Film Production Companies

Captions of awards the film has won and the companies who distibuted the film add attention to detail. The awards inform viewers were the film was recognised and for what aspects it was awarded. The companies allow the independent category and funding needs to be highlighted.

The Voiceover

I suggested the opening of the trailer to be played with Haq quoting Eminem-

'' If you had one shot, one oppurtunity, to seize everything you ever wanted, one moment, would you capture it or just let it slip?''

It sounded very deep and attention grabbing. However the lines did not relate to our story fully and we decided to research some powerful quotes on lifes struggles. We found one we all immediately loved and decided to use:

''Strength does not come from winning. Your struggles develop your strengths. When you go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is strength.''

We edited the quote slightly to suit our movie.

SceneS

We have filmed most of our trailer but want to re-shoot some shots as we found ourselves sticking with certain angles and shots instead of using a wide variety.
Scenes filmed:

• Overview of Birmingham.
• Birds flying off.
• Guy in church.
• Guy chilling with friends in park.
• Visiting graveyard.
• Meeting dealers.
• Police chase-on foot.
• Breaking into house.
• Party scene.
• Meeting enemies.
• Gym scene.
• Stabbing.
• Guy getting rushed.
• Job centre interview.
• Talking on the phone angrily.

We still need more shots as we wanted them to appear in quick succession to dramatise the events and keep the viewers interested in the movie.

The soundtrack...

Some tracks we might use for our film soundtrack^^^

Strengths and Weaknesses.....!

Some of the strengths...
+ we found the perfect person to play the main character within our own group!-Haq had the look we needed and having him as the main guy allowed us to film all the parts with just him alone when other cast members couldn't make it.
+ a lot of the settings we wanted were not far from college allowing us to film straight after the day and easier for other characters to make it.
+ all members of the group are creative and put forward a wide variety of ideas for us to work with.
+ we were all very critical of our own work which allowed us to film things in the most effective way and have ideas in how to edit footage to our advantage.
+ all four of us are good teamworkers and the good co-operation and helping out each other in thier roles allowed us to work to our potential.

Some weaknesses....
- Some of the cast members we wanted were not always available and we had to work around that.
- The winter season meant it was dark outside after college resticting good light for our filming.
- Our lack of experience with Final Cut Express before the project meant that we were using features incorrectly and sometimes found oursleves confused with how to capture our footage.
- We captured the blocks of footage instead of snippets of scenes which meant we had to re-do some parts of editing.

My Role

My individual role is to film the actual trailer. I helped direct the film alongside Haq. The footage needs to be creative and include a large vairety of angles and movements. We thought of a couple of shots that would be the most effective in capturing our vision for the trailer. The most common ones are:

Shot Type-

• XCU- Extreme close up. (of the guys face-to show emotion)
• CU- Close Up. (concentrate on one thing to draw viewers attention)
• MS- Mid Shot. (passing on drugs, show faces and hand gestures)
• MLS- Medium Long Shot. (use when showing friends chilling with the setting aswel)
• LS- Long Shot.(settings)
• OTS- Over the Shoulder Shot.(show conversations from characters perspective)

Angles can be low, high, eye level, birds eye view, worms eye view, slanted etc. We used specific angles to show the viewer more or less when it was needed. A high angle was used to show the city of Birmingham while an eye level one was used to show the more general, ordinary events concerning the protagonist.

The movements of the camera are generally the tilt, pan and track ones. Tracking was important when we wanted to follow the main character walking across a certain area while panning helped the footage to be taken in by the audience.

This genre of film and the types of events we wanted to portray allowed us to make use of many different shots and angles and we even used a handheld filmed scene where i ran after Haq as he raced up flights up stairs, away from enemies. This looked fantastic and i was very pleased with the surveillance use that was incorporated with the production.

I also helped organise the group in terms of meetings in pre-production and whilst filming was going on to ensure we all felt our vision was being seen through correctly and time was managed efficiently. Having some sort of schedule is key in our project as use of resources was restricted and we had a deadline to work towards.

InSpiRatIoN

Our group was inspired by the movies 'Kidulthood' and 'Adulthood'. The way the filming was produced, the issues affecting the characters, the costume and general mise-en-scene were all features that intrigued us and tried to replicate in some areas of our production.
The grime tracks in the movie are also a great tool in representing the music that some teens are interested in and the inner city stories being told in the film.

General Idea

• we haven't decided on a name for our trailer yet. We have a shortlist with names like 'Vindictive', 'Troubled', 'My Struggle','My Street' and 'Temptation'. The name will be decided in post-production work after viewing all of our footage and choosing the most strongly related name.
• the trailer is about a guy who leaves home after a huge argument with his parents. Years on, he finds out that they were in a major car accident and died as a result. He returns home to look after his sister but gets caught up in drugs and violence after failing to find legal financial help. His rise to wealth is illegal and he finds himself caught between his enemies who threaten the safety of his sister. This was the initial idea as we thought it was feasible in relation to our resources.
• after researching the audiences for movies of this genre we found that they attracted mainly people from black and asian backgrounds who are around 16-25 years old. Other teenagers may be interested in them as they allow viewers to relate to the story being told and the issues that arise in their lives.

Pre-Production...

• inspiration from 'One Day' and 'Adulthood' highlighted.
• shot-by-shot trailer sequence written up.
• photos of possible locations have been taken.
• a couple of people have been casted for certain roles.
• score for movie trailer decided. '9-5'-Kano.
• powerpoint presented to class to inform them of all the above.
• storyboard preparations underway.

Hello There...!

Welcome to my trailer blog =D