Thursday 29 December 2011

Lesson 12, 13 And 14

In lesson 12 we had a blogging catch up lesson which allowed us to complete any unfinished work that we may have had regarding our blogs. For me this lesson was helpful in many ways as I was already up to date with my work so this allowed me to improve my work by adding greater detail to what i had already done and correcting any mistakes that I may have made in my work. This lesson also helped me as I could check with my teachers to see if there was any work that I may have missed or if they had any problems with the layout or quality of work that i had put on my blog.

In lesson 13 we began to draw up our ideas for our pre title sequence on storyboards, this required our group thinking of how we could go about filming our title sequence. Also in this lesson we thought of some ideas of what font we could use for our pre title sequence titles. There were many ideas that we thought of when thinking about the titles for the title sequence as I had analysed many exisiting title sequences.This lesson gave me plenty of ideas for our pre title sequence as we were now placing all of the pieces together to make one picture. In this lesson we would use all the research we had previously done and combined it to plan and begin to draw up our storyboard for our pre title sequence. This lesson helped me as it gave me plenty of time in which to plan and draw our pre title sequence, the benefits of doing this in this lesson was that when one of us was drawing the other two members in our group could be thinking of ideas for the font for our titles.

In lesson 14 we finished off the drawing of our pre title sequence storyboards and began to look on the website 'Da Font' for different font types that we could use for our titles. In our group we designed a questionnaire with many possible fonts on and gave it to the class for them to decide which would be best for our title sequence. This lesson was very useful as it allowed us to get other peoples opinions on the fonts that we had chosen as well as which one they thought that would suit our title sequence best. Also the feed back we got from other students allowed us to broaden our minds with what font we could use. Furthermore the feedback that we were given was extremely useful as it gave us a chance to go back to the drawing board and see if there were any other fonts that matched the feedback we were given. This lesson was also useful as it allowed more time to plan and prepare our pre title sequence.

Wednesday 28 December 2011

Finishing Storyboard and Deciding On Typography For Our Pre Title Sequence

In this lesson we finished our storyboard for our pre title sequence and moved on to making the questionnaire for our typography for the rest of the class to decide which they liked best and which they thought suited our film best. Michael made the questionnaire and we as a group decided on which fonts we wanted to put on the questionnaire. Below is our questionnaire that we handed to the class.



This is the questionnaire that we gave to our class in order to see which title they liked best and which they thought best sutied our narrative and pre title sequence idea. The font title that the class liked best was this one below.

The class said they liked this one best as it was the font that looked the match when thinking of our pre title sequence. They also said that this font is a type of comical font which best indicated to the audience the theme of fluidness and the fact that the film we had done a pre title sequence for would be from the comedy genre.

In this lesson we looked at many font designs and picked out the ones we thought looked best to suit our pre title sequence and communicated comedy to the audience. The list of fonts which we have shown above are the ones that we gave to the audience on a sheet for them to decide which ones they like out of the list. We then took the answers from the class and decided based on their opinions aswell as our own and we decided that the typology above on its own should be the typology that we'd use in our pre title sequence.


Storyboarding And Typography Ideas

In this lesson we began to start drawing out our storyboards for our pre title sequence for our film. We already had an idea of what our storyboard may look like and how we may shoot this title sequence, we then just had to transfer our ideas onto the storyboards. We split the work between the three of us by each doing a shot on the storyboard paper; we done this so that we each got a chance to draw and to take part in the making and planning of our storyboard. The idea of our storyboard was thought up between the three of us. The first thing we established was the narrative of the title sequence, we then looked into how best to deliver the title to the audience such as; the font, colour and size of the words. This was important as the titles are one of the factors that communicates the genre of the film to the audience. The idea for our pre title sequence is as follows; our main character (Andrew Anderson) is on a sofa throughout the sequence, like his characters personality he is being lazy while laying back watching television. The props around him are mostly fatty foods and sugary drinks, which are on a table that Andrew's feet are resting on. The sound in the background which will be added on will be American sort of rock music, this will be played throughout the title sequence. The camera movement will be a 360 degree angle throughout the scene, starting at the back left of Andrew's head and ending with the camera looking at the front right of Andrew's  face. We will be using a medium close up shot of the main character Andrew, we will be using this shot continuously as the title sequence unfolds. Furthermore we are going to go with the fluidity theme of pre title sequences by the way that we show our titles to the audience, for example whenever Andrew moves his body, part of his body or object a title will be uncovered for the audience to see; doing this will continue the theme of fluidness.

When looking for typography ideas all we had to do was look on my blog as I had researched many different pre title sequences, mainly ones that can be linked to our film's genre. The three main pre title sequences we looked at on my blog were 'Happy Gilmore', 'Step Brothers' and 'Superbad'. I looked at these three films as they were similar in some way to the film that we had come up with. The ideas we got from these films was that the titles were black, block capital letters that were mostly placed alone away from any images. We took some ideas from these pre title sequences and encorporated them into our own ideas. The ideas that we thought of ourselves were the fluidity and placement of the titles within the shot. We looked for the font and colour on the website 'Da Font' which is a website consisting of various types of fonts. The ideas we got for the colour and font came from looking at the pre title sequences that i had previously researched on my blog. We picked out a few from 'Da Font' and placed them in a questionnaire which we handed out to the class to recieve their opinion on what they thought of the fonts and which they thought best suited our pre title sequence.

Blogging Lesson

In this lesson we had an hour specifically for blogging and catching up with our blog. When going into this lesson i was already very ahead with my work and therefore i had a chance to improve and make the work on my blog look that little bit better, for example I changed the lay out of my blog by making the widths longer so that my posts were not so compact. I added more writing to my previous lesson posts to make them more detailed. I then also had time to go through and edit and correct any mistakes that i may have made in my blogs. I was also able to make any changes that i needed to and move around anything i may have needed to in order to make my work look more professional and presentable.

Lesson 10 And 11

In lesson 10 our group presented our ptich for the new film that we would be making a pre title sequence for (Andrew Anderson). This helped me with my presenting skills as it allowed me to give a presentation on my pitch to communicate the different aspects of our film to the audience. My pitch presentation also allowed me to see what different points belong in a pitch for a film. It also allowed me to see just how much pressure people who are giving a pitch to film producers are under when giving the presentation. I think our pitch went very well as there wasn't many criticisms about our pitch and Shaun only gave a few comments on how to improve our pitch and paid us many compliments on our flawless narrative. The pitch below in the lesson 10 post is our pitch presentation with the correction that we have made. In conclusion I think that this presentation overall went very well as the class seemed to like the idea of the pitch.

In lesson 11 we was given time to make our pitches look more professional and to catch up on any work that was outstanding. This lesson was useful to me as I was able to correct any mistakes I had made on any previous posts. I was able to do this as i was ahead of my work with regards to my blogger and so instead of having to catch up with work on my blog in this lesson i had time to make my blog look more presentable.

Blogging Catch Up

This lesson was dedicated to revision so that if there was any work that we hadn't yet done we would be able to catch up on it in this lesson and get any outstanding work finished. When going into this lesson i was already very ahead with my work and so i had a chance to make my work look that little bit more proffesional on my blog and to go through and edit any mistakes that i may have made. I also have been able to make any changes that i have needed to and move around anything i may have needed to in order to make my work look more presentable.

Monday 12 December 2011

Presenting My Film Pitch

In this lesson we presented the pitches that we as a group made for our film that we have created. In this lesson we gave our pitch to the rest of the class whilst being filmed and after was given feedback on our pitching skills, our film idea and whether we answered all aspects of the film that the audience needed to know within the pitch. The aim of a pitch is to sell the film to the audience that are infront of you and this is what we as aimed to do as a group when presenting our pitch to everyone else. Once we had finished the pitch we were asked questions on our pitch and we were given comments on how we could possibly make it better. I think our pitch went well as there were no questions or criticisms from the class but there were a few from Shaun about our pitch itself, however there were not any about our film or our pre title sequence idea for the film. Shauns comments on our pitch were as follows;
  • To add the characters name in the Narrative slide of our pitch PowerPoint
  • To add the Genre of the film before the storyline (narrative) so that the audience know what the genre of the film is before they here the film idea
  • Also to add the director who will direct our film to the PowerPoint
  • Also to change one of the slides that says our film is a Romcom. We need to change it as our film is a comedy, not a Romcom 
This is my groups pitch PowerPoint presentation below, with all the corrections and errors, that Shaun pointed out to us, changed.
Pitch Andrew Anderson

Sunday 11 December 2011

Lesson 9 And My Own Research

Lesson 9 has helped me in many ways with regards to my pre title sequence as it has enabled me to get a better understanding of just how the film industry work, especially with regards to the distribution of a film. In this lesson i have learnt about what distribution is and just how films have been distributed in a certain way in order to communicate things to the audience. I have also looked into a Hollywood film myself and done a task set from the lesson to explore a film that is specifically from Hollywood. I chose to look at the new Sherlock Holmes film as it hasn't been released yet, so i saw this as a great opportunity to explore the distribution that this film would undertake and just how much would be put in to the distribution of this film. Looking at distribution in this lesson has helped me with regards to my pre title sequence and overall about films as it has enabled me to understand that the distribution also plays a big part in messages communicated to the audience about the film and it's themes and messages it is trying to communicate to the audience.

We also looked at how to write a pitch in this lesson and was later given the task of creating a pitch for our film that we are to make the pre title sequence for. This once again helped me as it gave me an added boost in knowledge of how to write a pitch and the basic fundamentals you would need in order to write a pitch and learning this in the lesson helped me with regards to the task we had to do which was to create a pitch for the film that we would be making a pre title sequence for and without the information that we was given in this lesson, i don't think that i would have been able to create the pitch that i created for the task.

My own research also helped me with planning my pre title sequence and also now looking at drawing sketches for the title sequence for our film. It helped me as it once again broadened my ideas of what i could possibly do when it came down to mapping out my pre title sequence and thinking about the design and how best to go about communicating certain themes to the audience. The pre title sequence that i have analysed in my own research is Superbad, this is a unique pre title sequence as it looks to be using silhouettes throughout of two of the main characters dancing and this communicates many of the themes of the film to the audience but also sets up many enigmas as it doesn't give the films narrative and plot away too much. When looking at this pre title sequence i think of how it could possibly be fitted to my film or how i could perhaps use it when drawing out the sketches for my pre title sequence but for now i will keep my ideas open, however when it comes to drawing the storyboards for my pre title sequence i will have many ways in which i could go about filming this title sequence as i have picked up many new ideas from specific title sequences that i have analysed.

Superbad - IMDB

Storyline

Seth and Evan are best friends, inseparable, navigating the last weeks of high school. Usually shunned by the popular kids, Seth and Evan luck into an invitation to a party, and spend a long day, with the help of their nerdy friend Fogell, trying to score enough alcohol to lubricate the party and inebriate two girls, Jules and Becca, so they can kick-start their sex lives and go off to college with a summer full of experience and new skills. Their quest is complicated by Fogell's falling in with two inept cops who both slow and assist the plan. If they do get the liquor to the party, what then? Is sex the only rite of passage at hand?

Taglines:Come and Get Some

Genres: Comedy

Motion Picture Rating (MPAA) Rated R for pervasive crude and sexual content, strong language, drinking, some drug use and a fantasy/comic violent image

Official Sites: Sony Pictures [France] Sony Pictures [United States]

Country: USA

Language: English

Release Date:14 September 2007 (UK)

Filming Locations:
California State University Northridge - 18111 Nordhoff Street, Northridge, Los Angeles, California, USA

Box Office
Budget:$20,000,000 (estimated)
Opening Weekend:$33,052,411 (USA) (19 August 2007) (2948 Screens)
Gross:$169,871,719 (Worldwide) (4 May 2008)

Company Credits
Production Co:Columbia Pictures, Apatow Productions





Superbad Pre Title Sequence Analysis



  • First sign of visuals that we see is a boy dancing in a strange fashion. It doesn’t look like it’s a dance movie as the way he’s dancing is something you might want to laugh at.
  • First sign of typology that we see is plain block capitals that change colour if anything crosses it on screen, visual wise.
  • The colours used suggest this will be an upbeat film as there are bright colour used which correspond with the titles on screen as the colours mix to make new colours.
  • The music used is an upbeat dancing sort of music, but not music you would find at a dance contest but more at party or getting ready for a party.
  • The second character we see in this pre title sequence is larger than the first character who is more slim and tall. The second character is dancing just as stupidly as the first character as if they don’t know what they are doing.
  • A good technique is used within the visuals of this pre title sequence as the character has be quadrupled to give an added affect to the title sequence and make it look more funkier.
  • We then see the two characters together in one shot and this time it is only one dancing whilst the other one watches on as if the guy is telling him, this is how you dance.
  • The audience can clearly see that this film is about two guys who are probably good friends as they dance together and they probably do a lot of things together, we can see this as they feel comfortable dancing with each other and enjoying themselves.
  • The effects are once again used well within the title sequence as the two characters are double in the visuals and this once again makes it look cooler within the title sequence.
  • Towards the end of the title sequence we can once again see that these two are good friends as they almost have a good time dancing with each other in rhythm to the music and no matter how stupid they look, they still carry on.

The only indication that we as the audience get that this film belongs in the comedy genre is the way the characters dance in this pre title sequence as it makes the audience laugh in the way they attempt to look cool in dancing. The pre title sequence does communicate some light tones to the audience as you can see by the upbeat music and the bright colours that this will be a quite upbeat film with light tones about it.  

Monday 5 December 2011

How To Write A Pitch

First - The pitch opening should be brief, one short sentence to introduce your film to the buyers.

Second - People should already understand the building block of the pitch. Such as for the film Se7en the audience understand that the building block for this is the seven deadly sins.

The pitch should also be no longer than 7-8 minutes long.

The pitch should also include; what the film is about but also the themes and messages it us trying to communicate. Furthermore it should include;
  • a general outline of story
  • apply Todorov's narrative theory
  • consider a whole story for the pitch
These are some of the questions you should consider when writing a pitch;
  • What genre is your film?
  • What other films in this genre have inspired your film/is your film similar too?
  • Who is the target audience for your film?
  • When will the film be released (what season?)
  • How much will your film cost to make?
  • How much will it make?
  • Who will star in the film?
  • Who will direct the film?
Using the Questions above and what i have learnt from this post of how to write a pitch, i have now been given the task in my group to write a pitch for the film that we have made. Our Pitch will have to cover all apsects of what is written above in order to make it a good pitch and in order to do this my group have to create a presentaion in which we will present to the class who will give us feedback on our pitch and the film idea in general.

The Distribution Process

There are several critical things the distributor must consider in order to create a productive campaign:

Who is the target audience?
The distributor will think about the demographic and psychographic profile of the larget audience.
Demographic profile includes: gender, age, socio-eonomic class and ethnicity.
There are many measures used for identifying psychographics proflies, however that most commonly used by advertisers is Young and Rubicam's 4Cs (cross cultural consumer characterisation)

What do the target audience do?
what magazines and newspapersdo they read? where do they travel and how? what are their interests? what other films are they likely to watch?
The distributor will aim to define everything about the audience, in order to maximise profit for the film, by targeting advertising in the most appropriate places. For example, if the audience is unlikely to take public transport, but likely to purchase political magazines the distributor can avoid the tube station posters and instead buy advertising space in The Economist.
The distributor will find out about their audience through surveys and data analysis and will divide their data into three areas:
1) who the audience is
2) what they think
3) their media

Is there a wider audience this film could apeal to?
Major studio projects are so successful because they are mainly family films. Distributors will look for secondry audiences or whether a film has mass audience appeal, they may create a number of different poster campaigns for example in order to appeal to these different audiences. This means they could advertise the film in trailers and posters as action/adventure (mass appeal), then Science Fiction and Romance (secondary audience) if there are elements of these genres in the film.

What majorcast or crew are involved in the project?
The distributor will consider how to maximise the exposure of key cast and crew, measuring the successful of their most recent productions will not only allow the distributor to see what audiences particular stars attract and perhaps widen the audience appeal in the marketing campaign, but it will also allow them to see which see which stars or crew (mainly the director/producer) should feature prominently in the advertising campaign.

Film Industry - Distribution

Objectives:
  • To be able to indicate how film distribution works.
  • To begin to understand the difference between the US and UK film systems.
Keywords:
Producers
Distributors
Exhibitor
Studios


A film distributor is the link between the producer and the exhibitors (the cinema chains and television networks) their aim is to get as many people as possible to see the film.
The distributor markets the film and develops an appropriate advertising campaign.
To market successfully the distributor has to target the appropriate audience.
This can be easy if there is a star but harder in the case of low budget independant films.

After learning about the film industry and distribution, we were then given the task of researching a new Hollywood film on IMDB.com that hasn't been released yet and create a PowePoint on the specific distributor of the film to try and cover all aspects of the following questions;
  • Who are they?
  • Why are they distributing this film?
  • Identify the main target audience, their interests and media use and any secondary/mass audience apeal.
  • Idetify key cast/crew/pre-existing property and the film's USP.
  • Identify the success of similar films by the recent director and/or key cast.
The task was optional in whether you wanted to do it in pairs or independantly. I chose to do it independantly as although it maybe a lot more simpler and less work when doing it in pairs, i feel that i would learn more about distribution if doing the PowerPoint by myself as then i would be able to answer all the aspects of this task independantly and gain more knowledge on the subject. Below this is my distrbution PowerPoint on the film Sherlock Holmes - A Game Of Shadows.

Sunday 4 December 2011

Lesson 7, 8, Shaun's Hw And My Own Research

In lesson 7 my group presented our groundhog day idea to the class and then watched the rest of the classes groundhog day ideas. This gave me many ideas as to what things i could do for my pre title sequence as there were many different aspects of how best to go about doing a pre title sequence for this new British version of the film.  Also the ideas that other people came up with and the different ways in which you could do the pre title sequence were intriguing as i was able to take ideas for other people's presentation of the ground hog day idea and perhaps twist them so that they could fit my film or even just use little ideas for my own pre title sequence that may make it look better or can assist it in helping me to communicate the themes of my film to the audience. This lesson also helped me with regards to my presenting skills and my confidence as i was able to present my groups piece of work to the class and see the response of what they thought of it and whether they had any comments on it that i could perhaps correct or things that the class thought went well about the idea. Also in this lesson we started to brainstorm our ideas for a new film that we would make the pre title sequence for, i thought this was good timing as i had made many notes on what i could do for my pre title sequence such as little ideas and aspects of how to go about doing it; perhaps animation or just one shot. Also the benefits of brainstorming our new film in our groups is that on my blog i had just done a few brainstorms on different ideas for different genres that we could possible do so then this helped me out a lot when it came to thinking of different ideas for our film. Having done some brainstorms on different genres i was able to suggest some ideas to my group  and see what they thought and whether they like any ideas that i had thought of.

In lesson 8 we as Paramount Vantage watched the films pitches of the other groups to see which one best suited our studio. This lesson helped me to understand many things about pitches and different studios as i was then able to understand that particular studios looks to put money into particular films depending on their budget, their genre and cast used. Also listening to the pitches to our film helped me to understand just what should be included within a pitch and just how to present a pitch as the rest of the groups demonstrated to me at the front of the class. Doing this task helped me to understand perhaps just what film studio might be linked with my film more than other film studios and when looking at the budget, cast and story line i have used, i think that one of the big 6 would be best suited for my film as i wouldn't see a film studio such as paramount vantage ever putting money in towards my film as they go for low budget drama/comedies. Also towards the end of the lesson we as the film studio presented our presentation of reasearch about our film production company to the rest of the class which gave me a boost in presenting as i got more practise at it.

I found that when doing Shaun's Hw it was very useful as i was able to get an understanding of what films, that are similar to my films, pre title sequences are like and in researching and analysing these two film i was able to get an understanding of the sort of budget, the cast, setting and director that it would need to use. This piece of homework has also helped me with ideas when thinking about my group and what we could do for our pre title sequence. Having looked and now analysed aa pre title sequence within the same genre as my groups film, we now know just what themes to communicate within the pre title sequence as well as what typology to use for the titles.

Finally when doing my own research this helped me with regards to my pitch and constructing my film idea as i have mentioned above. This has helped me as i am now able to understand what budget i will use for my film and also how much the film will make. This post has also helped me with what director, cast, setting and tag line to use as i have done research on Step Brothers and Happy Gilmore which is similar to my film and i can now give reason for my groups choices with regards to the director, cast, setting and tag line that we have all come together to think of.

Step Brothers - IMDB

Storyline

Brennan Huff and Dale Doback are both about 40 when Brennan's mom and Dale's dad marry. The sons still live with the parents so they must now share a room. Initial antipathy threatens the household's peace and the parents' relationship. Dad lays down the law: both slackers have a week to find a job. Out of the job search and their love of music comes a pact that leads to friendship but more domestic disarray compounded by the boys' sleepwalking. Hovering nearby are Brennan's successful brother and his lonely wife: the brother wants to help sell his step-father's house, the wife wants Dale's attention, and the newlyweds want to retire and sail the seven seas. Can harmony come from the discord?

Taglines: They grow up so fast.

Details

Official Sites: Sony Pictures [United States]
 
Country: USA

Language: English

Release Date: 29 August 2008 (UK)

Also Known As: Hermanastros

Filming Locations: 1987 Midwick Dr, Altadena, California, USA

Budget: $65,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend: $30,940,732 (USA) (27 July 2008) (3094 Screens)

Gross: $100,468,793 (USA) (21 September 2008)

Company Credits

Production Co: Columbia Pictures, Relativity Media, Apatow Productions






Happy Gilmore - IMDB

Storyline

A Hockey player wannabe finds out that he has the most powerful golf drive in history. He joins the P.G.A. tour to make some money to save grandma's house. The downside is that his hocky player mentality doesn't really go on the P.G.A. tour. Especially with the favorite to win the championship.

Taglines: He doesn't play golf... he destroys it.

Details

Country: USA

Language: English

Release Date: 19 July 1996 (UK)

Also Known As: Adam Sandler's Happy Gilmore

Filming Locations: Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada


Box Office
Budget: $10,000,000 (estimated)

Gross: $38,624,000 (USA)

Admissions: 400 (Netherlands) (1 January 1998)
Filming Dates: 6 July 1995 - 1 September 1995

Company Credits
Production Co: Universal Pictures, Brillstein-Grey Entertainment, Robert Simonds Productions