Research

Shola
What is a film trailer: A film trailer is a short clip advertising and promoting a feature film, that will be avaliable for an audience to watch, by showing scenes from the film. They are used to attract the attention of potential target audiences and often go to the extreme of the genres because of this.
Shola
Film Genres: Codes and Conventions of Major Film Genres:

Action – Clear binary opposites; high production value; 3 act narrative structures; high-key lighting; close-ups; action match shots; dominant representations of gender roles; main protagonist; fast paced editing.
Comedy – use of gags/jokes; includes a variety of sub-comedy genres, i.e.slapstick or dry humour; upeat non-diegetic sound; fast paced editing; bright mise-en-scene and high-key lighting; stock  characters
Horror – often uses hand-held camera shots; low-key lighting; abandoned/derelict locations; often has sub-plot of male/female relationship; youthful characters; heavy use of weapons
Science Fiction – often set in the future; heavy use of cgi and special effects; emphasis on space and outer-world beings; advanced technology; futuristic sounds; abstract mise-en-scene
Western – historical basis; mainly American genre set between 1860 – 1910; clear binary themes (e.g. East vs. West, collectivist vs. individualistic); clear protagonist and antagonist; locations often include deserts
Crime/Gangster – developed around the actions of criminals and/or gangsters, often involving bankrobbers, underworld criminals; characters are often meglo-maniacal, materialistic and immoral; often set in large, crowded cities
Other Film Genres:
Animated – more a film technique than genre, but does have some genre-like components; animated films have large emphasis on comedy, primarily targeting young children but also appealing to older ages – (Blumler & Katz, 1974 – the need for entertainment and escapism)
British/UK – location shooting, i.e. not in a studio; use of wide shots; non-professional actors; semi-improvised scripts; humour and seriousness; erosion of regional identities, e.g. The Full Monty (1997); wider social issues explored, e.g. sexism and alcoholism; natural lighting; low budget filming.
Children/Family – non-offensive and wholesome; not including topics or scenes of violence, foul language and sexual nature; contains child-like humour
Film Noir – storylines are often non-linear and elliptical; mostly shot in black and white; use of high and low angles and distorted cinematography; use of extreme close-ups and depth of field; irregular framing of shots; urban city locations with damp streets; low-key lighting; down-beat music.
Cult – have elements of innovation, thematically or aesthetically; often intertextual, i.e. they involve references to other films or parts of different cultures; often end narratives abruptly; stylistic directing, editing and production

Shola

Film Categories – A, B, C, D & E

• Category A – These films are made with British money, personnel and resources, e.g. Submarine, This Is England
• Category B – These films are co-funded with money from Britain and from foreign investment; the majority of finance, cultural ideas and content, and personnel are British
• Category C – These films are made with mostly foreign investment (non-USA) and with small British input financially and creatively.
• Category D – These films are made in the UK with British cultural content, but are financed partly or fully by American companies, e.g. the Harry Potter series, 28 Weeks Later.
• Category E – These films are American films with some British involvement.

Alba

By researching camera shots, we can see the kinds of shots we can use in our film trailer in terms of what ones would be effective at captivating an audience and would be approriate for our narrative. For example, if we were to show a character looking sad within the film trailer, we would use a close-up to show their emotion in greater depth, letting the audience identify with their emotion.

Shola
British vs. American Film presentation:

British film vs american film from A2mediashola

Shola

First, Second and Third Cinema

Solanas and Getino, writers of “Towards a Third Cinema”, proposed a new organisation and classification of world cinema into three categories. Third cinema, or 'guerilla cinema', was created to oppose the hegemonic views and functioning that was represented by the standard Hollywood films with narratives of individual heroism. This therefore meant that audiences were held to the ideologies of their control being focused on maintaining their own individual power when in reality someone will always have more power than them, i.e. characters within films were being represented as entirely powerless unless they were the protagonist, giving audiences the ideas that they also will be entirely powerless.

First cinema is classified as the standard and dominant Hollywood film, such as Casablanca (1942) – where Solanas and Getino described it as “man is viewed as the consumer of ideology; not the creator of ideology.” Second cinema is classified by films that follow the auteur theory, i.e. an auteur is a filmmaker that wants to challenge social constraints, and should be seen as an 'author' more so than the writer due to the creative styles they apply to camera placement, lighting, and scene length, to convey the message of the film more so than the narrative. This cinema includes French new wave and Brazilian Cinema Novo - films such as Taxi Driver (1976) and The Godfather films are classed as second cinema; it challenged the Hollywood cinema system but was, and still is not, considered revolutionary as such due to the pressures brought on by post-structuralism theory (a response to any text that uses structuralist methods by attempting to de-construct it and criticise it in order to prove that any text is open to unlimited interpretations as words have no meaning), feminism intervention and cultrual/racial distinctions, as well as the ever developing new media.

Third Cinema, or 'guerilla cinema' as previously mentioned, is a much more aggressive and forceful cinema which aims to diminish 'the system' and the racist, capitalist domination it holds. It has been defined as 'the cinema of liberation' – the voice, land and culture of Latin America, Asia and Africa was being lost to the European and American cultures, or 'the system', so they began to fight back with Third Cinema. The overall tone of Third Cinema reflects revolutionary ideas as it takes a different approach to the conventional film-making by subverting cinema codes, the aforementioned revolutionary ideals and views, and fighting against the passive film-consuming experience of generic audiences of mainstream cinema. The goals of Third Cinema include:

• To question structures of power
• To liberate the oppressed, whether it is based on gender,class, race and ethnicity, or religion
• To challenge audiences by reflecting on how poverty and subordination is lived, rather than how it is imagined
• To facilitate interaction among intellectuals and the masses by using for education and dialogue
• To recover the nation by using politics of inclusion and the ideas of the people to imagine new possibilities

Third Cinema harnesses the power of film to increase social consciousness about issues of power, nationhood, identity and oppression around the world by incorporating cultural and political criticisms to challenge audiences.

Third Cinema films can be made by anyone that follows the guideline of the 'aesthetic and political project' that it is, even those who are classed as 'first- or second-cinema' film-makers. One major example of a Third Cinema film is La Hora de los Hornos (1968) – translated to The Hour of the Furnaces created by Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino.

By researching First, Second and Third Cinema, I have been able to see how the world of cinema has evolved over the past years. As my chosen genre for my film trailer is a British film with Melodramatic conventions included, I can see that there is a resmebalnce between Third Cinema and British film in the terms of challenging political views and social realism, as British film has a heavy focus on social realism.

Shola
Prezi presentation on a History of Film - 1950s - 2010s: Please view Prezi's in full screen
http://prezi.com/yco0rr97jyq7/history-of-film/

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By completing secondary research into the history of film, I have a broader knowledge of film; how it started, how it has changed and the conventions that have been carried through over the decades.
Shola
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I chose to analyse British film trailers as this was my chosen genre and Alba analysed the melodrama trailers as we decided to join in a pair and combine the two genres. Analysing the trailers has shown the codes and conventions of them, and more specifically for British ones, which will be useful for the trailer we are going to make.
Alba
 
As previously mentioned, I analysed British film trailers whilst Alba analysed film trailers from the melodrama genre. This research has allowed us to find out in greater depth the codes and conventions of each genre, which will then help us when we decide how to use certain ones from each genre in our own narrative and film trailer.
Alba

As Alba researched the melodrama genre, she looked specifically at one popular director within the genre, Nicholas Sparks, which gave us a good knowledge of what generic conventions his films follow, and therefore what kinds of conventions we could include in our narrative and film trailer.
Alba
By doing a timeline of melodramas, we can learn more about the codes and conventions of this genre and how they have changed over the years. This is useful for when we have to create a narrative to include codes of the melodrama genre.
Shola
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By looking at the stages of the production, the knowledge from it can be applied to the trailer we are going to produce; it also gave a brief introduction into the industry and how it works.
Shola
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By choosing to create a film trailer, researching the history of film trailers has allowed me to see how they have evolved over the decades and see how the codes and conventions of them have changed or how they have not changed; I have found that most trailers follow the same format concerning the equlibrium. As the chosen genre for the trailer is a British film with melodramtic aspects, I chose to research, breifly, the history of British film to see how it has evolved and developed since it started in the 1910s. It has shown me that British film codes have followed a social realistic theme since the 1960s but there are many British Blockbuster films, so it is not limited. It seems that British film tends to break more boundaries and are more contorversial than most. Also, by doing some brief research on two popular British directors, I can see that British films do challenge creative boundaries and a lot have trademarks within them to allow an audience to identify the director.
Shola
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*If the slideshare does not expand into full screen click on this link -   http://www.slideshare.net/A2mediashola/film-poster-webpage-analysis?ref=http://sholaa2media.blogspot.co.uk/p/research.html

Through my research into film posters, I can see there are certain conventions to follow such as having one main image depicting the main character(s) in a way that tells the audience about the personality of the character(s); having the title of the film stand out in terms of typography and colour, and that the rest of the text on the poster should be in line with the title in terms of this, etc. Also, that the colours used for on the poster give a great indication into the genre of the film, which I will take into account when planning my products.

Alba

Movie poster analysis from abezhani
By having Alba research a more broader range of film posters, we are able to see the different codes and conventions used for different genres, but also the generic codes and conventions of film posters as a whole. This is particularly useful for when we begin to create our film poster because we can use codes and conventions in a broader sense to create a successful poster.

Alba
 
By looking at the typography used on film posters, and within films and film trailers, we can see what kinds of texts are used for different types of genres. This research will enable us to evaluate what typography will be appropriate for our film trailer, poster and website in terms of genre.
Shola
Audience Surveys:
After deciding to join our two chosen genres together, we composed two audience surveys; one on film trailers, one on film in general. The results of both surveys are shown below:
Audience survey 1 - Film Trailers
Question 1: Have you seen any trailers that particularly impressed you? If so, why?

The responses for this question were fairly varied, with a lot of individuals mentioning very recent film trailers. Responses included factors such as CGI and graphics, exciting soundtracks, anticipation and excitement, and lots of action. From this we learned that for our trailer to be successful, particularly within our demograhpic - which is the majority who answered this survey, we will have to include as much of these factors as possible. As our film genres lack CGI and special effects by their nature, this would be difficult for us so it is unlikely we will include these factors, but we will try to have an exciting soundtrack, and to build anticipation and excitement via the use of editing and effective camera shots that entice the audience.

Question 2: Have you seen any film trailers that you did not like? If so, why?

A lot of responses for this were very general, or just simply stated the title of the film trailer they did not enjoy; however, some responses suggested that trailers they did not like were slow, with not enough action and therefore boring, not attracting them to watching the film. From this we can try to attract our audience by editing our trailer to be fast-paced with as much action as we can, that is possible for our genre. Another comment is that trailers that have music that do not fit well with the editing makes them unenjoyable for the viewer. From this we have learned that we need to focus on choosing an appropriate soundtrack that works well with the editing of our trailer to ensure that it targets our audience effectively, enticing them. Furthermore, another comment suggested that trailers that give away too much of the film narrative are not successful - in this instance we must be careful when creating our script to ensure that we have enough of the film to entice the audience, but not so much that they are not attracted to watching it.

Question 3: What factors make you want to see a film?

The majority of the responses said that the trailer is one of the most important factors in making someone watch a film - from this we have learnt that our film trailer should be enticing to successfully attract our audience to watching the full film. These results also show that 0% of the respondents said that posters are a factor that makes them want to watch a film. As one of our ancillary tasks is to create a poster to accompany the film, this means that we should follow the conventions of other film posters to successfully advertise our film - if posters were a factor that makes our audience want to watch a film, we could have developed or challenged other codes and conventions of posters, however, by following them at least we know that the poster will successfully advertise the film.

Question 4: Do you prefer more dialogue or music in film trailers?

These results show that our audience prefer to have a bit of both dialogue and music in film trailers; this may be due to the fact that music builds up tension and excitement, whilst dialogue gives away parts of the narrative of the film, so audiences can decide whether the film narrative will appeal to them or not. From this we have learned that we should have both music and dialogue in our film trailer, for the above reasons, as this seems to be what makes a film trailer successful.

Question 5: What would your ideal length for a film trailer be?

The results from this question show that the majority of the respondents believe the ideal duration of a film trailer is 1 - 2 minutes. This is also what the generic duration of a film trailer is, so from this we have learned that our film trailer should be 1 - 2 minutes long, which would follow conventions of other exisiting trailers and would appeal to our target audience and demographic.

Question 6: What do you think the best way to advertise a film other than film trailers?

The audience here said that tv adverts, which is how the majority of film trailers are displayed, were the best way, with billboards and posters being the next best ways of advertising a film. This is useful for us as we can focus on making our poster successfully target our audience.

Question 7: Do you prefer having the film title at the beginning or end of a film trailer?

The majority of the audience here said that they prefer having the film title at the end of the trailer, which is also the generic convention of most film trailers as we have seen in our research. From this we have learned that this is what appeals to the majority of an audience so we will follow this and place our film title at the end of the trailer, as well as following codes and conventions.

Question 8: Do you like having each character being introduced in the film trailer?

These results show that the majority of the audience do not like having the charcters introduced within the trailer; from our research we saw that only few film trailers did this, for example Starred Up (2013) and Trainspotting (1996), and the majority did not. With th results of this quesion in our audience survey and our research, we have learned that film trailers are more successful if they do not introduce the characters throughout the trailer, and for this to be left until the film. 

Question 9: Do you consider the reviews within a trailer?

Here, the majority of the respondents said that they do not consider the reviews within a trailer, with 42% agreeing with this and 31% saying that they do. This suggests that to target our demographic, we should not include reviews. However, from our research we saw that reviews within film trailers make them appear more professional-looking.

Audience survey 2 - Film 

Question 1: What is your gender?

From these results we can see that our audience are 50% female and 50% male, making this representative of the population, which is useful when considering their views on films and film trailers for our own film trailer.

Question 2: What is your age?

Here, we can see that almost all of our respondents are between the ages of 15 - 18, with a minority being between the ages 25 - 34. This is not very representative of the whole popualtion, but it is representative of our target audience as our film trailer is going to be targeted at people around this age, up to early 20s; therefore we can consider their views more appropriately for what we include in our film trailer, as it is targeted at this age.

Question 3: What is your favourtie film genre?

The majority of the audience said that their favourite film genre is comedy; our chosen genre is not comedy but this is useful to see what our target demographic are most attracted to and we could perhaps find elements of comedy to include in our film. These results allow us to gain more understanding into how our demographic are attracted to films.

Question 4: Is the film trailer the main reason you watch film trailers?

50% of the audience said that the trailer is the main reason they watch a film, whilst the other 50% of the audience said that it is not the main reason they watch a film trailer, with other factors playing a bigger role. This may be due to a variety of reasons but this helps us understand that multiple factors entice audiences .

Question 5: Have you ever seen a British film?

The results here show that the majoirty of the audience have seen a British film, whilst 1 person were unsure if they had seen one or not. This question allows us to whether our target audience have seen British films and know what makes a film a part of the British film genre. As this is a part of our genre, this is necessary information so we know that our target audience are interested in such films.

Question 6: Do you enjoy watching melodramas?

This information is useful again because melodrama is a part of our chosen genre, so knowing that over half of our target audience do enjoy watching them, even sometimes, means that we can effectively reach out to our target audience with our film trailer.

Question 7: What attracts you to melodramas?

A lot of the responses for this question suggested that the emotions exlored within melodrams is what attracts them to this genre; from this we have taken that audiences enjoy and identify with emotions within films, which makes them successful - i.e. applying Blumler and Katz's uses and gratifications theory to this, our audience can use films of this genre to escape. With this in mind, we should try to incorporate emotion into our film trailer and narrative to entice audiences.