The Final Products
This is our final teaser trailer, poster and magazine cover.
Evaluation
Brief description of the story and creation of 'The Goddards'
The forms and conventions of the teaser trailer Shot-by-shot explanation
The reviews for the teaser trailer, how we used the review to improve our video, creating the final trailer? Video reviews by rickesh, kabir, soda, etc' Comparison between 1st teaser trailer and final teaser trailer.
What technology did you use? Final Cut Pro, Motion, HD Sony Camera, tripod, reflector, lighting - soft box, fruity-loop
The forms and conventions of the teaser poster Including research reference, the reviews given back about the poster.
What technology did we use? Photoshop, pentax slr camera for photograph
The forms and conventions of the film magazine
The reviews
What technology did you use? Photoshop
What was consist in our final products? The close-up of Marcus showing his importance and the main focus of the film, red/black/white colour scheme, consistency in font which are arial which is bold but elegant
What went well? The filming process, the whole group were ready and active to get everything done on time. Overall, we worked together and everyone made contribution to the work.
What I learnt? I have further developed my photoshop and final cut pro skills. Learn to how to work well in a group as we didnt have any arugements. Alsp this was a key project that improved my time management skills.
The forms and conventions of the teaser trailer Shot-by-shot explanation
The reviews for the teaser trailer, how we used the review to improve our video, creating the final trailer? Video reviews by rickesh, kabir, soda, etc' Comparison between 1st teaser trailer and final teaser trailer.
What technology did you use? Final Cut Pro, Motion, HD Sony Camera, tripod, reflector, lighting - soft box, fruity-loop
The forms and conventions of the teaser poster Including research reference, the reviews given back about the poster.
What technology did we use? Photoshop, pentax slr camera for photograph
The forms and conventions of the film magazine
The reviews
What technology did you use? Photoshop
What was consist in our final products? The close-up of Marcus showing his importance and the main focus of the film, red/black/white colour scheme, consistency in font which are arial which is bold but elegant
What went well? The filming process, the whole group were ready and active to get everything done on time. Overall, we worked together and everyone made contribution to the work.
What I learnt? I have further developed my photoshop and final cut pro skills. Learn to how to work well in a group as we didnt have any arugements. Alsp this was a key project that improved my time management skills.
Evaluation
The Creation of 'The Goddards' - Firstly we combined our ideas onto a brainstorm where we divided it up into genres, and then for each genre we came up with an idea. We thought more in depth about the storyline and how we would fit in it a low budget teaser trailer. We decided to go with the gangster theme because it could fit in with two genres, action and thriller. We agreed on the idea and developed a storyline out of it. We then research into the genre and watched teaser trailers for films such as ‘Super 8’, ‘Buried’, and ‘Sin City’. We then researched into different gangster films to come up with a plot which we eventually did after watching ‘The Godfather’ and ‘Lucky Number Slevin’ and the trailer of a docu-drama ‘The Sicilian Girl’. All of these films have a storyline about revenge. Our film is about a young man who wants to leave the gangster life and get his brother out. But as soon as his own father and his ‘business’ start hurting people that Marcus’ care about, he takes matters into his own hand.
Conventions
Conventions and Forms of a teaser trailer – We researched several teaser trailers, to study what style we would we use and also we learnt how other gangster/mafia films portray their story using the forms and conventions.
We started our trailer using a red band rating card which tells the audience this teaser trailer is not suitable for a young audience because it is ‘restricted’. We put this red band because our teaser trailer contains violence and strong language. We learnt that movies containing explicit content, must state before watching it. In ‘The Departed’ they start their trailer using a restricted audience rating card. But ‘The Departed’ using a green background. We developed the idea and used a red background to represent that it is a warning.
It cuts to black and fades into a shot of Marcus. We started off by using the transition effect of fade in fade out between the clips because it gives the audience a brief second to think about that shot and how it fits into the next shot. This is also seen in one of teaser trailers we researched, ‘The Pirates of The Caribbean – On Strangers Tide’ where they fade in and out between clips of Caribbean location. But we also used cut out as well where there was a dramatic shot. We also made sure cut in and cut out is in time with the explosive sound to make the teaser trailer more dramatic which emphasises a bit of the genre, thriller.
It fades into a close-up shot of Curtis who plays the character 'Marcus'. The audience straight away know that Marcus is the main character because he is the first subject you see, showing he has an important role. We shot the scene outside in a nice setting to emphasis his innocence. It also shows he is alone, separate from the darkness of his father.
Then there is a contrast shot between the close-up shot and the next shot which is of Marcus with a gun point a gun at the camera creating a point of view shot of a victim. This contrast's Marcus good and evil side. Firstly there is a contrast in the setting, where one is outside in the open where it is peaceful and relaxing and second shot is set at night which is a connotation of the darkness taking over him when his father is around who is in the shot yelling at Marcus. This contrast is also seen in the opening shot of the trailer of 'American Gangster', where you see the two contrast shots. This almost shows the two divided lives. But one shown after the other represents that each life is very close to each other and one will take over the other.
We started our trailer using a red band rating card which tells the audience this teaser trailer is not suitable for a young audience because it is ‘restricted’. We put this red band because our teaser trailer contains violence and strong language. We learnt that movies containing explicit content, must state before watching it. In ‘The Departed’ they start their trailer using a restricted audience rating card. But ‘The Departed’ using a green background. We developed the idea and used a red background to represent that it is a warning.
It cuts to black and fades into a shot of Marcus. We started off by using the transition effect of fade in fade out between the clips because it gives the audience a brief second to think about that shot and how it fits into the next shot. This is also seen in one of teaser trailers we researched, ‘The Pirates of The Caribbean – On Strangers Tide’ where they fade in and out between clips of Caribbean location. But we also used cut out as well where there was a dramatic shot. We also made sure cut in and cut out is in time with the explosive sound to make the teaser trailer more dramatic which emphasises a bit of the genre, thriller.
It fades into a close-up shot of Curtis who plays the character 'Marcus'. The audience straight away know that Marcus is the main character because he is the first subject you see, showing he has an important role. We shot the scene outside in a nice setting to emphasis his innocence. It also shows he is alone, separate from the darkness of his father.
Then there is a contrast shot between the close-up shot and the next shot which is of Marcus with a gun point a gun at the camera creating a point of view shot of a victim. This contrast's Marcus good and evil side. Firstly there is a contrast in the setting, where one is outside in the open where it is peaceful and relaxing and second shot is set at night which is a connotation of the darkness taking over him when his father is around who is in the shot yelling at Marcus. This contrast is also seen in the opening shot of the trailer of 'American Gangster', where you see the two contrast shots. This almost shows the two divided lives. But one shown after the other represents that each life is very close to each other and one will take over the other.
Technology
What is Final Cut Pro? Final cut pro is a professional editing software using in the film industry. At school every iMac is supplied with the software. We used it to edit all of our videos, including our teaser trailer. There are a lot of functions on final cut pro that we used to create our teaser trailer. For example each text has controlled setting.
What is Photoshop? Adobe Photoshop is a leading and pioneering illustration software used both in a business, domestic and educational settings. Commony refered to as "Photoshop" the software allows the user to edit tweet customise and create 'Portable Network Graphics'. Photoshop is also used by big inderstriyal cooperations in the morden technological advancements such as "CAD". Computer Aided Design commonly known as CAD is a fundamental element that links Adobe Photoshop to the business environment.
What did you use it to do, and why not some other program like publisher? We used Photoshop to converge our posters for the practical film production we did for AS. This included us sourcing and taking our own individual pictures, downloading specialised fonts and using the tools provided to perfect our marsterpeases. Photoshop was used as a vital nessecity in the success of our projects.
Why Photoshop ? We specifictly singled out and targeted adobe as they have a strong heritage in the digital illustration industry. Adobe have been making illustration software ever since computers were perfected in the mid 1990s. Photoshop was targeted in particular as it is a specialised tool that was specifically designed to manipulation graphics and digital imagery, were as other similar programs like Publisher are too un authodox and are generalised to a wide range of uses that lessening its mandate to perform as well as photo shop.
Equipment used while filming
What is Photoshop? Adobe Photoshop is a leading and pioneering illustration software used both in a business, domestic and educational settings. Commony refered to as "Photoshop" the software allows the user to edit tweet customise and create 'Portable Network Graphics'. Photoshop is also used by big inderstriyal cooperations in the morden technological advancements such as "CAD". Computer Aided Design commonly known as CAD is a fundamental element that links Adobe Photoshop to the business environment.
What did you use it to do, and why not some other program like publisher? We used Photoshop to converge our posters for the practical film production we did for AS. This included us sourcing and taking our own individual pictures, downloading specialised fonts and using the tools provided to perfect our marsterpeases. Photoshop was used as a vital nessecity in the success of our projects.
Why Photoshop ? We specifictly singled out and targeted adobe as they have a strong heritage in the digital illustration industry. Adobe have been making illustration software ever since computers were perfected in the mid 1990s. Photoshop was targeted in particular as it is a specialised tool that was specifically designed to manipulation graphics and digital imagery, were as other similar programs like Publisher are too un authodox and are generalised to a wide range of uses that lessening its mandate to perform as well as photo shop.
Equipment used while filming
Sony HD Camera - We used a HD Camera which had a built in Hard drive because it's easier to use compared to a camcorder that used DV Tapes because it's more expensive to buy tape and then when you have to capture the footage, Final Cut Pro play the entire tape as it's capturing meaning you have to wait a couple of hours. Unlike a camcorder with a Hard drive which downloads the clips onto a computer which takes 3-10 seconds per clip meaning it only takes 30 minutes and then a few seconds to import to final cut pro.
Tripod - This made our camera moves steady where we wanted it to be. For example the restaurant scene and outdoor scene of Dre Monte standing infront of a sunset. This way our shots look more professional and keeps the audience focus on the mise-en-scene.
What is Digital Cinema?
To understand the concept of digital cinemas, we need to understand about the film based cinematography – In a large number of cases (even today), the pictures are shot using analog film based cameras, then converted in to digital format for editing, mixing, re-recording and adding special effects and converted back to analog films for projecting them through the analog film based projectors.
Digital Cinemas use digital processes end to end – right from the capture (digital movies are shot using digital CCD based cameras with high resolution), storage (they are stored in digital tapes, hard disks or flash drives), processing (editing, mixing, re-recording, sound, special effects etc are handled in the digital format), display (digital cinema is displayed using digital projectors which are controlled by industry standard servers with management software in the theatres) and distribution (digital cinema copies are mostly transmitted electronically over the Internet or satellites or even hard disks).
Advantages of Digital Cinema
Disadvantages of Digital Cinema
To understand the concept of digital cinemas, we need to understand about the film based cinematography – In a large number of cases (even today), the pictures are shot using analog film based cameras, then converted in to digital format for editing, mixing, re-recording and adding special effects and converted back to analog films for projecting them through the analog film based projectors.
Digital Cinemas use digital processes end to end – right from the capture (digital movies are shot using digital CCD based cameras with high resolution), storage (they are stored in digital tapes, hard disks or flash drives), processing (editing, mixing, re-recording, sound, special effects etc are handled in the digital format), display (digital cinema is displayed using digital projectors which are controlled by industry standard servers with management software in the theatres) and distribution (digital cinema copies are mostly transmitted electronically over the Internet or satellites or even hard disks).
Advantages of Digital Cinema
- The films used in analog cinemas (based on vinyl records) degrade with time, but digital images do not. And even if a DVD is scratched, it could easily be backed up in a hard disk or another DVD, for example.
- Digital cinemas can be shown and managed in the theatres by unskilled labour (with minimal training) as the management terminal is PC-based and simple to handle, unlike analog film based cinemas, which need dedicated personnel for receiving, prepping, showing, dismantling and returning the movie tape films.
- Distribution of digital cinema’s (electronically via Internet, satellites or even hard disks) are simpler, fast and in-expensive than the time taken and cost incurred for the shipping and handling of heavy film tapes.
- Supply rarely matches the demand in the movie industry – suddenly a picture might become a huge hit and the demand for showing it in additional screens might arise. It is much easier and faster to distribute additional copies for digital cinemas in those situations.
- Addition/deletion of scenes after the movies have been released is easier/cheaper with Digital cinemas.
- Piracy could be more effectively monitored with robust copy protection, encryption and water marking processes for digital cinemas. The chances of introducing a new anti-piracy technology is higher in the digital format.
- The solid state projectors used with Digital Cinemas are smaller and occupy less space than their analog counterpart.
- The digital tapes/external hard disks used in digital cameras (camcorders) cost much lesser than analog film based cameras – the same scenes can be shot many more times till the director is satisfied without worrying about the cost of the film tapes.
- The scenes can be previewed immediately after they are shot with a digital camera – so the director can immediately judge if a change in lighting conditions are required or a re-shoot is required etc.
- A lot of tools are available for introducing special effects in digital cinema. In fact, the scenes could be created fully using special effects/animation in the computers.
- There are management software’s available for digital cinemas which can automatically schedule the movies showing in various screens in a multiplex without manual intervention.
- There is a body formed by the major production studios called DCI – Digital Cinema Initiatives which is engaged in standardising the major specifications for digital cinemas to ensure interoperability between major vendors of digital cinema.
- Digital cameras are often highly configurable and use detachable modular components for flexibility and upgrade-ability. They can also record high resolution images up to 4096 x 2304 pixels.
- If a theatre can play digital cinemas, it can also broadcast events – live or hold meetings/conferences with minor changes in the theatre facilities.
- Digital 3D uses polarization instead of coloured glasses (used by older 3D cinemas) to portray the 3D effect. This ensures that the colour of the finished image is not corrupted.
- Digital cameras are considered to be better for indoor shooting/ shooting at nights with a very low light.
- Digital cinema is advantageous for low budget cinemas made with limited man-power as such movies have lower budgets and alternatives are available for cheaper capturing, editing, processing, recording and distribution of digital cinemas.
Disadvantages of Digital Cinema
- Even though the digital data may not get scratched/grained etc, the digital projector pixels would break/degrade over time
- The quality of digital projection is comparable with analog film based projection. Some people feel that the quality of analog film based projection is better than digital projection and the image reproduction is more natural. But digital technology is improving everyday.
- Most of the theatres are equipped with film based projectors and to replace them entirely with digital projectors would involve a lot of cost and re-designing for the theatre owners.
- Digital data always has a higher risk of getting pirated than their analog counterparts.
- Digital technologies are prone to technological obsolescence. With newer technologies/improvements introduced so fast, the existing digital equipments might get outdated faster and some of them may not be upgradeable to newer technologies, introducing a higher risk on investing in them.
- Analog/film based cameras are even today considered better for outdoor/day-light shoots as digital cameras produce inconsistent images when exposed to high brightness environments.
- If the digital camera uses 4k resolution to capture digital images for good clarity, the cine projector displaying that image also needs to support 4k resolution to display the images at that clarity. But, there are a very few 4k projectors installed in theatres around the world.
- The digital standards of recording/playback keep changing and hence many digital cinemas are converted to analog films for storage and archival.
- Some Analog high-quality formats like IMAX etc, cannot be achieved by their digital equivalent cameras/ projectors.
- contrast, each digital camera has a unique response to light and digital treatment processes are not mastered fully by cinematographers.
FL Studio and Pro Tools
FL Studio and Pro tools are sound-making software, which is what we used to compose our score. Using didn't types of sound we adjust them using effects and placed them on a timeline.
The Connection between the Media products
All three products are linked mainly because it all center around our main character, Marcus. In the film magazine and film poster we used the same image of Marcus. We wanted to use him in both products because it emphasises his significance in the film. It also wanted to show that even someone who looks as innocent as Marcus can be stuck on a bad path like the gangster life. We chose that image because he looks innocent which also mirror the same representation of Marcus in the first shot of the teaser trailer. The shot of Marcus and the photograph are similar because Marcus also looks innocent in the first shot because of the bright lighting. Also it is the first subject you see like the poster and magazine. We also used a consistency of the red, white and black colours which was inspired by other gangster films like the 'Goodfellas' where the poster shows Robert De Niro wearing a white shirt, black blazer and red tie. We also see this with the Don in 'The Godfather' when he is in his office wearing a black and white suit with a red rose. The red in both movies symbolises blood which is split in for lives. We wanted to show the same connotation but I wanted to use it as a symbol of warning. In the trailer we used a red tie on Dre Monte. I wanted it to symbolise warning that Dre Monte is dangerous and corrupted. It is almost a reminder to Marcus to keep his distance and not get ot close to his father. We also used white and red font in all three products for the title. In the teaser trailer we have the font fading from white to red showing Marcus' goodness being taken over by the blood of innocence. Because we couldn't create the same fading effect in photoshop (because it is a still image), we highlighted the 'god' and in 'Goddards' to emphasis that they are power and it shows it in the family name.
Ideologies
Film making is a form of art which reflects the culture of the society. It also affects the society to a great extent. It is a popular source of entertainment which is enjoyed with all age groups alike. Film making has been found to be profitable and has become a source of living for many. As it gained popularity with the masses it has turned into a billion dollar industry. To attract more and more people the makers have started to include the beautiful scenes from various countries. A common man gets opportunity to see the beautiful places of different countries and is further fascinated. It has turned into a craze for films and one is almost addicted to them. Over a period the ticket prices have reached sky high and it is turning out to be a very expensive proposition to watch a film in a theater. One has to spend a lot of money to enjoy a movie with family.
