The Retrograde trailer longer version

We were happy with this draft of the trailer but after some feedback we decided to cut it down by 30 seconds and by removing some scenes that we thought were not vital to the trailer.

Evaluation Question 3

What have you learned through audience feedback?

Evaluation Question 2

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

Final Storyboard

Storyboard

Evaluation Question 1

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

Evaluation Question 4

Evaluation Question 4

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

The Retrograde Official Trailer

Here is the final trailer:

Final Poster Designs

Here are the final designs for out trailer poster. We made both a portrait and a landscape version as they could suit different purposes e.g. landscape could be used for billboard.

Portrait:

Landscape:

Directors of our Genre

Alfred Hitchcock: Arguably, the most famous thriller director. Hitchcock is the director of classics such as "Psycho" and "Vertigo". Often nicknamed "The Master of Suspense", he pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. Renowned as England's best director.

Christopher Nolan: Best known for his cerebral, often nonlinear story-telling, acclaimed writer-director Christopher Nolan was born on July 30, 1970 in London, England. Over the course of 15 years of film-making, Nolan has gone from low-budget independent films to working on some of the biggest blockbusters ever made. Nolan probably had the biggest influence on our trailer, as we took inspiration of his films "The Dark Knight" and "Inception"

Clint Eastwood: We were inspired by the trailer for "American Sniper" and we used a lot of aspects that were used in that trailer in ours. We liked the way that the trailer started with a hook that would be revisited later on, but not resolved. Clint is also famous for many other action films and westerns.

Website

Click here for site

History of the "Action Thriller" genre

Technology

Technology

Costumes, Props and Make-up

Costumes, Props and Make-up

We chose to have our main character, Lewie, wearing jeans and a top/coat for most of our filming. This is because we want him to look like any normal teenage boy. Also we thought that it would be much easier for him to wear something like this, that he always wears anyway as it would help coninuity. If his outfit was very complicated and he needed vast amounts of make-up and props, each time we filmed, it would not look exactly the same and then there would be major continuity errors.

Codes and Conventions of Genre

Font

Music

Music

We have used 2 different pieces of music in our trailer.

In the first half we have used a song called 'Apparat Goodbye'.

 This piece is very calm, creating an equilibrium to the audience, introducing him to the protagonist. 

In the second half we have used a song called 'Kinetik One'.

This piece of music is much faster and the sudden change from calm to dramatic creates a tense overall feel to the trailer.

Certificate Rating

Certificate Rating

First Draft

First Draft

This is the original trailer that we created.

We did not finish it because we decided that it looked more like a short film/film opening.

We have used many of the same shots for our second attempt. However we had added more cuts, taken away the sound and added a voice over instead and added some title sequences. 

Health and Safety

Behind the Scenes

Audience Feedback

Audience Feedback

We showed our first draft to the other media groups.

This gave us an opportunity to see what our target audience did and did not like.

Our main criticisms were:

-Do not like the font

-Story line is confusing

We have taken both of these things into consideration and discussed how we can make them better so that the audience will not pick them our again the next time we show it.

Steps we will take to improve the font:

1. We will research other action thriller film trailers and look at the types of font they have used.
2. We will decide on a font that we like the look of and try and find similar ones.
3. Finally, we will make a survey and send it to our audience that we showed to to before, of our top 5 fonts and chose the one that gets to most votes. (It is important to use the same audiences as we cannot ask someone who has not seen our trailer as they will not know what it is meant to look and feel like).

Steps we will take to make the story line less confusing:

After discussion within our group, we decided that the main reason that the audience found our trailer confusing was because it was not completely finished yet. We believe that when we have finished the whole thing, it will all make sense. (We will make sure of this when we have finished).

Our main positives were:

-Good shots

-Good music that fits well 

We are happy with the positive feedback that we got as we believe that the shots are all good as we took time and effort to make them work.

We also are glad that the audience like the music as we believe that it is one of the main features of the trailer and it brings it all together. If we had to change the music this would change our whole trailer as the cuts etc are in time with the music.

Credits in Trailers

Here is an analysis of three film trailers which gave inspiration to our own project. I have noted down on a time scale, the moments in which the credits of the film appear. The results were each fairly different. 

'In Time' introduces with many cuts to dramatic wording and this is to establish the narrative of the film. It then follows with continued linear cuts, slowly increasing the tension and finishing with the film title at the end. This is a common theme throughout all three so it will be reflected in our trailer.

'Interstellar' and 'Lucy', I found were more similar with their credits, spacing out the text and having less of it. However, 'Interstellar' included only two appearances of dramatic text and I feel this worked effectively so it is a potential method for our trailer.

Poster Inspiration

Chatroom Testing

Chatroom Testing

This is the template for our chatroom which we have created. We wanted to use Google Hangout but failed to make it work effectively, therefore, we decided to create our own.

Voiceovers

Voiceover

Lewie: 

1   .     I was… confused

2   .     But then, I realized

3   .     Party scene

4   .     There was this party, the day before it happened

5   .     It wasn’t the alcohol, the drugs.. it was, something else

6   .     I couldn’t talk about it, no one remembered

7   .     Not from the night before

8   .     Not from a week before

9   .     Not even a month

1   .     I thought I was the only one

1   .     20^th century fox logo + music change

Government:

  1.     Person 1: He’s asking questions, this leads to                       suspicions. And he’s not the only one.

  2.     Person 2: We need to contain these people.

  3.     Person 1: Sustain visuals on him.

  4.     Person 2: Get the Retrograde ready.

  5.     Person 1: We need to eliminate him.

  6.     Person 2: Who is he?

  7.     Person 1: I don’t know, but he knows…too much.

Social Media

Social Media

Currently we have an Instagram and FaceBook page for our group. On these we have been updating the audience on the progress of our project and shown a few behind the scenes shots. This is a good way to engage our audience.

Poster Designs

We created four different poster designs for our trailer. As mentioned in my previous post, Taken had a very large impact on the designs we were creating. We liked the 'dark' side of the posters so we decided to go for the top right one. It reflects our trailer very well and the half light, half dark make it seem like he is in the good and the bad. 

Our next step is to start looking at fonts and positioning of our actor names and the film title. We also want him to be holding a gun in the poster but we won't be able to do this until we continue with our filming. 

Test Shots

Here are some test shots before our first initial day filming. The shots indicate the type of quality and positioning which we want to include when we begin the real thing. Using ourselves as the actors, it will help us prepare for our shoot and enable us to be as efficient as possible. We were able to show these shots to our real actors to communicate exactly what we wanted.