Film Trailer = Recruitment Poster

Millie and I decided we wanted to use students from our own school in our trailer, preferably ones who study A Level or AS Level drama. So we decided to create a poster which we printed out and stuck around our sixth form area and in the drama department, in order to target the correct students.

Film Trailer: Questionnaire and Feedback

Questionnaire and Feedback from Ella Sandison

Film Trailer = Final Idea

Millie and I decided to produce our own social realist drama. This genre normally focuses on topical issues in current modern society, such as money, drugs, sex, class and political views. Here is our trailer brief:

Project Name:	Loving You
Medium/Format:	Film trailer and accompanying poster and magazine cover
Length:	Three to four minutes
Deadline:	16th December 2016
Group Members:	Ella Sandison and Millie Turner
Brief overview of content (approx. 50 words):	The trailer starts with one central female protagonist who feels awkward around her friends because they don’t know that she is gay. She meets a girl who is in a heterosexual relationship, the second central protagonist, and they fall in love. Her friends and the boyfriend find out about the relationship and things take a turn for the worse. After a period of self-confliction and torment she comes to grips with her sexuality.
Target audience (age, gender bias (if any), Socio-economic status and lifestyle profiling):	Teenagers of both sexes, this is because it is easier for them to relate as it is produced by teenagers and the main protagonists and other characters will all be of this age.
Possible Scheduling/ publishing suggestions:	The trailer would be shown in cinemas before films of a similar genre, in order to target the correct film goers. It could also been shown around television programs, or film shown on TV, of the same genre to again target the correct people.
What comparable products have you researched?	We watched the trailer for ‘Blue is the Warmest Colour’ which is about a girl realising her sexuality and over-coming the stigma around it. We also watched the trailer for ‘trainspotting’ although this doesn’t share any similarities in plot line it is a social realist drama which is was we intend to produce.
What is the rationale behind this text? (What key codes and conventions will we use to keep the audience engaged?)	Our trailer will include minimal special effects in order to keep it as realistic as possible. We will also do this by focusing on the majority of the populations feeling and emotions and not just a small select percentage.
What representations will be operating in your text? Are these justified?	One representation we will be using is innocent youth. This is because it can present the characters as more naïve as they haven’t been exposed to the world, and we can play on this throughout the trailer. Another representation would be of homosexual relationships, this relationship goes against the stereotype of their being a more masculine partner and a more feminine partner.
How will you test whether the product is successful? How will you check that it accomplishes the intended effect?	We will use questionnaires to evaluate our product and these will be handed to people in our target audience after they have viewed the trailer. The questions will be tailored to see whether our representations have come across correctly and to see how effective our conventions are.
What generic codes and conventions will be operating in your text?	The setting will be in a school environment in order to incorporate the idea of awkwardness between her and her friends and peer-pressure. These ideas are normally more apparent in a school environment.
What are overt (obvious) messages incorporated into the text?	The obvious message in this trailer that homophobia is wrong and that not all love stories are heterosexual.
Are there any (hidden) messages incorporated into the text?	The hidden message is internal homophobia, the rejection of what the protagonist is feeling.
Identify any resource constraints (time, money, equipment, human resources) that might affect your production and your hopes for your product?	Time is always at a shortage, so effective time management will be key in order to complete the task in time. Money shouldn’t be an issue as this is a social realist drama, it won’t require special effects or costly camera equipment. However, human resource will be hard to tackle. As we require a handful of actors/actresses we will have to think carefully about people’s time tables and free time in order to have the whole cast together at once.
Additional Notes:

The Importance of Film Trailers

A film trailer is known as an advertisement or commercial for a film which is launched weeks or months before the film is released to the general public for viewing. It's sole purpose is to inform the audience about what they should expect to see in the film and to make them curious about the film. However, some trailers include extra special effects, which will not be apparent in the film, in order to excite the potential audience more.
Many modern trailers are now released before the filming of the actual movie is even finished. This is very helpful to the editors of the film as they will be able to tell from responses to the trailer, what is and isn't appropriate to include when the whole film is released.
Trailers are considered to be an insight to the film and a way for a production company to inject their film into the public eye. So much so, there are specific agencies which specialise in creating trailers for new movies, these are called 'trailer houses'. From this we can see the vast importance of releasing a well cut and chosen trailer of your film, due to its ability to prevent further conflict, exhilarate the audience and catch their target audiences eye.

Research into Media Texts 2

Blue is the warmest color from Ella Sandison

Research into Media Texts

Trainspotting from Ella Sandison

Film Trailer Ideas

Millie and I came up with three final ideas for our film trailer. We chose a range of genres in order to see all the different conventions we could explore before deciding on our favourite one.

1. Chick Flick
This trailer would feature a typical blonde female protagonist and a typical tall, dark haired male protagonist. At the beginning of the trailer we can see the female protagonist is totally in love with her boyfriend, who breaks up with her out of the blue. She was so in love with him she now has nothing left and doesn't know her true self. The film then follows her learning about herself and how to make new relationships.

2. Horror
This trailer would be filmed entirely by using a camcorder. A group of friends go camping for a night to celebrate the life of their recently passed friend. The friend had been kidnapped and announced dead, but in fact she wasn't. She

finds the group of friends in the woods after she manages to escape and kills them all as revenge for not searching for her.

3. Social Realist Drama
The two protagonists in this trailer are both gay. The main protagonist feels left out and awkward at school as her close group of friends don't know that she is gay. She then meets the second female protagonist and things get a bit rocky before they start to become better for her.