Presentation and Audience Feedback

This is a video showing us showing the presentation to the class, talking about the background information, what we have thought for our trailer and explain how we are going to film it; we have shown some of the techniques we will be using whilst filming our trailer. We have chosen 'The Blair Witch Project' to link with our trailer, this is really good because the film is a low budget film and some of the camera techniques that they have used links to what we are thinking of using for our trailer.

Film Production Organisational Structure

The Three Sectors From The Film Industry

Production

The production of a film basically means how was the film was thought and how was it inspired, it literally means the beginning of the making of a film. To make a production of a film you will need to include various things to make this happen.

You need a motivation to make this film, if there's no motivation there's no successful film. The process of the film is really important, as you need to be really organised to make the film a success.

Every director will need to set up a process and follow it, it makes it easier and avoids less mistakes happening during the making of the film.

Every director that think of making a film will need stakeholders. Stakeholders are basically the ones that sell the film outside in the world, this stage can last for a very long time and can be repeated various times until all the stakeholders are content with the screenplay.

Every director will need finance and to develope a finance. The producer will use a pitch of the film and his persuassion to get the money for a script. There are various ways on how to get money to develope your script, producers can go to film production companies for development money, the producer can also offer the future sales and broadcast rights to the film in return for money to develop the script. The producers will also try to pitch their ideas to public and private sectors. However, investing in films it's a high risk as they don't always give back what they say at the beginning, it's not always a safe bet.

Distribution

Distribution is the reason why people know about a film, it's in between the production and exhibition. The distributors will invest on the film, will buy the rights after the film is made, this happens more often if its an independent film, and distributors will belong being part of a multinational corporation.

The film can be well known, with some marketing strategies, for example, above and below the line advertisings, trailers, test screenings, etc. They will sell the big stars in the film and they're job is to target the target audience.

Exhibition

Exhibition is the last stage, this is basically when the film is finished and it's time to collect data or information about the film , they would have cinema screens, exit polls, modes, etc. They would put collect data on how people heard about the film, why watch it and other various questions. This helps for the production of a film and it helps for future releases.

Example of an exit poll for the film 'Adulthood'

 

Different Ways In Which People Find Out About A Film And Why They Choose To Go And Watch It

They are a lot of reasons on how people find out about a film, it's all over the streets, TV, magazines, newspapers, billboards, etc.
The main reason for people to be aware about a film its the cinema trailer itself and off course many other reasons, the reasons are:

• Cinema Poster
• TV Advertisement
• Reviews
• News Features/Talk Show
• Radio Advertisement
• Radio Reviews
• Magazines Advertisements
• Magazines News Reviews
• Online Advertisement
• Online Interviews, Reviews and Features
• Outdoor Advertisement, eg. Billboards, Bus Stops, London Underground, etc.
• And the most obvious one 'Word Of Mouth'

A lot of people go to watch a film just because they have seen the film advertisement everywhere, they are a lot of more reasons, people go to watch a film maybe because they like the actors playing in the film, they like the director, the genre suits them, maybe because the reviews were really good and they thought to go and watch it and see for themselves, the story maybe appealed to them, their friends have been talking about it, maybe someone just asked them to go and watch it with them or maybe just because of boredom.


Exit Polls
The UK Film Council are required to take Exit Polls surveys for films supported by the Prints and Adverstising Fund. It is usually used for Hollywood big films but much less so for smaller and independent films that are most likely to screen in fewer cinemas with smaller budgets. The Exit Polls are carried out by professionals research companies, they make up a questionnaire for at least two cinemas during the film's opening weekend. These questionnaires help as it tells them who the audience is, why they came to watch the film and how did they find out about the film, this kind of information really helps because it refines their marketing and publicity campaigns and it will bring up new ideas and how to improve for future releases.

http://www.ukfilmcouncil.org.uk/exitpolls

Film Exhibition

Reviews are organised by Distributors, however they can't control what they say, bad reviews do not always lead to loss for the film, they are an important part of marketing the film but they don't cause a big impact for the film.

For example the film 'Pearl Harbour' directed by Michael Bay got a lot of bad reviews world wide but the film still made $451 million.

One of the bad reviews for 'Pearl Harbour':

"In addition to the above, there are some horrendously cheesy scenes, perhaps the worst of which involves a character dying on a cross-like structure. Similarly, the film blatantly rips off several other blockbusters, to the point where you can practically tick off the scenes (the boat tipping over from Titanic, the camaraderie and stunt-flying from Top Gun, the ricocheting bullet noises from Saving Private Ryan and so on).

Of the actors, Beckinsale comes off best: she looks stunning and somehow makes even her corniest dialogue seem forgivable. Affleck is less fortunate – he mostly appears to be acting with his chin. Hartnett’s character, by contrast, feels under-drawn, and as such, we never really care about the romance angle of the film – Evelyn could end up with either one of them and it never seems to matter which one."

UK CINEMA ATTENDANCE

This table shows the attendance to cinemas around the UK, at first it was very popular but with the years passing by the attendance lowered and they are various reasons why this happened.

1951 - TV was created

1970s - 1980s - Colour TV was invented

1991 - Home video and Multiplex cinemas were invented

Some of the factors that may have lead to this decline could've been the recession, poor facilities and the amount of screens.

During the 1950s the average of screens around the UK were 4 807 and the average of screens during the 21st century are 3 406. With these numbers you can see that there is a great difference between the 1950s and what we've got now.

Many of the cinemas around the UK were closed down because most of them were converted into Bingo Halls and Retail Outlets. I live in Tunbridge Wells and the cinema multiplex I go to is called 'Odeon' next to the cinema there are pubs, restaurant, bowling alleys and video games centres, because of these companies the cinema industry are getting less customers.

One of the mains reasons that the cinema audience is on decline at the moment is because of DVD and video rentals, it was argued a long time ago that video rentals would kill the cinema, however, cinemas in the UK went down  to 54 million in 1984 it now stands at around 150 million.

There are 4 types of cinemas:

• Art House
• City Centre
• Multiplex 
• Drive In

Costumes For Our Trailer

Characters:

Alex - Miguel Pilgrim
Blue jeans
Plain white t - shirt
Blue hoody
Black and white shoes

Jessica - Kate Burden

Black leggings

Black shoes

Grey top

White cardigan

Molly - Nicole Taylor

Leggings

Beige boots

Grey Lace top

White vest top

Denim Jacket

Kate - Zoe Hilton

Brown shoes

Dark blue jeans

White long sleeved top

Brown leather jacket

Script for Evil Awaits

Characters:  Alex – Miguel

                     Jessica – Kate

                      Molly – Nicole

                      Katie – Zoë

Scene 1 –  Molly, Jess and Katy sitting down in a park bench.
Katy: 'Ghosts? Are you serious?... Don't tell me you believe in that pointless crap'
Molly: 'What do you mean?'
Katy: 'How can it be true? an invisible being floating around?'
Molly: 'Think about it, where do you think you go when you die?'

Katy: 'I don't know but i just don't believe in ghosts and stuff like that'

Molly: 'Okay... I'll prove it to you'

Katy: 'Ha! good luck doing that, How you gonna do it?'
Molly: 'I don't know let me think'

Jess: 'Wasn't Alex talking about an abandoned house last week?'
Molly: 'Oh yeah he was, can you ring him and ask him about going?'

Jess: 'Yeah no worries i'll ring him when i get home'

Scene 2 – Friends approaching the forest. Establishing shot with forests in the background, Alex sitting on his bag smoking, in the middle of the shot. Then it fades into a medium shot of Alex:

Alex - ‘where have you been? I’ve waited ages!’

Next shot is Jessica, Katie and molly walking towards him, then as they walk past (without making eye – contact).

Molly – ‘come on, hurry up, and finish that fag.’

Close up shot of Alex taking one final drag and flicks it on to the floor, picks up his bag. There is an extreme long shot of Alex walking to catch up with the 3girls and them walking towards the forest. Fades into a black screen.

Scene 3 – Alex, Molly, Jessica and Katy are walking through the forest. Medium camera shots tracking their legs are they walk.

Long shot of the abandoned house in the forest, with the 4 friends walking towards it on the right, medium long shot of the house, with Alex, Molly, Katy and Jessica standing in front of the house.

Close up shot of the 4 friends facing towards the house (the camera)

Alex: Come on, let’s go inside

Molly: Hmmm I don’t think so Alex, it looks dangerous

Alex: Well im going in, you coming or not?

Katy, Alex, Molly and Jessica start climbing through a broken window, extreme close ups of their hands on the window frames.

After going in, the camera slowly zooms in to the window and fades into black and into the next scene.

Scene 4 - Inside the house, Alex and the girls are inside. Long shot of them through the window frame. House is trashed, rubbish everywhere and graffiti on the walls.

Girls are too scared so they wait outside

Katy: No way, im waiting outside

Katy climbs through the window back outside. Molly and Jessica follow her. Close up shot of them walking out.

Alex walks around the house and looks at the walls. He sees the names of them written on the walls in black ink. Over the shoulder view of alex with the writing in the background. Extreme close up of alex’s face and eyes.

The girls are waiting outside sitting down against the wall, talking and laughing. They then hear a scream from alex inside the house, The screen quickly goes black.

Timeline

This will show most of my theory work learnt in lessons and in school.

9th September 2011

Film Industries

There are three sections in the film industries, they are divided into sections so everything becomes simple and they make good business by following step by step.

• Production
• Distribution
• Exhibition

There are nine points every director, producer or writer should always follow if they want the film to succeed and in some cases make a big profit.

Points into making a film (Timeline):

1. The film will always need an idea. Before they start to even write the script they will need a solid idea, in most cases directors/writers/producers get their ideas by inspiration, past experience, etc.
2. Money - Development Finance. They will need a budget, if they want to make a big profit they will need a bigger budget, if they want a smaller profit it's obvious they will need a smaller budget. For example; horror film '28 Days Later' had a budget of $8,000,000 and made $82,719,885 and another horror film 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre' had a budget of $9,200,000 and made $107,017,655. You can see that the bigger budget makes more money at the end.
3. Script development. Every director will have to employ a writer to write up the script and at the end they would need to do a 'Sales Treatment', this means a conclusion of the whole script, it usually is two pages long.
4. Packaging. Directors should always make a package for their film. Inside the package it must include various things that would get people's attention. It should include: Sales treatment, first draught of the script, genre of the film, target audience, the cast, director, budget, when the film will be released and mention when will everyone get their money back.
5. Finance. They should always have investors. They should do pre sells, meaning selling the film before it's released and they do make money by doing this. They should have insurance for the film, just incase they film doesn't finished and it fails so some people could get their money back.
6. Pre Preduction, this includes all the equipment, special effects, storyboard and cast.
7. The Shoot, this is when it arrives to actually shooting the scenes from the film and managing time well when shooting.
8. Post Production (editing), this includes sound, digital effects, rough cuts of the scenes and then all final cuts.
9. Distribution

19th September 2011

Codes and Conventions

In every trailer they will have codes and conventions such as:

• Film Title
• Captions and Reviews from newspapers and magazines
• Star Rating
• Music (diegetic sounds and non diegetic sounds)
• Production Companies
• Introduce famous actors
• Director's previous work
• Genre
• Montage. For example: for an action film the change of scene would be quick, build more tension throughout the trailer
• Non linear
• Voice Over

3rd October 2011

Trailers: The Theory

25% of the budget from a film will go into marketing.

A producer will usually employ a sells agent and that sells agent will have to sell the film to a distributor; the distributor is basically the one that helps the film to get recognised with marketing and advertisement.

Marketing companies will do test screenings of the film before they make up a trailer. They are two types of advertising; there is, above the line adverstising, basically this means this type of advertising has to be payed for whereas the other type is called below the line advertising which basically means the opposite, you wont usually have to pay for this type of advertising.

Above the line advertising: Magazines, billboards, newspapers, TV, radio, bus banners, phone booth, etc.

Below the line advertising: Facebook likes, premiers, film reviews; all of these give free media coverage for the film.

The marketing campaign is one of the main reasons why films are so popular now a days, they inform the audience about a film and encouraging them to see the film at the cinema.

Why is the trailer important?

The trailer is very important in order to have a successful film. It's more visual than magazines or billboards advertisement. They show actual scenes and key scenes from the film making it more interesting and they do set expectations from the audience.

Why is it important for a trailer to show us the genre and how is this established?

Genre is what people first think about when watching a trailer so it makes it very important for the film marketing because their decision about what to see will partly depend upon whether they enjoyed other similar films.

How does the trailer show that the film is worth going to see?

The marketing campaign use genre to gain the audience interest, however, the trailer must show why is the film different from others from the same genre by showing key scenes and key lines from the original film and this is known as the USP (unique selling point).

Distributing a Trailer

When is the trailer produced?

Most trailers in the film industry are produced at the same time as the film is being edited to become the final version that will be released in the cinema.

Global Releasing

Sometimes trailers are shown in a range of countries so it may have a range of release dates, meaning that the trailer must show the correct release date for each country so the audience is aware when the film is released. Trailers may be re-cut for different countries, maybe with different voice overs and also they might be different cuts from the film just to aim the interests of different audience groups.

Features of a Trailer

What are the features of a trailer?

Trailers are designed to capture the audience's attention and hold it until the film is released. They create anticipation for the audience of what is to come withing the film.

What types of trailer are there?

They are three types of trailers.

1. Full theatrical trailer: this type of trailer generally runs for two or three minutes in the cinema.
2. TV Spot: this one usually lasts no more than thirty seconds.
3. Teaser Trailer: this type of trailer is as short as ten seconds, it teases the audience so they can wait for the full theatrical trailer.

'Friends With Benefits' Trailer

'Crazy Stupid Love' Trailer