Rough Cut Feedback

We had finished gathering all of the different shots that we wanted for our teaser trailer and put them in the right order so that we had a rough cut and people could start to see our idea. The idea of having a rough cut is to get feedback on the shots that we have already and then the feedback given can be taken into account and put into the final cut. This would let us know what people thought of our trailer so far and what they would like to see. Below are the suggestions and feedback given to us from others in our class:

1. Transitions- At this point we had not put a lot of transitions into our trailer and therefore there was not much continuity. We knew that we had to put more transitions between each of the shots to make it flow better and also look more professional. The group also pointed out that we must have transitions between almost every shot because we need to make it fast paced and look like a real teaser trailer.

2. Music- Music is a huge part of a trailer because it has to give off and create its own atmosphere. After not yet putting in the music that we had, it was very clear that it was missing. When the group was watching our feedback they noticed straight away that music was missing and without it, the trailer was very plain and boring.

3. Sound- There was one specific point in the rough cut teaser trailer that the sound needed changing significantly- the scene by houses of parliament where the two agents are talking. While we were actually shooting this scene we thought is was best to take it from three different angles. This worked really well for us because the shot and sound that we had originally had an excellent shot but poor sound. The feedback showed us that this had to be changed because if the sound quality. Therefore, when we are going to edit for our final cut, we need to take the sound from the other shots we took and make it in sync with the original shot.

These were the main parts of the feedback that needed changing desperately to make our teaser trailer have the right impact on the audience. We feel that the changes will work and will make our teaser trailer a high standard.

Intertextuality In our production

Intertextuality in media texts is where one media text borrows from another one, and may even borrow from various texts, and transforms those factors into one media text. This is a form of postmodernism. A very good example of this would be in recent years the 'spoof genre'. This takes characters, plots and conventions of existing films and creates something called pastiches ('Meet the spartans' 'epic movie' and 'scary movie' etc). Another good example is a recent music video called 'rude boy' by artist 'Rhianna' where it borrrows a retro theme also tied in with modern an other themes. Also s good example is the novel 'Frankenstien', the idea always seems to be substituted into another story, the prime example bieng 'Van Helsing'.

In our production, we have borrowed ideas from the Television series '24', which carries the spy theme and thriller, also the interrogation scene in the trailer is taken from many scenes in 24. Also we have borrowed from texts such as 'James bond' and the film 'Shooter' which carrie a action/mystery (conspiracy genre). I believe that borrowing from other texts in order to make our production intertextual which effectively makes it alot more proffesional and exciting.
Sam Morris

Intertextuality

Intertexuality is where a text will borrow, change and take ideas from a previously made text. There are many well known texts that you can see intertextualityin. A good example of this which can clearly be seen is in 'Spoof Moives' like 'Scary Movie' and 'Superhero Movie'. These films have taken ideas from other films and made it into their own recreated version with similar conventions, characters and storyline.

Our production has deveolped from last year's production- London's Finest. We did this because we wanted a more serious version of this. London's Finest however, was intertextual because it had many ideas taken from Johnny English, which was a pastiche of James Bond.

James Bond ---> Johnny English ---> London's Finest ---> Conspiracies

You can see the borrowed ideas from last year's production like the group of secret agents and the enemies plotting an attack. This is also very similar to the Johnny English and James Bond storylines. I think that our film trailer is very intertextual.

Steven Bourner

Viral Marketing

Viral marketing is something that would really appeal to us and people of a similar age because we have realised the popularity and success of viral marketing. We believe that this would be a good idea because it will help us to promote our film. This campaign can be done through social networking sites like Facebook. We think that this is the best way for us to promote due to a number of factors. The main one is the audience that it can appeal to- all kinds of people of different ages have a Facebook account and therefore would be able to view our page. Also, it has been proven to be a success because Cloverfield created viral marketing campaigns on Myspace and Facebook by giving the characters their own page which advertised and promoted the film. This was very successful and had lots of hits, and could be a big contributor towards the success of the film itself.

After researching the success of Cloverfields viral promotion we believe that it would be a good idea to also do this because it doesn’t cost anything and it can generate a wide fan base for out film.

Music

Extensive research showed that music is a huge part of a teaser trailer and therefore we had to get a piece of film music that portrayed the genre and suited the atmosphere that we wanted to give out.

However, similar to last year’s production we had some limitations that would affect what music we used. For our teaser trailer we were not allowed to use any copyrighted material and has to make or find our own un-copyrighted music. After we had decided the genre of our film we quickly set to work on researching different types of music that we could have. The best options that we had were with Garage Band on the Apple Mac or finding an unsigned band with music we could use or that they could create for us. We thought that these were the best options available to us because they would both give our film suitable music and they way we obtained it was feasible.

We thought that the best way to find un-copyrighted music was through the internet and websites such as http://www.unsignedbandweb.com/. When we were looking through some of the content on this website we thought that lots of it was very good but there wasn’t too much music that would have suited our production. However, after all of the searching we did find a couple of tracks that could have worked for our teaser trailer. At the same time we were also learning how to use Garage Band because it is a useful skill to have and is something that we could need for other sounds on our film and maybe even the main piece of music.

Before we had created any music or downloaded any of the music from the internet, we took a look at some music kindly created for films specifically for us by Stephen Scott. We listened to each of the tracks and thought carefully about which one could work with what we were making. There were at least 3 that did suit our production and after putting the music with our footage we decided on a track that would work very well. After selecting the music and putting it into place with our film, we are very happy with the outcome because it is exactly what we wanted; it gives off the right atmosphere and suits the genre of our teaser trailer.

Distribution Companies

It is very important for us to look into potential production companies who would be willing to distribute our film. We didn’t want aim for one of the most famous companies in the world and therefore looked into smaller more local companies.

We found a number of different companies that would be feasible for us to use, but the following are the ones best suited to us: Screen East, UK Film Council and First Light. We also researched into other production companies such as EM Media, Film London and Shorts International.

First Light is a part of the UK Film Council and we have decided that this smaller company would be more appropriate as our production company. I believe this because First Light offers a programme for people aged up to 19 years of age. As well as this, they offer funding which we would be eligible for, that funding figure would range from between £3,000 and £30,000. We have decided not to pitch our ideas to the UK Film Council because they usually target larger productions and we think that First Light is a company that would be very appropriate for us considering what they are looking for and what they offer to people of our age.

Screen East was another production and distribution company that we researched and looked into because they have a great reputation and are well known. Also, their company will benefit us massively. They are a company located in the East of England (counties such as Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire, Suffolk, Norfolk, Cambridgeshire and Essex). They are funded by the national lottery and they also try to search for new talent in the East of England. This is a good option for us to use if for some reason we do not use First Light.