Evaluation 1

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

Major Influences By Name:

'Welcome To The Punch' - Overall style

'Hummingbird' - Overall style

'Departed' - Location

'Irreversible' - Colour and Tone

'Only God Forgives' - Colour and tone

'Zodiac' - Titles and Sound

'Eastern Promises' - Character ambiguity 

'Gangster Squad' - trailer narrative

'Taken' - trailer narrative

Location:

We took particular inspiration from many of our main trailer influences, such as 'Welcome To The Punch' and 'Hummingbird' for our different locations. We wanted to contrast the bright, London (city) location shots, as seen in 'Welcome To The Punch' with more darker, gritty style locations as seen in the 'Departed' trailer and in our own trailer, when we show our main protagonist in the alleyway. This way we could both adhere to the common conventions of many crime/thriller trailers, whereby establishing city shots are used to over-emphasise the power and influence of the crime world and also challenge normal conventions by developing our main protagonist's character and one of the best ways for us to do this, was through using different locations that could represent opposing sides of his character. We particularly wanted to use this contrast in shots in order to highlight the different worlds of crime in our trailer; one of glamour and money and the other of death and betrayal (Boss and friend of main protagonist tries to arrest him). 

We used many outside locations, such as the Southbank, China Town and the Car Park, which can be seen in most crime/thriller trailers as it is a fairly action-packed genre in the first place and we wanted to adhere to this by filming much of montage Act in multiple city locations in order to highlight the frenetic, uncontrollable world of crime that most crime/thriller trailers depict. Most crime/thriller trailers employ the use of establishing shots in order to reveal the city, whereby the action is taking place and also to reveal the main characters of the story. We conform to this part of the genre by establishing London as the city, in which our trailer is set, through multiple panning shots of different London motifs, such as the London Eye and the Millennium bridge. We also employ establishing shots of the main actors in our trailer, especially our main protagonist and the female actress in the bar scene. We also establish the main antagonist in our story through a voice over and panning shot of him leaving a car park after an evident job has been 'completed'. 

We also wanted to contrast the outside shots with effective interior shots, especially seen in our Bar sequence with 'Aaron Mays' and our female character, which informs the audience a lot about the story we are trying tell and even suggest a possible relationship between the two, which conforms to many crime/thriller trailers, which also employ a 'love interest' character. 

Graphics:

Our graphics were inspired mostly by those of our main influence, 'Welcome To The Punch', with the still title, coupled with a moving image in the background of the letters on the screen. It is important for the graphics in most crime/thriller trailers to stand out in comparison to the highly glamorous shots of multiple city locations shown before & after them. Even those trailers that employ more gritty/subdued locations, most often deploy engaging (stand-out) titles that are memorable for an audience. We wanted to create this 'high-budget' feel in our narrative graphics in order to adhere to not only our main influence as aforementioned but also the conventions of most graphics in crime/thriller trailers, which employ stand-out and eye catching graphics that an audience remember and also associate/draw a link with our poster cover title. We wanted to suggest the glamorous, high-budget world of crime through our narrative graphics and we did this by adding effects, such as glows in order to make the titles stand out against the block background. 

STUDIO IDENT - We wanted to create a professional (high-budget) styled Ident, similar to the ones seen on the trailers that we were influenced by. This way we would be adhering to the conventions but at the same time creating an Ident that would fit with the tense, action-packed style of our trailer. I attempted to make one on motion prior to this that didn't turn out exactly how I expected so scrapped the idea and we begun work on another one, which can be seen below and we felt suited the style of our trailer more closely.  

Sound:

Most of the trailers we watched when looking at sound deployed a large use of different styles of sound, such as a recurring soundtrack that kept the flow/rhythm of the trailer running smoothly, mixed with lots of foley/ambient sounds, such as sound booms, gun shots and voiceovers. We adhere to genre by using all of these sound techniques, such as ambient, separately recorded footsteps for certain moments, which create tension amongst the audience, a voiceover between Act 1 & 2 to not only link the acts seemlessly but also for the purposes of informing the audience on important aspects of our story and multiple sound booms, usually before an establishing shot or a credit. We didn't work with our main soundtrack until the latter stages of the editing process due to the fact that we wanted to finish a rough cut before handing it to our musical producer, but we realised the importance of the soundtrack, especially after revisiting many of our main trailer influences to recapture our original ideas on sound. We challenged the conventions slightly by employing one underlying soundtrack that runs all the way through our trailer unlike many conventional crime/thriller trailers that dip in and out of the main soundtrack but we still used conventional ideas, such as lowering the soundtrack and increasing the ambient sound at moments of important dialogue, especially noticeable in the scenes with our main protagonists and his 'friend', which is another example of us adhering to the original conventions of the genre.  

Title:

The title is fairly similar to the narrative graphics shown throughout the trailer, but is slightly different, which we felt was important as it continued to conform to the conventions of the trailer but added something extra, which the audience could then remember as it is the final thing they see on screen and so we wanted to place extra importance on it, in order to impress our audience and leave an image that would last in their memory. We undoubtedly developed this part compared to our final at AS, which was rushed due to the fact that we didn't view it as that important, which was clearly an error in judgment. At AS we took more time over the final title, which not only improved the quality of our trailer but also adhered to the conventions of most title presentations in film trailers, especially those, which we had studied ('Welcome To The Punch').

Colour & Tone:

We placed particular importance on colour and tone in our trailer as we wanted to find an aesthetic, similar to that in 'Welcome To The Punch', which could be a recurring motif throughout our trailer and something, which our audiences to identify and think about throughout the trailer itself. We used multiple filters, during Reccee's and found that we were extremely fond of the dark blue, especially seen in Act 2, with the bar scene & the scene's in the friends house. We wanted to use the bright neon style colours as seen on buildings located all around the Southbank area of London, which adheres to the style, in terms of colour and tone, seen in 'Welcome To The Punch' and 'Hummingbird', with the bright lights of Soho. We were also influenced by the colour and tone of the 'Irreversible' trailer, starring Vincent Cassell an actor found in many of our crime/thriller trailer influences, which also uses bright colours, such as different shades of oranges and blues. We challenged the conventions of many crime/thriller trailers with our use of brighter, more neon style colours as most employ a darker set of colours that represent the darker world of crime, especially seen in 'gangster squad', 'departed' and 'eastern promises'. We are still adhering to the conventions seen in a major trailer however ('Welcome To The Punch'), which justifies our actions for going against the conventions of the majority of crime/thriller trailers. 'Only God Forgives' starring Ryan Gosling also employs the use of Neon style colours as a recurring motif throughout, which we felt would be suitable to apply to the style of our trailer. Lighting tropes were essential to our trailer, especially due to the fact that we were not blessed with an extremely high-budget, meaning that we had to think very carefully about style, positioning of camera and light positioning and colouring in order to create the stylised shots we wanted without using a high-focused camera and state-of the art equipment seen to be used in our major influences. Utilising these tropes of the crime/thriller genre was essential as the narrative connotations, such as romance, revenge and innocence, which can be found in almost all crime/thriller films, such as Fight Club, The Dark Knight Rises as well as in our trailer are clear to see through the focused positioning of both our lighting and camera.

(Our Trailer)

(Only God Forgives Trailer)

Cinematography:

We use and develop conventions of most crime/thriller trailers to a certain extent, especially when linked to the specific framing/width/positioning of the shots in our own trailer. The 'Zodiac' trailer for example takes particular care over the framing of the shots in order to suggest the narrative, whilst almost 'wowing' the audience with their choice in shots and keeping them engaged in the story they are telling. We have certainly developed in our vision and skills in cinematography as we wanted to use the ideas seen in our trailer influences and then develop them to fit with the style of our trailer. This can be seen below with the powerful shot of Jake Gyllenhaals character standing outside the press building at a low angle, suggesting a lot about his character/s role in the movie contrasted with our shot, whereby we developed this idea but shot it at night time and against a neon lit (fitting with our colour and tone ideas) wall. This shot suited the style of our trailer as it suggested danger evolved around our main protagonist but at the same time creates a powerful image that the audience members can remember at the end of our trailer. We also decided to frame our main protagonist in the middle of the shot in order to highlight his importance, despite the overwhelming task facing him, suggested through the sound and pace of this montage scene.  

 (Zodiac Trailer)

(Our Trailer)

(Zodiac Trailer)

Character/Actor:

We adhered to the conventions of most crime/thriller trailers, through our use of characters and how we allow them to appear throughout the duration of the trailer. Most crime/thriller trailers place particular importance on a character (usually the main antagonist) whilst keeping him fairly ambiguous. This can be seen in 'Gangster Squad', one of our influences, whereby Sean Penn's characters is presented as central to the story but is also kept fairly ambiguous throughout, leaving the audience wanting to know more. We attempt to do something similar in our trailer, especially during Act 2 when our main antagonist is walking towards his car and their is a voiceover explaining who he is, keeping a large sense of ambiguity around his character. We also further this with a few shots in the montage of our main antagonist on the phone in an alleyway. We challenged the conventions of many crime/thriller trailers however, by producing a more character based sequence, instead of focusing solely on 'guns' and 'action', like most of the trailers we viewed. We wanted to reveal more about our main protagonists inner feelings and emotions in our trailer and so we decided to include shots, such as the intimate moment in the bar sequence, which could help the audience to relate to him more and thus allow them to actively become involved in the trailer, instead of passively enjoying it.    

Narrative:

Most conventional crime/thriller trailers, such as 'Gangster Squad' and 'Eastern Promises' employ a narrative that has some complexities but is usually fairly easy to follow and decipher, which is what we, as a group wanted to produce. Something that the audience could passively enjoy but also provide twists that the audience could actively think about. Our twist is shown in Act 1, when our main protagonist discovers the man he has been chasing for years is dead and realises that he has opened up a whole new world of crime. Our narrative in terms of its complexity and thought has certainly developed from our AS product, which used a fairly simple storyline that was easy to follow and passively enjoy. It has certainly developed this year as seen by the fact that we had to think about the whole film, instead of simply the opening two minutes. 

Editing:

The editing was catered particularly towards producing a trailer that both adhered and challenged the conventions of most crime/thriller trailers and even the thriller genre. Much of what has been previously said, was produced during the editing stage, in order to create the effects we most wanted to produce. We took influence from the editing of the 'Welcome To The Punch' trailer, which mixed together both fast-paced and slower-paced editing in order to highlight the more intimate moments directly contrasted with the action. We did something similar with our fast-paced montage directly contrasted with the intimate moments in the friends house and during the bar sequence. In order to keep the blue colour motif throughout we decided to colour match many of the shots we had taken with our favourite shot that used the blue-neon filters (bar shot with protagonist and female). 

Below is an Art of Title style compilation of shots from our trailer, linking to the paragraphs above as well as mirroring the second compilation of our influences.

Below is another Art Of Title style compilation made on Photoshop, highlighting shots from our two main influences, 'Welcome To The Punch' and 'Hummingbird'. The shots are similar to the ones seen above in the Art of Title compilation from our own trailer:

Magazine and Poster Prezi for the products I created:

Prezi on our finished/chosen poster:

MT