Preperation for filming (Mori)

Equipment and actor list:

Female actrees to play the main part.

2 boys, one to play the boyfriend and one to play the boyfriends best friend in the scene (the dream) where he dies.

A female actress to play the best friend.

Two boys to play the murderers.

General clothing, casual clothing for actors and actresses in most scences and also school uniform for the scence in which the boyfriend dies. Hoodies for the two murderes to make them seem more dark and evil.

Tripod.

Camera.

Swivel chair for moving shots.

Locations:

Because we only need to show a few scences and major parts of the film to interest the viewers, this makes it easier to have fewer locations, these are the locations we have choosen to fiml our trailer at:

The school main drive - Boyfriends death

Duffus Village - Best friends death

Cliffs by the sea - First and last shots

Room in a boarding house - Where the main actress is telling her friends one of them will die.

Editing:

We want this trailer to be a non - linear trailer but at the same time follow a similar pattern to most action film trailers, which is fast and exciting with slower bits to add tension.

So we want our trailer to start slowly with a medium length shot lasting roughly 5-7 seconds and then slowly build up the speed of the editing, this will make the trailer more exciting and will hint to the audience that this will be a fast moving, intense and interesting film. We also want it to be fast as no to give away too much of the whole film otherwise we may fall victim to a trap lots of film trailers fall into, showing all the best bits of the film in the trailer. So for example in the murdering scene we want to show lots of very very fast shots, showing what is happening but not the details. We will then end the clip with a slow bit at the end which i found out in my research was very effective as after all the fast bits of the trailer it suddenly slows down and gives the audience that final bit of information which makes them really want to see what happens and often during this slow shot a question is posed by use of a voiceover.

Music/Sound:

We are going to focus greatly on sound for this trailer as i think it is one of the most important aspects of a trailer. A voiceover is going to be used on the first shot and during a small part of the dream, this is so that the viewers know a bit about the film but not too much, just enough to get them interested.

We want to have some slower depressing music to start the trailer in the dying scenes but as the trailers editing speeds up we want the pace of the music to echo that and thus giving a greater effect and therefore we will want the music to become more exciting as well. The music will build up until the last shot where is silence will fall and we will again here the same sounds as the very first shot, the diegetic sound of the sea. In this trailer we also want to have quite a bit of asynchronous sound especially in the murder scene as we don't want to show exactly what is happening as it will not only be too difficult to have fake blood and cuts etc. but it will also mean we are using the viewers most powerful tool, their mind which can create a far worse picture than we can. The screams will be heard but not seen coming from her mouth. 

Story Synopsis (Aaron)

After a long and hard think, gradually Mori and I came up with the idea that influenced us by watching the trailers of "Knowing" and "Final Destination". Both of us wanted to do something different and unique as we wanted that to be our unique selling point. In order for us to do that and also try and keep the storyline as close to school as it would create the perfect atmosphere and location shots would be easier to create, whereas if we had decided to make them adults, we would have to choose teenagers that looked reasonably matured or have to find teachers to play the role which would mean that our filming schedule would be complicated.


Our storyline asks the philosophical question, "Can you trick fate?". Our movie is called "Marie's Vision" or we are also thinking of an alternative "Fate". This is a story about a girl who has 2 sets of dreams out which she finds out that she has to choose between her long time boyfriend or her childhood best friend. She tries to save both of her close and loved ones but fails and dies herself in the process.

Both of us have tried to make the storyline as such so that instead of the audience asking us the question, we instead ask the question "Can you trick Fate?".. By doing so, we manage to put the audience in the hot seat.

Decision on genre (mori)

Over the last few days me and Aaron have been working hard on developing ideas and what type of film that we could develop a good trailer for. So we started to look at trailers of different genres. After looking closely at romance, horror, thriller and action we decided that a mixed genre would benefit us best as our film could target a wider market and therefore make a larger profit.   thought that romance would be fairly difficult with the resources that we have available to us, to create a good romance movie you usually need comedy which in turn requires at least a good pair of actors, which are hard to come by. A teen romance may be easier to do but it does not interest a large range of audiences, in fact it cuts off almost the whole of the adult market which would mean that it would be very hard to make the film successful unless it was a first rate film with a great advertising campaign. Horror and action would also be fairly difficult to do as most of the trailers for films of these genre's show some of the best bits which generally include expensive scenes with make up for dead bodies or special      effects for an explosion, we decided very quickly that this would simply be too difficult for us to do with our low budget and our limited time frame. We then started to think of genres which incorporated romance with action and mystery, we thought that although action will be difficult this type of film wouldn't require any special effects it would be more thrilling action. Also with these three genres in one film the potential market expands by a great deal meaning more chance for 'bottoms on seats' so to speak and therefore more chance for profit. The reason we added mystery into the films overall genre is because we think that it will set us apart from other films that are single track minded, it will help our film to develop a strong storyline and excite many more people. 

After having chosen this genre we started to make the storyline which Aaron will post on the blog. 

Research (mori)

After a healthy dose of swine flu I decided to get back to work, so over the last few days i have been researching trailers, i firstly looked at trailers normally, watching them and thinking about several different aspects of them, such as music, cinematography, length, actors shown and how much is given away. A trailer that i particularly liked was 'Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen' so i decided to analyse it so that i could see what our trailer would need to be appealing, make someone want to watch the whole film and something which simply isn't boring.

Transformers 2

Michael Bay
This is a trailer for the film transformers 2 which is a sci-fi action film about large metallic aliens coming to earth to settle a feud. This is a trailer which is loud and big pictures, with many stunts and special effects being made use of, for example a transformer turning from an alien into a lorry while it is moving along at ferocious speeds. These special effects show potential audiences that it is going to be a high end production as well as an action packed on the edge of your seat film.

This is the second film in the series and the first Transformers was a great hit at the box office so they do not need to show too much of the storyline in the trailer as people will automatically link the special effects, stunning picture in the trailer and a great first movie with a good storyline in the second one. Also storylines in sequels tend to be fairly terrible in my opinion so they often try and keep the trailer short and show little about the story but more about the high production parts of the film which people loved so much about the first one. Also another bonus of this being the sequel is that people will recognise the stars of the film and remember them from the last film, this then makes it easier for the production company as they just have to show lots of them in the trailer which in turn will secure seats in the cinema, this is something which the Transformers 2 trailer used to great effect they have the two big stars in the film heavily involved in the trailer, one of them being Megan Fox.

In this trailer they do not use a voiceover they use actual dialogue from the film, especially the transformers voices which are very loud deep voices which make a impact on people watching, this also gives the trailer a bit more reality from the film and people get more a of a chance to not only see what it will be like but also hear what the film will be like as well.

Editing in this is very fast, not much is given away and as it gets closer to the end of the trailer the editing speeds up and as each new clips comes onto the screen a loud swoosh sound as if something narrowly missed hitting you is played, this gives the illusion that it is building up to something and adds suspense in that few seconds and then the name of the film appears in big writing by itself imprinting an image of that name in the audiences head.

I then looked at trailers in a slightly different way, i watched many trailers, especially horror trailers without sound. This suddenly made me realise how important the music is to a film. The music makes a horror scary, it makes you sit on the edge of the seat, it makes the tension build to an unbearable level and it means that what you are watching doesn't threaten your senses in more than one way as the only way you are taking in the media is through your sight.

A film which i watched that i really noticed the sound making the biggest impact on the viewing was 'Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind' a film with Jim Carrey and Kate Blanchet. In watching this trailer without the music it suddenly looks as though it is a piece of film done by an amateur because this trailer has a very high tempo like most do and therefore it just looks like a string of clips put next to each other with very fast editing, but when there is music the trailer turns into a brilliant one, it is fast moving the sound tells us that it is a strange but happy film through tempo matching the clips and some slightly strange noises in the music and words said by the characters. I also watched 'Transformers 2' without volume and what i noticed from this is that without the voiceover you cannot tell anything about the storyline. All of this made me realise how crucial a good soundtrack is to the trailer and maybe for certain types of trailers a voiceover is important to tell the potential audience what this film you want them to watch is about.

General View (Mori and Aaron)

This year both of us are going to attempt to create a trailer to our own storyline. This is part of our A2 coursework and we shall be sharing our research, progress and thoughts on the trailer.

Any comments or constructive criticism is much appreciated throughout the year.