PROMO PACK BRIEF

Matthew Heyns 1828

I worked with Sam De Bruin 1815, Finn Hanley 1824 and Ben Richardson 1853

Our brief was to make a promo package, consisting of at teaser trailer, full trailer, film poster, and social media pages for a film. The title of our film is 'Off The Leash'. Off The Leash is a Horror/ Thriller film about how Covid-19 struck the UK, which as a result forced the government to take serious action by putting the nation into lockdown. However, many people are fed up with the intensive lockdown regulations, stating that it is a restriction of their freedom and a way for the government to take ultimate control of the country. As a result, there has been a group of people committing violent crimes to show their disrespect to the government. This group of people are wearing animal masks to hide their identity but also as a method of intimidation, because there has been many news reports highlighting this group as a threat. The animal masks are also significant because this group feel the government are treating the population as animals because they feel they are being kept captive. Therefore, they say “if the government are going to treat us like animals, we will act like animals”. The lockdown regulations allow for each person to be outside for an hour each day. After having seen the news on the reports of people wearing animal masks causing havoc, four teenage boys set out looking for the group of people wearing animal masks. Boredom and typical impulsive teenage boy behaviour is the reasoning behind their decision to go into the woods. 

Camera Work - As we used my phone for the majority of the filming, when I wasn't in front of the camera, I was often the one operating it. The iPhone 12 Pro camera quality is impeccable, allowing us to film in 4K HDR with Dolby Vison. Filming in HDR, known as High Dynamic Range, is an incredible benefit to us as it allowed us to film at different exposures of light and still achieve exactly what we wanted, in post production it also allowed us to change the exposure more effectively without negatively impacting the quality and look of our footage. Filming in 4K allowed us to have great video quality throughout our production. 

For our news report scene with Tom, we used a Canon DSLR camera as it allowed us to use a tripod when filming

For the drone shots, I used the Mavic Pro 2, which has a Hasselblad camera, 1 inch sensor, Hasselblad Natural Color Solution and a 10-bit Dlog-M color profile. Which meant we got 14 EV of dynamic range and an incredible 10-bit, 4k video.

Editing - As I have had past experience with Final Cut Pro X, it made it easy to choose what editing software to use when editing our trailer. I edited Tom's news report scene using the Keyer effect, which helped remove the green screen, which I then replaced with a news set. After some time we thought of a soundtrack to use for our trailer, which then allowed us to edit our footage in correspondance with the soundtrack. Although I had made a production company ident for our last production, I decided it would look better to overlay our production tag over one of the drone shots, I used the typewriter effect to make it appear gradually on the screen.

Props -  I used my knowledge from DT A-level to create a protest placard and a banner. 

Social media: https://www.facebook.com/OFF-the-LEASH-MOVIE-113983074528113

OFF THE LEASH POSTER

 

REFINEMENTS: POSTER DESIGN

FACEBOOK PAGE

 

Facebook: UK Film Review

To build hype for the release of our movie Off The Leash, I engaged in a hypothetical interview on the website UK Film Review. This website is well known for their interviews with filmmakers which means audiences who regularly read the UK Film Review could potentially choose to watch our film. 

REFLECTION: FILMING ALESSIA'S SCENE AND PROTEST

PLANNING: CASTING

 

REFLECTION: News Report Scene

 In terms of Miss en scene, the news report is very valuable to our trailer as it puts the plot line in context. Rather than just filming the protestors, Alecia in her car and the scenes in the woods of the four boys, the news report helps to tie together these scenes and give the audience a relatively good idea of what the movie is about. The audio of the news reporter is also useful because it means we can overlay it other establishing shots. 

To film the news report we used the media department’s green wall/screen. This is because in post production editing I can replace the green screen with the set of a news channel set. This is because we are unable to use the real set of a news channel, therefore, using a green screen should be effective enough to realistically mimic the set. Although we filmed the other parts of our trailer with an iPhone, for this scene we decided to use a DSLR camera and a tripod. This is because we didn’t have a tripod for our phone, which meant we couldn’t keep the footage still/stable. Therefore using a DSLR camera and a tripod allowed us to film the news report stationary without any camera shake or movement. This was important because of the footage wasn’t still, it would have been hard to make the green screen set look realistic.

As the audio on the DSLR camera wasn’t very good, I decided to set my phone up behind Tom and record his audio through the internal microphone on the iPhone. I was sceptical at first as to wether the audio from the iPhone would work better than the camera and to my surprise it was better.

Planning: Props

 

Planning: Audience Questionnaire

 

CONSTRUCTION: PROP MAKING

The vision for one of our scenes is to capture a sequence of people protesting for the group "Transparent Animals". This group is protesting against the lockdown regulations and their restriction of freedom. Therefore, to make this scene as realistic as possible, I needed to make props that are relevant to this scene. I decided to make two different props that can be used by the protestors, which clearly states the reason they are protesting.

The first prop I made was a placard. This is because in almost every protest you can expect to see someone holding a placard with a message on it. To do this I found two offcuts of MDF, which I then wrote a message on one side of the two offcuts. Using a power drill, I drilled the two MDF boards to a plywood strut. The messages on the placard showed "Freedom" on one side and "Boris lied people died" on the other side. 

The first prop was easy to make as I have good knowledge of carpentry and joinery therefore there wasn't much of a challenge. However, making the second prop was significantly more challenging as my knowledge on making flags isn't that broad. To start off using a CAD (Computer Aided Design) software, I started creating a template which had a crow and the words "Transparent Animals" on. This is because the group protesting is called Transparent Animals, therefore I thought it would be appropriate to put their group name on at least one of the props. Using the laser cutter, I cut out a stencil on Vellum card, which would allow me to spray paint the template on. Then using a white sheet I got given from textiles, I ironed and stabled the sheet to a MDF board. This was to keep the sheet flat and stuck to its position. I then placed the stencil over the white sheet, masking taped it down and stapled it down to make sure the stencil didn't move during the spray painting process. I spray painted over the stencil directly onto the white sheet and then let it dry. I was very happy with the result.

PLANNING: TREATMENT

 

PLANNING: MY TARGET AUDIENCE

I know that all brands define their target audience. In order to reach my specific target audience I need to know who they are and what their interests are. To achieve this I will create an audience questionnaire to research age, gender, ethnicity, and social class of my target audience. In addition I need to find out what their media needs and wants are so I can create a film that will satisfy them. 

My research started with investigating how brands define audiences in preparation for creating my own audience profile. For example, I saw how Bauer Media, NME and Empire defined audiences. This helped me create an audience profile.

The following points are factors I need to consider when carrying out my research.

1. Who is my primary target audience? Unisex audience in the age range 15-25 but can be applicable to older audiences.

2. What kind of films and television are they likely to prefer? They would probably like a combination of thriller/horror/action. Cloverfield, Blair Witch Project, IT and the Ritual.

3. What platforms do they choose to watch films and where are they likely to see information about films? Netflix, Prime and Sky. They are likely to see information about films through advertisements on TV, YouTube, Internet and Social media. They might also find information spread through influencer power.

4. What brands do they prefer? Odeon, Xbox, Apple, Microsoft, Instagram, Snapchat, WhatsApp, JD Sports, Nike, Adidas, Puma, Nandos, Wagamamas, Tesco,

5. What makes my film stand out from the competition? One of our USP's for our film is the found footage we use. Found footage allows our audience to feel connected with the characters as we watch the film through the eyes of one of the characters. With the audience feeling a connection to the characters allows them to create a rapport with them and it feels more personal.

6 . Why should my audience watch my film?  

 

 

PLANNING: TARGET AUDIENCE & SIMILAR FILMS

PLANNING: ADVANCED PRODUCTION

Deadline DECEMBER THIS TERM for all TRAILER making - filming and editing main trailer and teaser trailer

PLANNING: TASKS (this is the title of the post) Copy / paste the list below (and edit it!).

1. The name of our film: Transparent Animals
2. The name of our Production Company and our co-production companies: Chambers Production and Holding productions
3. The name of the director that will appear in our trailers: Matt Heyns
4. The name of the 2-3 main actors that will appear in our trailers: Matt Heyns, Ben Richardson, Sam De Bruin and Finn Hanley
5. (Optional)  "From the director of Suspect"
6. The names of the film festivals where our film will be screened (more festival names here): BFI film festival
7. Pull quotes from reviews etc; wording: 
8. Our location recce - take photos and collate in an attractive way + written explanation
9. Our target audience
10. Social groups and issues in our film...
11. Our props list - photos + stereotypes + clothing
12. Our social media - Ben - Instagram, Sam - Twitter, Matt - Facebook
13. Our music - we researched (this type of music) as the background track... and narrowed down our choice to include...
14. Our call sheets are being written by ...
15. Make your storyboard - include....

• how you plan to frame shots - identify establishing shot, wide shots, two- shots, three-shots, CUs, ECUs,
• words of any other inter titles
• release date - decide on wording

RESEARCH: WHEN ARE TRAILERS SHOWN?

Most trailers are produced at the same time as the film is being edited. The timing of a trailer campaign is important: it must be shown far enough in advance to generate excitement about the film’s release, but not so early that people forget about the film before it even comes out.

• The trailers are designed to create a ‘buzz’ around the film. What do you think will be the main talking points from these trailers?
• Most of the film trailers on this site are due to be released in the UK over the spring and summer months. From the trailers you have seen, why do you think the distributors have chosen this time of year to release these films?

Toy Story 4

As this trailer is a sequel of the previous Toy Story movies, the buzz is created around the fan favourite character Woody. The main talking point about the trailer is the reintroduction of other famous characters Bo Peep and Buzz Lightyear. The music also contributes to the feel good summer movie, God Only Knows - Beach Boys. As the target audience are too young to watch the movie themselves, it is up to the parents to decided, and as the song is an old school summer song, it might resonate with the parents.

The film gives of a summer vibe, as shown in the picture above there is a fun fair and summer skies which offers a family friendly appeal to the movie. The movie was released during the 2019 Summer in June, which was the right time to release this movie because it has family holiday summer feel. Releasing the movie in summer time also allows the target audience to watch the movie. This is because during the winter and autumn months of the year in the UK, all children are in education, therefore there is less time to watch the film during those times. However, releasing the movie during the summer months when school isn't going on, means that all the children can watch the movie.

Yesterday

The trailer gives off a very summer vibe through showing the festivals and all the audiences in the festival having a great time. There was a concert on the beach and naturally the beach is associated with the sun and summer. Therefore, releasing the movie in the summer works well in correlation with the scenes appearing in the trailer.

It was easy to create a buzz around this movie as music produced and created by the Beatles is synonymous with the music culture in the UK and places abroad. However, rather than making it a generic movie about a band, it was unique and humorous having some random guy get famous from the music the Beatles created. The buzz was also created through the use of starpower. Big names like Ed Sheeran, Lily James, Himesh Patel and James Corden helped to create a buzz around the movie. This is because Ed Sheeran is very well connected with the UK music scene often topping the charts with his music.

The Brink

The Brink is a documentary following the life of Steve Bannon, who was former White House Chief Strategist and Senior Counselor to the president, during Donald Trump's spell as the president of the United States of America. Steve Bannon is a controversial character due to his right-wing political views, however, it can be relatable to audiences who are also right-wing. The film allows audiences to see 'behind the scenes' of the USA's political scene and fully understand how it can be very difficult to be a politician. The trailer perhaps doesn't create enough buzz for audiences. It doesn't challenge enough but instead it just observes over everything happening.