Tuesday 30 March 2010

Progress

This was my original time plan that I created to help me make sure I was organised and on schedule to complete my work on time. I feel that using Microsoft Project to make my timeplan was and extremely effective way and a software that I would consider using again in the future. It is clear to see exactly what needs to be done and by what dates, and by looking visually at the Gantt chart, you can instantly see which tasks will require more time.



However, looking at my time plan now, I realised that I perhaps did not follow it as closely as I should have done. I was scheduled to finish all three aspects of the project (website, poster and teaser) by 6th March, yet I actually completed these tasks on the 24th March, which is 18 days late. I feel that this is because I did not give hardly enough time for filming. I did not realise how long it would take to film and how many times you would need to re-film parts as they did not look too professional when loaded and watched back on the computer. In this timeplan, I also did not take into account Re-Sits. The main actor for our film along with two of the girls all had re-sit exams in the week I wanted to film and so therefore, they were unable to. Therefore I was already behind a few days. I also realised that I did not allow enough time for editing, giving myself only three weeks. The editing process took a lot longer than I expected, especially due to the fact that for one of the week's that I had scheduled for editing was taken up by a half term break. This then meant that I was not allowed access to the recording studio and therefore did not have the equipment or software to edit at home. This then put me another week back therefore resulting in each of the other tasks that I had planned to finish by a particular date ending late as well.

I have learnt from this project to make sure that I take into account other factors such as Half Term breaks, so that my final time plan is something that I can realistically follow and it would be of a much greater use to me. I will also make sure that at the end of each week I check to see how much progress I have made. This will therefore result in me more likely staying on track and completing the work on the date that I was meant to.

Saturday 27 March 2010

Final Website

Above is an image of what my final webpage looked like when I had finished designing it in Adobe Photoshop. I have made this webpage very similar to my poster, so that I can establish a sense of identity for my film. I have used the same font for the film heading as well as the same image of Nick, yet I have repositioned and enlarged it. I have kept to the same colour scheme of a white background with black text, and used the dark pink shade to highlight certain pieces of text, for example the last two words of the tagline. I have included many conventions of websites, such as including a date when the film is released, a billing box and a copyright symbol towards the bottom of the page, verifying that LSA Productions own this site and no-one else can take credit for it. I have also included an 'Enter the Site' button, as well as the option to share this page on various other social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook. This increases the publicity for my film and allows for media convergence (integrating different forms of media to appeal to a much wider audience). The white space on the left is where I will embed my teaser trailer.

You are able to view my live website by visiting this address:

Tuesday 23 March 2010

Website Analysis / Mock Up for Website

Website Analysis
I have decided to look at three other websites of the same genre of my film to help inspire me for my own website. The genre of my film is a romantic comedy, which is why I have looked at the following films: "It's a Boy Girl thing", "Rumor has it" and "Music and Lyrics". I feel that all three of these websites are successful, yet nto one of them features a trailer on the homepage. I would definitely like to present my teaser on the homepage as I feel that this is the best way to really sell your film and make users want to watch it.



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Mock Up for my Website


Above is the mock up for my website. I have decided to keep my website the same style as my movie poster, so that users will recognise it much more quickly. The font for the heading and main image of Nick will be the same as that on my poster, just slightly adapted. The trailer will be positioned underneath the heading, and I will embed my trailer using the website 'Vimeo'. To the right of the trailer, users will be able to see the tagline for my movie as well as the day it is realeased. The 'Enter The Site' button will be in the same font that I have used for the heading ('Elephant') so that my company remains consistent throughout. I will also place a box around this so that users are more likely to notice it. The billing box will also be positioned underneath the trailer.

I will have to remember to include two more things though when I finally get round to making my real website poster. The first includes icons for users to share my page on Twitter, Facebook, Blogger and Delicious. This will increase the number of my site hits, and the film will gain much more publicity. I will also need to include a copyright logo underneath my billing box so that it clearly states this website belongs to 'LSA Productions'.

Sunday 21 March 2010

Final Trailer

I have now finished editing the trailer and feel that the final result is successful. After presenting our trailer to the Year 12 media class, we received both positive and negative feedback.



Positive Feedback
  • There is a clear storyline that runs throughout the trailer, and viewers are fully aware of the the film is going to be about. The voiceover helps with this as well.
  • The storyline is humorous meaning that they were more likely to want to watch it.
  • There is a good use of editing which helps to make the trailer look professional.
  • The music fits in well with the scenes.
Negative Feedback
  • Although the music fits in well with the two different sections within the trailer, the transition between the two songs could have been smoother.
  • The beginning was slightly too long, and probably could have been simplified more
I am pleased with the final outcome and feel that the trailer has a clear storyline that runs throughout, meaning that users are able to understand what the film is going to be about. The editing is quite simple yet professional, which made the final teaser trailer successful.

Thursday 18 March 2010

Final Poster


Above is the final draft of my poster. I feel that my final poster is quite successful. I have decided to keep it extremely plain and simple, which I feel helps make it look quite sophisticated and professional. I have followed many codes and conventions of movie posters which also help make my poster quite successful. Firstly, I have included the actors' names at the top and in alphabetical order. If I display the actors' names, then people are more likely to be persuaded to watch it if they are aware that their favourite actor is in the film. Secondly, I have included the film name in the centre of the poster. I have used the font 'Elephant', as feel this serif font is qutie sophisticated and gives users a good idea as to the kind of lifestyle the main charcter leads. Thirdly, I have inluded the tag line "Work Hard, Play Harder". I came up with this tagline as I feel that it is short and catchy, and allows users to gain an insight into Nick's way of living without even seeing the film yet. It suggests that Nick lives quite a hedonistic lifestyle, work hard but making sure he plays harder. It shows that he takes some issues in his life seriously, but is mainly interested in making sure he has a good time. Lastly, I have included a billing box, the release date and the website address towards the bottom of the page. This is all of the legal requirements, and basically states important information that users may want to know.

Whilst looking at other films, I noticed that they normally have two or three different posters. This is probably to keep viewers entertained and also to tell more of a story and allow viewers to see characters that may be featured in the film but not necessarily be the lead. As you can see in the image below, Alfie has two posters, John Tucker Must Die
has three and Hitch has four.


Therefore I decided to make three more posters for my film, each featuring a different girl. I have replaced the tagline with a quote that Nick says in the film, yet I have kept all fonts and colours the same as my house colours so that viewers are still aware that this is still part of the film 'Nick'.

Monday 8 March 2010

Second Draft of Poster

After receiving some feedback, I decided to change my idea slightly.

Firstly, I have decided to use an image of Nick only, as I feel that he is the main star of the film. The other three girls, although they do play a part int he film, it would simply look too overcrowded if all four actors were present. Secondly, I decided not to have film reviews on the page. These are normally found on websites instead, and I wanted to make sure I used standard forms and conventions rather than challenge them. Lastly, I made the heading 'Nick' much bigger. In my previous draft it was quite small with almost 50% of it covered by the images of the girls. This did not stand out and would not attract any attention if displayed on a billboard for example.

Music / Photoshoot / First Draft of Poster / Mock Up for poster / Advertising

Our teaser trailer is now almost complete. All that is left to do is insert a voiceover.
This past week, I have spent most of my time trying to find some music for the second half of the teaser trailer. This section is a montage of images that feature Nick with the three different girls, and music needed to be romantic yet happy at the same time. I found it quite difficult to find a song that matched this on Jamendo (the free music download website). However, I eventually found the song below and feel that it fits in well with the section. I did not think it would take that much time to try and find music to fit in with the different scenes in our trailer, and I probably should have taken this into account whilst creating my timeplan as it took much longer than expected and put me behind a few days.


Recently, I have also been creating the first draft of my poster for our film. Below is a photoshoot plan that I made, which made it a lot easier for me when I actually came round to taking my photos, as I knew exactly what I needed to photograph.


First Draft of Poster
I feel that this poster is quite a good first draft, but there are many changes that need to be made to make it look much more professional. These changes will be discussed when I make my second draft for my poster.

Mock Up for Poster
I feel that one of the reasons why the poster above was not as successful as I wanted it to be was because I had not created a mock up for it. It is essential to create a mock up as it gives you a much clearer idea as to what your final poster will look like. It also allows you to play around with the layout before you start inserting pictures and text and everything is final. Below is the mock up for my second draft of the poster.



Increasing Publicity for our Film
Whilst creating the first draft our my poster, I also began thinking about what other publicity our film could get to make sure that it receives as many viewers in its opening week as possible. There are many visual ways of advertising a particular film, such as the TV, magazines, billboards etc, which all appeal to a huge amount of people. However, personally I feel that one of the main forms of advertising for films that are soon to be released is on the sides of buses. Buses are constantly running in and around central London, and at busy times such as rush hour, people are very likely to look at them. Therefore I have used Photoshop to place an advertisement for our film on the side of a bus and also at a bus stop, to see what it would look like if our company decided to advertise there.

Saturday 6 February 2010

Film Poster Research

What I have been doing these past weeks
Recently, because I am the editor, I have been in and out of the studio editing the footage that we have filmed so far. I've been familiarising myself with Final Cut Pro, and capturing clips from our tape and saving them in the right places on the computer. I have then been looking back at my teaser plan and shot lists to remember what we want our teaser to look like and where about on the timeline I need to position certain clips.
I have also been researching some film posters briefly to gain some inspiration as to what I want my film poster to look like. One of the film posters that I looked at was for the film 'Alfie'. Our group has looked very closely at this film, and so I thought it would be extremely useful to see what the poster for it looked like.

As you can see, this particular poster for 'Alfie' is extremely simple, yet quite sophisticated. The 'L' has been substituted for a photo of Jude Law, which I feel is quite clever and makes the whole poster look much more visually interesting. The white background contrasts with the black text, making the heading stand out extremely well. The letters of the word have also been positioned on different levels, making the poster quite playful and suggests to the audience what Alfie's character might be like before they have even seen the film. For my poster, I want to keep it this simple and professional, yet I would also like to include images of the women that feature in the film as well, to give viewers a much clearer idea as to who is in our film.

Another poster that I have looked at is for the film 'John Tucker Must Die'. Similarly, our group has reasearched this film to gain inspiration, and so it would be useful to me to analyse the poster for this film as well.
As you can see, the poster for 'John Tucker Must Die' is aslo extremely simple yet effective. The white background is something I would definitely like to use in my poster, as I feel it makes it look much more sophisticated and does nto distract users from the main focus of the poser. The film name for this particular film has been positioned on the model's lower back and in the from of a tattoo. I feel that this is quite clever and gives an idea as to what age group this film is aimed at (normally young adults have tattoos, probably between the ages of 18-25 years). The tag line has been positioned at the top of her vest top, which I personally do not feel is a place that attracts a lot of attention from the user. However, there is not really anywhere else it could have been positioned and so at the top is the best place for it. This poster also uses a clear colour scheme of white and maroon, which makes it look extremely professional. I will therefore try to stick to the same sort of colours in my poster as well.

I have focused primarily on 'Alfie' and 'John Tucker Must Die' for my research so far, so I thought it would be useful to look at other films in the same genre as my own to see if the posters and teasers all relate as well. I decided to look at the film 'Hitch', as this is a Romantic Comedy which also focuses on one leading man.



Above is the trailer for 'Hitch', and I feel it is quite a successful film trailer. It is very entertaining, and there is a mix between clips from the film and clips that aren't. The voiceover makes the trailer easy to follow, giving users a clear idea of what the film is about. I also especially like the ending how the name of the film comes up, followed by an 18 second clip of footage and then the final text advertising when it is out on DVD appears after. I feel that this is a good way to keep the audience watching, as they are not expecting any more footage after the ending title comes up. I would like to include something like this in my film as well, but perhaps a shorter scene which is still humorous and keeps the viewers entertained and curious as to what is going to come next. Once I still have their attention, they are much more likely to see the last clip advertising when the film will be released.

I have also looked at the film poster for 'Hitch' to help me get ideas for my own poster.


As you can see, the poster is quite simple with just an image of 'Hitch' in the centre with the film name in red and on a white background. I really like this poster and feel that even though it is quite simple, it is still quite effective. It has all necessary information (apart from a tagline which I would have liked to have seen). I feel that it looks extremely professional having him lean on the film name like that, even though it is clear he was not actually leaning on it in real life. I would like to have the character 'Nick' lean on the words in the same sort of way for my poster, as I feel that this is quite humorous and gives users and idea of the sort of character he is (quite laid back and 'cool' by slouching like this). One thing that I would probably change about this poster, apart from the lack of a tagline, is the billing box. I dislike how it is split into two sections and feel that it would have looked slightly better if it was simply displayed at the bottom as a whole section.

Saturday 30 January 2010

Planning

Filming Schedule
As we are working in quite a big group, I decided that it would make things a lot easier if I created a schedule for everyone to be able to see easily where each member of our group was during the week.

I created this schedule in Microsoft Excel, writing out when every member of our group had study sessions between the hours of 08.30-3.30, Monday to Friday. I colour coded each member so that it was clear who was who, and I highlighted the different time periods in yellow where we were all in the same study sessions. I printed a copy for each member of our group so that whenever someone needed to know where a group member was, they could check the schedule and easily see. That way, there are no complications and time will not be wasted with groups members trying to find one another.

Contact List
Although the filming schedule shows you where they are meant to be, some group members may not actually be in the common room during their study sessions. That is why I decided to create a contact list so that if a group member needed to get hold of someone urgently, they could easily phone them on their mobiles or send them an email.

(I have blurred out the numbers to protect our group members' privacy)

Time Plan
This is a gantt chart that I made using Microsoft Project. It shows how long each task of this project will take, as well as the dates that we should complete them by. By creating this time plan, it means that our group can stay on track of things, and know what we need to do and when to do it by to make sure our project is finished in time.


PLANNING AND RESEARCH PRESENTATION