Setting/Location:
At the beginning of most trailers there is a shot which catches the audience’s attention so that they don’t just change the channel or focus on something else. In low-budget films or dramas this is usually done by use of location. For instance in my trailer the second shot is of my main character outside the main gates of Wandsworth Prison. This shot, aided by the dialogue used, helps establish the genre of the film and also part of the narrative. In blockbusters such as ‘The Dark Knight’ they come with a brand name and therefore do not have to do too much at the beginning of the trailer to impress, they just have to show Batman or the Joker for example, then later in the trailer they can show off ‘the money shot’ which in this case was a truck flipping up and over onto it’s back. However, when it comes to dramas, it’s usually down to location or props to catch audience’s attention, often this will include a wide camera shot of a city like London or New York. In my case, the film is set in urban London with a gritty tone of a man’s struggle with himself to try and prove to his family he is worthy of being a father. The shot seen above with the backdrop, grey skies and darkened lighting effects will hopefully depict the struggle that many people face in Britain today, where a lack of opportunities, lack of work and lack of money mean that people from poorer backgrounds are forced to try and earn a living from illegal habits. The vital convention of a Drama Film is the use of realistic characters dealing with emotional themes that people are able to relate to and empathise with. This particular convention is one that I have conformed to, with the similarities of events in my film to those of young people in Britain today.
A recurring location in my trailer is that of my main character running on a common with heavy breathing. I used the space beside him running for where I would place my graphics, which help to portray the narrative. The inspiration for these scenes arose from my planning when I found the trailer to another British drama called ‘Shame’ where the main character is running in the night on a city street. I found these scenes very dramatic and I believe they exemplified the narrative of a man’s struggle against sex addiction and his determination to put things straight.
The final act of my trailer is a fast paced montage of shots and one scene which conforms to conventions of drama trailers is where my main character and the girl he is trying to impress are coming out of a local pub. A convention in a number of drama trailers is where there are scenes of despair but also scenes of hope. This scene conveys that feeling of hope as the question is asked to the audience about whether the main character has succeeded in earning back his family, and the only way they’re going to find out is by going to see the film.
Style and tone:
There are a number of sub-genres to Drama films such as Romantic Dramas, Period Dramas, Crime Dramas or Melodramas. But there are recurring themes across all of these sub-genres such as drug addiction, alcoholism, poverty, class divisions and so on. With these themes there is often a dark and sinister tone to Drama Films which portrays a very sad side to life. In the peak of a recession and where jobs aren’t easy to find, I wanted to do a take on a very realistic life of a Londoner whom has just come out of prison and doesn’t seem to have many opportunities at his feet to be able to start afresh. The scene above shows off this dark tone with use of drugs and alcohol and the obvious plan to sell these substances on to others. With low lighting and use of props I am left with a scene that shows off how young people are sometimes forced to make a living. Another scene which indicates the despair that my main character faces is when he is seen holding a young man up against a wall in a menacing manor and is robbing him of his possessions. The inspiration for the tone of these few scenes came from the trailers for the film ‘Kidulthood’ and its sequel ‘Adulthood’. Heavy violence, strong use of drugs and alcohol exemplifies the dramatic style that I want in my trailer.
However, my trailer is not all doom and gloom as I wanted to challenge forms of Drama films where they give an upsetting and hard-hitting view on the life of young people; I wanted to put a Romantic twist on a film which shows very little sign of hope. The scene of hope in my trailer is with my main two characters smiling, and looking like they’re enjoying each other’s company outside a local pub. My early planning was looking at films such as ‘The Notebook’ and ‘Dear John’ to see how they portray a romantic style but also with dramatic scenes. This is where my trailer challenges other Drama Films with its strong urban feel with the locations, violence, drugs and costume but also creates scenes of hope with the romance between my two main characters.
Costume and Props:
The costume which is seen most in my trailer is probably the hoodie or tracksuit. Nowadays there is the image of a young man or boy on a street normally wearing a hoodie which is often considered to look menacing because it conceals the face and the face is where one can see the emotions of others and if this is partly covered then people will feel threatened. A hoodie is also often linked to lack of wealth and those living on estates or on the streets. There are a number of British Urban Dramas where the hoodie can be seen as a symbol of the street and a symbol of threat; such as ‘Anuvahood’, ‘Football Factory’ and ‘4-3-2-1’. The colours of the hoodies and clothing in my trailer is no coincidence, as the main character is often seen in a lighter colour to his friend who is supposed to be leading him back to his old habits such as drug dealing and violence. As seen above, my main character is in white and his friend is in a dark grey. This theme is also supported in the scenes with my main character and the main female in my trailer, as he is wearing darker clothes to the female to symbolise their gap in morality and behaviour.
There is one particular scene where an audience can see props and this is where my two male characters are seated on a sofa, sorting out drugs readying them for sale. The props on the table are there to help establish the genre and narrative. When I decided to go for a gritty, urban British drama I looked at other film trailers similar to the style I was going for and I stumbled upon the trailer for ‘Shifty’ where drugs being used as props help to give the audience a feel of the style and tone of the film.
Camerawork and editing:
When out on set is was vital to take a number of shots so that when it came to editing I was able to choose from a wide number of shots and angles to finally have best possible shot for that scene. In the scene above I deliberated over whether to use this close up shot of my main character or whether to just stick with the conventional over the shoulder shot. I choose to keep this image because I believe it is intimate, intimidating and involves the audience to the point where they feel they have been addressed. The close proximity to the camera means that his facial expressions are heightened and I believe the aggression in his face will come across to the audience to heighten the drama in my piece.
Another key shot that I contemplated over which angle to use was the scene at the prison, where I wanted it to be the shot to stun the audience with the backdrop. Therefore having the whole prison’s front gate with a wide shot was more important than having my character come out of the visitors exit which would have looked rather bland and not obviously a prison.
The scene with my main character running enabled me to be creative and trial with a number of different camera techniques. For example, the opening shot to my trailer is a hand held shot of my main character with me running alongside him with the camera. The other two running shots are of the character running close up towards the camera and this was a good time to place my graphics depicting the narrative and the awards which my film has won, such as seen in the trailer for ‘Shame’.
After all my shots had been shot, I had to try and edit them into a trailer, particularly focussing on pace and the aesthetics of my piece. In most trailers there is a build-up in pace through a trailer, I decided to conform to these conventions of a trailer and started my piece by over cranking a running scene so that it is obviously slow-mo. Act 1 then returns to normal pace with shots explaining the narrative and this continues through the whole of Act 2. However, in Act 3 this is when the pace of the trailer begins to build. I decided to use a montage of shots with transitions in between the scenes showing the drama of my main character’s life. Finally, in the editing stage I wanted to focus on the aesthetics of my trailer, so I matched the colours from each scene so that the dark tone of my film could come across and so that there were no scenes which stood out because they were brighter when I hadn’t planned for them to be. In other urban trailers such as ‘Attack the Block’ and ‘Shifty’ the use of effects on scenes to make them look darker is regularly used and that is something I wanted to use to help establish the style and tone of my trailer.
Genre:
In the early planning for my film I looked at the conventions for a Romantic Drama, which focuses more on love, passion and emotion. I came to the conclusion that this was not something that I was going for with my film so I settled on the genre of Drama with scenes of Romance. ‘Dramas are serious, plot-driven presentations, portraying realistic characters, settings, life situations, and stories involving intense character development and interaction.’ This quote showed to me that this was more the genre that my film fell in to, especially as I paid particular to my film being realistic and audiences being able to relate to it. Things that someone is likely to see in a Drama Film include; alcohol, drugs, sex, moral dilemmas, poverty and class divisions. You will find some of these in my trailer with the scene of my main character and his best mate seated at a sofa getting involved in the drugs trade and also the scene where the main character is holding an innocent man up against a wall, this is a sign of the violence to come in the film. Violence in films induces fear and stress for the audience and these are the types of emotions I want them to feel during my film. However, my film is not entirely about violence and drugs, that is where my early idea of doing a Romantic Drama influenced my final product. I made sure that the trailer is not about the despair of this man’s life and his struggles as he tries to make a start in adulthood. For this reason, I included scenes of hope with my female character to heighten the dramatic struggle for this man which will subsequently end with him changing his ways and trying to become a father. The two scenes in my trailer which most conform to the Drama Film genre are the running scene as the accompanying heavy breathing enlightens the audience to this man’s determination to change his ways, and the other scene is of the female character seated on the stairs as she expresses her emotions with tears.
Poster:
To establish whether I believe I conform to modern day film poster conventions, I must first establish what the conventions of a film poster are. In my opinion, a film poster for my genre would include a number of things such as; a billing block, a main image, the title of the film, actor’s names, possibly director’s names, secondary images and a tagline. But how many of things from this list did I decide to include in my poster? The answer is all of them. Having looked at posters for low-budget British dramas I came to the conclusion that there was a recurring theme throughout all of them, and this was the use introduction to characters through a main image where the actors stare directly at the camera and address the audience. My main image consists of my main character looking fairly menacing and looking directly straight towards the camera. I believe his facial expressions and the intimacy of the size of his face in comparison to the size of the paper, adds a dramatic feel.
I considered just using this solitary image and altering with the lighting and background to make the poster very personal, just as seen in the film poster for ‘Bullet Boy’. However, I concluded that in most urban British dramas their film posters do not just have one solitary image of one lonesome character. In film posters such as ‘This is England’, ‘Kidulthood’, ‘Adulthood’ and ‘Shanked’ a group of characters from the film are lined up in a straight line addressing the audience. Perhaps where I decided not to conform to these conventions is where I came to the conclusion that I wanted my three main characters to have the own little section of the poster, separated by the film title, like seen in the film poster for ‘Atonement’.
Something which most stood out for me on posters for Drama Films is the use of a backdrop, whether it be a city or just a wall, in many of them there would be a dramatic grey sky, this is evident in the film poster for ‘Brighton Rock’. This is something that I took note of and decided to include in my poster with strong dark clouds of the two male characters and slightly lighter ones over the morally better, female character. The inspiration for my title and the graphic surrounding it came from posters like ‘Shifty’ where the ‘I’ in the film title is stretched down to split the two characters and this is something I used so that my characters were easily distinguishable.
Things such as the billing block, actor’s names and social networking sites on a poster are obligatory nowadays, and I believe, in particular having a Facebook group on the poster is vitally important because it means friends and family are able to review my poster and give feedback.
Magazine:
When it came to my magazine front cover I conformed to a number of conventions of previous covers but there were a number of things I felt I wanted to change so that my magazine would have a place in the competitive market of film magazines. With my film being entirely British funded and located in the suburbs of London I looked at previous magazines that had given new directors and producers, working on a low-budget, a feature in their magazine. The magazine which I felt I most conformed to was Sight and Sound not only because of the type of film they would feature but also the look of the front cover itself. Sight and Sound is an art-house International Film Magazine that looks at films from blockbusters right down to low-budget Indie productions. For my title I focussed in on something which I believe there is a gap on the magazine market for and that is the idea of a magazine that is independent to British films but not only that, a British magazine that focusses on young talent up and coming into the film industry from the streets of Britain.
A convention of all magazines is the use of a main image, on my poster i've made that person in the main image, me, the producer and director of my film. This technique is used more in art-house magazines such as Sight and Sound and occasionally Total Film, it is used less often in Empire where they are more inclined to use well-known actors or characters. With all magazine front covers there is a USP, which tends to be this main image, and that is something which I have conformed to as the USP of my magazine is my main image. I wanted to focus on my magazine giving a break into the film industry to lesser known directors and producers from British descents. Next, I had to look at the placing on the page of my main image, my masthead and the text. A convention of a film magazine front cover is that the text and masthead are on the left third of the page because when they are lined up on the shelves this will be the bit poking out. Therefore, I conformed to these conventions and placed my text and masthead on the left third of the page.
Following this, I looked into the conventions of mastheads of previous magazine front covers. For 'Empire' they have the title large and bold yet occasionally behind the main image because all the audience needs to see is the 'E' or the 'IRE' and they will realise what magazine it is. This is similar for that of the Total Film magazine masthead. However, I was more intrigued by the masthead for Sight and Sound where they used a black text on a bright yellow background to catch the audience's eye when sitting on the shelf. From then on that audience will associate those colours when they see them on the shelf to that magazine. Therefore, I believe I conformed to the convention for the magazine masthead of Sight and Sound, whereby I made my masthead a strong white text on black background to draw the audience's attention immediately to my magazine when sitting on the shelf.
Finally, I looked at the text used on previous magazine front covers and took this into account for my magazine. A vital part of a magazine is the tagline; this is where they describe their magazine in one sentence to sell it to their target audience. In my case I used the tagline 'The British Film Magazine' to target my solely British audience. Another crucial part to a magazine are the coverlines, where the audience is told what is featured beyond the front cover of the magazine and on the inside pages. I conformed to the conventions of these coverlines with my main coverline describing the main image and my USP, and the smaller coverlines describing what is featured in the inside pages. The colour palette that I used for my magazine's text is very ryan and British with the colours of the Union Jack being used. Furthermore, the strong brown background has a rigid pattern to it that adds to the gritty, urban and dramatic front cover I was going for. Perhaps the biggest convention that I did not conform to was the use of 'puffs', whereby pictures of other films or features are put on the front cover to draw more appeal to what appears inside the magazine. I decided against using puffs because having looked at Empire and Total Film where they are used, I could see that they give a glossy, slightly tacky look to a magazine front cover. However, for the magazine 'Sight and Sound' which is most similar to mine, there are no 'puffs' because they want a more indie, art house and classy look that doesn't look so glitzy. Consequently, I decided against using 'puffs' because I did not want an airbrushed, Americanised look, I wanted a very British, low-key, art house product.
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