Alfie

Alfie, similar to John Tucker Must Die, is also about a man, this time in his late twenties, who lives in Manhattan and works as a limousine driver. He too lives a hedonistic lifestyle "meeting, romancing, and seducing women" as a hobby.

As the trailer opens, you can immediately see the different audience that Alfie is targetting. First of all, the music is a laid back sort of jazz which is completely different to the more upbeat and technologically advanced track played in the opening of John Tucker. It also shows Alfie, a working man travelling alone in a city, and not at an American High School. This immediately suggests that the target audience is much older, probably women aged between 20 and 35 years of age. Also shown in the beginning seconds of the trailer are clips of Manhattan and its skyline. This immediately sets the scene that it is based in America. However, Jude Law, the character who plays Alfie, is an English -born actor. By casting a British actor to appear in this American film it is clear that it is going to be released internationally, therefore intending to appeal to a much wider audience.

There is a much clearer message that runs throughout this film, and as a viewer, I picked it up much more quickly then I did with John Tucker, which I feel is purely just a film for entertainment value. 'Alfie' possesses much more serious issues, for example the cancer scare that Alfie has during the film. He teaches the audience not to be so shallow and to enjoy every day as if it were your last.

John Tucker Must Die

'John Tucker Must Die' is an American film of the genre 'romantic comedy'. Released in 2006, it focuses on three girls who want to get revenge on a boy in the year who has secrely been dating all three of them.

The trailer begins with clips of John Tucker playing basketball in an American High School. This immediately suggests that the target audience is probably females aged between 14-19 years. The music playing is also a song by the All-American Rejects, which not only relates to the plot of the film, but also appeals to the modern day target audience of young teenagers. As the trailer continues, we hear a voice over of the second -to-lead character, who describes to the audience the situation. The different shots cut quickly into each other, which adds to the whole chaotic atmosphere of the basketball game, and appeals very much to the younger audience who would have no problem keeping up. The language used by the character also appeals very much to the target audience, using phrases such as 'She's so hot!".

It is clear that this film is a modern adaption of the film 'Alfie', aimed at a much younger audience. However, it was given an age certificate of PG13 in America, due to the amount of sexual references throughout. We want our film to appeal to those between the age of 13 and 18 years of age, meaning that it would receive a 12A rating. This therefore means that we need to be careful when referencing anything of a sexual nature.

Where I am now

My Role:
What I have done this week: 30th November - 4th December
At the beginning of this week, I was in charge of creating a moodboard for our film 'Nick'. I created this moodboard on Animoto, as this website allows for you to create a short video with exciting and interesting effects. In our moodboard, I decided to include images from other films where we have gotten inspiration from such as 'Alfie' and 'John Tucker Must Die'. I also included images of locations where we would like to film, such as Central London and Starbucks Coffee house. This particular location of central london, and filming in coffee shops such as Starbucks really gives a good impression of where the main character is from and the life he leads. He is extremely busy and earns quite a high salary, due to the fact he lives alone in the central of London.

I have also been in charge of drawing a storyboard and creating an Animatic for our film, based on Susan's (a member of my group) shotlist that she provided. However, the story board does vary slightly from the shots that she gave me as we wanted as many different ideas as possible to make sure that our final shotlist is the best one.

When drawing the storyboard, I remembered to keep all the boxes the same. This was so that when I come to creating my animatic, it flowed better and looks much more professional. I remembered to include every single shot, even drawing a character's movements for example if someone is walking. The more frames you include, the more realistic your final animatic will be. Once I had finished scanning in my images (I chose not to photograph them as the lighting would change for every photo I took), I then cropped them on Adobe Photoshop to make sure that they are all identical in size. I then imported them each individually into Windows Movie Maker, where I set the transition to less then a second. This means that when I played my movie, the images would move extremely quickly and look like real moving footage. I then added some jazz music into the background, which reflects the lead character's personality (laid back and easy going). However, this music that I used was in fact the ssample music already given to me on the computer. Although I felt that this still worked quite well, I could have used a more unique song to make my animation different from anyone has ever seen of heard before.
I used Vimeo to upload my video and copy the code onto my blog.

Next week, I am going to be present when my group is filming, giving my advice and watching to see how it is all going. The next time I will have an active role will be when all footage has been filmed and I will begin editing it on the computer.