Bloopers

Similar Film Research

Film Pitch - Teacher and Peer Feedback

First Draft

Improvements

Plans for new voice over...
                                                                                                                                 
                        Possible Script for Voice-over:
We've been friends for as long as I can remember. When we were younger we were care-free and nothing else mattered. Those three took me in and gave me a place where I belonged. Our club started out as just being a bit of fun but it evolved into a place of refuge when we were older. A place where we could go and just have fun. We didn't have to worry about anything. We called our club, Connect Four simply because we that was our favourite game. We would meet two or three times a week and spend hours in our cabin. It would be night before we even realised, but we didn't care because we were having fun. As the years past our friendship grew and we became closer as a group. We never expected things to change…

Further Music Research

After much deliberation we decided, as a group, to change the song we used in our film opening. This was purely because the song we originally chose was not original. After a while it became repetitive and irritating which is not the effect we wanted it to have on our audience. So with this in mind we set out and spent a couple of days each researching possible music choices for our opening. We each conducted music research and then decided which song we felt encompassed the themes of our film and our opening.

Brother by Mighty Oaks is the song we have decided to use. This is because it is simple but different and quirky which is what we were looking for in our song choice.

Film Poster

This is the finished film poster for our film Connect Four. This poster will be present throughout all of our marketing campaigns including all of our social media platforms and our film's website.

Justification of Criticism

After viewing the first draft of our film opening we received criticisms from both our teachers and from fellow students. One of theses critiques was that one of our titles "would not feature in a film" as it looked childish, low budget and is difficult to read. This is a small clip of that title and below is the justification of our title. We will explain why we chose to keep and not re-shoot this particular title.  

 Below is a small clip of a similar title that features in the opening credits of Napoleon Dynamite. When conducting similar film research we stumbled upon Napoleon Dynamite and considered it to be similar to our film because of its creative and low budget title sequence. As a result of this, we drew much inspiration from its title sequence and tried to present ours in a similar and quirky way.                                                                                      

 

It is because of this title that we chose to present our title in the way we did. It does appear low budget but we are essentially a low budget film and so we wanted to make it authentic and quirky, like Napoleon Dynamite, and we believe that our titles create this effect. As an audience member you struggle to read the name on this title just as you struggle to read the names featured in our title but this is what makes our titles, and Napoleon Dynamite's, quirky, unique and low budget.

Teacher Responce

1.

What Went Well

• very clever titles
• good music 
• mise en scene rules!

Improvements

• new voiceover 
• colour when grown ups playing is off 
• more time needed on Tilly Hawkins titles 

2. 

What Went Well 

• voice over not strong enough 
• nice shots - love the titles 

Improvements

• maybe something a bit better to signify those kids are older you 
• music volume feels off 

Low Budget Film Research

 

Feedback

Teacher and Peer Feedback

Script

Below is our script showing narrative and the timing of speech...

Target Audience

Title Research

In order to understand our own title sequence, and the order in which to present our titles, we had to conduct some research into films that are similar to ours and the title sequences that they have. The films that we have chosen are: Napoleon Dynamite (due to the creative title sequence), Stand By Me (because of the similarities between our four characters, who are childhood friends, and the boys in the film) and Now and Then (due to the same reason as Stand By Me; the similarities of our characters).

This is the timeline for the opening title sequence in Napoleon Dynamite. It contains a list of each of the titles, what time they appear and whose name appears...

Film Pitch

This is our group's final film pitch for our AS Media Project. It has taken us a while to get to the stage where we are able to present a complete idea but we have finally devised an interesting and unique film opening premise.

Prop List

Club house

This is a list of the props that will be needed to fill our portacabin:

• Vinyl Records which will be moved by one of the characters and a title will be shown on the middle of the record.

• Old posters which will be taped to the wall in the club house.
• Boxes of retro sweets and cereals
• A lava lamp
• Scrabble which will spell out the name of the film
• Guess who introducing the characters
• Retro DVDs
• Fairy lights around the room to make it more
• Comic books
• Tea mug, which will have a title on
• Monopoly
• Connect 4
• A round wooden table in middle of the room
• Alphabet Spaghetti to introduce a title
• Rack of fancy dress clothes
• Dart board
• A guitar which will be given to the character of Kurt to show his musical side.
• Cup stacks
• Jenga
• A rug on the floor of the cabin

Using the props to create titles

1. The titles will start rolling after the 360 degree shot of the older children sitting in a circle around the table, then one of the characters picks up a coffee mug and takes a sip where the first title will be spelled out on the bottom of the mug. This will be introducing the film's production company.

2. The second title will be using Scrabble pieces which will spell out the name of the film, this will be a sped up version of one of the characters moving the pieces into a line to introduce the film name.

3. The first character Alex, who is played by Tilly, will be introduced by her character walking over to the wall where a posters corner is bent over and she folds it back where her name will be on the corner.  

4. The second character Katie, who is played by Sarah, will introduce her title by pulling out a Jenga piece where her name will be on.

5. The character Kurt, who is played by Connor and is musical, will have his title on his guitar which he will have on his back when sitting down.

6. The character Jacob, who is played Jack and is very sporty, will have his name on the front of a comic book which he will be looking at, at the time.

7. The title for who the film is produced by will be on the spine of a book which will be on the shelf. The camera will pan past the books and then one of the characters will take out of the book shelf.

8. The title of the editors of the film will be on a CD and will be spun around in its case; one of the characters will spin this around.

9. The title of who filmed the opening scene will be on a piece of fake money from the board game monopoly.

10. The title for costumes by will be on a sketch notepad which someone will flip over and the title will be on the other side.

11. The title for who directed the film will be on the top of a coat rack, where someone will go and hang up their coat and the title will appear above the hook.

 Other ideas for titles

1.Glue with glitter on top.

2. Candy stick sweets on table then children’s hands go and grab them.

3. Cup stacks construct to make name.

4. On a whiteboard, steps to clubhouse rules, (First rule of board game club, don't talk about board game club).

5. A slice of cake and pipe onto plate.

Photo Evidence

This our group's photo evidence of planning and filming for our film opening. It features images of us planning and researching as well as exterior/location shots of where we are going to film...

 

Risk Assessment

This is our groups risk assessment...

We chose to do two separate risk assessments for each location we were going to film at. This was because as one is indoor and one is outdoor we felt that each of the two locations presented their own, very different, risks and possible hazards. Due to this we wrote two risk assessments: one for our exterior shots and one for our interior shots.

Possible Film Titles

For the last couple of days our group has struggled to come up with possible titles for our film. We have had many suggestions but have yet to find the perfect name for our film. These are some of the possible film titles that we have come up with…
• Meeples
• In Bloom
• Then and Now
• Outnumbered
• Fools
• When We Were Young
• Connect 4
• Gherkins
• Blind Faith
• Out of the Black
• Good Times
• Good Girls, Bad Girls
• Wannabe
• 5 Second Rule
• The Insiders
• The Normal Ones

Music Research

We are going to include a small song in our film opening as well as other uses of sound and dialogue. These are the possible options we have found for songs that will feature in our opening:

Visual Moodboard

Storyboard

Target Audience

Primary

• Our primary target is teenagers.
• Gender: Female
• Age: 14
• Favourite Films: Mean Girls, The Breakfast Club, Bring It On and Clueless.
• Interests: Watching films and television, reading, playing netball and other sports and shopping.

Our primary audience is teenagers between the ages of 12 and 19. This is because our film features both 11/12 year olds and 16/17 year olds thus making it easy for teenagers to relate to our characters and our narrative.
Why would she go and watch our film: She loves teen comedies and classic coming of age films. She is a big film fan and so enjoys going to the cinema and watching new films. She also has a whole range of interests so she can relate to each one of the characters in our film, thus making her more likely to watch it.

Secondary

• Our secondary target is parents
• Gender: Female
• Age: 30+
• Favourite Films: Thelma and Louise, Beaches, Back to the Future and Sixteen Candles.
• Interests: Reading, spending time with her children and watching movies.

Our secondary audience is parents of teenage children because they will have to accompany their children to our movie as it has BBFC classification of 12A. We believe they will also want to go watch our film as it follows a similar narrative to classic teenage films that were released during the 1980s/90s such as: The Goonies, Stand By Me and Now and Then.
Why would she go and watch our film: Because if she has teenage children, then she will have to accompany them to our film as it is a 12A. She herself loves watching films, especially 80s/90s teenage comedies.

Chrarcter Costumes

We have to think carefully about the costumes for our characters so that they fit in with the scene and how we want them to look. Below is a list of what we want the characters to look like…
Sarah:

·         Black jeans with a plain white t-shirt and black boots to make her character look more grown up.

Tilly:

·         Black jeans also so she looks similar to Sarah, with a grey jumper and trainers.

Connor:

·         Grey jeans with a plain t-shirt and a shirt with trainers.

Jack:

·         Blue jeans with a plain black t-shirt and grey trainers.

We will have to ensure that the four young children that play the younger versions of ourselves look similar to us and that they have similar outfits to make it more realistic or they should wear school uniform which is generally what the younger version of ourselves would wear if they were in Year 7.

Marketing Campaign

Strategy 1 - Social media sites 

Social media sites are used for low budget films to market their film because it is free and because so many people now use social media in their everyday life.

Strategy 2 - YouTube pop ups

This costs a small fee to advertise films on YouTube but is a very effective way because you can specify what sort of video you want your pop up to be viewed on which means your marketing is automatically shown to your implied audience.

Strategy 3 - Vine

A vine is a very effective way for a low budget film to market their film, because it is free to do and can be distributed all around the world using the internet.

Strategy 4 - Blogs

Blogs are free to make and you can add lots of detail to them, something you cannot do on other types of promotions like posters. But it is not easily accessed, so it is hard to gather a large audience.

Strategy 5 - Street marketing

Low budget film companies can take to the street, to leaflet and promote their film because it is cheaper than other marketing strategies like TV and radio adverts. But it does cost to print off the leaflets and for the wages of the staff who are promoting the film.

I found this off a website that specializes in how low budget films can market their film successfully, so that the film is well known and people are aware what the film is about.

Paranormal activity low budget marketing strategies:

Before the first Paranormal activity film was released in 2009 few people, other than Paramount production company and select cities knew about the upcoming horror film. The $15,000 horror movie, directed by San Diego filmmaker Oren Peli, first gained awareness at Slamdance Film Festival. A year later Steven Spielberg noticed the potential of the low budget film. The film company marketed the film using social media which intrigued some of its viewers. 

We have decided to use the following strategies to market our film because they are free or very cheap, therefore fit in with our low budget but are still able to make our audience aware of the film and what it can offer them. Here are the strategies we are going to use:

1) Live snapchat feeds- We can create our own snapchat account for our film as this is free and we can create stories that can be viewed by all snapchat users to help market our film. We can also have live feeds of teasers from the filming and production of our film with this we can also leak our release date for the film. This is a really good place to market our film because most of the users on snapchat fit in with our target audience which is 12+ years old.

2) YouTube pop ups- We are going to use YouTube pop ups which are a good way to market our film 'Connect 4'. This is because we can choose which videos our advertising is shown on, helping us target our chosen audience effectively. Also it is fairly cheap to use this method of marketing, which is good because we are a low budget film.

3) Social media sites- We are going to produce a page on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram where users can see when our film is being released and can watch clips and trailers of the film before its release date. This is a suitable method of marketing because it is free and anyone around the world, who has access to these sites, can see our marketing page.

Title Analysis and Timeline

Shooting Schedule

This is the shooting schedule for the week. we are going to try and film most of the shots over four days this week.

Insitution

This the film production company we have chosen to use...

A similar film production company who produce low budget teen films are Canal+. they produced the film 'Son of Rambow'. There was more than one production company that helped to produce this film but Canal+ was the main contributor in the making of the film and contributed the most money. 

Film Logo

After a long conversation we decided on the film name Connect Four. This is because Connect Four id a well known children game, which our characters play. We are our four childhood friends hence the using the game name connect four. This is because connect four is a well known childhood game. 

Representation

Teen films we used as inspiration for our opening sequence... 

High School Musical

High School Musical is a 2006 American teen/romantic comedy musical. 

Male: represented as jocks who stick status quo. However, towards the end of the film they break away from there typical representations and become their own person.  

Female: represented as being very intelligent but also follow the status quo. They also break out of their typical representations and become what they want to be. 

American Pie

American Pie is a 1999 teen sex comedy. 

Male: represented as weird group of loaners trying to out do each other.    

Female: represented as a goal and not actual people. Women are objectified and seen as sexual tools.   

Superbad

Superbad is a 2007 American teen comedy film. 

Male: represented as a pair of weird, sexually frustrated, friends who trying to make a name for themselves at school. 

Female: represented as sexual objects and are not really given a role in the film.