Evaluation Question 4

Evaluation Question 3

Evaluation Question 2

Evaluation Question 1

Final Trailer

Film Poster

This is the poster for our film. We wanted to create something that conforms to traditional conventions of romance film posters, and we gained inspiration from various posters, some of which are below:

                     

We loved the idea of having two separate stills, one above the other, merged into one, clearly shown in these three posters. 

Film Website

http://emily-kelly.wix.com/thedeepend

This is the link to our website. Our aim was to produce something informative and interactive, but also something that heavily reflected they key features of our film. The aesthetics of our film trailer was always something very important to us, and we wanted to incorporate a similar ambience in our trailer, hence the video in the background of the homepage, which is actually our initial mood video. The website also includes information about the plot and characters, as well as links to social media pages and a link to the music we used in our trailer on soundcloud. 

Conforming to Theorists

Todorov's Narrative Theory:

Franco-Bulgarian philosopher, Todorov, studied fairy-tales and established this theory about the stages a story goes through in a typical narrative: 

1. Equilibrium - A State of normality
2. Disruption - An event that disrupts the normality
3. Recognition - The hero recognises the disruption
4. Complications - The hero meets problems in trying to restore the equilibrium 
5. New Equilibrium - The hero restores a new state of normality

This influenced our trailer, as at the start there is a sense of normality when we see the couple in love. However, the introduction of the brother provides the disruption, and the break-down sequence shows both that the protagonist has recognised this disruption and also provides the complications. However, of course, being a trailer, we did not include the end state, as we wanted to keep the audience interested and intrigued to find out what happens. 

Social Media Sites

Editing And Post Production

We edited the footage on Adobe Premiere Pro which was different to Final Cut Pro but meant that I was able to learn a new program with different effects. The Adobe Creative Cloud Package also came with After Effects and Photoshop. After Effects helped us with colour correction and adding grain and noise to create a sort of Super Eight, vintage effect whereas Premiere Pro gave us a very accurate and easily navigable program to create our trailer with.

We added images over the top where festival logos and our own production logo were edited so that the black was transparent and they could be placed over our own footage. 

Here is an example of layering footage during the montage sequence. We altered the opacity so that you could see both shots together in one frame. 

Choice Of Font

We chose a basic font, Avenir, inspired by the trailer for the Romantic Drama 'Carol'. We wanted to keep it simple to compliment the aesthetics and avoid something to bold and extravagant. 

Across all three of our ancillary products we used a variation of this font, from 'Avenir Medium' to "Avenir Light' and simply 'Avenir', occasionally placing it in bold for emphasis, and keeping it thin and simple for a more subtle effect. We made sure that we kept the font the same for continuity across our trailer, poster and website. 

Difficulties Encountered When Editing

Film Title

Deciding on a title for our film was a difficult task as we had lots of ideas, focusing on different aspects and themes of the film. Some of the ideas included:

Maybe One Day
White Lies
A String of Secrets
The Right One
Take Its Course

'The Deep End' was our final decision as it had a lot of meaning behind it. Firstly it reflects the dramatic ending of the film where, in the trailer, it is suggested that the protagonist drowns, thus 'The Deep End' is a literally reference to deep water. It also gives the impression of danger, reflecting the danger of our protagonists actions throughout the film, particularly her infidelity. 

Our Production Company Logo

This is the logo for our company name. It was created using Microsoft Word and has been designed so that the black in the logo above becomes transparent when placed over another image, which can be seen in our film trailer. 

Behind the Scenes - Bloopers

Romance Poster Analysis

I have selected a conventional film poster of a Romance film and analysed the key features that influenced our decisions when creating our own film poster. 

Filming Schedule

We managed to film our trailer in 5 sessions, each focussing on different aspects of the trailer. 

Session 1:
The aim behind this session was more to get ideas and tests shots, but the success of the session meant that we decided to use quite a few of the shots in our trailer. The session lasted an hour, and was filmed at around 7am when the sun was just rising. 
We filmed in the car, so that we could get some beautiful light shots through the windscreen of the car. I also filmed some shots of Jordan on the footpath in the sunrise, we created some amazing lighting and the perfect atmosphere for our trailer. 

Session 2:

In our second session, we filmed the underwater shots using a go pro after school. We knew we only had a few hours before it would get too dark, but this worked to our advantage, as the sun was low enough to create some defined lighting underwater. We filmed at my Granny's swimming pool, as not only would we have private access, but she has a dome over the pool, which meant it wasn't too cold to film, the location wasn't given away, and it let the right amount of light in. 

Session 3:

We filmed the majority of our scenes on October 30th, and began the day at 7.30am in order to get the perfect morning lighting. We also filmed in the prime of autumn as the colouring of the trees helped to enhance our aesthetics. We began filming the montage shots on the footpath, as the outdoor lighting was at its best. I then drove the group back to my house, where we filmed the sequence in the woods, as well as the car scene and the argument scene in the kitchen. We filmed each scene as if it was the whole scene of a film, so that the most dramatic bits could be used, and we gathered many excess shots for a wider choice when it came to editing. 


Session 4:

We also filmed the bonfire scene after school, however we filmed during the winter, and therefore it got darker earlier, and left us with more hours to film. We created a fire pit and used sparklers, and experimented for a long time with different shots, giving us a large amount of footage that we could use.

 Session 5: 
This session was quite unplanned, but we decided to film some more filler shots for the breakdown sequence, including close-ups of Jordan, and her getting angry at the situation. 

Audience Feedback

After we had finished the first draft of our trailer, we had a feedback session where fellow media students watched our trailer and filled out these forms. The top picture shows what our main improvements were and how many people agreed followed by some examples of our forms. In total, we received 19 feedback forms which helped us greatly.


In addition, once our trailer was completed, we posted a survey on our Facebook page to see what our audience thought of our trailer. This was the response to the last question.

By posting our trailer on our Facebook page, we were also able to get feedback through the comment feature. 

Behind The Scenes: Bonfire

Here are some stills from our session of filming the bonfire scenes. These scenes were really great to shot and tested our knowledge on alteration camera exposure and aperture in order to allow the correct amount of light into the camera to allow the shot to look professional, and to create the romantic atmosphere which is pertinent in the montage sequence where these shots were featured. 

Audience Expectation

TRAILER - FIRST DRAFT

This is the first draft of our trailer. After gaining some feedback from our peers, our next steps are going to be:

1) Refining the sound levels
2) Changing some of the filters and their levels

Certificate Rating

According to BBFC, as a group, we feel the most appropriate rating to give our trailer would be a 15.

The implication of domestic abuse in our trailer would make it unsuitable for children under the age of 15, as they may find it upsetting and parents may feel it is unsuitable for them. There is also an underlying tone of threat and violence, again, making it unsuitable for children under the age of 15. It would also be likely that bad language and sexual references would be included in our film, although these are not shown in the trailer. 

Romance Genre Conventions

This is a brief outline of typical romance genre conventions I made using stop motion

Iconic Romance Films & Their Directors

Character Research

For our film trailer, we have decided to create a romantic drama, which focuses a lot on the aesthetic elements.  We drew inspiration from super 8 footage and examples from Lana Del Rey and films such as 'Like Crazy' and 'Love Rosie'.  We wanted to create old styled footage with new technology, embracing new and early cinema, and also showing that the past, present and future don't have to be separate, but can work together.

The trailer focuses on the secret love affair of a girl and her boyfriends brother, unbeknownst to the audience until half way through the trailer.  We cast myself as the girl as I also do theatre studies, so would be able to embrace the role.  In order to develop the groups and my own understanding of the character I have made a mood board selecting different elements on which to base my character.

The mood board shows a range of characters such as Allison from The Breakfast Club, Angela Chase from My So Called Life and Anna from Like Crazy.  I chose these characters to take inspiration from not only due to their sense of style and appearance but due to their personalities, they can all come across as quite shy and with low self confidence, but once they become comfortable their confidence comes through, this would work well with my character due to the romantic nature of the trailer.  Costume would include a lot of oversized wear, with big coats and jumpers, dark in colour, this would also contrast with the white dress worn in the underwater scenes, adding to the dream like atmosphere.

Deconstruction of Romantic Drama Film Website