Group Schedule

This is our schedule that the group created. This will enable us to keep to a plan of action, therefore preventing us from missing deadlines or falling behind with our progress. Having a group schedule as well as individual timetables, means that the group can work together more efficiently because we have agreed on group deadlines.

Treatment

This is our treatment, we first wrote it in a word document and then recorded Georgia, Hayley and myself discussing the concept of our film and the development of our ideas.

Personal Timetable of Action Plan

This is my individual schedule. This will help me manage my work and make sure I keep to important deadlines. Organising my work into a timetable means that I can maintain control in the development of my Blog work and the group project.

Summary of Product & Audience Research

For our advanced portfolio project, we had to conduct primary and secondary research including analysis of cross media advertising this including; film teaser trailers, poster and magazine front covers, as this is what we will be creating for our project. And researching what sells films to audiences and researching to determine what our target audience should be. This research will help us divide demographic and psycho graphic audiences, this guiding us to determine the most useful parts of these such as; age, gender, attitudes and opinions that will be the best to target.

For my personal research I first analysed movies from a range of different genres such as; romcom, action and thriller. This giving a broader view on the way that film makers advertise their films. For instance, how colour can be adapted to a certain film, in 'Going the Distance' there were a lot of light colours and soft tones giving off an impression of light heartiness and romantic emotions. This I found being a complete contrast to how and what colours were used for the advertisement of 'Devil'. In this trailer and especially the poster, there were a lot of dark colours reflecting the sense of evil or death. I found in the poster, the whole image is black with a just a small portion of the poster, an elevator down button, being red. This symbolising danger or possibly the devil, with the button pointing toward hell? I also noticed with the poster how the unique selling points of a film are a huge focus on the poster, whether it be M. Night Shymalan in 'Devil', 'Resident Evil' in 3D or Drew Barrymore in 'Going the Distance'.

As our group ideas evolved I refined my research and analysis to the thriller genre as this is what we decided to make our film in. For analysis on cross media advertising, I looked at the film 'Buried' starring Ryan Reynolds, another unique selling point. Both the teaser and poster had very successful elements to sell the film and left me wandering what has happened, and has encouraged me to go and see the film. As well as my analysis, we as a group have set up a Yahoo! account and created a questionnaire about the film trailer, asking for the general public to watch it and then discuss what they thought and felt about how it worked etc. Although it can be assumed too general for audience research by having the questionnaire open for all, we did it purposely to see who actually did the questionnaire, this helping us determine a target audience. To coincide with this questionnaire, we created one on Facebook and sent the same questionnaire to selected 'friends' this making the research more refined. As these may not be as successful as we hope, we also constructed a Survey Monkey questionnaire which will give us added data. When collecting results we can then compare and contrast the three to understand who would be more approachable and successful to target in selling our film. We also conducted a more general questionnaire that we handed out to people, this was to useful for us to understand what parts of pyschographic and demographic factors to include in our final piece. To add more to this research we are setting up focus groups and we will record audience’s reactions to teaser trailers of the thriller genre.

To conclude my findings so far, I have understood that unique selling points are very successful; colours are very effective in symbolising elements of the film that you want to reveal. Also, music sound tracks are important and creative however simple they may be, they always add to the atmosphere.

Simplicity is something I have found to be very successful and is something my group and I are considering for our own, as we have learnt that this will be very valuable to the success of our trailer.

Psychographic & Demographic

Results

After collecting the results from my Psychographic

and demographic questionnaire, I have collated

them into pie charts for easier analysis.

Here from question 1, the chart to the right shows that 30%

said they are most likely to see a film poster at

the cinema and only 11% said it would be at bus

stops.

This chart below shows the results for question 2. This question being: What attracts you to go watch films? The results state that a massive 30% said the genre of the film, 27% being the stars of the film and only 18% being both the interesting advertising and famous directors.

Question 3's results show that a huge 38% say that
the star on the front of a magazine makes them want to buy it. Compared to a minor 9% saying it would be the interesting articles.

This pie chart to the left, states that majority of the people we asked will most likely see film trailers at the cinema, 42%. The lesser being online, at only 19%. The medium being on television with 39%.

Questionnaire

This is an example of the questionnaire that we handed out to a group of people. Although some of the answers that we collected were not as helpful or useful as we had hoped, most of the replies we received gave us a lot of useful insight into what audiences want and expect from advertisements in the movie industry. This enables us to demonstrate these needs in our own project, making it all the more successful.

Technology Research

iMovie

This is the software that we will be using to create our final product. iMovie is an advanced software product that will be the best to use in the creation of our teaser trailer. It provides us with a range of tools to input the immense detail that we need to edit and cut our trailer. Making it as professional as we can.

http://www.apple.com/ilife/imovie/

Final Cut

For the editing of our trailer we will most likely use Final Cut as it can provide us with reliable tools to make our trailer professional. It means we can easily and successfully edit our filming with ease. We can effortlessly transfer our recordings from our tape straight to Final Cut and then we can begin editing. The tools on Final Cut give us endless possibilities to customize our trailer, including transitions, sound effects and freedom to cut any parts we desire. During research of these products, I found out that Final Cut has been used by proffesionals to edit their work, such films include; Eat, Pray, Love and 500 Days of Summer.

http://www.apple.com/finalcutstudio/finalcutpro/

The Sony A1E Camera

To obtain the best possible recording of our trailer, we need to make sure that we use one of the best camcorders. The Sony A1E is the camera that is provided at college. We will use this camera as it is ideal for the high standard that we want to achieve. The Sony A1E has many features that will benefit us greatly. The camera is small, lightweight and uses technology such as CMOS meaning it can deliver a professional recording.

http://www.sony.co.uk/biz/product/hdvcamcorders/hvr-a1e/overview