Narrative outlines

Home by nine

Propps theory

Characters
Hero - Matt - A rich school boy who is the one one catches the killer. 
Villian - Killer - This is the masked person who try and succeed to kill the school boys. 

Joe - Is also attends a private school but is the  
Rory - Is the Dad of Matt and is very worried when he don't come home at nine. 
Killer - This is the masked person who try and succeed to kill the school boys. 
Janet - Is the police detective for unsolved crimes

Todorov's 5 stages

Equilibrium 
Six rich school friends play football in a park that is directly next to a cemetery. Everyone is happy as they have all just broke up for the half-term and are talking about where they are going on holiday. Just five minutes after playing there football gam, Rory has a shot on goal which completely misses there make shift goal of two school blazers and flys across the cemetery fence into the cemetery. As the time was ten to nine and they had to be back at nine o'clock, three out of the five decided not to get the ball. Therefore leaving Rory and Matt to as the thought to quickly collect the ball. 

Recognition
As they got closer to the big iron gates a scream came from near a big oak tree that was directly in the middle of the cemetery. This made Rory and Matt even more determined to get through the small gap at the bottom of the wooden fence ether side of the gate that surrounded the whole of the cemetery. Just twenty metres from the fence where they got in, a dark shadow could be seen to more to the other entrance on the right hand side of the cemetery. 

Disequilibrium 
As the ball was near the tree the two school boys went even closer to the wear the dark figure ran away from a men, aged around thirty left on the floor with blood pouring out of her chest and lower face. 

Repair
She screamed "help" and by following her orders the boys ran without there ball, towards the gate of which the attacker left. Then as they was getting closer they could see a tall white male with a knife covered in blood stranded under a street light, under the entrance sign to the cemetery saying, "welcome." Immediately after seeing this Rory picked up a short thick metal pole off the floor, that could have been left there years ago. As Matt was a lot quicker and stronger, Rory gave the blunt metal object to Matt. Matt then sprinted at the 6ft man but being as quiet as he could because the attackers back was turned to him. Then with two metres between the Matt and the attacker, Matt jumped and with one swing of the pole, he hit the man on the back of the head. Which then made the attacker to drop to the floor and releasing the knife of which lands about a metre of where he fell. 

New equilibrium
As the police station was twenty seconds away from their entrance, Matt told Rory to go to the station and tell them what happened. A minute went by of just Matt on his own with a 6ft potential murder, then four police cars came racing down the main road. Then the police arrested the man and then a small police detective said "we've been trying to catch this man for months, thank you."

Barthes theory

This narrative is a closed narrative. This is down to that Matt and Rory nowhere the killer went so the audience know where how Matt was going to catch him. 
   
Wrong place at the wrong time

Propp's theory

Hero - Liam 

Villian - The unknown psychopath murderer

Helper - Ellis 

Princess - Amy / Ellie 

Dispatcher - Ellies mom but it was too late

Donor - Ellis as his tripod is used Liam to stop the killer

False hero - n/a

Todorov's theory

Equilibrium

Four school friends in Sutton park, who are trying to trying to capture land scape photos for there school project. Is was about 5 o'clock when the bright orange sun was starting to set very slowly with the reflection across the lake. It was a lovely clear and warm early evening, seemingly. ideal for the type of pictures they needed to capture.

Recognition 

The group were busy taking photos when all of a sudden Ellis was aware of the sound of 

a sharp snap of a branch as if someone was behind him. Ellis turned around, to see no one was there. Then Amy says "what's wrong with you" in reply Ellis told Amy "I heard a noise, thinking someone was there". Amy laughed and said "you wimp". 

Everyone started talking and began taking further photos, Ellis was lining up his position for his next picture when again heard the crack of someone snapping something under foot he turned his head trying to focus on his camera but with his eyes darting about looking for anyone that might be there, but not seeing anyone. Ellis turned his attention to his camera to capture the sun disappearing before he lost the chance of good photos. He felt a cold chill that made him shiver but the air was still but he realised the leaves were blowing up swirling around and around making strange rustling noises the branches of the trees were swaying making thrashing noises  no one else seen to notice but the noise was getting louder.  Ellis was standing transfixed expecting someone to appear, the others of the group were still taking photos oblivious to Ellis.

Ellie's phone began to bleep with text messages but she was busy taking the shots of the sun sinking further down. Ellie only noticed her phone when it started to ring. On the phone Ellie's mom on the phone saying to come home straight away as there was a mad psychopath murderer on the loose heading towards the park. 

Disequilibrium

At that moment something came out behind the bushes heading toward the group of youngsters lashing out at them. They did not realise they were being attacked or what they were being attacked by as it was so quick. The attacker was brandishing a knife he was reigning knife wounds on the four youngsters, he was waving his arms in all directions inflicting cuts on all of them, blood was pouring from wounds from all of them, they were all panicking, screaming, shouting, the girls were crying. Liam and Ellis who both were knocked to the floor half conscious loosing so much blood. 

Repair

Liam tried to concentrate on seeing where the crazy man was. When he thought the man was going to attack the girls he managed to spot ellis's tripod he without thinking of the consequences or even the pain he was in grabbed it and swung it at the legs of the man who went flying as he lost his balance falling banging his head on a rock landing with a thud on the ground. 

New equilibrium

Ellis found his phone that had fallen to the ground and then called 999. 

Levi-strauss

Male vs. female 

The two male characters are the ones to try and stop the killer when the female character are left on the floor and are helpless. 

Good vs. bad

The teenagers are the "good" characters as they are minding there own business and not causing trouble. Then the attacker is the "bad" character as he attacked the students. 

Time

Time is linear as everything is in order and there are no montages or flashbacks to manipulate time. 

The ultimate how-to guide to making trailers

This source is written by Ian Wall, who is the director of The Film Space.

The purpose of the trailer
Make people want to go and watch the film. A film theorist called John Ellis has said a trailer is a presentation of a narrative image of the film. So a trailer gives the audience a feel of what the film is going to be like. Types of Media like trailers and posters are marketing materials that give a promise on what the film is going to be. For example, the latest Fast and Furious film gave a promise on that it has more action than the last film.

A good trailer will give the audience a number of enigmas which makes the audience want to go and watch the film, so they can solve it. These enigmas include; Who is that character? What might happen? Why does that event happen?

The unique selling point
What sets the film apart from other films, in that genre? Unique selling points are used in the marketing campaign as it gives the audience an idea of of the story.

The target audience
Is the specific group of people who might want to go and watch the film. This will affect where to advertise the film and how to reach the target audience. Even though it is important to focus on a specific group, it is equally important to attract a wider range of people so more people will want to go and watch the film.

The trailer
Most cost-effective advertising technique. Is shown in cinema's before other the start of a different film, is also shown on web-sites and social media. The trailer is constructed by using a combination of moving images and voiceovers so it gives the audience an idea of the; narrative, genre, main actors and the date released. By showing a trailer before the start of a film that has a similar target audience, this will appeal to cinema goers and persuade them to return to the cinema experience. The cinema experience includes having a big screen and a massive speaker system.

Most common mistakes of trailers
They are the trailer is; too long, shots are too long, lack of variety of shots, lack a change in editing pace, sound dialogue is poor, no voiceovers and there is no clear film narrative.

Filming
It is important to have lots of possible shots to use from so the editing stage is a lot easier. Trailers that only use one or two shot types are boring to the audience. However, if there is a mixture of long shots, extreme close ups and establishing shots it makes it more interesting to the audience because they don't know what will happen.

Music
The music that is in the trailer should reflect the genre and target audience, because music can be used to keep the audiences attention if it has a beat which songs that they normally listen to have. A good chose of music will give a real feel for the film.

Editing 
If you chose the music before you start editing, you can cut from one shot to another on a beat. When using music and dialogue, it is important to lower the sound of the music when dialogue is used so the audience can hear it. When adding shot it is important to look at the length of the clip so it does no boar the audience. Therefore cut the clip down as much as possible which gives the most amount of effect.

Key Concept 2 - Narrative (Mr Love)

Survey Monkey Analysis

Questionaire

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Evaluation

1. What new skills, techniques and knowledge have you learnt from producing the preliminary activity? 

I have learnt a lot of new skills from this preliminary task. One of the new skills I have learnt is how to use iMovie, which I used to edit my trailer. It was very important for me to learn all the applications in iMovie so I could make my trailer as professional as possible. When I first started editing my trailer, with little knowledge of editing, I was just joining one clip to another with no transitions that made it look very unprofessional. However, when someone in my production team recommended using transitions in-between different shots and straight away it looked more realistic. Another skill I learnt whilst making my trailer was cutting individual clips, which makes that shot shorter and keeps the audiences attention as they as seeing the bits with the most of action in them. This is vital in a trailer because if they are looking at lots of shots they believe there is a lot happening in the movie and is worth there while going to pay to watch the movie. From my research I quickly found out that text and music is very important in a trailer, in their own way. Text is found in every trailer I looked at and was used in most cases to show who the leading protagonists are in the film. From members of my production team I learnt how to add text in iMovie, I added text for when I was highlighting who was featuring in the movie who are well-known and therefore helps more people go and watch the film. I learnt how to add music to my trailer as without it, it is dull and boring which does not help keep the audiences attention. To add the music I had to download the non-copy righted music on Peggo which then allowed me to insert the file onto iMovie, where I could then cut the music so it fitted the shots and looked like the music was made for the trailer which lots of film companies do, which are predominantly from the “big six” to give the audience different moods. 

From the preliminary task I have learnt is that next time I need to film as much footage as possible because for this task I felt that the trailer was too short and with more footage I could have kept the audiences attention as well as showing more shots which hopefully makes the audience want to go and watch the film even more. 

2. How did you work with other people in your production team? 

As a whole I think my group worked well together, as we tried to accommodate everyones ideas when making the script and deciding the location of which to film. Prior to the day of filming we as a group made a shot table which outlined what shots we are going to take as well as the costume style the actor needs to be wearing. This saved a lot of confusion because we all knew what we was supposed to be doing. 

3. What role did you play in the production?

For the trailer I took a couple of the camera shots like the one at the start of the trailer. This shot was of another member of my production team called Joel who was acting the part of a drug dealer. Like vast majority of the shots I took I used the tripod so I could achieve the goal on my shot type plan of having a steady long shot of the drug dealer. In my production team I also helped make decisions on where to place the camera and what locations to use. The idea of filming in the multi story car park was my idea because it gave a sense of mystery as not many people who live in the area don't actually know where it is, which drug dealers want as they don't want to be caught so choose places which are away from the public. This I feel this made the trailer more realistic.

4. Would you have done anything differently?

If I was to do anything differently, I would change the equipment I used to a higher specification camera so it would give a better quality which would make the editing stage easier. Even though the sound was recorded using the camera and as a whole is good. I would use a separate sound device to preliminary record the sound. As a result this would dramatically increase the audiences attention to the trailer as the sound would feel more dramatic. 

5. What parts of the process did you find most challenging?

I found the editing stage the most difficult. This is mainly due to the vast amount of thing you can do in iMovie, however the more time I spent using the program the easier I found it. Even though as a group we came up with the location quickly, choosing the shots we found difficult because as the location was in a relatively large space it maximised the types of shots we could use. It was very difficult to choose one shot apart from another as they both impacted the trailer positively.

6. How did you overcome this?

To overcome the challenge of using iMovie I had to, at first keep my patience as it was very frustrating at the start. Even though it was very frustrating I also had to have good determination as the longer I used iMovie the better I got at it. The difficulty of choosing the right shot was overcome by looking at trailers with similar locations and using camera angles they used when applicable. 

7. How successful was your final media product? What are the strengths and the areas that you need to work on in future projects?

The tools I had I believe my media product overall was successful because i feel it made people go and pay to watch the film. However, as the camera quality of some of the shots i have used are not to a high standard it makes the overall trailer not as professional as it could be. 

The key strengths of my trailer was the range of shots I used. These shots included, over the shoulder shots and extreme close up. If I did not do this it would not have made the audience bored and therefore would not attract them to watch the film. 

One of my weaknesses I felt was the lack of different locations. I used two different locations which was a shopping car park and a public foot path. Therefore it suggests to the audience that only two different locations have been used and so they may not believe the film is worth going to watch.

In the future I will increase the amount of locations, use a better resolution camera as well as using actors that fit into the character profile. 

Trailer