character profiles

Character profiles

Nicole Smallman: Main character, a chronic drug addict coping barely with her feeble excuse of a life. She resembles a skinny trampy looking individual struggling with day to day normalities without her fix!!!

Ruaidhri Sharp: The unforgiving boyfriend once in love but was turned away by her junky ways and slowly gave up on his former love to the extent of taking her money to improve e his own life.

Mark Mayaski
Pictures by Jamie McLynn

Props

Props

Crack pipe: Was used to symbolise her drug taking and the problems she has her life.

Lines of “coke”: Once again used to symbolise her chronic drug issues.

Spoon with cinnamon burning: used to recreate heroine burning.

Syringe and belt: to show her taking heroin, and her junky ways.

These props were very important to the trailer in symbolising her drug addiction and her poor state of life the trailer would have been very bare without this content. The props being real drug utensils gave the trailer credibility and a professional feel rather than imitating them.

Mark Mayaski

Film Synopsis

Nicole Smallman was an ordinary woman with an ordinary life, however, one day and one man who she was whole heartedly besotted with ruined everything for her, it started out as what seemed to be the perfect relationship. She would have done anything for him and this weakness leads her to a life of drugs and heartbreak. She is in so deep that she feels as if her life could never change for the better and her life is headed for death some way or another so maybe she should just get it over and done with. Can her problems ever end and will someone loyal to her, if there is anyone, come to her rescue.No money, addicted to drugs, no home, no friends, no family and no prospects for improvement, can Nicole turn her life around or will it end before she can find out?

george bridges

Our Own Magazine Cover and Film Poster

Our magazine took the conventional means of basing information around the portrait photo of an actor/character. The archives of various film magazines highlights that, understandably, the majority of film publications sell their product with a cover featuring the biggest film in terms of potential box office revenue, so accordingly we've had to slightly adapt the concept and present Heroine as such a film, although the genre, concept and style of shooting is far more reminiscent of low-grossing independent films.

I tried to emulate commonly found conventions in film magazines, such as side features based on up and coming actors; "The next De Niro, Nicholson, Jolie and more", and (fictional) director biographies; "Mayaski & McLynn". Such numerous features crammed onto one page attempt to lure a reader into buying the magazine based on appealing to their film-related interests even if the main feature doesn't.

I also obviously designed the magazine to take the same structure as similar publications, with the striking title as the header, a clear portrait photo, clear bold font with the name of the main release that month etc.

The poster is, I think, one of the strongest aspects of our practical work this year. Whilst obviously not being industry standard I think the incorporation of many elements of real-life attributes of film posters heightens the realism and gives it a relatively professional look, albeit with a lack of real knowledge of Photoshop.

The general mood and tone of the film is represented in the dense, dark effect achieved by the desaturated colour from the original image, also the title of the movie will have instant connotations with drugs due to its play-on-words origin.

The Academy Award aspect is just something I thought I'd add because it, if done properly, could heighten the plausibility of the overall poster, adding a further element to enticing the audience. I am aware however that 9 nominations at such prestigious would be perhaps over ambitious for such a film. However I saw the recent acknowledgement by the Academy for similar darkly toned biopics such as The Wrestler and especially Precious in 2009 and 2010 respectively.