Storyboard - 22/09/11

In today's lesson me and Daniel began to create a written storyboard to show what will happen in our trailer so that we can later show this to our focus group and get a good response from them. To do this, however, we first needed to say what props, actors and music we would need, as well as what the title of the film will be. We decided that the music could be "The Sound of Silence" that we will need the permission of - we will email the creators and ask if we can use their music for our trailer. We decided that the props we would need are as follows:

Top hat
Tuxedo/suit
White gloves
Cane
Gag
Rope
Chair

We then picked actors to feature in our trailer. There will only be two characters. I will be playing the victim, and Tom Webster will be playing the magician. The title of our film is "Black Magic". Our storyboard is as follows:

-Static sound fades into 'The Sound of Silence', we see a hallway. It's dimly lit and the camera is moving down it as if someone is walking and we are seeing from their point of view.
- Cuts: we are now in a dark, claustrophobic space. It is just possible to see that there is a girl gagged and tied to a chair. She looks terrified.
- Back to the hallway. We can now here footsteps and whistling to the music.
- We see the lower body of a well dressed man, the one who's whistling, carrying a cane and swinging it as he walks with a spring in his step.
- Now we can only see his eyes. He has strange markings over one eye, and a vacant yet focussed look.
- Cuts: the girl has begun to struggle now, becoming manic, we can hear her muffled moans.
- Now we can only see the man's mouth. He's smirking. We faintly hear him whisper "prepare to be amazed".
- Back to the girl: a crack of light illuminates one side of her face, as though a door has opened, and she stops struggling. Tears cloud her eyes.
- We see the man standing in the doorway, leaning on his cane (from behind). He puts on white gloves as she muffles another scream.
- Cuts: black screen, with the words "black magic" written across it.
- Cuts: the white glove thrown onto the floor, covered in blood, we can hear muffled whimpers from the girl.
- Cuts: black screen, with the words "coming soon" written across it.
- Now for the last quick scare: the camera is on the floor, the girl falls and fills it with her dead, bloody face.

I later drew up this storyboard in pencil for the focus group later in the year:

We discussed the setting of our trailer in great detail and length. At first, we were struggling to find anywhere that would look abandoned, and even when we were encouraged to use the stage at school as the room where the girl is, we were still finding it difficult to find a decent hallway to film in. Finally, it was suggested to us that we could use a corridor in school as long as we made it look abandoned by putting cardboard and leaves on the floor.

Planning our product - 15/09/11

I apologise for the lateness of my blogging. There were technical difficulties at my sixth form college that resulted in the loss of computers and internet for the duration of September, October and partially November.

I am working on my A2 media coursework with Daniel Stockton. We had to choose what product we wanted to create and then begin planning our ideas.

Our first idea was to create a short film which would also require a film poster and review. It was called "The 14th Day" and was about a zombie apocalypse, as a result of a virus outbreak, and a group of teens attempting to survive. However we soon realised that we would need too many actors, special effects and it would be very complicated to edit so we changed our product completely.

Our new task is to create a film trailer, film magazine cover featuring our film and a poster for the film. To start with, we began planning what genre our film will be, and what  would happen in it.
We decided to make the genre of our film trailer as 'horror' with the sub-genre being 'slasher'. A slasher film is one that involves a lot of blood, gore and violence and no supernatural or mysterious events - it is usually very close to reality. Before we could decide what would go in the trailer, we had to think up of an entire film so that the trailer will seem more real. We thought up a storyline: a failed magician killed his assistant a long time ago and it caused him to lose his mind, therefore he now scours the country searching for the perfect assistant to accompany him with his act. However, his deranged mind means that he begins to kill each girl, usually in an ironic circumstance such as sawing them in half in a box or throwing knives at them whilst they spin on a giant wheel. Eventually one girl manages to escape, the protagonist, and alerts the authorities so that a chase begins and the magician is caught.
We then created a target audience profile so that we can aim our trailer at a certain type of person that would normally go for this kind of film. This is the profile that we came up with:

Gender: Male
Age: 15-25+ (it's too gory for a young audience - moderate profanities also featured)
Interests: Horror/thriller

As a class we analysed film trailers to give us more of an understanding into how they work. We watched the trailer for 'The A Team" and were given the task of naming the camera angles featured, the content and the genre. We decided that "The A Team" was created for a predominately male audience who enjoy plenty of action, violence and one-liner humour. There were many gun fights, explosions and funny lines within the trailer which is why we came up with this profile. We also noted how the trailer was represented as an action film - it was fast paced, featured lots of explosions, guns and fights, one-liners, close-ups and the music was fast-paced and loud.