The main characters are young adults, which is the main reason why the target audience is of a similar age. The audience can easily relate to the storyline when the action is about people their age. This film develops conventions of rom/com/drama’s, but lacks challenging them.
The conventions of a romantic/comedy/drama movie are: cheesy jokes, a dilemma, a person completely in love with the other character, but that character completely oblivious, and dramatic, unrealistic storylines. Films with an example of these conventions are:
The Notebook picture clearly has a red theme running in the movie, alike to 'Get a Life'. This is a parallel to similar movies in the rom-com-drama hybrid genre. All of the other conventions shown in the example movies are a part of ‘Get a Life’, for example: the main characters are in love, when a tragic ‘dilemma’ strikes, killing the female. The third, and final, main character pushes her way into the boys life, getting attention from the dead character who is beyond the grave. She returns, which is unrealistic, and haunts the boy humorously.
The only convention that is really challenged is the ‘ghost’, which isn’t a common convention of romantic/comedy/drama films. The idea that it is unrealistic fits the conventions, but the whole sci-fi idea of a ’ghost’ challenges a real film which is a hybrid of these three genres.
The theme colour of red suggests love, and death. This was used because most rom/com/drama films have a ‘theme colour’ that is used on posters, titles, and any advertising for the film.
The colour palette is bright at the beginning of the trailer, to show the happiness of school, until we see the heartbreak of Megan. The expected outcome of this bright introduction to the film was to grab the attention of the audience, especially the younger members. I personally find a bright looking, happy movie much more appealing than a dull, miserable one so therefore figured that if I like this then its highly likely that other members of the public will also. It's not an informed decision to make but with asking around, I got answers to related questions to which 8/10 people said they would prefer to watch a brightly coloured opening movie scene than a dark one. In editing, this opening scene wasn't completely light and needed some hue adjustments to make it more vividly coloured.
Antithetically, the colour black is also recurring throughout as that also connotes death. The return of Charli from the grave involves her wearing all black to a wedding. This clearly shows she’s come from a dark place: purgatory. This scene comes further into the trailer and is therefore not contradicting the opening scene which is preferred to be bright. The death of Charli comes about a third of the way through the film, which allows the audience to 'love' her character. I hoped that they would empathise with the feelings felt by Tyler and Megan due to the tragic loss of their friend and, even though its not played upon and she returns, it would evoke emotional involvement on the audience's part. This outcome couldnt be tested as we only made a trailer, but if I talk a guess as to what reaction we would recieve, it would be that her death was a shock, and her return was a relieving moment for the audience, as they felt they had lost the character. This guess came from the involvement I feel when watching films as I know I get more involved than I should.
The part of the trailer when Tyler leaves was filmed at night, at the same time as the scene of the night before. To show a notable difference, we changed the hue/contrast of the scene. This allowed the lighting to be more pronounced, with a more extreme white balance to suggest dawn/morning. The shot-reverse-shot of the conversation shows a darkness in the window which was unavoidable due to the only available filming time. The mise-en-scene clearly shows a bedroom and the adjusted lighting creates the desired effect for the morning time frame.
In terms of the costumes, we represented the social groups easily and less stereotypically than truly possible. They included typical everyday clothes: leggings, dresses, plain colours, patterns, etc. In contrast to that, each character had to dress up rather than down so we see the difference in them through the text. The way they mature is shown through costume in the way of the everyday clothes turn to wedding, formal wear that shows the age change.
The sounds added were simple and effective. Most were diagetic, even though added in editing because they were part of the narrative, and came through it. An example of this is the bell noise heard at the beginning, after the voice-over, and before the start of the school scene. This sound is a bridging noise and allows a fast cut between completely different scenes, effective in grabbing the audience's attention and keeping it throughout the trailer.
The main product and ancillary texts, an Empire magazine cover and a movie poster, work well together. The research into Empire covers began wi
th simply looking for covers with a white background, as this is a convention of rom/com/drama movies. The Megan Fox cover was suitable as it allowed me to see the layout created when the background is white.The change of a title was also an option as it would clearly represent the idea of romance, like the image changed the magazine title to black, like batman, with a blue outline. These colours fit well as they represented that colour palette of the film.
The final front cover used a simple, chirpy colour palette including summer-y colours such as pinks and reds. The immediate colour of red is the main theme colour for the movie so it was obviously going to be a part of the front cover. The idea that the characters are divided clearly shows the jealousy, and the expression on the face of Megan shows she doesn't appreciate being second best for Tyler. The plain white
background is a typical rom-com-drama convention while the red blocks behind the writing is an Empire feature. The costumes worn are those like in the movie, with the black theme suggesting death, while Tyler's red shirt suggesting love or blood. The affectionate hug between Charli and Tyler shows they're clearly together, and Megan's expression connotes hurt, or pain on her part. She shows jealousy in her eyes and sadness in her mouth. The front cover fits the film, and is a professional looking Empire cover. A website is an output device for Empire. This would allow the audience to visit the front cover online, and be viewed by the target audience,The idea for the poster, with Charli being transparent, came from the most obvious representation of a ghost. They're stereotypically see through, just like in films such as 'Casper', and this idea could easily be displayed on a poster. It would also allow the audience to easily justify that Charli is a ghost at the end of the movie or, without watching the trailer, they could imagine she is a ghost throughout. Other posters which are for similar movies of this genre use plain white backgrounds, and bold colours. The red and black theme runs through the poster also, and tells the audience when they can see the movie, and where. All the typical requirements of a poster are present, while showing the audience a sneak peak of what to expect in summer 201
0.The output devices are the internet, and I would fund a website for advertising. Websites which would attract my target audience are Facebook, Myspace, Bebo, etc. The social networking sites attract young adults and parents who're trying to reconnect with old friends. They would take their kids to see the film on recommendation of Facebook adverts down the right hand side of the webpage. While advertising would be payed for on the internet, I would also fund billboards in town centres. These would attract the target audience of young people, and families who're looking for a night out at the cinema. The movie has no rating as its appropriate for anyone of any age.
Both texts show a clear image of what happens in the film, and use typical conventions of rom/com/drama movie texts.
The audience feedback was positive, but clearly stated that the first half of the trailer was more action packed, and funny than the futuristic, ’3 years later’, part. After the first viewing, we edited the future part more to make it fit well with the school days. The change in music clearly shows the change in time period, and allows the audience to anticipate what will happen now as an ellipsis separates the film trailer.
A second, and final, viewing of the trailer allowed us to see that the audience would be interested in seeing the full movie if it was in cinemas. They agreed that storyline works well, and it fits into the hybrid genre we intended.
We used media technologies, such as the internet, to explore the genre we chose for our trailer. This allowed us to research thoroughly the conventions of these genres, view images of the posters for real movies, and take ideas from them for our film trailer. We watched a variety of trailers online when researching our chosen genre, and this allowed us to see what sort of shots, transitions, and fonts were used in romantic/comedy/drama films. These were simple mid-shots, long-shots, or close-up’s with adventurous, cheesy transitions. The fonts used were always bold, and written in higher case lettering, clearly catching the eye of the intended audience, making them want to look at the poster and see the film.
When planning our film, the internet provided us with a never-ending supply of information to wade through. We worked together to decide on the storyline, shots, transitions, etc, and managed to plan out a film trailer with a simple, yet effective storyline.
Even though the editing process was unexpected, and very messy we managed to pull together a trailer which included many rom/com/drama conventions, with a typical storyline that our audience liked.
Over the past year, as a growing A2 student, I managed to change dramatically. Last year I spent time editing with my group, and spent even more time researching, planning and writing up everything that happened during the process of editing. While working in a different group this year, I didn't partake in half as much editing as was possible. This wasn't due to a lack of commitment, it was purely because I had other unchallengeable commitments such as work in my daily routine. The editing process mainly happened out of school hours where I was clearly unavailable, and wasn't forewarned. I was penalized for this and I personally feel that was unnecessary.
This year I took on an acting role, unlike last year and took part in the planning of the film more than last year. The fact that I didn't take part in as much editing as possible is not something I regret. It helped the other two group members develop their skills on Adobe Premier Elements, while mine were average from the previous years editing.
The whole process of making this trailer was not smooth at all. A bump was hit almost every day, and the idea that my commitments got in the way is not something I accept as my fault. The technical errors including lack of sound, and our files being deleted from the computer were unavoidable just like other commitments. When everything finally got sorted the trailer was much more developed, unlike what it would have been without the bumps in the road. The trailer is a well fitting idea of a rom/com/drama and its definitely a text to be proud of.
hello, do you miss me? i hear you say you do but its not the way i'm missing you.
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