Fireflies - Music Video Analysis

The band Owl-City constantly use blue in their songs and artwork, most famously in the music video for the song 'Fireflies'. 

We are contemplating using blue as a motif in our trailer due to the connotations of loyalty, serenity, trust but also sadness. 

Below you can see a video clip emphasising the uses of blue in the music video for 'Fireflies'.

Broadchurch Trailer

        Broadchurch          series 2 - Trailer  |Create infographics

Actors

Our school's Year 12 Drama group showed us their monologues or duologues to enable us to see if any of them would be appropriate to act our trailers. All of the actors were very good as shown in the clips below.

We have already cast the kidnapped girl, Esther, as shown in our 'Tester Shots' post. We were thinking about using an actress we know called Sophie to play the mother, but need to find a father figure. Unfortunately, as the showcase was of Year 12's none of them look old enough to play the father. Therefore we have not asked any of them to act in our piece.

Trailer Titles

I have looked at the trailers for 4 new films, and taken screenshots of the titles.





The conclusions that I can draw from this research is that all of the trailers I looked at had the production company first. They all had the title of the film very near the end, occasionally with a list of people involved with the production at the very end. They put the names of the most prolific actors and occasionally the director, if significant. They all put a release date or season to keep the audience in anticipation. 

Developed Logo

When researching trailers, we realised that most if not all of the bigger companies had an animated logo. Not only does this make it seem more professional, but also continues the pace of the trailer, fitting in with the constant flow. We realised that inserting a static slide among fast cuts slows down the tempo and causes the trailer to lose some momentum. 

Below are some examples of logos that have movement in their logos. 

We wanted to reflect this convention in our logo, so experimented with a changing of the colours and then a bold flash of colour, reminiscent of a camera flash. 

Colour Motifs

Tester Shots #1

Because our favourite idea involves a child we decided to take some tester shots before completely deciding on a narrative. Children can be hard to work with, and can struggle to portray the emotion required, so we decided to film some of our original ideas with the child we were planning on using, Esther, to see if it would work. 

After getting all of the consent necessary (as shown in this blog post) to use Esther in our production, we booked the drama studio to experiment with the shots. 

We decided to use the drama studio for location, regardless of whether we will use it for the final piece as it is a blank setting with black curtains as a background. It also has a lighting rig, so we can experiment with spotlights and low key lighting. For our final filming we will need to decide on a location, either the blank background we used here, or a large room that we can dress accordingly. We will also need to decide on Esther's costume, for this she wore her usual casual clothes, but we may want her to wear black to emphasise her restriction and lack of identity as a hostage.

Below are images of us at work, with Esther and her Mum.

We recorded numerous takes of our final shot that we have planned with Esther, to experiment with lighting and camera shots. We also experimented with the shot where Esther is playing with a doll, to see if it works to have her turn around and then back again to see the feet/face of the kidnapper. We have created the clip below analysing the shots that we took. 

Teacher Feedback 

After showing our teacher the tester shots she gave us some feedback which resulted in us altering our idea. She pointed out that the camera and ties do not add the shock factor as you know from the dialogue and the previous action that it is going to be a ransom video. We decided that something more shocking would be if a man in black went towards her at the end of the dialogue and we faded to black from his black top covering the camera. We will film the whole video on a good quality camera, but looking at the action through the flip screen on another camera (the one recording the ransom video). This will worsen the quality making it more realistic and further showing the audience what is happening. 

Child Protection Regulations

Narrative Idea

Interstellar - Trailer Analysis

I have created a poster with my initial reactions and thoughts of new Science-Fiction Action, 'Interstellar'. 

I commented on the Camera Work, Mise en Scene, Sound and drew 4 main shots. 

Even though our chosen genre isn't Sci-fi it helped to see some of the ways they used media conventions in the theatrical trailer.

Spooks - Textual Analysis

'The Missing' - Textual Analysis

As we have chosen our narrative to surround a child being taken, or going missing, I have researched media products with a similar theme. 

The modern TV drama 'The Missing', directed by Tom Shankland, follows the abduction of a young boy. As an audience you are shown the fallout of his family and the wider community as they attempt to find him.  

The entire series experiments with time as it merges both the disappearance and immediate effects, with the long-term effects including the separation of the parents. 

The piece uses sound to impact the audience as eerie music accompanies ordinarily pleasant scenes of the family pre-abduction. After the scenes of the child's disappearance editing is used to quickly cut between happy shots of the family and the father frantically searching. 

When the father is looking, a hand-held camera is used to show his panic which is later contrasted by steady camera work reflecting the organisation of the police force. 

Mise en Scene is especially prevalent through the colours Blue and Yellow. The boy is wearing a yellow scarf when he disappears, a colour that ironically ordinarily signifies joy, and a blue jumper, a colour of serenity. In the most recent scenes, in years after he is missing, these colours are shown both in what the parents wear and their surroundings, such as the yellow walls and blue chair of the mothers future house. 

Nearer the end of the episode when the Dad searches for the second time, the local team has just won a football game so they are celebrating. This emphasises his discomfort due to the juxtaposition between his panic and their joy. In addition the fireworks are shocking and sound like guns which adds to his panic and stress.

Finally when the Dad goes for a drink with the detective, in the more modern times, prophetic fallacy is used through the torrential rain.

The main elements of this piece that we could use in ours is the idea of colours as symbols (you can see a further post for this here) and the juxtaposition of terror and joy of others.

Narrative Ideas

We have drafted three ideas for the narrative of our film, that are all of a similar genre. We have storyboarded a few shots from each and evaluated the pros and cons of choosing them as our final storyline.

After evaluating the ideas, and discussing it with our classmates, we concluded that Narrative 2, with the taken child, was our strongest idea.

Time and Place

Where to find us....

To keep in contact with our audience we have two social media accounts. 

We have Instagram (as you can see in the widget at the side of my blog) - @officiallensproductions

This is our main way of keeping in contact with our audience and reaching out to them. We will post updates on our filming and editing, as well as post photos with questions looking for audience research. 

We also have a Tumblr account. - 

We use our tumblr to brainstorm and create an ongoing mood-board for our film. We will post ideas but can still reach out to our audience through original posts. We can look for inspiration from both professional film companies and also other media students. 

Tumblr

Our Logo

History of Genre - Horror

Theatrical vs Teaser Trailers

There are two main varieties of trailers; Theatrical and Teaser. 


Teaser - 
             can be released very early into filming
             doesn't include much footage from the film 
             very short 
             one main theme and concept 

Theatrical - 
                 footage from the film 
                 quick cuts
                 lines from the film as voiceover 
                 lots of disruptions (Todorov's theory of Narrative)

Hulk 2003

The timelines below show the difference between the Hulk teaser and theatrical trailers. The green line shows the changes in tension and the emotions of the audience (higher the line, more dramatic). 

The teaser trailer has much fewer cuts and contains one lasting theme. It contains more fades of images but more text at the end. The music is more prominent in the theatrical trailer as the musical emphasis matches the change in scenes. They both include a voice over however the teaser trailer uses a monologue and the theatrical takes lines from the film from different characters and plays them over a variety of scenes. The levels of tension for the teaser trailer slowly increases until there's a climax and then a drop at the end for the credits. For the theatrical trailer there's a few climax's to keep the audience's interest. 

Theories

Todorov's Theory

Evaluation Questions - Initial Thoughts

For the A2 course there are 4 evaluation questions that we need to respond to: 

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products ?

2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

4.How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

I have written down my initial responses to these questions, and things that I need to think about throughout the coursework to help me answer these questions at the end. 

I will keep these original ideas in mind throughout the project. 

The Brief