Magazine Cover- Empire and The Entertainment (with more than one person on the cover) as our mainstream magazine cover, Little White Lies as our Independent Film cover. The results favour the Entertainment as the picture consist of well-known actors and displayed as three people on the cover instead of one. This tell us that Comedy is more interesting when it involves more than one person, giving a mixture of responses to a situation depending on the character's personality which ends up as a humourous situation.

 

Preferred Music Genre- Loads of people have a wide range of music taste and therefore we wanted to know their favourite. Most people chose Rock/Metal/Punk. Depending on the storyline we create, we will try and consider music which the audiences' can enjoy along with the trailer. We may not consider Rock/Metal/Punk as our genre is Comedy Drama, but we will make sure our soundtrack suits the trailer to make the audience understand.

Type of Film- The majority chosen mainstream films, the high budget films which are distributed around the area attracts huge number of audiences. If we choose a mainstream film, we need to consider the conventions of a film as most audiences may not be familiar of the conventions if we do an indie film. But overall, our group finalised our results and are going for an Independent film which the trailer itself is much more manageable when it comes to filming.

 

 

Visit Cinema Per Month- From our results, we notice that the majority of people we gave the questionnaire to visits the cinema at least once. The audience may visit the cinema with friends or families to watch a movie newly released, but some may choose to wait till its released on disc or digitally, or not interested in the movie, therefore chosen never. We need to consider the conventions of a Comedy Drama to grab the audiences' attention allowing them to visit the cinema to watch a film. Considering the humour to be strong allowing a wider audience to understand it to attract huge number of audiences.

The majority visited the cinema more than three times to watch Comedy, Drama or both which was surprising as we gathered the results. This resolved our decisions to continue with Comedy Drama genre and hoping to attract these audiences when we finalised our production at the end.
 

The Title

We have finally settled on a name for our film - 'We Will Shine'. We decided on this name as we thought it encompassed the various themes and ideas we hope to express in the trailer such as hope, guidance and happiness. Originally we thought 'I WiIl Shine' would work well but we thought that the 'We' helped to suggest that our protagonist's friends play a key role in helping her find happiness and support each other along the way. We thought 'Shine' links in well with our photography theme as it relates to light and also the flash and glare effects we intend to include in our trailer. 'Shine' also ties in well with the themes mentioned above and sets quite a positive tone and uplifting feel which is what we'd like our audience to think when they read the title.

Here is also an idea for the tagline we'd like to use for our film poster.

Certificate

 

After deciding that our target audience is 15+, our group chose to look at the BBFC website to look at the certificate of our age group. Although we will avoid breaking the following criteria above, it was helpful for us to create our own boundries in order to achieve an appropriate trailer.

Inspiration: Tagline

I came across this quote by Roald Dahl whilst thinking of ideas for our tagline...

Mood Board

Product Research: Film Poster- Little Miss Sunshine

Promotional Package: Product Research- 50/50

Focus Group- Submarine (2010)

Focus group Reaction:

 


Focus Group Questions:

 

Focus Group- About a Boy (2002)

Focus Group Reaction:



Focus Group Questions:

 

3. 50/50 (2011) - Markers & Same Scenes

The trailer for 50/50 uses four distinct markers throughout the sequence which indicates the emotional state of the protagonist. I think this is a really good way of splitting up the story in order to show the important stages of the film. A similar idea is also used in the trailer for Submarine. This way of structuring not only helps the audience follow the story, but it I think it would be useful for us as creators to help mark key moments and make sure we are portraying a sense of development throughout the trailer.

Another thing I liked about the structure of this trailer was how a different clip from the same scene was used at another point in the sequence. The initial shot is of the protagonist just about to shave his head. The dialogue between the protagonist and his friend creates quite a comical moment so when a different part of the same scene is shown later on, it's funny for the audience to see this development. This in turn helps the audience begin to connect with the characters.

2. The Kids Are All Right (2010) - Achieving a Light Hearted Tone & Interrupting Music

This trailer caught my eye because I like the way the light hearted tone is sustained throughout. The majority of the trailer focuses on the comical moments which shows the audience that the film is quite upbeat. Each time there was something particularly amusing within the dialogue, the sound was interrupted. This happened quite frequently (nine times) which suggests that the film is more comedy oriented than drama. The dramatic elements only came in towards the end of the sequence, taking up thirty seconds of the whole trailer, and even then the sound was interrupted suddenly after, quickly reverting back to the comedy. If we decided that we wanted to achieve a more light hearted feel to our own trailer, then I think this structure of comedy outweighing drama could be an idea to keep in mind. I definitely think that dropping the music works well when you want to mark a funny moment but I don't think we'll include it as many times as this trailer has!

1. About a Boy (2002) - Half & Half Structure

What I liked about the 'About a Boy' trailer was how clearly the genre was established; the first half of the trailer introduced the comedy and the second half brought in the drama. I think it works well having the comical parts at the beginning as it immediately allows the audience to connect with the plot and characters. If there are parts that make the audience laugh then you can be sure that the audience is engaged, and I was. It was the editing, dialogue and voiceover that helped to pinpoint the funny moments, but most importantly, the music help to distinguish the light hearted tone. The music included upbeat drums and guitar and quite bright sounding vocals. The soundtrack really helped to show the exact moment when this tone changed and led into the more dramatic side; a melancholy piano introduction along with light percussion was followed by smooth, sombre sounding vocals. So, I think the structure of the trailer as a whole allows the audience to experience and understand both sides to the story clearly.

Product Research: Structure of trailers

I've been watching a whole of range of comedy-drama film trailers recently and one aspect in particular that I have noticed are the varying structures. There are a number of interesting ways in which trailers are pieced together so I've picked out three that I like in terms of structure, and which I'm considering to use for our own trailer.

I also found this really useful website. It gives a variety of tips for making a good movie trailer:   
The Art of First Impressions: How to Cut a Movie Trailer

Audience Research: Vox pop - Film Trailers

Audience Research: Online Survey

By creating an online survey, we can gather more research from not only at school but from people to give us a wider reach of audiences.

Due to the developement of technology, this online questionnaire becomes more accessible to the audiences who have internet access on their devices.
We are able to distribute this website link to people through social networking sites and are able to receive it on the go.

Click here To Take Our Online Qestionnaire

Audience Research Questionnaire