Final Magazine cover

Here is our final magazine cover which we think went well. We were able to stick to many of our initial ideas.

Magazine Cover Production

Here is a slideshare produced on making our magazine cover.

Magazine Ideas #2

Magazine Draft:

Magazine Ideas #1

We had a look at a few film magazines and looked at the pros and cons of using each.

Empire - We liked the idea of a mainstream film magazine however would have had to of made it clear that our film wouldn't have fit that criteria entirely and addressed that. This could possibly done by doing a british film edition of the magazine. We also liked their subscriber editions in which the covers were much less busy.

Total Film - We also liked the idea of Total film magazines as they are quite similar to Empire in many ways however can we very busy with their covers for example with a strip of loads of over scenes from other films coming out.

Sight & Sound - The sight and sound magazine covers are very mundane and simple in terms of there photos. We found the idea of having our director looking artistic on our front cover in a suit was a good idea however the magazine covers more serious films as appose to our comedic film.

Studio - This magazine doesn't appeal to us as our film has male main characters.

Trailer Feedback Survey

Here is our final trailer:

Please complete this survey once you have watched our trailer.

Final Poster

Here is our final poster. It took a while to put together the finishing touches but we got there in the end.

Poster Progress

In terms of our poster, we are coming towards the end of our editing and touching up process. In the two versions of our poster above, it shows how we took the image and enlarged it and brightened the colour so that the character stood out more. We also tried to add more detail to our boxing ring however  feedback has told us that the idea isn't clear and we should figure something else to go there instead. We also added a gradient fade behind the text in order to make it stand out more.

Poster Ideas

here are our initial ideas. We've stuck with films we had originally written about for our influences earlier on our blog in terms of genre ideas.

Final Trailer

This is our final trailer, we are happy with the outcome and are glad that we managed to get it to depict our storyboard and initial ideas as well as it has.

Finishing Touches on Sound.

I used the program audacity in order to remove the background noise levels on my trailer and it was difficult however once i had gotten the hang of it it worked really well. The first image is the sound waves after i had removed the noise whereas the second picture is before i removed the noise.

Animated Titles.

Here is a preview of animated titles that we had planned to produce to give our trailer a more comical vibe. After producing these titles and watching them we came to the conclusion that we don't need the extra bounce as it may lead to there being too much happening on the screen and it may become cliche after a while.

Foley Sound Experimenting

Today I have been experimenting with Foley sound, and thinking about the ways in which we might be able to incorporate it into our trailer. It is a technique rarely used and can spur up a few problems if not edited with properly.

However, we are willing to take the risk as it is something that will definitely benefit our production. We thought about possibly incorporating a punching sound alongside Ralph being punched. This, of course, would have to be a completely new shot so is more unlikely. We also thought that it might be worth adding a running sound with a fade out to the scene where Ralph is running away from Raheem and Jermaine.

Here are some clips from what we have found.

UPDATE - 20th November.

Here is a spoken update explaining our current position on our Trailer.

Sound Update.

In terms of sound, we came to the conclusion that the music used in our project would be an underground artist called MF DOOM with a very caricature-like personality which fit in well with our comedy genre. This is also shown through the tempo and up rhythm beat of some of his music, especially the ones we have chosen for example MF DOOM - Red and gold.

We've also used sound effects such as the ticking for our production logo but also the heartbeat in the beginning of our trailer to add tension and suspense before the comical aspect kicks in. We are also attempting to mess around with foley sound for example punching meat to get a punch sound effect.

First Draft of our Trailer.

Changes that need to be applied:

• 0:36 - The names of our characters need to be animated comically to convey our genre more clearly.
• Motion added to the production logo.
• 1:12 - Voice over is low and volume needs to be raised as background music is fairly louder making it hard to hear.
• 2:02 - Background noise is very loud and needs to be modified.

Costume rearrangement.

We decided that our Phil Collins character was quite random as an agent in a gym environment so we changed his occupation to coach which meant he was dressed more sporty in the gym environment wearing a tracksuit.

Titles Feedback

Whilst using LiveType to produce the Titles and the names of characters being interview, i received feedback that it would be a better idea to use the actors names instead of the characters name as it would make more sense to show who is starring in the trailer.

UPDATE: However, after some extra research on Documentary styled trailers i noticed that many of the more popular films under this category included the characters names instead of the actors names. Examples of these were Best in Show and Waiting for Guffman.
Here is the waiting for Guffman trailer:

Animated Storyboard

This is our animated storyboard that provides a rough idea of what our finished trailer will consist of. It uses instrumentals however our main piece may use the original versions of the songs. We also hadn't added the credit screen to the end.

Costumes

Ralph

• wearing a black shirt, black trousers and black tie when going looking for jobs. 
• Black polo shirt when being interviewed.
• In gym shots, Black vest, with Black Tracksuit bottoms/Blue Shorts.

Jermaine and Raheem

• Black hoodies in order to look intimidating. 

Phil Collins

• Smart Casual Attire.

UPDATE - 13th November.

In the past week or so, we haven't had the best of luck. During half term we planned to film or gym scenes however the gym closed half an hour earlier then we thought they would which mean't we weren't able to get any filming done. I then became ill with the flu for a week which wasn't helpful as I play the role of our main character.

At the moment we are looking to upload our animated storyboard and finalise our decision on which songs we will use for our trailer. We will also be filming our gym scene tonight.

Location idea - Rocky parody scene

For the fifth shot of our trailer, Ralph is going to be filmed running up the steps in Crystal Palace Park and tripping over. The idea is clearly influenced by the scene in the Rocky films of Rocky running up steps, but emerging as a strong, willing athlete. However, with research we have found out exactly where it was that the scene in Rocky was filmed. This was at the Philadelphia Art Museum. What is particularly interesting is that we have found a location with an almost identical landscape as the museum in Philadelphia right here in London. This being at University College London's main North entrance.

                   

Above, you can see a significant resemeblance in the architecture of the locations. On the left, is a photograph of University College London, and on the right is one of the Philadelphia At Museum. We feel that filming here might give our production a more clarified parody of the famous Rocky scene. This will benefit our trailer, making it increasingly funny and attracting more people. We are still yet undecided on whether to go with this idea.

Locations

Here is a video we put together to give a rough idea of the locations we have chosen for the location of our trailer. The park scene will be a good 'knock-off' of the rocky balboa scene. The gym will work well however the picture in the video is off the website as we couldn't take the picture in the gym. The video clips of the Mcdonalds and Sainsburys were in positions that our cameraman would roughly be standing in.

Final Storyboard

This is our final drawn out storyboard. We will be using it to produce our animatic storyboard.

Music and Sound Update.

This is an instrumental by an artist named Dj Khaled. We have taken the initiative to use his instrumental as the opening music to our trailer. The reasoning behind this, is that the artist and track is fairly unknown to many. This is something completely different to our original idea of using the Rocky theme tune which is world renowned. 

Tick tock sound effect

After a discussion, we came to the conclusion that instead of playing a song for our production logo we can simply use the sound of a clock ticking. 

Casting Shots

Me and Miguel had access to a number of possible actors for a few of the roles in our trailer. In order to decide who we should use, we held small auditions for a few people asking them to recite lines of the characters they were auditioning for. Here is how it went:

After going through who we thought would play each role best and fit the descriptions of the characters we created, we took photos of our cast in poses that express the personality of their roles.

Miguel's Moodboard

Here is a moodboard I compelled. It is based on various aspects and influences to our film that will be highlighted in our trailer. On the top left corner there is a picture of some thugs. In our film there will also be some thugs who cause Ralph, our main character, some problems. Thuggery is also something associated with boxing itself. Goofy is dazed in the bottom left hand corner and this evokes all the characteristics of our main character's life and career. The desert on the right expresses the sense of desertion fromt the

Film Schedule

Here is a Slideshare of our film schedule. One of the advantages to our filming process, is that all of our locations are within reasonable distance and near our school. This will prove to be helpful when travelling and bringing our actors together who are all from the same school. 

Trailer Transcript

In terms of our trailer transcript and the order our titles appear in, we found 'Anuvahood' very influencial in terms of the order that the information on the titles were shown. It is very comical which is something we plan on presenting immediately through our trailer too.

Initial Ideas for Sound.

In todays lesson, i've started thinking about sound in our trailer. Initially, we have had the idea of the rocky theme for a while and only recently thought that the classic song, Pietro Mascagni - Intermezzo, from the other boxing film Raging Bull would be good too. We have a current idea of playing Intermezzo for the beginning of the trailer up until Ralph trips over then using a 'record scratch' and continuing the trailer with a more upbeat soundtrack which preferably resembled rocky's training theme. Whichever audio we use as the solid background to our trailer will be mixed and edited in such a way that the volume of it is lower when important dialogue is taking place in our trailer.

A Rocky Theme Idea



Record Scratch Sound

Storyboard First Draft

Slide 1: This was a draft plan of the storyboard written out by Miguel before we began drawing out our storyboard so that we were not improvising and had a plan we could work off of. It includes every idea we could think of that would createfully enhance our plot. As well as all our ideas, we included a few specific shots here and there that might improve the quality of what we will be projecting to our audience.

Slide 2: In this slide our different ideas for our trailer have been drawn out onto a storyboard by James. The first thing to show will be our production logo, 'Duration Productions', followed by either a voice over or narration of description on why a film crew followed Ralph to film him. The first actual shot will be a flash of Ralph punching a boxing bag, then doing press-ups in the next shot and then sit-ups. What we feel might make our trailer stand out from the get-go is if we implement a time lapse of Ralph doing all these various exercises. Next, there will be a shot of Ralph running up the steps of Crystal Palace Park, South London, and then eventually tripping over at the top. We will then meet Ralph himself in an interview, and establish the fact that he is a genuine fool! The final shot here, is an interview with Phil Collins (Not the 80s sensation) Ralph's agent/coach.


Slide 3: Here, we can establish the main part to our plot. We catch a glimpse of Phil talking to Ralph about his career as a boxer, conceeding that Ralph was not as good as he thought, therefore terminating his semi-pro contract. He advices Ralph to find a new job, which moves us on to the next shot. We decided to have establishing shots of Ralph going in and out of Sainsbury's, possibly using the time lapse technique again. We will also have non-digetic voice overs of Ralph being interviewed and told 'no' several times. We might use a sound bridge for these voice overs if we add Ralph walking into one or two more shops. The next shot will be of Ralph going into a Macdonalds, but then coming out with a burger. There is a panning shot to some thugs who come out of nowhere and approach Ralph asking for their money. At this point, there are still specific details and ideas we wish to implement in a cohesive manner, in order to sharpen the edges of our trailer. One point we urgently want to work on is the structuring of what we have, so that it does not give the impression of an opening sequence and a trailer. 


More planning and organisation will be conducted. But for now we have a firm foundation to build upon.

Target Audience - What limitations are there on our production?

It is particularly important to understand that our film is liable to certain limitations in its appeal. Although it is most likely to directly appeal to an under 18 audience, we must comprehend that different factors might not be to the taste of everyone.

For instance, the london based location is something that draws in a specific culture that those from alternative countries will not find appealing. In London, the slang and humour can be established as specifically unique in comparison to other cultures. Considering the fact that our film is a comedy as well as a documentary, this might be a problem when thinking about how some might not understand this 'comedy' aspect.

The image behind the sport of boxing is something that also does not appeal to everyone. Boxing is something that has this stereotypical view of involving thugs and malicious violence in some circumstances. Various members of the public could in turn give our film this stereotype and inhibit the wider appeal it has. This is the overlying theme of our production and can therefore be interpreted as a slight limitation in our films appeal. 

Target Audience - Would our film appeal to you?

We established that our film might also appeal to our target audience for more specific reasons. Here, we interviewed a varied group of under 18s, our most obvious audience, and asked them what it was that they might find appealing in our film. We found this to be particularly useful as it gave us an insight into some of the features of our film that could be made more enjoyable. The discussion of some within the clip give reference to cultural and social themes and personal interest. 

We discovered that our film appealed to some because of the sporting - Boxing factor, which is provenly a respected theme in past films such as the Rocky trilogy and Raging Bull. Alongside this, we found a trend in how most boxing films have inspirational story lines to them. Although ours is a spoof-documentary, it still contains elements of ambition. This may also be something that would appeal to those who wanted to watch our film. The cultural aspects of our film such as, London-based slang and fashion makes the film more relatable. Through this our trailer will appeal to a wider scope of youth.  

Target Audience - Who is the target audience for the films you looked at in your influences?

How to navigate on this presentation:  Click to zoom in. Move cursor to the bottom of the embedded presentation to scroll down and move cursor to the right for an arrow to appear allowing you to see the next image.

             
Here is a presentation highlighting statistics on the user ratings of different audiences for films that are similar to ours. The films we have chosen are Anuvahood, The Foot Fist Way and Rocky V. These films share similar cultural, sporting and comedy themes to ours and can be compared in order to establish which target audience in particular would be most likely to enjoy our film. We found a correlation between all of these films, where the most prominent audience group were those aged under 18. We found this clarified who our main target audience would be.

Creation of our Production Logo

After discussing our production logo ideas, we decided to go with our 'Time Production' idea. We kept to our initial thought of wanting to animate our logo but before that we needed to create our image on photoshop CS5 which i then found out i could animate on instead of having to go into adobe flash. This was a challenge so i saved a still version of our logo whilst i try to figure out how the mechanics behind the animation work.
                 

Here is a draft image that we may use if we cannot animate our wristwatch. We changed our name from 'Time Productions' to 'Duration Productions'.

Update on target audeince

In todays lesson, we have started pushing towards getting our target audience section of our research done and Miguel was able to film short interviews of a few people that would fit our target audience. Here is a screenshot of part of the interviews.

Production Logo

Here is are some sketches of images that we think might make great production logos. The ideas here were spontaneously influenced by our surroundings and we focused on specific things, delving deeper into what might make good logos.

Genesis idea

 In the top left corner, there is a sketch of a bridged beam of lights within a circle. Around the inner section of the circle there would be a shallow golden glow with a black background. The contrast in colours would improve the way the logo might stand out. We thought that animating the beams of light would definitely improve the lure of the logo. The lights might also give the impression of a fresh start and rejuvenation. We decided that Genesis would make the perfect name for this logo. 

Time Production idea

In the bottom left hand corner, there is a sketch of a watch that we thought would be amazing for a logo. In fact, we have decided that this is definitely the idea we shall go for. The watch itself will be coloured gold and silver, enhancing the lure to this particular image. The clock hands should not be hard in animating with Adobe Flash and ticking in a clockwise direction. As the clock hands get to the 12 again, they will be facing the 'Time' and an alarm tone will sound.

Lake idea

Our final idea is in the bottom right hand corner. It is of a lake/river flowing down. We thought the idea would stand out as a production logo as it is a fairly unique idea. What we felt would definitely enhance the logo itself, would be to have attempted to animate the stream of water going down the lake. Again, using Adobe Flash we thought that this could help us do this.  This was our second choice logo.

Genre Influence

Here is the UK trailer for the film The Foot Fist Way.

 This Film is highly influential towards the documentary/comedy hybrid genre that we are also trying to implement within our production. However, the structure of the trailer itself is not one that we feel is particularly suitable for our storyline. The aspects of the film that we do find highly influential surround the genre. It's primarily a comedy about a martial arts instructor who had in the past been a champion himself. After a while he loses power and influence between his students and faces a downward spiral. This leads to him making a fool of himself, and finding allies such as Julio Chavez, his nine-year-old apprentice! The documentary aspect of the film is one that we especially think could enhance the humour of our film which will also be a hybrid comedy/documentary.

Structure Influence

An obvious influence of ours would have to be Rocky 5.

In terms of structure, this trailer conveys the image and ideas we have discussed about our own trailer. The beginning is purely shots of Rocky working out and boxing with opponents. This was an idea we have for our piece. While it will remain serious for the first half a minute, the comedy aspect will kick in. As well as the second half being comedic, it is also the core plot for our film with clips from different areas of the film, majority being the intense and funniest scenes. This is also similar in terms of the structure of the Rocky 5 film due to it going into the more intense storyline when it reaches around the 1:00 point. However, in terms of titles and release dates, I think we may have to look for guidance from a different trailer.

Visual Aspects Influence

In regards to our idea, we noticed that this episode of Fresh Prince had very similar concepts to the idea we had put together.

Although this clip isn't a trailer or even part of a film, it still contains shots and visuals that we aimed to portray in our idea. We had planned on producing very similar ideas to this as there is only so much you can do with a Rocky parody however we'll do our best to put our own twist on it with features of Raging Bull stirred into our idea. We really like the shots in this clip however we decided that as these shots will be in the beginning of our trailer, we would like our main character to have a mystery aspect to him. In order to do this, for each shot we find appealing, we will film it from 180 degree angle to the one used in the clip so that none show our characters' face and are all from behind.

           

Full synopsis.

After We had written out our individual synopsis', we combined them to create our final idea.

Won 0 - Drawn 1 - Lost 6

Ralph is a young motivated and courageous boxer who fluked his way through his semi-pro boxing career for just under a year. He is stripped of his boxing contract and told to move on by his agent. As time passes, Ralph's financial predicament deteriorates and some old friends come into the picture seeking a loan repayment. Ralph becomes more aware of the severity of the situation as the thugs begin to threaten him and his family. He begins applying for numerous different jobs ranging from cleaning jobs, to retail jobs, to supermarkets. He is unsuccessful in his search and then becomes confronted again by the thugs as they begin to feel as if they are not being taken seriously. The thugs hunt for Ralph and catch him out, cornering him. With a hint from Judith, who knew Ralph, police arrive at the scene of the confrontation and arrest the thugs. Ralph then converses with one of the policewomen and is offered a place as a boxing coach for her son and his junior boxing club.

Initial Ideas

We haven't had the steadiest start to our blog as the school network was down for a while which lead us to doing the majority of our work verbally and involved us jotting our ideas down on sheets.

Here is a neater digitalised version of our initial idea brainstorm we wrote out for our Boxing idea. Initially, we were going to make it a very serious boxing film like rocky and raging bull but decided to beat the cliche.

James' Moodboard

This is my moodboard i created to try and convey the main idea's behind our trailer. The boxing equipment, (boxing ring, punching bags, boxing gloves) represent the main theme behind our film being the sport aspect. The rocky picture in the top left corner is to show that it is an influence to our idea as well as other boxing films such as raging bull. The top right is a main at an interview to show the idea of our main character going job hunting. The money is the money that he owes to the drug dealing thugs whilst the cartoon in the bottom left is to show the comical aspect of our idea.

25 Word Pitch

"Ralph feels his boxing career coming to an end, but how will he make money to pay off his debt to thugs?"

A boxer who loses his spark and can't fluke his way through any more fights, has to retire early and find a new way to make an income. He needs to find a new way soon so that he is able to pay off a group of drug dealers he had lean't money off of. The film follows Ralph as he attemps to find a new group and attends interviews.

What is a Trailer? What is a Teaser Trailer?

In our media lesson we looked at the differences between two types of trailers; Feature trailers and teaser trailers. We were shown a few trailers in our lesson that we watched numerous times so that we could analyse them and spot reoccurring characteristics within the trailers.
A teaser trailer is a trailer that generally gives away much less of a films plot and is also shorter than a feature length trailer. A feature trailer is normally one that gives away much more of the plot.

Looper

We began by looking at the trailer for the film Looper which was clearly a feature trailer which was portrayed by the characteristics it possessed. Immediately we hear a common characteristic which was a voice over from the main character.

This trailer would be considered a feature trailer rather than a teaser trailer purely due to the fact that it gave away more of the story than a teaser trailer would. Main aspects of this trailer would be the camera shots and editing highlighting the weapons and violence of the film and the fades to convey to suspense.

focus pull on the gun highlights violen themes of the film.

I feel that this trailer was presented very well as it maintains your attention from the beginning and doesn't take too long to make it clear and clarify what the genre of the film is, as well as the main themes of violence, time travel and a love interest. The trailer also gives off an unsettled vibe from the shaky images all throughout the trailer which is mainly noticeable when the production logo (TriStar) and intervals of text appeared on the screen.

 The fonts, colour schemes and music were also all applied well. The  black on white/white on black fonts and backgrounds gave a simplistic feeling to the trailer which contrasted with the trailers overdose of action.  The mundane colour scheme behind the trailers writing also suggests a intent storyline as appose to a colourful comedy font from a comical film. Also the non diagetic music placed over the action of the trailer was very thought out dupstep which added to the energy of the trailer and the atmosphere. The action aspect was conveyed well through the increase of pace throughout the whole trailer  to link with the adrenaline of the viewers watching.

Man of Steel

This was the first teaser trailer we looked at. Unless you were a fan of the superhero genre, this trailer was not an obvious superman trailer right up until the end when the recognisable logo was shown. This is an aspect of a teaser trailer that some audiences would find appealing as it would make them feel eager to see the rest of the film and find out the plot, whereas others would be frustrated that it gives away no hints.

  
The team behind the trailer used very arty looking shots and scenes from the film to convey a different aspect of the film. This again, would be quite unappealing to those who take no interest to the action/comic genre however it is a great teaser for the audience it appeals to as it will keep them wanting more until the full feature trailer is released in oppose to the whole film.

This teaser trailer also refrains from revealing too many names for example actors and only shows the successful directors and producers involved in the film which is another way in which the trailer teases viewers. The font is also a metal type font that glimmers which resembles the title, 'Man of Steel'.

The Campaign 

I think that of all the trailers we were shown, i was appealed to by this one the most as it was the only one that had a comical vibe to it. It wasn't an obvious teaser trailer or an obvious feature trailer as it had characteristics of both. It has the length of a feature length trailer however it has a vagueness about it that makes it possible for it to pass as a teaser trailer. However i feel if anything it would be classed as more of a feature trailer.

This trailer conveys its genre very clearly through the colours and the titles shown for example the animated 'coming soon'. This is also shown through all the clips in the trailer being all the best comical scenes from the film as well as the energetic non digetic soundtrack playing whilst the titles appear.