This is our final film for our coursework!! We are really happy and proud with how this turned out! We think that we have used a good variety of shots and angles through out, and we also feel that our music fits in perfectly with our film adding more tension and atmosphere to the film.
All in all, we are happy with what we have produced and really hope we get a good mark!!
We know it is not perfect as we can not produce a hollywood quality film but with the technologies and equipment we had we feel we have worked well and have created a good quality film.
What kind of media unstitution might distribute your media project and why?
Distribution is how you get a film promoted, to then get it into a cinema. The main and most successful ways of distribution includes advertising and marketing, selling posters and memorabilia, which are all used to raise the awareness and also to gain attention.
Hammer:
Hammer productions is an independent production company based in London. One of their most successful films is 'Let Me In'. With the main character being played by Kodi Smit-McPhee. Before the official release of this film, it was publicised globaly, with movie trailers and sneak previews being shown across the globe, this raised the awareness of the film, and built up tensions which later led to more views when it hit the cinemas. The film also has its own official global merchandise store, aswell as both UK and US facebook pages, a twitter page and a US site. By having your film being advertised on 2 of the most popular social networking sites, this would have definatly risen the awareness of this film. Along side many television interviews on both US and UK tv shows, the film itself was still not over publicised and doubted before its general release, and by doing so this has definatly not only rose the awareness of the film its self, but also the production company too.
There are other big films produced by hammer, such as The Resident, Beyond The Rave, To The Devil A Daughter and the most recent Women In Black.
The main and most effective way that films distribute their films are through trailers. Below is the official trailer for 'Let Me In'.
I feel that this was mainly aimed at teenagers and young adults more then any other age groups. Seeing as the film was released in November 2011, this trailer was shown in many different cinemas across the country through out late 2010/early 2011 to promote the film and its punchline, creating excitment for the actual realease.
The film was still promoted in the obvious ways aswell for example;
Radio
Cinema
Social networking
Youtube.
Personally I think that considering they're just a small budget, standard London based film company, they managed to advertise there film effectivly, with it going on to be a huge hit.
Liongate:
Lionsgate productions is a majourly world wide brand based in America. It makes films worth millions of Dollars and usually have some A list celebrites star in them.
This is one of Lionsgates massive films, The Slaughter, released in 2006. Again this was advertised in exaclty the same way in which Let Me In was advertised, radio, television, interviews, trailers and via social networks. However The Slaughter had an advantage, as it was being distributed by Lionsgate who are already a well known and loved film producer globaly so this automatically gives it a lee-way!
Overall I think that Lionsgate would have more money to spend on advertisment/promotion of the film itself, where as Hammar would concerntrate more on actually making the film the best it could be. Other films that Lionsgate have produced are:The SAW series, Kick Ass and From Paris with Love.
Seeing as we are no where near as big as film company's like Lionsgate and Hammer we needed to think of other ways to to promote our film, and get it out there and recognised. We looked at local film festivals like BANG! film festival, which takes place in Nottingham City Centre every year at the broadway cinema in Hockley. Every year it showcases the local talent and lastest range of short films produced by local talent. Also there are talent scouts at the events so this could lead into great praise and recognition by the scouts themselves.
Here is an example of a film from the BANG! Film Festival:
Below are some sample posters that have been inspirations for the poster that we have created. We looked at posters that are in the same genre category as our film which is Ghost. We have used 2 of the films that we watched earlier on in the course as part of our inspiration, along side the Paranormal Activity poster.
These are the posters for 'What Lies Beneath', 'Paranormal Activity' and 'Dark Water'. After taking into consideration what our film is about, we feel that the Paranormal Activity is the best poster to use the most inspiration for our own. We have decided for our own poster to take a still shot from our horror film of the bed and then we are going to edit it on Photoshop. We want to place the image over a plain black background and have bold, block color font below and above the image naming our title, our logo and other useful information.
This is our own poster for Coraline. We decided to use a similar design as the Paranormal Activity poster. We got a picture from our film of the main character in the bed with a scared expression on his face, we then put a dark black/grey background. We used white block font on top of the dark background so that the titles look better and bolder. Underneath the picture we decided to colour the font in a dark, deep blood red so that this fits in with the conventions of our film.
How does you media product represent particular social groups?
Drag Me To Hell:
This is an extract from Drag Me To Hell. In this clip it represents how the older generation (the old women) is seen as the villain. With the young girl giving off the impression that she is scared and vulnerable, this suggests that in this case, the younger generation is the victim where as the old lady is the threat. In my opinion i feel in some ways both characters fit the stereotypes of there generation. The young girl is seen as a hard working person, who has pretty much a perfect life style. When the old women starts interrogating her at first she plays it cool, but after time she starts to get a bit aggravated which is when her fear starts to come through. Similarly the old lady fits the stereotype of being a bit crazy and mad. However i don't think I could really comment on this as stereotypically not every old lady is possessed!! I also think that the gender is important, by making both the victim and the threat female, this shows that she typical stereotype is proven yet also broken. The young girl fits the stereotype as most people assume that young females are typically vulnerable and scared of pretty much everything. Where as the older lady breaks that as she is shown as being evil.
Paranormal Activity:
In this clip from Paranormal Activity, the threat isnt shown. However the victims are, the victims fit into the following social class groups; both female and male who seem to fall under the 18-25 year age group. From this clip we cant really state what class the fall under, however I think it's safe to say that they are working class citizens. This is represented through the mise en scene. The setting of the bedroom istelf gives us the impression that they are working class, as they can afford goos furniture and a nice house etc. The age is represented through the way that the characters apprearance. Even though the way the young female character is behaving, gives of the impression that she is younger then she appears. However, to me, both the characters looke between the ages of 18-25. The genders of the characters dont need to be represented in any special way, as it is pretty obvious what genders both characters are!
In my opinion, i feel that the characters DO follow the stereo typical of age and gender, however I feel that race isn't as important as the others, as the race doesnt have much of an affect on the characters/film itself. In horror films, female characters tend to act girly and scared whilst under threat. This was potrayed through this clip from Paranormal Activity. The male genre always tend to be potrayed as keeping their cool in scary situations, making sure that the other character (which tends to be a female) is alright and safe. Almost as if the male characters are putting on a act!
These are our test shots for the actors that we have chosen. We felt that it was right for us to include generic and age conventions because typically in horror films, the younger character is seen as the threat. So we decided it would look better if we used a young girl as the threat in ours.
Our storyboard also fits in with this as through out it has perfect opportunities to show the conventions we are using. The ghost girl we use is haunting the older male character, which fits in with other typical ghost films, by having the threat as a child.
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After researching into many different films that fit in with our genre; Ghost/Thriller horror film, we have come to the conclusion that on average, both genders (Females and Males) and the age groups that enjoy this horror genre.
Most of these films have the threat as a young girl, and the victim as a young person between the ages of 18-25.
We
have come to the conclusion that we have decided to make our horror
film a 15 certificate, as it fits the correct criteria. Also, we are
going to make our target audience both gender groups and for anyone
between the ages of 15 and 18 (however people over the age of 18 are
welcome to watch aswell!)
