Coursework Task

A promotion package for a new film, to include a teaser trailer, together with two of the following three options:
a film magazine front cover, featuring the film;
a poster for the film.

Working Title

Are productions current title is 'Quarantine'.

17/11/09 - Changed to 'Party from hell'.

Idea 2

Idea 2

He got away with his first kill, he got away with his second, will he get away with a third? Over the space of ten years a man has killed2 children, snatched them from outside there schools. He plans to do the same again. However this goes wrong and he ends up being spotted snatching the child.He plays a game with the police, after being chased he leaves a recording of him saying if they want the child back then they will have to find a royal flush of cards, each card placed at different spots around the town.
However these are know ordinary places and before cards come traps.This film will contain many intertextual references to saw.Nobody ends up being killed but however many people end up badly injured and the killer escapes.

Ancilliary Texts Final Product 2

The Final Poster

Ancilliary Texts Final Product 1

Here are my products for my ancillary task. They go from one to another as I continuously changed them to fit the criteria of the task better and to show off mine and my partners skills. The third one down looks just like a real magazines as it has stuck to the typical forms and conventions of a typical movie magazine.

Final Magazine

The Final Magazine front cover

Rough Cut using Imovie

Here is our rough cut using Imovie. Sorry it has no sound we are using as I didnt have the music files with me at the time.

Audience Feedback

• Good editing, just need to edit down to make clips a bit finer.
• Could do with more digetic sound.
• Good pace but need to cut a few slower clips out or shorten down.
  

Ancilliary Texts Ideas and Research 2

Looking at these poster, they arent just pictures with writing on, they are heavily edited images, usually not just one image but many images, they all contain reviews and star ratings. There is also the building block which contains many details about the cast, production companie etc.

A common feature in a poster would be the building block, this is usually situated at he bottom middle of the poster and in small writing as the lines go on with cast names, producers names, director, production company, musician names and so on.

The common theme for posters is that they usually contain the central protagonist or main characters, for example the Batman poster, where Batman is placed in the centre with a low angle shot to show he has power and is important, therefore providing anchorage for the audience.

Ancilliary Texts Ideas and Research

Ancilliary Texts Ideas and Research 1

 

Looking at these film magazine front covers, it is easy to see that there is a definite link of similarity between them all. The all have the bar code on, they all have bold coloured text usually on the left handside of the page but also in other places and they all have a clear picture of the main character of the latest blockbuster that has been released when the magazine is printed. There is also the title of the magazine boldly shown at the top in the centre of the magazine which seems to change to relate to the film shown on the front cover.

Also notice how the colour mainly used on the front cover match with the genre of the film, for example, a slasher movie would use 'red' colours to connote and anchor the genre of the film across to the audience.

Also there is ideology used, for example the 'total film' magazine above has a picture of a globally known character Batman, look at his figure, a muscular well built male, this is how the audience is meant to interprete a super-hero.

Looking at Empire magazine with 'Hellboy' on the front cover, look at how binary opposition is used, the protagonist, Hell Boy himself is made to look like an antagonist, as he is the devil, muscular and smoking a cigar, not the everyday look of a protagonist, however in the film he is a super-hero.

Production Schedule

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Production Schedule

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Revised, Final Narrative, Storyboards and Screenplays

Screenplay

Soundtrack

We will create our teaser trailer soundtrack using the software application 'Soundtrack Pro'.

Costumes, Props and Set Dressing/Mise-en-scene

Costumes need to reflect the age of our characters, so we need to get the style right, i.e not dressing them in our grandmothers clothes. Also getting the outfit right is important as it appeals to our target audience. So generally we will ask the cast to wear their own clothes. As its a horror film props such as knives and fake blood will be needed as they provide important anchorage and connotation to the audience, we need to make these obvious as its a teaser trailer and clips and cut are very fast and we have little time.

Locations

My house, as this would be a good place to show a party. We can also film in another room, to show Victors house. Create to different settings.

Casting

We need to cast young actors of the age of 16-18 years old. We will do this by putting posters up around the school aswell as asking students from the creative arts departments such as Theatre Studies.
The cast needs to be 16 to 18 years old as these will appeal to the age group we are targeting with our film. Also the storyline fits in with people are age, as certain things such as getting drunk at a house and going out to an abandoned hospital is more teenage behaviour rather than adults.



Our cast...
We needed a girl to represent a blonde haired, sexually active female, a stereotype in many American slasher movies. Aswell we need to create a 'male gaze'. We feel the girl who would best fit the role would be Sophie Brear.

Another stereotype in American slasher movies is a good looking, inteligent female and not sexually active and made to look a bit 'nerdish' and pure(virgin). We feel the girl who would be ideal for this part is Sophie Gannon. Her dark brown hair would also provide anchorage for the audience that maybe she is evil.

To add a touch and go against ideologies and conventions of the norm and stereotypes of typical American slasher films, we added another character with dark brown hair. However, this character isnt a 'nerd', shes actually a party girl providing a 'male gaze'. Emiy outterside will play the part of 'Charlotte'. This is also to help confuse the audience throughout the film.

Teaser Poster/s

Idea 1

The Software

The software we have used for our media project is final cut express 4. Final cut express 4 is a product built by the Apple corporation and is compatible with Imovie 09. Final Cut Express 4 has an open format Timeline that handily accommodates DV (both NTSC and PAL) and HD footage simultaneously and in real time. Final cut express 4 is much more sophisticated than Imovie, it enables you to edit with real detail and offers a much better range of SFX than Imovie, its a really good editing suite if you know how to use it.

The Hardware

To shoot our production we will use Sony Camcorders. We have gained the skills to use these cameras from our AS production. The only down side to using these cameras is you have to be near the camera in order to get good audio of the characters conversations. The cameras are easy to plug into the computer via a firewire. The footage quickly imports to imovie.

Pre-Production Schedule

Schedule

Target Audience and (notional) BBFC Classification

Socio-economic groupings : Class terms AB = upper class, C1 = upper-middle class, C2 = lower-middle class and DE = Working class. Our production in these terms would target C1C2DE. As our characters are of middle class it would appeal to most classes as of the type of film it is, a 'slasher'.

The audience for our media product would be people aged from 15 to 24. We attracted our audience by the content of the film, although 'illegal' until 18 alcohol is praised upon by the youth, aswell as sex and violence, these things attract the attention of the audience and keep them drawn in. Also attracting our audience is made easier as we have used similar aged characters to our target audience. We have also attracted our audience by using an attractive and 'slutty' looking blonde aswell as a 'jock'. The mise-en-scene we used specifically interests the audience. The BBFC rating I would give our production would be 18, as we have frequent reference to sex, drugs and alcohol and also use of graphic gory violence.


Our media product develops forms and conventions of real media products such as the scene of the stabbing, when one characters stabs another character  the stabbing involves some quite graphic detail e.g coughing up blood, this could be seen as forms and conventions of real media products such as the film ' Dressed to Kill' or other slashers such as 'Scream' and 'Halloween'.

Final Proposal

The five main characters of the film : Joe, Matt, Victor, Rosie and Charlotte.

The narrative : The group of five are drinking on the way to a party. They walk past an old abandoned hospital, a big, grey, dull looking building which is childishly rumoured to be haunted by the ghots of a family which died there 10 years ago.
Victor's eyes lit up as he sees the hospital, and he suggests that they go in there after the party, Joe, Matt, Charlotte and Victor, but Rosie a brunette, good looking, 'good girl' doesn't think it will be such a good idea.
They arrive at the party, to be introduced to more alcohol and drugs. The night continues, with the free males heavily intoxicated on vodka, lager and cocaine and Charlotte hardly standing just as intoxicated as the boys, Rosie has also let her hair down but can still see sense.
As they are so smashed, the five decide to leave the party, walking the same way back as they did the way there. They walk past the abandoned hospital, Victor stops and has an incredible desire to go in. Heavily intoxicated, the whole group agree and they go inside to mess around.
The group light a little fire and sit down, passing around a bottle of vodka. Matt and Victor decide to go upstairs for a look around, for Matt this wasn't a good idea...
Charlotte, Rosie and Joe begin to get an edgy feeling, however they cant just leave Matt and Victor, as they are all staying at Matt's house.
The next scene they all wake up, hung upside down still in the abandoned hospital.
Victor enters the room, he explains that it is his families death anniversary and that he needs there souls to bring them back to life.
The rest of the film, the 4 captives try to escape, whilst Victor trys to stop them, Matt, Joe and Charlotte all get captured by Victor and Rosie as Rosie is really Victors sister, helping him get there family back.

Initial Animatic and Audience Feedback

Initial Proposal

5 characters, Rosy, Charlotte, Matt, Victor and Joe.

The plot of the story is ...

The 5 walk past an old abandoned hospital, Joe(the group rudeboy) tries to persuade to go in but nobody wants to so they carry on to Matt's house, to get drunk and watch films. They arrive back at Matt's and begin to drink, Joe carry's on mentioning the abandoned hospital and after a few drinks everyone suddenly thinks this will be a good idea. So... armed with alot of alcohol, they head towards the abandoned hospital, not knowing what they are getting themselves into. The group break in and just mess around for an hour. Then weird things begin to happen and they here sounds of other things in their, this excites the boys but makes the girls want to go back to Matt's. Charlotte gets so fed up that she decides to leave but her supposedly best friend Rosy decides to stay because she fancies Victor. Matt gives Charlotte the keys to his house and she heads back. However about an hour later they here a girl screaming, they recognise its charlotte and they all run to find where she is, they find her naked hung upside down from her ankles and blood flowing from her ankles all down her body. They run to get help but they cant escape, all the windows wont open or smash and all the doors are shut and locked, a strange thing has shut off the building, something paranormal. The group continuously try to escape. Suddenly Victor goes missing, then Rosy. Matt and Joe think they've gone off together, however this is found to be untrue when they are both hung from the ceiling, dead attached to meat hooks. Matt and Joe run round the house they find a hole in the roof, Joe is the first to clime out, as Matt comes through the roof Joe says ' Sorry Matt' and kicks him in the face and Matt falls down the ladder into the house, Joe nails a piece of wood over the hole and Matt is murdered by the paranormal creature that is Joe inside the house.