Wednesday, 23 November 2011

Distributors

I looked at the website launchingfilms.com and found a list of distributors that I could use for my film, I have done some research into each one to see which would suit my film.

Audience feedback to genre

I asked 20 girls and 20 boys what their favourite genre of film is. I wanted to do this to find the initial favourite genre of film that people my age like to watch and as I want my film to be targeted at around the same age as me I needed this market research to back up what I want to do.
I noticed that boys preferred action and horror and girls preferred thriller and horror which shows that I am working at the right kind of genre that both sexes will like. However I feel that my trailer will attract more female than male because the main character is a girl and it will show the girls side to things but I think that boys will enjoy the thriller aspect to it so it could attract both.

Friday, 18 November 2011

script

I dont want there to be much speaking in my trailer as I want people to physically see what happens and what could happen but I want to make sure that there are a couple of sentences in it.
These are all drafts and wont necessarily be in the trailer but it gives me an idea of what I could include,

"I've done no wrong".
"They deserved what they got".
"Nobody can understand".

I want these to be words that are softly spoken because she is a "loner" so they will be words that she will be speaking to herself and I think that they could work quite well because it makes people question if what she is doing is right.

I also want there to be some sort of saying that none of the characters will say it will just be ontop of the footage, here are a few possible
"An eye for an eye would make the whole world blind".
"As she has planted, so does she harvest; such is the field of karma."

A quick brainstorm into my trailer

Who is in a crisis- The murderer because she has a decision to choose.
Action scene- The murders themselves.
Scene- Along the seafront mainly (old town) and woods.
Interior locations of her house (everyday life).
Tracking shots on the beach and on the east and west hills.
Scenes to make people question- who is the real "bad" person?
Scenes concentrating on props- Her in her everyday life, possibly murders.
Scenes with music-location shots.
No voiceover.
Intertitles possibly could say:
"How can somebody be driven to kill".

Tuesday, 15 November 2011

narrative, research into Propp.

Propp used analogy to analyze Russian fairy tales
Propp had 31 elements to stories that he had identified, plus their symbol, interpretations and discussion.
I also looked into the characters that he resolved into 8 broad character types in the 100 tales he analysed:
1. The villain — struggles against the hero.
2. The dispatcher —character who makes the lack known and sends the hero off.
3. The (magical) helper — helps the hero in the quest.
4. The princess or prize — the hero deserves her throughout the story but is unable to marry her because of an unfair evil, usually because of the villain. The hero's journey is often ended when he marries the princess, thereby beating the villain.
5. Her father — gives the task to the hero, identifies the false hero, and marries the hero, often sought for during the narrative. Propp noted that functionally, the princess and the father cannot be clearly distinguished.
6 .The donors —prepare the hero or give the hero some magical object.
7. The hero or victim/seeker hero — reacts to the donor, weds the princess.
8. False hero — takes credit for the hero’s actions or tries to marry the princess

I think that this concept is true within most films and is something I should take into account when creating a story for my film, obviously Propp used old folk tales as his inspiration but even now you can relate his work to many stories, books and films today.

Test shots

Here are some test shots that we did as a group, it was really helpful to do so that we know what kind of shots are achievable. As a first time using the camera I thought that it was quite successful and shows that we can progress to do better and more interesting shots.

production companies

As my film has influences from the film submarine, I have looked up what production companies they used, I wont necessarily use these companies for my own film but I am interested to see who they used, also because it was quite a small budgeted film it gives me some sort of

Film 4
Develops and co finances films in the UK




Red Hour Films


Is an American motion picture production company. Ben Stiller and Stuart Cornfield run the actual company and the first film they produced was Zoolander (2001).

Warp films
Is an creative independent English company.
It was launched in 2001

Im going to look more into the films that they have produced to then decide on what companies suit my film.

Friday, 11 November 2011

Richard Ayoade

Here I am going to look at a variety of directors from the films that I have already researched in to, to see how they may have been influenced in their work and to see what problems they faced when creating their films.
-Ayoade adapted his film from a 2008 novel by Joe Dunthorne
-He is taking his film to the Sun Dance Festival.
-He has been compared to Wes Anderson
-Ayoade feels that his film is more in common with "Billy Liar" (1963) by John Schlesinger.
-Ayoade says that a lot of things in the film were influenced by himself,

Richard Ayoade (Submarine)
Submarine is the first of Ayoades films, he both wrote and directed the film, it took about a year of press work to promote his film.
He found the film shoot gruelling – "It's like trying to tell a joke by recording one word a day into a Dictaphone out of order and reassembling it and hoping the cadence of it works"
Ayoade found making the actual film quite gruelling itself, describing it like "trying to tell a joke by recording one word a day into a Dictaphone out of order and reassembling it and hoping the cadence of it works".

Some quotes from interviews,
“You have to be violent, I don’t know any actor that doesn’t respond to threats,” 
"I’m pretty involved with the technical aspects. I guess you don’t really end up subdividing it too much, as it really depends what the specific problem in front of you is, and different sequences have greater technical demands than others, and they’re all really interrelated. I’m not brilliant at categorising those things really … I know where the focus pull is, but I probably wouldn’t be able to work one of those electronic focus pull docks myself."

Thursday, 10 November 2011

Films based on youth

This is the trailer for "Attack the block"



In this film youth is represented as "gang culture" nearly all of the characters have hoods and talk how gang members are normally associated with, however the film is a comedy/sci-fi which is an unusual mix to have with gang culture. In this film at the beginning youth is represented as reckless thugs, as they mug a harmless pedestrian walking home.
The film shows this gang as the source of all of the trouble as they were the ones that murdered the alien but it also shows them as the "heroes".
This film is also low budgeted but it still creates as much tension and drama as any blockbuster and also you want to watch on to see what the outcome really is.

Tuesday, 8 November 2011

Genre

The genre of my film will probably be a mixture of different things but the main one being thriller.
Aspects of thrillers which relate to my film;
-Thrillers have the aspects of uncertainty, anticipation and terror which I believe that my trailer will contain.
-Mainly take place in ordinary suburbs or cities. (my trailer will be based around Hastings and the sea.)


Thrillers keep people on edge and make people think about the whole situation, I want my trailer to make people think and it also needs to have a lot of tension, thrillers for me are also quite mysterious so I don't want to give anything away about what will happen. It won't be a typical thriller however, as I don't want it to be quite so gory, it will be more of a niche thriller but with aspects of "normal" thrillers.

Monday, 7 November 2011

Research into film festivals

This would be a festival that my film would probably belong to because they mainly focus on films that have been produced with a budget no higher than £100,000 that are unlikely to be distributed.

The winners for 2010 give me an idea of what types of films the festival actually show, for example;
Best film was "Being Sold" (Phil Hawkins).
My film is in no sense similar to this one but the way that they film and shoot would be very similar as it is low budget so the effects will be quite similar.

The best Sci fi/Horror film was "Zomblies" (David M Reynolds) which looks like a very graphic film compared to what I want my film to be, they use a lot of shots of woods and outdoor  space which is what I will be doing with my trailer.
I like this festival also for the fact that absolutely anyone can submit a film which opens it up for small budget films which "if" they do win will get a cash prize which can then mean that they can make more films at maybe more of a budget.