Potential Issues.

Obviously, when making anything to do with media, there's always the scare of something not going quite to plan. So, I figured that knowing all the problems that could occur would be a big help, as at least it gives me something to look back on and potentially have a plan for, so I can deal with problems as they happen.
Now, there are a few big ones that are nearly impossible to fix, but there are some I can plan for and try to avoid!

Now, the absolute biggest problem that could occur, is if the weather isn't right. As I want my film to be shot in daylight, with there being no rain, this could be a huge problem. The joys of living in England. The thing here is, that there's simply nothing I, or anyone else can do about the weather and so the best thing I can do, is to either shoot in a different setting, such as one of the indoor scenes, or simply call of the day of filming and work on something else!

Another huge problem is that one of the actors doesn't show up, or can't make a scheduled filming date, then effectively it's a wasted day. There's nothing really that can be done about this, apart from filming any parts that don't need that specific actor/actress or again, just doing something else. This is a reason for why I will be making sure that any actors I 'hire' are able to commit to dates. As there is no budget, I'm relying on volunteers, so I need committed volunteers!

A third big problem is if the equipment becomes faulty. If I turn up to film and something doesn't work, then we're in big trouble, for a number of reasons. Most obvious is that I won't be able to film what I want, but also it annoys the volunteers. If they all get ready and come out to film, then get told to just go home and come back another day, they're going to be annoyed, which is the last thing I want, as they could choose not to do the film, meaning I'd have to ask another actor. If a lot of the film is already filmed, it would mean I'd have to do it all again! The way to overcome this is to check the equipment the night before and on the day of filming, so I can let people know in advance. If anything isn't working properly, then at least people get to know before they take time out of their day, or I have time to fix what is wrong.

Now, there are other problems that could occur before/during or after filming, yet many of them aren't too huge. Despite this, I still want to have some kind of plan, just in case something does happen! Camera lenses can get dirty and affect the quality of filming, so I would simply make sure I have a lens friendly cloth with me. Similarly, the batteries could run out, so I'd make sure to always carry spare batteries. Also, simple things such as people being in the way of filming can be an issue, if there aren't supposed to be 'extras' in the shot. This can be fixed by politely asking them to move, or simply waiting, whilst filming something else, or taking a break.

There's even the possibility that someone's phone could ring mid-shot, which isn't too bad, but it would be an idea to make sure people switch their phones off, so this doesn't happen and it doesn't affect the flow of everything.
Another problem could be people in the background deliberately trying to ruin the film, such as kids or people with little better to do. If this happens, then it's a case of just waiting for them to get bored, as shouting only empowers them.

Any other problems are bound to be minor and nothing that can't be dealt with on the day, all clothing will most likely be brought by me, so as long as I have a checklist of the things I need, stuff can't really go wrong!

Knowing Myself!

It sprung on me, that I'm actually quite a forgetful person, which isn't brilliant considering I need to remember exactly what I want in my finished film trailer in regards to sound, picture, lighting, scripting, etc!
So, this tells me that I need to have a plan that I can stick to quite rigidly, to make sure I have what I need for my film. Because of this, I will be planning every single scene in writing, planning the sound to that, planning the lighting to that, all before I finally go to storyboard it. Although, I'm doing this for more reasons than simply forgetfulness. Whilst that plays a big part, I also want it so I don't confuse myself. As you'll soon see, my art skills aren't the best, so story-boarding is going to be quite a challenge for me, especially since I'm going to be using the program 'Celtx' to do it, so my already non-existent art skills are going to be transferred onto computer drawings. My aim is that anyone could pick up all my planning and know exactly what I wanted to do, even to the extent of being able to do it themselves.

I know that all great things take planning, so I know I'm not 'special' in this respect, but I also know that I personally need a lot of planning to make it work. Also, if there is good planning behind everything, then any problems that arise I will more than likely be able to work around them! Saying this, I'll also be looking into any possible problems that will arise, mainly in filming. 

On top of planning for filming, I'll also be doing sketch plans for my poster and website, too, before putting them into production! 

Names!

So, one thing I seem to have avoided is the topic of naming my characters. Whilst this doesn't necessarily need to be told in the trailer, I think it would benefit the entire media package, if the three main characters were to be named, even if it is only for reference in areas of planning and evaluation. This in mind, I need to come up with some names!
Now, when we look at other films, there are many different names for characters, from films like 'Saw' where the main character is called John Kramer, yet often goes under the alias of 'Jigsaw' to comedy films where the characters are simply named things like Chuck Levine (I Now Pronounce You Chuck And Larry).
Whilst mine isn't a horror or a comedy, names are still pretty standard anywhere you look! In the sports film 'Facing The Giants' the lead character is simply called Grant Taylor and in 'The Longest Yard' the character is called Paul Crewe. What is to be noted is that many sports films have a comedy aspect to them, which is different to mine, as mine is far more dramatic, with very few comedy aspects to it. What is also to be noticed, is that most sport films are American, unlike 'The Loneliness Of The Long Distance Runner' which is British, where the main character is called Colin Smith. Again, very simple. This in mind, I can start looking at names that sound British to put into my media package.

What I want to do is capture quite modern times in my film, so I want to go with modern names. The top boys name last year was Oliver and actually, I took quite a shine to the name. So, the main lead character, shall be called Oliver. Now, I also want last names to the character, so they have more character and feel more real. The theory is that if they feel real, then the film will be more real! So, picking a last name isn't that easy, as there are no 'popular' last names, if we don't look at it on a historical basis. If we did that, then every character would be named Smith. So, I decided to just come up with one that took my fancy! Simple as that! The last name I liked was Young. Now, Young also has some great connotations with it. As my film is essentially focusing on British Youth Culture, the name Young is pretty much directly focusing on 'Youth'. As simple as it sounds, my hopes are that the name Young, will directly influence a younger generation to watch my film. So, now that I have the main characters name, I need to move onto the 'Love Interest'.

Picking a girls name is going to be slightly harder than the boys, as my female character is designed to be a love interest, so the name needs to be pretty and elegant, yet relatable. A film that does this very well, is 'Bend It Like Beckham'. One of the main characters is played by Kiera Knightley, who is more often than not seen as a very attractive actress and so her name is one to be looked at. She is named Juliette 'Jules' Paxton. The name is simple, easy to shorten and pretty. So, with this in mind, I need to come up with a good name myself, following pretty much the same guide as before! Something modernly popular with a random last name. Unfortunately, I didn't find a name I liked in the top names until I reached close to number forty in the list. The name I found was Scarlett. Whilst not a particularly conventional name, I took a shine to it and thought it would fit my female character well! As for the last name, I decided to go with Stevens, as the double 'S' sounded quite nice and free-flowing.

The last name I needed to come up with was the Antagonist. Now, for this I do want a popular name, but without wanting to offend anyone when I choose the name, I want something quite sinister. As I'm sure many people would agree with, sometimes names like 'Randall' and 'Darius' can sound quite evil, if taken in the right context. So, I wanted to create something like this. After checking out a few different sources, I realised that I actually quite liked the name Sebastian, as even though it's not particularly sinister sounding, it's quite harsh to say and is very unconventionally British, making it quite perfect! As for a last name, I decided I wanted something else quite similar, so I decided on Powers. Okay, so actually yes, it is conventionally British and before someone says all I did was copy Austin Powers, I have my reasons!
The Antagonist in the film has a considerable amount of 'Power' in a sense, so the name Powers, implies that directly.

What is also to be kept in mind here, is that these are just the main 3 characters and more characters will more than likely make an appearance in the trailer, although they aren't that important. Also, these are just references and will most likely not even be said across all three of the media products I am creating.
But, it's good to have names for many reasons, and here I have them!

Pause For Thought.

Following my research into audience theories, I can see a great opportunity to play into the Cultivation/Culmination theory. As my film is going to be on quite a 'touchy' subject, there's a possibility that if it's done right, it could almost desensitise people to the idea of disability, which following recent events, would be huge. The fact that disability is highly seen (still to this day) as it should be hidden away, a film made about disability and the best side of it, could really educate people on disability in quite a subtle way and really play to the theory that it would desensitise people. If my film was made into a real film, it could quite easily be marketed this way to potential sponsors, as it can be seen as a film that has real purpose behind it and not just solely for entertainment.
There isn't much else to this other than a real reason for making a film such as this, as it even fits in with the audience theories, previously looked at and adds something to the overall creation of the media package.

Film Name.

After much thought and lots of ideas being batted back and forth, I finally came up with a name for my film. My initial ideas were quite cheesy, with names such as "Rising Up" or "Waking The Hero" but then I realised that these were quite sickly and almost quite Americanised with the 'Grand' names.
I thought I needed something more British, with maybe a little irony or sarcasm involved, but then I decided I wanted a lot of irony, so that even an American audience would understand, which of course would then lead to American profits as well as English. As I'm not looking for subtlety, I went for a really controversial name (considering the film is about disabled people). The name I finished with was "Taking A Stand". Obviously, a name like this is really pushing conventions and would spark controversy, if actually made into a film. However, something a little controversial often works out well, as we can see in films like "The Exorcist" which was actually banned, yet after it was re-released, the film did very well. Similarly, a film like "Schlinder's List" which was shot in black and white, despite having the technology to film in colour, was made to be un-conventional and the story was controversial. So, from past experience, I can see that films often make it, when controversial. Obviously, there will be films that did not do so well that will have been controversial, but I feel it is worth the risk.

Wheelchair Research and Planning

This here is a small Prezi presentation that looks at Basketball chairs, the fact that my entire film package is going to be about Wheelchair basketball, means that I have to choose what kind of chair would look good for it. Here is a presentation on the pros and cons of the different chairs I have access to. On my Pinterest there are a number of images of different wheelchairs, yet not all of them made it through to what I call the 'Final Few' due to many different reasons.
I showed this to a number of peers and used a simple tally chart, here are the results:



As can be seen, the Interceptor was the definite leader. There aren't many people who voted on this, mainly due to time and resources, but ultimately it's not the most important decision of the film. It's good to know what people like, but since it's on such a niche topic, there are going to be few pre-conceptions, therefore the answers given aren't bound to be very biased.

Audience Research

The research here originally started taking place last year, yet it seemed it would have been perfect to carry on the research for this! So, what is here is a lot of information on different audience theories. It's difficult to apply many of them, but this doesn't mean it's not useful. In fact, it's very useful as it gives me a better idea of what to do in regards to many things. It helps me sub-consciously, when deciding on different things to do in creating and planning my media package!

Character Research

Here is some research into different characters and conventionally liked characters, everything is explained in the presentation. I feel I'm making good progress with my research and certainly finding useful information!

Film Trailer Research

Here is research into film trailers. What is here is mainly conventions and the stuff inside is mainly for something to refer to when planning my own. There are many different patterns I have seen within the trailers, yet some things are varied throughout. The things that stayed the same are the ways in which characters are represented, they are all blunt and all have roles, whereas things that change are things such as lighting, sound, etc. So, there's not much to be gained from highlighting these things, as it's all to think about when I begin planning.
Apart from that, there isn't much to be said for the research, I found what I expected to find and what I've found will be easily interpreted to help create my own trailer.

Rough Plan.

 

 

 

What I have here are seven images of notes that I made about my film ideas. It looks at many different aspects of the film, many of them based on the research I have done. Reading through them, I get a decent idea of what I want to feature in my film trailer, yet no doubt the ideas will be slightly changed when I come to storyboard, as I will realise exactly what I have to work with and what my limits are. However, for now this is a decent rough plan of what I want to do and one that I will stick reasonably close to.

Choice Of Film.

So, given my research into different genres, I can see that people want a film relating to sport, which really helps, as this was what my initial ideas were based around. The fact that sport is a popular topic, means that I can now start to plan what kind of sport film I would want. Given my expertise in Wheelchair Basketball, I feel it would be perfect to do a film on it. Also, what can be taken is that after the Paralympics, a film about disability sport has the potential to be a huge hit. The Olympics/Paralympics were possibly a heavy factor as to why sport was a big contender for favourite genre. Given that I have chosen to do a film on Wheelchair Basketball, I feel that there is much to be researched in terms of Wheelchairs themselves and also planning how exactly I will make a film of that sort. Obviously, this is to be looked at later and planned carefully.

The storyline for the film is going to be based mainly on Wheelchair Basketball itself, however I feel there is much call to have other happenings in the mix, but this will be further studied at a later date.

Film Website Research.

As well as researching film poster conventions, I decided to do some research on the conventions of Film Websites, too.
What I found wasn't too surprising, really.
I found that all websites tend to be pretty simple, in the way that there's really only one main image and a few links off of that to different areas of the website. The colour schemes stay relatively similar and are often colours associated with the film, as another thing I have seen across all my research so far, is that films tend to have their own specific colour schemes, over their whole package, from the actual film to the posters. This helps to create meaning for an audience and gives a consumer something to relate the film to.
Aside from this, I haven't really discovered much more, apart from what is already on the slides. I've got some good information here to help me go ahead and start designing my website homepage for the film, as soon as I have all my characters and colours decided upon!

Movie Poster Conventions

What I have made here is an Empressr presentation on the conventions of a movie poster, as I will be creating one for my pack. The presentation doesn't go into too much detail, because not much is necessarily needed. My reason for this is that whilst I do need to see what is right and wrong to put on a film poster, all film posters are different, so I won't be able to take a great deal of inspiration from these.
What I have here is some knowledge on film poster conventions and perhaps a few ideas that I can redo myself in a post-modernist style, but ultimately I am going to have to start from scratch with this in a sense, as that's what I need to do to make mine original and eye catching.

Pinterest

As I am making a media product, I decided that I wanted to try and make use of many different kinds of media and the one thing that struck me was the possibility of using social media to advertise and document different things about my product.
Unfortunately, as I'm only making a small package, there isn't much that could be done to really benefit my product through it.
However, I came up with an unconventional way to use the social site 'Pinterest' which is an image board social networking site, where members 'Pin' images to boards, for those that are following them to see.
So, I created a board called 'Media Images' in which I will be posting as many pictures as I can of things I see that I want to include in my research, planning, production and evaluation.
I'll be doing this using computers and a graphics tablet, in which I can crop images.
The link to it is here

http://pinterest.com/waring77/media-pictures/

Hopefully this will be a useful tool to help me store pictures online and also for people to reference, should they want to see the images I have used.

What film? Survey.

The next thing I decided I would have to do, would be to actually question people and see what kind of film they wanted. I could have my own ideas, but if other people didn't share the same ideas as me, then any film created would be a flop. For this reason, I decided to host a large survey to see what kind of film people would want to be the next 'Big Thing'.
Here are the results:

Questioning


If you had a choice of what genre of film would be the next big hit, what would it be?

Action - 57
Comedy – 39
Romance - 15
Sport - 75
Sci-Fi – 48

Documentary - 2
Superhero - 23
Horror - 24
Thriller - 16
War - 5
Animation - 24
Musical - 3
Adventure - 14
Crime And Gangster - 13
Drama - 21
Historical - 5
Western - 17
Biopic - 1
Chick Flick - 26
Detective - 6
Disaster - 22
Fantasy - 26
Melodramas - 12
Road Film - 9
Super-Natural - 18

When asked, people were also asked to answer based on what nearest fit what they wanted, if their specific chosen genre was not on the list. Only 500 were asked, and although this does not show a huge range of people, it showed enough to judge what kind of film would be best to create a movie package for.  The people asked were just average people on a main street, so there (From what I can see) is no bias. From the questionnaire, it was blatant that people wanted a sport film as I was hoping for. 

From this, I am going to start researching the different things needed to help me construct my sport film package, such as characters, conventions, etc. 

This survey has helped me greatly, as it shows that what I am doing is going to be well received by the majority of people, as opposed to other genres. 

Film Trailer Checklist

As I was searching online, I stumbled across a checklist about what is needed in a film trailer, that isn't too serious, but seems really quite relevant and helpful. The checklist speaks in quite a casual language, so is easy to follow.

Film Trailer ‘Checklist’

Through searching online, a film trailer checklist (for want of a better word) has been found, that pretty much outlines modern film trailers. The list was found The Guardian’s (Newspaper)website, meaning that I have a reasonable amount of trust in it, and I know that it’s not just a random article that could have been written by anybody. Because it’s written by a trusted source, we can look at it and almost use it as a guideline for creating the film trailer. Even though the whole thing is very informal, it strikes me as even more modern, as that is how things are worded in today’s society.

• "In a world ..." before those ironically grandiose E4 continuity announcements, all you needed was a strong, sonorous voiceover to set the tone for any big-budget actioner. Nowadays, you have to be more inventive. Try assembling fake news footage into a glitchy, distorted montage, and be sure to include words like "epidemic", "catastrophic" and "unexplained". The Cloverfield crowd will go apeshit.

• You haven't got much time to introduce your characters, so aim to sum each one up with a single line of stereotypical dialogue. Loose cannon? "I don't take orders from nobody!" Nerdy scientist? "You don't understand! It's simply not possible!" Female character? "I'll wait for you."

• When it comes to music, the old standards – please rise, Carmina Burana – just won't cut it any more. Dubstep is increasingly becoming a viable alternative, with sub-Skrillex warblings lazily plastered over trailers for films as disparate as franchise smash-'em-up Transformers: Dark Of The Moon and second world war race-relations epic Red Tails.

• Don't give too much away. Offer only brief glimpses of your most impressive CGI set pieces, accompanied by a quick fade-out and that irritating foghorn noise (or "BRRRRRRAHHHHMM" as it's become known) from the Inception soundtrack.

• Single words written massively across the screen are more impactful than whole sentences, so break your tagline up into its component parts and sprinkle them throughout the trailer. It doesn't matter if they're so far apart that nobody can piece together the meaning; chances are, they're not paying attention anyway.

• You don't want to blow your load too quickly, so take a brief pause for thought just before the climax and let one of your characters say something witty. Good luck bettering Jason Statham's timeless words from the new Expendables 2 trailer: "I now pronounce you man and knife."

• Don't forget, the title is the bit you want people to remember. Put aside at least ten seconds at the end for an agonisingly slow reveal.



After reading through the checklist, I have discovered many things with I otherwise may not have thought of. It’s not too extensive, but if it were then there would be risk of it dictating what I put in my film trailer. This makes it so the film trailer is still mine to work with, and leaves me to be able to put into my trailer whatever I want. However, this ‘checklist’ forms a perfect guide, as I can refer to it when creating my trailer, for inspiration, and to make sure I am on the right track. 

Brief

For my A2 Media project, I decided to create a film trailer, along with a film poster and the homepage of a website as part of the package. I decided to produce this media package as I feel it would be the best for me, as to let out my creativity and ideas on film. Also, I feel that in doing this I will be able to bring in a certain element of my expertise into it. As I already have an idea on what film I'd like to produce, I know exactly what elements of my personal background I would be able to bring into the film ideas, to make it realistic and truthful.
However, I am hoping that my research will reveal that prove that people want a film similar to that which is currently in my head. Should my research show me that an audience wants a film similar to that which is currently in my head, the thing I want to do is make the film real. To do this, I may have to push conventions slightly on a storyline basis.

Firstly, I plan on doing research to discover what the actual conventions on film, posters and websites are along with actual audience research, looking at theories and actually questioning different people to see what it is they want in a film.
This will be followed by planning the storyline to my film, who the target audience is, planning ideas on how to construct my poster and homepage and overall plan everything I need to do for my final piece.
Finally, I'll evaluate everything I have done, looking at different aspects of production and if I achieved what I wanted to.

As I have not started yet, there may be parts of research, planning production or evaluation that I do differently to how I have stated in this, but the general plan will stay the same.