London Shots

 As a preparation for the filming of our trailer I took some establishing shots in Central London which I think will be very effective to use in our trailer because it would make it more appealing to the audience. This type of London shots we would like to see in our trailer:

This is the possible location we could use to film in:

We could take different shots of the River Thames and the London Eye for the romantic part of the trailer. This attractions will be very easy for my group and I to access as it is very close to the tube and every one from my group can commute to Westminster without any problems. This places are also very popular and the audience will find it easy to relate to the trailer if they are familiar with the setting and location.

Location

• An enclosed room
• College restaurant
• Central London
• Hospital room/bed (in college)
• Police Car

Character Breakdown

• Karolina - The serious Polish boss of the money laundering. She is in control of everything illegal especially within Europe and nothing passes her. She has never lost a worker and doesn't plan to. John had been working for Karolina for many years now but their visits are brief and consists of hardly any talking. Despite Karolina barely talking to anyone she speaks many languages to be able to communicate with her thousands of workers.      

• Zoey - An attractive, intelligent and sensible young lady who is currently going through a very critical illness, which will more then likely eventually kill her. She studies science medicine at university in hope she will find a cure for all critical diseases. No one is aware of her illness let alone the critical state of it. She has not gotten close to anyone since she found out about her illness until now.

• John - A street hustler who is not new to the game despite his age and has more brains then most. He has been directly working with the kingpin Karolina for most of his life. He didn't have an easy upbringing as his mother lost her life to drugs and his father went to jail when he turned 13. He starts to fall in love with Zoey, which has never happened to him before. He has to make a choice between Zoey's love and Karolina’s illegal money, as he cannot cannot have both.

Target Audience

• The target audience of our trailer will be both male and female as there are romantic elements which might be appealing to the female audience and the thriller elements will attract the male audience.
• The age of our target audience is 15 to 25 years old, however some older people might also watch it. The characters in the trailer are young therefore they would be able to easily relate to them and the romantic relationship between the boy and the girl.
• Working class people are our main target as it is a low budget trailer and people with a higher status might expect more from a trailer/film. However people of higher class might also be interested as they might like the idea of a film like ours.

Unique Selling Point

• Polish language is going to be included in the trailer with English subtitles as the main antagonist is going to be Polish. This will attract wider range of audience because Polish people will be able to relate to their native language and might want to watch the whole film after seeing the trailer,
• Hybrid genre - we are making a romantic thriller which is very rare to combine those two genres together. This will attract a wider range of audience as the female audience might want to watch it for the romance and the male audience will be attracted to the thriller part of it. Therefore a couple can go and see it together with everyone being happy about it.

Genre Research: Romantic Thriller

      Codes and Conventions of Romance:

• Boy meets girl scenario
• Love/romantic symbols such as hearts, chocolates and stars etc.
• Typical happy ending
• Non-diegetic music
• Often set in a well known city
• A story that the audience can relate to
• Emotions and empathy
• In most romantic films there is often a third person or a villain in the way of love
• Usually some kind of conflict followed by reconciliation
• Typical romantic film would include sexuality, status, gender and relationships.
• Usually aimed at female audience.

         Codes and Conventions of Thriller:

• A thriller often consists of a battle between the protagonist and the antagonist when there is a disruption in the equilibrium.
• There is always a villain and a hero (good v. bad)
• Suspension 
• Enigma codes are used to create suspense.
• Low key lighting
• Quick cuts
• Tension building non-diegetic music.
• The antagonist often has a hidden identity which the the audience will uncover as the film progresses.
• The main role of a thriller film usually goes to a male character.
• Often thriller films happen to have young people in them to appeal to a greater audience.

         Themes in Thriller Films:                                                         

• Terrorism
• Conspiracies 
• Revenge
• Heist
• Obsession
• Mind games
• Stalking
• Assassination

        Themes in Romantic Films:

• Relationships
• Love at first sight
• Sexual and passionate love 
• Obsession
• Romance
• Sacrifice
• Tragedy
• Obstacles

         Similar Trailers:

•  Focus (2015) - thriller elements
• The Fault In Our Stars (2014) - romantic elements

Treatment and Genre Change

         Romantic Thriller:

• After hearing everyone's pitch ideas in class in my group we have decided that we want to change the genre of our trailer. We thought that since other groups are doing a horror trailer, we should go for something totally different that no other group is doing.
• We have came up with a hybrid genre of Romantic Thriller. 
• Romantic Thriller is a really rare hybrid genre and we thought that it would be our unique selling point to come up with a story line for that genre and because it's two genres combined, the trailer will reach a greater audience.
• Researching different thriller trailers and romantic trailers we decided to take some of the basic filming ideas from the film trailer of Focus(2015) and The Fault in our Stars(2014).
• We have kept the idea of Polish speaking character as this will give us a unique selling point and fits in quite well with our new and final pitch idea.

         Final Treatment:

• Trailer title: Secrecy
• A boy and a girl are happily married.
• The girl has a life threatening condition which she doesn't tell the boy about even though they have been together for a long time.
• The boy is involved in an illegal activity which involves money laundering and the girl has no idea.
• The girl finds out what the boy really does for a living and breaks off the relationship with him.
• The boy wants leave his job as he is deeply in love with the girl and wants to get her back.
• His boss doesn't want to let go of him making his life hell.
• The girl goes to hospital as her condition worsens.
• The boy later finds out that the girl has been very sick and has never told him about it and is determined to go see her in the hospital.
• The boy gets arrested/in trouble and never makes it to the hospital.
• The boy's boss gives her other employees instructions to kill him

         Production Company Name:

• Chambers Production 

         

         

         

          

Marvel - Examples of Franchising

This is an example of successful franchising. It's a timeline which shows how different sequels progress over time. They draw the audience in by presenting story lines which the audience are familiar with and the titles create the immediate awareness for the audience as they are certain of what they are watching/going to watch. Those franchises have already existing audience who provide additional promotion to the release of the film as they create awareness for the film by expressing their opinions to friends and family.

Genre Research and Pitch Idea Draft

Horror

• On our first group meeting, my group and I had thought about the easiest genre for our coursework trailer. We thought that horror would be the easiest to do and we started to think about different plot lines for the horror film/trailer. 
• Since it's a horror, we decided that we would do something about dolls and since I speak Polish we thought it would be more terrifying to hear the doll speak a foreign language and at the same time it would be our USP to attract a wider range of audience.

          Codes and Conventions:

• Death and blood
• Tension building, upbeat and instrumental music to indicate danger and manipulate the audience's feelings.
• Personal, deadly weapons
• Ghosts/spirits/demons
• Killer
• Isolated location
• Dark and scary atmosphere
• Beyond human abilities and unbelievable things and props
• Loads of close ups and eye line matches to show character's reactions to what is happening
• Dramatic camera angles
• There is always a protagonist that survives at the end and this is always the good and most innocent person in the group.

          Pitch Idea:

• A woman moves to England from Poland. When she gets to her new home from the airport and starts unpacking she notices a doll on a shelf. Her home is isolated and empty with nothing in there except for the doll. After she settles in she finds work through her friends that she already had in London. As the protagonist lives by herself, she starts to engage in a strange friendship with the doll she found in her house. She starts talking to the doll and soon it becomes very serious as she becomes isolated from the rest of the world - not going to work and cutting off her friends and family. The protagonist then goes missing and strange things start to happen with the doll left in the house who supposedly is a killer doll

         Working title of the film: Foreign Doll


The ideas my group and I have came up with were inspired mainly by Chucky: Child's Play, The Conjuring and Annabelle. Those 3 films also are about a killer dolls which is fairly easy to imitate. We thought this would be a good concept for our trailer as talking dolls are considered very creepy by most people and therefore it would be easier to ensure that our trailer is actually scary and contains codes and conventions of horror.

Harry Brown Analysis

• A gang is represented through stereotypical hoodies. They all wear dark clothing which signifies they are bad for the community. At the beginning of the film they welcome a new gang member with a test, one of them says "You're ready to become a man" an then forces him to inhale marijuana by pressing on his chest. They also give him a gun which suggest they are violent and gives the audience a clue of what they have to watch out for in the film. The costumes and props in this scene suggest that what is coming is to do with these kids at the beginning.

• Harry wakes up alone in a double size bed and is getting ready in silence. This signifies that there is emptiness which might be because he has lost someone close to him. When he we get a point of view shot on the two pictures on the night stand it makes it more clear that he's missing he's wife and daughter as we can assume that the pictures are of them. The pictures are black and white which could mean that they both passed away. When Harry goes to the hospital we can see that his wife is very sick which is probably the reason for his misery and loneliness. 

• Daffodil - signifies rebirth and new beginnings.

• Harry is wearing a dark suit with a brown coat over it. This suggests that he is more important and also relates to his age as it's the typical costume an older man would wear. This makes it more realistic as the audience can relate to the character. 

• First location we can see is the subway which is covered in graffiti. When Harry hears shouting in there, he decides to take the longer route. We can see that he is in hurry because he looks at his watch to see what time it is, this suggests that he knows that it wouldn't be safe going through the subway. The fact that there is nobody around creates isolation which shows how abandoned the area is. This reflects the crime and violence in the area as it might be the reason why it is so empty.

• In the pub Leonard says to Harry that Kenny bribed Sid to not say anything about them dealing drugs. He already knows that Sid is not to be trusted and it revealed to us that Sid is Noel's uncle. This shows that Harry and Leonard only had each other and that no one else in the area could be trusted.

• Harry's reaction when he finds out that Leonard's dead shows how much Leonard has meant to him and probably was the closest person left in his life. This also ties in with Leonard's funeral when no one but Harry is there. This shows that they were very close with each other because they were both lonely, left with no one but themselves to talk to. 

• Jane (Noel's mum) is drunk when the police come and has no clue about what is happening. This shows how unstable she is and that she has no interest in what her son is doing. It also suggests that the reason for Noel being troubling, angry and violent is the situation at home. His mother isn't really a good role model for him and that's why he might have turned to violence and crime. 

• Noel is very confident, he says "is this your new b**ch?" to a police officer and calls them names. This shows how he is not scared of what might happen, he doesn't obey the law/ speaks when they arrest him. At the police station he doesn't admit to killing Leonard and makes jokes about it comparing the victim to Freddy Krueger and insults the female officer. This shows how disrespectful he is and that he doesn't care about any one else apart from himself.

• Drug dealer - the scars, tattoos and his instability show he is dangerous and not to be trusted. 

• "You failed to maintain your women son." This shows Harry as a more powerful and mature person as he calls him 'son' and it sound like he's teaching him a lesson for not taking Sharon to the hospital.

• Noel has his hands around his girlfriends neck when they kiss. This shows his strength and the fact that he thinks he has more power than everybody else and can do whatever he wishes. It also suggests his lack of respect for women as he doesn't care about the girl's feelings only about what he gets out of it.

• Mark is mostly quiet and looks scared when he's getting questioned by the police and when Harry ties him to a chair wanting to get the truth out of him he cries. This suggests he is scared and maybe ashamed of what he did because he had been abused himself. It also suggests that maybe he didn't mean to do anything, but wanted to fit in with the gang so they wouldn't touch him.

• The last location we can see in the film is the subway. This connects both the beginning and the ending showing how the area has changed. At the end the subway is all clean with no graffiti and no one blocking the way. Harry doesn't go around any more to avoid the gang as they are no longer there. This shows that everything is okay now and that the area is safe again even though there is still emptiness and isolation.