1.
For this project, my media partner was Moneeb Hussain. We chose Brief 1, and Tasks 1 and 2 - that is, the trailer and the magazine. We chose these because we had both previously made trailers for media projects, and we felt the magazine would be a fair challenge to us and extend our skills in that area.
For our trailer we researched the trailers for Buried, Funny Games and The Others. The enclosed filming space in the trailer for Buried inspired us to make a film about someone who is trapped in a small space. The temporary blocks at our main school seemed like a likely option. We decided to make a film about someone who becomes trapped in a temporary block on the last day before the summer holidays. The film was initially going to be entitled Just One Mistake, but we eventually decided to make it a sequel to Isolation?, a previous trailer that I had worked on, so the title was changed to Isolation: The Second Coming?
The film was a psychological thriller, with a twist similar to The Others in that sense. The film was supposed to focus on my character's fear and slow descent into madness, so there are a lot of shots of my face - in face, we even had to cut some out because there were too many. The start of the trailer had a close-up of an iPod my character was holding, and then a long shot of me walking into the building, to set the scenario before my face was even shown.
At the start of our trailer there is Not Afraid by Eminem playing, and it is implied to be the same music that is playing on Ed's iPod. The music quickly changed to Hello Zepp, the theme music from the movie Saw, because that is much more dramatic. There was no voiceover for our trailer, because we decided that that would be cheesy, cliched and inappropriate for this project.
Editing our trailer took quite some time, because there were a lot of things to get right. As I've mentioned above, we had to cut out a few of my shots, mainly the close-ups of my face, as there were simply too many. We also added in quotes from famous newspapers and film magazines, such as The Daily Telegraph and Empire Magazine. Because there was no voiceover, we added in screencaps such as 'ED CRISPIN IS BACK' and 'THIS TIME HE FACES A TOUGHER CHALLENGE'.
For our magazine cover we each made a number of pages. We each made a cover - Moneeb's was based on the cover of Empire Magazine and mine was based on Sight and Sound. We each conducted interviews with each other in different formats - some were articles, and some were more like question/answer type features. I also wrote a Sight and Sound-style description of our film, taken directly from the film magazine. I also wrote a very cynical review of the film, because most of the publicity pages that we made were about how good the film was and how I was destined for big things, so I thought it would be good to have a balanced opinion and show something from a different perspective.
We made most of our magazine pages on InDesign. This programme made the font size very small, so we had to resize our text a far bit. We also took photos of each other and used them with our pages, with captions next to them explaining what the picture is, like a professional film magazine. Most of our pages were taken directly from Sight and Sound - even the page numbers were decorated to look like that.
2.
When we first designed the idea for this film, target audience was not considered very much. Our plot design - about someone getting locked in - was so simple and so easy to understand, that anyone at all could understand it. We even considered making the film in another language. Our only original concern for target audience was that as a psychological thriller, it might not be appropriate for under-12s. The main attraction we designed is the idea that 'it could happen to you!'
However, later we made two decisions that made us think about our target audience more carefully - one is that we made the film a follow-up to Isolation?, and the other was the twist at the end where Ed realises that he in fact locked himself in. The twist would probably make it even less appropriate for very young viewers, as the ending might be difficult to understand at this age. If the same kind of audience would be attracted to this film as to the first film, it is likely that they would be predominantly male teenagers. While Ed is wearing casual clothes, is listening to an iPod and goes to a state school, I don't personally thing that social groups, regional identity or class would make any difference in our target audience.
The trailer is on YouTube, and all of the comments that I have about it from my friends have been very positive. However, not that many people have actually seen it, so it is hard to generalise this to a specific target audience - it could just as easily appeal to everyone. However, as most of the people who have seen it are teenagers, I think this is a good result, as teenagers are the target audience and the ones I have spoken to seem to like the trailer.
Our magazine would probably appeal in particular to film buffs and media students. I think this because a lot of our pages are quite complex and not many people that I know would read such wordy descriptions and reviews of films. However, it is very descriptive and would be treated like gold dust by film researchers, possibly slightly older than the target audience. I think more white middle-class people would be likely to buy our magazine, because stereotypically this category of people read more than other social classes.
3.
A fundamental part of our trailer was the music. The Eminem music we use at the start is an immediate attention-grabber and the Saw music is very dramatic and striking. I think that our camera shots were effective, particularly the close-ups on my face, and I think the order that the clips appear is pretty much perfect, because it attracts an audience without telling them too much, and it ends on a cliff-hanger.
Other forms and conventions used successfully in our trailer include the screencaps (which are used in many trailers and always look very professional) and the quotes from various magazines advertising our film.
I think one of my biggest triumphs for our magazine was my cynical review. Most of our pages were about how successful the franchise was, so I thought it would be crucial to have something from another opinion. I also think my description of the film - taken directly from Sight and Sound - was very good and very much reflects the way film magazines describe their subject.
The photos that we took looked very professional - inspired by a cover photograph of Tilda Swinton, Moneeb took a photo of me outside our canteen to use on our magazine cover, which I was very proud of. We also used captions for our photos with directions like 'above' and 'left', like articles so often do.
I think that our biggest mistake with the project was working too much on the filming and editing early on. The magazine work was very rushed over the last two weeks, and I think balancing out the work early on would have made both of our productions a lot easier.
Another fatal flaw that we made was not identifying our target audience properly. Our brief instructed us to approach a certain target audience and base our project around that, and - although we knew that we were aiming it at teenagers - I feel we did not examine our target audience as closely as we could have. Also, I personally regret not taking so much of a hands-on approach to the editing and magazine making. Although Moneeb was excellent, I did sometimes feel like he was on a team of his own and I was not really doing much. While I offered to do anything I could think of, it did not always feel as if I was pulling my wieght, so I think if we were to do the project again I would work on that a bit more.
4.
Our third media task was about creating a website, so probably the most appropriate thing to have done would be to create a promotional website about the film Isolation: The Second Coming? In class recently we have been studying the website for documentary film Man on Wire, so it is likely that our trailer would have been quite similar to that.
The website for Man on Wire has a trailer, information about the film, screenshots from the film and theatre dates. It also has an advert for a DVD of the film and a link to the Wikipedia article. Had we made a website for our film we would likely have had similar features on it, but because we are attracting a younger target audience, we might have changed a few of the features.
Our website could possibly have had a few video interviews with me or Moneeb. I think it would also have been useful to have a few animations on our website, and we could possibly have designed a game as well.
