In A2 I created a theatrical trailer, poster and magazine for a film called ‘Paint’. I made sure that my trailer followed general conventions by including features such as Film Production Logos, Social Media Links and a Release Date. These are all things that you would expect to see in a trailer and were included in the trailers that I used for inspiration.
My trailer comes under the genre of a Coming of Age drama and tends to follow the conventions rather than challenge them. Coming of Age dramas usually look at the journey the protagonist has to go through in their teenage years to their adulthood. These types of movies usually focus on serious topics and struggles that teenagers have to go through such as depression and drug abuse. This was a convention that I followed in my trailer through the storyline. I used extreme close ups of pills such as ‘Paracetamol’ to convey the idea of drugs and also showed alcohol bottles on a table to show a party environment.
Some Coming of Age dramas focus on the strain on relationships between people, a movie that does this is ‘Perks of Being a Wallflower’. This was a movie that I took inspiration from as it looks at the difficulties of mental illnesses and the struggle of maintain friendships which was a theme I included in my trailer. This was done by showing a text conversation on a phone between the protagonist and another character using a close up on a phone screen.
Part of my footage from my trailer was taken in school and other parts from central London, I used these locations as I thought that they would be relatable environments for teenagers which are the target audience for my trailer. I shot the majority of my footage at night to help create a mysterious atmosphere for my trailer, the clips I used of London where shot once it got dark to help convey the idea of a busy night life. I intertwined the use of shots with bright lighting and dark lighting to show that there will be a journey made by the main character that isn’t straight forward.
For the soundtrack that I created for my trailer I took inspiration from the Netflix Original programme ‘Stranger Things’. I really liked the mysterious feeling that it gives off so I tried recreating something similar to it. As ‘Stranger Things’ is set in the 80’s I tried to implement that into my soundtrack as I thought that it fitted the footage really well even if the sound was a bit dated. I think because of beat used I think it gave the trailer a bit of tension and suspense. I also include some voice over snippets to help bring a bit of clarity to the storyline, voice overs are used frequently in trailer to help the audience understand the plot of the movie more.
In my trailer I had my character wear normal clothing to convey the idea that the struggles that the main protagonist goes through can happen to anyone. I think this helped the storyline become more relatable as the audience could see themselves being represented in the main character and therefore would relate to the scenarios more.
I chose to call my trailer ‘Paint’ as the majority of my trailer storyline revolves around artwork. I chose the title as I think it’s quite peculiar which I then hope will grab the audience’s attention. I think the title hints to what a main theme of my trailer will be which is something I wanted to happen as I think it will engage the audience and make them wonder how it will all relate.
The main use of my intertitles was to help the audience understand the narrative of my trailer. This conforms to the conventions of coming of age dramas as they use intertitles to introduce characters and convey the plot to the audience. I took inspiration from the intertitles from ‘Perks of Being a Wallflower’ , by having them look fairly simple but hint at the plot to the audience. A difference I had was by using a simple colour scheme of black and white for the intertitles as my trailer is dimly light throughout the majority of the scenes therefore i thought it would fit better with the overall feel of my trailer.
Magazine
For my magazine my first intention was to create a ‘Sound and Sound’ magazine but after receiving feedback after uploading my first draft saying that ‘The image used for the magazine doesn’t fit in with the feel of the trailer and magazine’ I looked into the company ‘Little White Lies’. I found that it had a more artistic feel rather than movie magazines such as ‘Empire’ and ‘Total Film’ and i thought that this was necessary as my trailer surrounds artwork and bright colours therefore I concluded that ‘Little White Lies’ was better suited.
All of the magazine covers for ‘Little White Lies’ have a lot of graphics and artistic aspects but don’t follow the usual conventions of magazines when it comes to additional features such barcodes and puffs. The magazine covers mainly focus mainly on the design of the central image. Therefore I spent a lot of time editing my picture to make it bright and eye catching. Using several layers on photoshop i spent time editing each of the colours of the paint strokes. I wanted the colours to resemble a bright version of the colours i used for my poster. I achieved this by using the ‘Hue/Saturation’ tool on the software to increase the saturation and lightness of the colours. I also used another layer to place the white ink splatters on top. I did this as it’s a feature i also include on my trailers poster. I did this to make it more obvious to the audience that there is a clear and distinct link between the products.
Poster
When creating my poster I looked at the posters for the movies ‘Closet Monster’ and ‘Moonlight’ as they both had a similar style that I wanted to recreate for my poster. I took the idea of overlayer a character that’s slightly faded from the ‘Closet Monster’ but I changed the colour scheme to one that I thought was more suited to my trailer. I wanted my poster to have a softer feel but at the same time also produce enigma codes that make the audience question things about the main protagonist.
I tried to have the title stand out so I put it in white colouring and Black faded into the main image to much whereas I think the white is quite eye catching. I also had the font resemble simple typing as I found that it was a common in the other posters that I took inspiration from. In the ‘Moonlight’ poster the title has an effect over it that makes it seem to glow almost and in the ‘Closet Monster’ poster there is a box surrounding the title which relates to the image of the main protagonist who also has boxes around his eyes. For my title to make it slightly different I had the letter of the Title be more spaced out and not bolded and have white ink splattered along the side.
On my poster I followed conventions of normal poster by including star ratings, because my trailer is for an independent film I thought that the ‘Sundance Film Festival’ award logo would be suitable for my poster. Along the top of my poster I included the name of the actor that plays my main character, I made sure to use the same font as my main title to make the look of my poster more consistent.
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