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.