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.