Testing of Tricky Shots in "VIRAGO"

The short video compiles all of the tricky shots as mentioned in a previous post. The tests were all successful and only required some extra thought into how they could be made possible. For example, Test 2 was achieved by rigging the camera on a tripod and holding the tripod by hand up into the air, resting the camera on the ceiling to aid in stabilizing the camera.

CROWD FUNDING

Due to our film being considered independent due to lower budget and non pre established fan base, crowd funding for us would be vastly necessarily. Films such as 'Four lions' vastly relied upon crowd funding due to the controversially of the film as it was humouring a classic and deeply rooted racial stereotype of the British-Muslim community: radicalisation. The film was originally rejected by both the BBC and Channel 4 due to both controversially and if the film would be a success, therefore the director Chris Morris would have to have 'proof' that film would attract an audience. This therefore required Morris to seek other methods of funding. He therefore resulted in relying upon crowd funding. He succeeded in this by sending an email titled ' funding mentalism', where fans could contribute £25-£100 pounds each to the production costs of the film and as a perk would be able to appear as extras in the film. Both beneficial for the fans and the creation of the film. Through this, it enabled morris to provide evidence for securing a target audience, hence why at the box office it made 6.9 million.  The film secured funding in October 2008 from film 4 production and Wrap films, with Derrin Schlesinger and Mark Herbert producing. Within in mid 2009 ( May), filming had begun. 

Crowd funding for our film would be certainly a must have due to the psychological narrative which may appear confusing at first glance. Additionally crowd funding would also be necessary in terms of production costs in particular,due to our low funding budget and the film being independent  rather than considered to be 'mainstream'. 

Idea for crowd funding:

One possible idea for crowd funding would be in the same way morris had sent an email out asking to star as extras if they paid a small some of £25 to £100. However due to our age group being 15+ we would send the email to students at university and Alevel age due to 1. finical issues and 2. success in getting individuals to want to take part in a film. One persuading benefit would be gaining experience which may help them in a job prospect i.e. a student studying film, media or theatrics. Both again offering benefits for the producer and the contributor. 

Research into Viral Marketing for Films

Some of the most effective uses of marketing a film is making it go viral- viral meaning that it becomes popular on the internet. For me, the most effective ways of marketing a film is making the film give the impression that it is reality. Many films have done this before with strong impressions on audiences. Here are a few examples:

The Blair Witch Project = This film claimed itself to be a documentary- an actual piece of footage that was supposed to provide evidence for supernatural activity.

The campaign for the film was crafted around attempting to make it appear as though the events of the film were not fictional but a true account of a documentary shoot gone wrong. With a website purporting to show police reports and real evidence related to the case, buzz for the film reached previously unseen levels for a low-budget horror flick made for less than a million dollars.

Of course, that’s not to say that everyone believed The Blair Witch Project was depicting real events, but if you ask anyone who followed the film at the time of release, they’ll tell you that the vast majority of moviegoers were unconvinced as to whether the film was fiction or nonfiction. And for a film with a production budget estimated to have been about $60,000, the viral marketing certainly paid huge dividends, with a $140 million domestic gross and a $108 million overseas gross for a worldwide total of $248 million.

The Dark Knight = Christopher Nolan's Batman epic marketed its film in many ways such as trailers, posters and utilising social media accounts to attract internet focused audiences. However, Warner Bros. too attempted to make the film a reality by creating a legitimate-looking campaign site for Harvey Dent. Besides introducing the motto “I believe in Harvey Dent” and giving fans early access to themes explored in the film, the Joker would later take to the same sites, defacing them and making his presence felt. Soon after, emails sent to the vandalized website would remove the pixels blocking an image and revealing to fans the first official image of the Joker.

Warner Bros. would again use viral marketing to push the film, as it sent fans on a scavenger hunt at Comic-Con that would unlock a teaser trailer and a new photo of the Joker.

 Cloverfield = The 2008 sci-fi monster film Cloverfield was equally successful in marketing their film. For this film, a series of websites were created that focused on the fictional drink Slusho! and the fictional Japanese company Tagruato. As speculation mounted as to what these companies meant for the film itself, a number of websites were also created that contained puzzles, including one that provided a number that when texted from a mobile phone, provided a ringtone of the unrevealed monster and a wallpaper of a destroyed Manhattan.

Secrecy was also an important factor in Cloverfield’s marketing strategy, as images and the first trailer revealed the desolation of Manhattan by a large creature but with no clear indication as to what the creature would look like. This lead to widespread Internet speculation that the film was anything from a live-action adaption of Voltron to a new adaption of Godzilla or even a spinoff of Lost.

The risky campaign ultimately paid off, as the film earned $40.1 million in its opening weekend while going on to earn $170 million worldwide on a budget of only $25 million.

Link to Slusho website: http://slusho.jp/

My Viral Marketing Advert Idea

For our film, Virago, I too wanted to create a perception of reality. However, because out film does not have any fictional brands or companies, I used the idea behind The Blair Witch Project's marketing campaign and created a fake news story, describing to death of our film's main protagonist in the real newspaper Barnsley Chronicle. I believe that this would be successful because it will provide the audience with a sense of mystery (Barthe's Enigma Codes) and will encourage them to watch the film and wonder why the main character, Edward Virago, dies. 

film poster annotation -SPLIT 2017

Film analysis

Film posters are critical for advertising a film to the public and enticing them into watching the film. a film poster needs to interesting from far away and also from close up. This is so that people are intrigued by the image making them want to watch the film.

A good example of this is 'Captain America The First Avenger' this poster is a good representation of an interesting poster because the background is dark, grey and gloomy but in the foreground, Captain America is more colourful and catches the attention of the viewer. The main characteristic of Capt. America is his shield, in this poster, his shield is a lot most vibrant feature in this poster. From this picture you can a lot see the texture of the shield, from a close up, the shield almost looks like brushed aluminium. Poster features like this, makes the poster more interesting to look at from a viewer point of view.

From my opinion, the second thing that catches my attention is the text on the poster. The text is positioned towards the bottom of the poster, but with it being in a contrasting colour, the text readable and clear, even if it is from far away. The text is coloured in with the same colour as parts of the shield, giving the text a metal look to it. Then the second biggest text on the poster is where the viewer can see the film, in this case it says 'Only in theatres'.

Chris Evans (Captain America) is stood directly in the middle and takes up the majority of the poster. This medium long shot of him makes him the centre of the viewers attention, making them interested by the image, due to the level of detail captured on his costume etc.

As a conclusion to this poster, I have found out that a poster needs a main characteristic (such as a character/s picture) to first capture and intrigue the viewer, then a big text to let them know what the viewer is looking at. Then where they can view it the film.  

   

Friday filming outline

 Attending: all group members: Chloe-Louise, Kurt, Chris and Nico.

Due to filming on Friday we decided to create a plan and check list for what needed to be filmed and also a guideline to help us keep on task. Which would enable us to get the most possible best outcome for that filming session.

                                                                      SCRIPT

• The part of script will we be focusing mostly on: are sections 1-3 then 5-6. However within in this script guideline upon the day we may alter this due to various reasons: if the scripting works well and flows, changes due to alteration in the main narrative. Being able to adapt and change will be our main goal in terms of the days agenda. Mainly due to the fact we may get certain inspirations from actually being on set and spur of the moment ideas that may function better than originally planned.

 

 

 

 

LOCATION

• The filming location we mainly decided upon was based in Silkstone. The location does require a bus journey to get to. However the church we first envisioned best fits the one in Silkstone in terms of: fitting  the criteria we need to portray of such a beautiful and delicate scene between Edward and Elizabeth in their wedding ceremony. Due to Silkstone being a village many of the surrounding areas offer stone houses, untouched churches and little village shops and offers many natural spaces such as woodland areas and hidden secrets i.e. the hidden church we will be filming at. We wanted to create a natural essence to out film but also highlight some features that England has to offer interms of the natural beauty of out country side and villages.

 

SHOTS

 

• The shots we will be focusing are from 1-5 and 18-31. However again on the day we may change and alter the shots used and may add more in. Mainly due to the fact we may again gain inspirations from the set location, spur of the moment ideas and some shots that we intend to use may just not work in the way we envisioned them.

 

 

Further Research in Film Posters

Link to Film Poster Research and Analysis

Second Draft of Film Poster Design 

In this second draft, I have added credits and the logos for the productions that would be producing the film for us. I have also swapped around the title from being at the bottom to the top as well as altering the font and location of the main actors names. These alterations were problems which peers and members of my group considered as improvements. I will ask the same peers for suggestions on further improvements for a final draft.

Kurts final poster idea

This is my final poster for our film 'Virago'. The helmets main feature is the helmet and gloves of the Edward, which gives the viewer of the poster an idea of what the film is about.
When the viewer sees the poster for the first time, they will instantly think that the film is about a biker.

I put the robin on the reflection of the visor because the robin is feature in part of the film, but the reflection does not give away too much about how it is involved.

Narrative change

From our online questionnaire it was made vastly clear that the narrative was consider greatly confusing in terms of if the wife survived and what was actually going on. Therefore from this we considered a change in narrative which would allow our target audience to be able to watch the film and this would also help our team in filming but initially give continuity to the narrative and give more logical sense.

The Changes:
- Edward kills his wife and this is the reason she keeps returning with hints to indicate to him what he had done. This will be established throughout the film from Elizabeth leaving notes, hints and Edwards own flashbacks that all lead up to him remembering his vicious criminal act.
- Edward re-visits the crime scene where he lays down flowers to convey his emotional guilt and frustration over not being to remember how Elizabeth died. Certain parts of the outdoor church bring back flashbacks of the actual wedding scene, all leading up to him having his final flashback of what really had occurred.

As a group we are still curious to whether to leave it a mystery,  to whether Edward did really kill his wife on their wedding day as this would create more intrigue for viewers overall cinematic experience.