Target Audience

When exploring who are target audience are going to be, we decided to make a Prezi showing films with similar genres and what rating they got from males and females of all age ranges.

The most popular groups for the films we included are;

• The Dark Knight - In the under 18 category, the most popular one, males voted slightly higher than females, 9.4 to 9.1. The lowest rated category was females over 45 with an average vote of 7.3.
• The Dark Knight Rises - Both male and female under 18 rated an average of 9.4, but more males voted. The lowest group was again female over 45, who voted 7.9.
• Taken - Male under 18 was once again the most popular category, with an 8.3 average rating. Females under 18 also enjoyed the film, with an average rating of 8.1. The lowest rating was again females over 45, with a rating of 7.4.
• The Raid - Females under 18 rated higher than males, 9.0 to 8.4, but much less females voted. Females aged between 30-44 voted lowest, 6.9.
• The Sweeney - Females under 18 rated highly, 8.2, while males this age only voted 6.7. Females aged between 30-44 voted low, 3.7.
• Inception - Male under 18 voted 9.2 while females under 18 voted 9.1. Again, females over 45 voted, on average, 7.7.
• The Avengers - Under 18s enjoyed the film, 9.1 rating from females and 8.9 from males. This time, males over 45 voted lowest, 8.1.
• The Godfather - All males voted very highly, all above 9, with a high of 9.4. Females also rated highly, all above 8.5 with under 18s voting 9.1.

Using the information from the films we looked at, we decided that our target audience will be under 18s, especially males.

We believe our film should appeal to a wide audience, from our research we found that most action films had quite big budgets, thus had a bigger potential audience. Our film will be very low budget, so we believe that we can give it a "straight to DVD" action film feeling, so there would be a specific audience it could appeal to, but potentially a large audience could enjoy it.

In terms of who wouldn't like our film, from the stats we have already included, we believe that older females will be the main audience to not like our film. Although, it is not easy to predict such trends as these, we need to have an in-depth look.

Character Development

This post will be where we write ideas we have surrounding the characters in our film.

Luke Pine - Main Character

• Closed off
• Dark personality
• Feels under appreciated like there's something out there better for him
• Trained briefly in boxing aged 12
• Educated
• Witty
• Sarcastic 

Max Pine - Biological Father

• Expertly trained in MMA
• Weapon marksman
• Worked in secret organisation on the street
• Left to start a family and was targeted for assassination
• The car crash was a cover up for his death
• Escaped crash with a bad limp so uses a cane

Stephen Morgan

• Smart
• Rich
• Posh
• Adopted Luke out of the kindness of his heart

We'll also have a few extras as henchmen for the organisation, and we believe they'll look a bit like this:

Full Synopsis

This is our Full Synopsis:

1996. A mother and father die in a car crash in the South of London, their 1 year old son, Luke, is sent to an orphanage. He is eventually adopted aged 2 into the Morgan household. For 15 years Luke didn't fit in. He was bullied in private school, thrown out of boxing club, and generally out of place. 2012. Aged 17 Luke Pine discovers the car crash which killed his family. An anonymous tip takes Luke to his birth father, who takes Luke under his wing for his new organisation. A year later after working for his father, he discovers he has been assisting his father in organised crime, and the car crash was a cover up for an attempted assassination, in which Luke, and his father survived, and Luke's father swore revenge on the government for killing his wife. Luke is then faced with a moral dilemma as to whether he kills his Dad, or assists him. He kills his Dad.

When it came to writing this, we had some complications in terms of wording and how much of the story we were supposed to give away, as it is a full synopsis, we were supposed to give away the whole plot so we ended up doing that.

Another difficulty we had was deciding exactly what our story would be, we had our basic idea of an orphan and some story about his parents, but we needed to figure out exactly how the plot would develop. We came up with a set up car crash but then we needed to piece together why someone would  want to kill the family, how, whether or not Luke knows he's an orphan. Eventually we came up with this plot we have now, we added in a plot twist at the end in which Luke needs to make a moral decision. We needed to figure out where we would film all these shots, but we have a warehouse at our disposal, and of course numerous public places and houses.

Another issue was, and still is, the cast. We needed 3 male characters, Jake was originally going to play the main character Luke, but decided against it. We do have a new cast but height may become an issue so we may have to find our way around this.

Production Logo Development

We drew up some initial designs for our production logos, we decided we would make 3 different logos for our trailer, and chose the names "E5Y Productions", "BL2 Inc", and "Edition Limited"

These are some rough sketches we drew, we wanted the production logos to fit in with the theme of our film; action, drama and dark. 

Here is what we produced so far;

We decided to use a black, grey and white colour scheme to fit our genre. 

We used a police badge for our first production logo "Bright Lights 2 Incorporated" because it fit in with the theme of action.  The name "Bright Lights 2" comes from the bright set lights used in filming. 

The second production logo "Edition Limited" is a play on words for the phrase "Limited Edition". We wanted to end a logo company with "Limited" and came up with the phrase "Edition Limited". In our logo, the L overlaps the E which we based off of the "DC Comics" logo.

Our third production logo is called "E5Y Productions". E5Y stands for "Entertainment FOUR you, it's so good that its FIVE you". This logo is just text with a shadow but works well with our theme.

Joe's Moodboard

This is my moodboard for our production, it encapsulates the theme, influences, and story. We agreed Taken, Dark Knight, and Heavy Rain were all strong influences, we have guns in there as that is something we would like in our production, as well as a warehouse, as that will be one of the filming locations, and then what we think some of the characters will look like.

Jake's moodboard

This is my moodboard which includes films that are influences for me. I tried to use darker colours because we want to make a dark, dramatic action trailer, and the films I included also fit into this idea in one way or another. Taken and The Dark Knight Rises fit this scenario very well, and will be great influences for us. They are both dark action films, similar to Looper which I also included. I also included a screenshot from the video game "Heavy Rain". The picture includes the main character and originally I imagined our main character to look similar to him. Finally, I also included a picture of some rain because it would be ideal if we could film mostly in the rain, and I find this to set the tone of films. The picture of the car crash relates to our initial ideas.

25 word pitch

"17-year-old Ethan attempts to track down family after car crash. He then finds his father and discovers a shocking truth involving a conspiracy."

This was our original pitch which we pitched to the class, and the picture below shows the response to our pitch...

From this we decided to remove the end of the pitch, so it's now

"17-year-old Ethan attempts to track down family after car crash. He then finds his father and discovers a shocking truth."

Finola Kerrigan's 'Film Marketing' response

I will use an extract from Finola Kerrigan's 'Film Marketing' to inform my knowledge of trailers and what makes a trailer effective.

Kerrigan says that "trailers are used in order to provide the potential consumer with a taste of the film". This shows me that our trailer shouldn't give too much of the film away, such as key plot moments or spoilers, but still have enough substances to reveal enough about the film to attract potential viewers. She later says "trailers must at once "withhold the fullness of the cinema event" while achieving a "sense of heightened presence" - this supports my early idea of what should be included in a trailer.

Kerrigan also mentions the fact that "the contemporary era sees the trailer lose some of its dominance as film is promoted through such a wide number of methods". I think this is key in understanding our coursework as we also have to produce a poster and magazine cover which should match the standard of our trailer.

Kerrigan discusses stereotypes of trailer, as she says "conventions of film trailers are established in the mind of the film consumer and moving too far from these conventions can involve significant commercial risk". I interpret this to mean that trailers of certain genres should have certain features, for example horror trailers should be low lighting and action trailers should be full of fast takes. I would argue that trailers should conform to conventions of their genre, but also be unique enough to leave a lasting impact on the viewer.

Overall, I found Kerrigan's 'Film Marketing' to be very helpful in deciphering my ideas about trailers, and it has developed the original ideas that I have.

Initial Ideas

We sat down to brainstorm our initial ideas, we already had some features we wanted to include, involving; genre, plot and target audience.

Here's the mind map we created, we have a fixed genre and plot line we want to follow. In this next mind map we explored the car crash idea in more depth.

Some very early ideas we have for our car crash idea are:

• Car crash as a baby, parents  died, or told they abandoned him
• When he grows up, he finds out his dad was part of a terrorist organisation
• He gets a tip off to go to a warehouse
• He finds pictures of him in the warehouse
• His father comes out of nowhere and recruits him
• He eventually finds out his dad was part of a terrorist organisation
• He kills his dad.

What is a trailer/teaser trailer?

A trailer is a short advert made prior to a film to promote it, and we have been given the option of making a teaser trailer or a feature length trailer. A teaser trailer is shorter, and gives away less of the film, and is generally released a lot longer before a feature length trailer. A feature length trailer gives away more of the plot, released closer to the release date.

Looper

Looper being an action film means it will provide very helpful ideas for us. The production logo in this trailer was very interestingly used, it only appeared on screen for a small amount of time but left a lasting effect.

The titles were also interesting, they synced up with the sound, something we included in our last production with the titles, and we would like to do it again, especially due to the action genre. We also liked the simplicity of it, with the light background contrasting against the black letters, and the small amount of movement with the letters.

The opening to the trailer was also interesting, the clip used was from later in the film and provided some context for the trailer, an interesting style that we could use. The non-diagetic sound used in the trailer was also very good, it once again synced up with what was on screen, and it was very loud and fast in general.

Man of Steel



Once again, the titles were very interesting. We would like to use titles like this in our film, as it would reflect the genre quite well.

As this is a teaser trailer, it doesn't show the names of the actors, just the directors and the release date. This style teases the fans of the directors, rather than the actors. 

We also like the style of the clips used. The film is of action/comic book genre, but there is very little action in the trailer. This style is used more in a teaser trailer, rather than a feature trailer. 

The Master

The Master trailer featured an interesting use of sound. At the beginning, there is a slow, pounding sound and it is revealed that it is a man slamming his fists against the table. This repetitive sound slowly speeds up and is continued through out the trailer. This is a very interesting style of editing and use of sound so would be a unique feature to include in our trailer.

The typical use of a voice over was also used, and the dialogue was synced with one of the clips, which was interesting to this style of editing. The use of this technique also helps provide context for trailer, giving a background on the story

We personally didn't like this trailer much, it didn't give away much of the film, and didn't entice us much, but there were some nice shots like the one above.

Robocop

Robocop was a fairly unique teaser trailer, as it wasn't clips of the film, but rather a fake advertisement for Omnicorp, a company in RoboCop, so it was a bit tongue-in-cheek. This style is very effective for teaser trailers. It gives an insight into aspects of the film, and provides context for potential viewers. It would be an interesting thing to do in our trailer, as we could provide a lot of the back story to our plot line.

The Human Centipede II



Once again, this teaser trailer is very unique and interesting. Rather than showing clips, the producers of the film invited members of the public to watch the film in a van probably in the film. The teaser consists of clips from the viewers, and this technique is used to show how scary this horror film actually is. This teaser reminded me of Paranormal Activity, and this style of trailer is used effectively in this teaser.

The Campaign



The Campaign is a comedy film, and features very little titles. This style, we feel, is very common in comedy trailers and teaser trailers in general. This teaser in particular is very short, only 1 minute, and in our opinion this trailer isn't very effective as it is too short. We think that comedy films need to have a lot of the punchlines in to tease the viewers. This trailer takes a while to get going and only really features two or three jokes.

Overall, all of these trailers and teasers feature titles, so more than others. They also feature a release date, most don't feature the actors names but they do feature the directors name. The action teasers feature usual conventions of action films, fast paced editing and fast, loud soundtracks. The horror films are very indirect, and feaure very little of the film. Finally, the comedy film features some of the better jokes from the film to entice the audience and give the impression that the film is full of laughs. It is important that we stick to normal conventions for action films, the genre we are looking to produce, but also be unique and exciting so that our trailer will be a good advert for our film.