Poster Designs

We decided that our posters had to be well linked to our trailer. We looked at the images we had taken during the filming, and chose a photo that was emotionally intense. We did two designs and asked our target audience what one they preferred.

Poster Design 1

For this poster design, we  decided to use a large picture of the protagonist as that is a usual convention of a Social Realism. We used a photo of a part of the film, where she is outside doing art. We felt this represented the film well as it encorporated the mood of the film and the message that she is trying to break free from her restraints at home. We placed a Sepia layer over the top of the photo to get the brown-like feel, and also helps encapture the emotion we wanted to portray. We kept the font that we use in the trailer itself, for continuity and helps the viewers recognise the film more and therefore increase publicity. We also put the release date and the caption so people were encouraged to see the film.

Poster Design 2

 

For this second design we wanted to do something different with the layout. We changed it to portrait to see whether this gave it a different effect to the film. We wanted to use the letterbox type layout and this gave a good effect as it looks like a small cut out of the girls life and also doesn't give too much away. The facial expression of the photo is also very thoughtful and with the black background it gives a good dark feel to the poster.

 



We decided to choose Poster Design 1 because we felt this depicted our character better and helped portray the emotions she is feeling.

First Draft and Feedback

We decided to publish our first draft of our trailer onto our YouTube channel to see the responses that we get. This will be useful for gathering research on how to improve it.

We have evaluated our draft to ensure that we can improve the necessary faults so our final cut matches the conventions of a social realism. We answered the question 'In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products in association with our trailer?' 

After reviewing our draft, we concluded what strengths and weaknesses the product had. These include:

Strengths 

- Award research

- Original film production company

- Creative font- for anchorage and title sequence

- Use of colour filters- black and white at the end

- Variety of editing techniques- reverse of girl's journey, slow motion in bedroom scene

- Variety of shots- tracking shot, point of view shot, high angle shot

- Variety of lighting- low key and high key lighting

- Good camera quality- Cannon with changeable lens and excellent zoom and focus features

Weaknesses 

- Sound is not as layered

- Voiceovers are not embedded- they stick out and sound irregular

- Shots of the laptop are basic and boring- too amateur, does not show our skill and genre

There are certain conventions that you expect to see in a social realism that we should include in our trailer to demonstrate how we have understood and reproduced a social realist trailer. 

In our first draft we have matched the conventions in many ways:

- We have included a main protagonist (the girl) which is a convention of a social realist text

- We have depicted a working class lifestyle through the housing estate shots

- The actress is an unknown female which confirms the genre

- The storyline matches the conventions as it is hard hitting and emotional through shots such as the dad with the belt and the scene with the girl in bed with the boy.

- Social Realist films normally use mostly diegetic sound which we used through dialogue

- One of our themes was sex which is a common trait of social realisms

- We challenge the stereotypes of the genre by narrowing the themes, excluding drugs, alcohol and antisocial behaviour.

Further Tagline Research

We decided that to decide our tagline, it is best that we made a list and sent out a questionnaire to ask our target audience which one they think is the most effective or best fitted for our film.

- The art of making the right choice, is harder than you think.
- All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.
- Dreams are your paints, the world is your canvas. Believing, is the brush that converts your dreams into a masterpiece.
- One Girl, One Life.

We decided to use the tagline 'the art of making the right choice, is harder than you think'. We felt this was ironic as she has an art talent, and people will get the the tagline after watching the trailer and will attract people to watch the movie. However we also felt the phrase 'the art of' would be suitable for making choices as well, no matter her art talent. So although it may not be an obvious link to her art talent, we felt it was subtle enough to be noticed.

We felt this also encorporated the choice of her life she has to take in the movie and thus helps the viewer understand more about the storyline, and keeps them on the cliffhanger as we know there will be an important choice at one point in the movie.



'The art of making the right choice, is harder than you think.'

Creating Our Website

We decided that we were going to use the website wix.com to create our website as this has the perfect features we wanted to include in ours. From looking at our previous website deconstructions, it is important that we clearly show what the website is about and the way that we market our film so that people would like to see it.

On the home page we wanted to use a clear picture of the protagonist and this helps the user realise what the story is about. We also edited the photo to a darker more monochrome tone as we felt this would depict the two options that she has to choose from and to the extent in which her life can change immediately - its either black or white.

This was our first draft:

Filming 13/01/13

Today we got to work filming our shots. We had our storyboard at hand to follow and this made our filming a lot easier. We had three main sections of shots - Home Shots, Outside Shots and Boy's room Shots. This helped us plan our day as we had 3 different locations to get filming in one day; which was a struggle but with our time-keeping and extensive planning we managed to get all our filming done. 

As we can see from the shots below, the quality is a such an improvement in comparison to the last camera we used and we are positive now that we can edit this really well and give it the finish and effect we want our trailer to have. 

We also used this time to get a few photos for our potential poster and this was also great with our camera that we had borrowed. Overall it was a very successful day.

Problems Whilst Filming

Some problems have arisen during the making of our trailer.  The girl we were going to use as our main actress in our trailer cannot participate anymore, which is a huge problem as some filming has already been done. This ultimately means we have to re-film everything again with a new actress.
Additionally, we have had a problem with the poor quality of the camera as the footage looks grainy and low grade. We have overcome this problem by borrowing a high technology camera that will produce a clearer image.

Tag Lines

In order to have an effective and eye-catching poster, we have to chose a suitable tag line. This would be beneficial when film companies are advertising their trailers.

Some initial idea:

- A girl can dream
- She has one chance, will she do the right thing?
- One moment can define everything
- One girl, one life
- Which path will she chose?
- You need challenges to keep reality real
- When someone turns against you... you don't know who to trust.
- Heart vs. Head
- Trying is sometimes just not good enough
- Trying to keep your head clear




These are only some initial basic ideas which we can build upon.