At first our group wanted to create a football hooliganism trailer but unfortunately the production wasn’t possible because we didn’t have the appropriate location and props need for this type of a trailer, so we eventually decided to change our idea to making a biopic film trailer.
Our biopic trailer strikers many similar codes & conventions that are found in biographical films & trailers. The narrative that we as a group have come up with shows many elements of a biopic. The story is about the life of Nicole, a young adult whose happiness strays from her after she becomes addicted to drugs, more specifically, the drug Heroine, which also our film’s title, which instantly gives the audience an impression that this is a personal story.
If you look at the technical codes that we have in our trailer, they are clearly visible for the audience to see. The mise -en scene indicates what she is involved in with the props bring used such as the crack pipe and smoking to emphasise that the story is a drug-related story. The camera shows shots of medium close-ups in order to convey the main character emotions and also shows the poor state of physical health and also shows her taking the drugs at a street corner.
You can also notice that in editing the crosscutting shots where she is crying & walking on the pavement emphasises that she wants her addiction to end. The sound used in our trailer reflects the mood of the story, the music i.e. non-diegetic sound used in the trailer conveys that the character is feeling down & sad.
Representation of young adults being conveyed by Nicole would be that they are seeking independence and are living alone as her story emphasises that she has at a crossroads in her life i.e. her life can either get better or get worse as her on-going difficulty continues. The main character is seen to represent drug addicts in a number of ways in that she shows that they have physically deteriorating health as well as clothing appears to be cheap.
Because she is representing a social group, she is also conveying known stereotypes associated with drug addicts. Like for e.g that drug addicts are confused & lost as well not caring about their appearance. This therefore reinforces the dominant ideology that drugs are bad for you which is emphasised by the poor state of health caused by the addiction.
We looked at a number of trailers in order to see the common codes & conventions found in biopic trailers such as The Pursuit of Happyness, Transpotting , Requiem for a Dream & Nil by Mouth.
When shooting our trailer, the mise en scene was of huge important as making Nicole look like a drug addict would help convey the convention of a biopic that drugs can lead to a poor state of health, by applying make-up to her face . Locations were also a big factor in order for us to portray the places where often druggies smoke, not forgetting also the props we used such as the crack pipe to emphasise the drug taking so that the main character is able to represent the social group i.e. drug addicts.
The pictures to the top left show the drugs that will eventually be consumed by the main characters, The one on the below left is a shot from the film requiem for a dream and the one on the lef below is from teaser trailer, Heroine.
The camera shots that we used were very significant. The medium close-ups we used needed to convey the emotions of the character.
The pictures above shows the effects that the drugs has had on the characters looking from the technical code mise ens cene. The picture shows that the grandmother is now feeling the effects of the drugs as she looks now to be suffering anxiety & distress that she can’t find drugs which means that she is now developing a dependency on the drugs. The picture on the left above shows the extreme effects that the drug Heroine she is now falling deeper into her drug addiction
Editing was another big part because in order to convey meaning to the viewer, it was essential that we had a good level of continuity in our trailer to show that it looks of good standard. We could have made our trailer longer in duration by putting more clips in our trailer, but decided against as we thought that it had all the necessary & important shots to convey the narrative well. Here is a clip that we that we didn’t use in our trailer.
This clip would been have been ideal for our trailer which is a point of view shot from Nicole that shows her waking up feeling dizzy as tries to walk with people looking at she walks hesitantly walk pasts them, but the reason why we didn’t use it in our trailer was for two reasons as it didn’t fit in with the sequences of shots. Also, didn’t match with the sound that we wanted to use for our teaser trailer as this would have been a hindrance in attempting to reflect the mood of the narrative.
2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
Our combination of our media product i.e. our teaser trailer has proved to work very well with the ancillary texts that we have used such as the posters & magazine covers that the group has created.
It is important to use posters & magazine as this is in order for us to market our film and tell the audience that a new film is out there as the best way to market a film is by ‘Above the Line’ promotion. This is where trailers & posters come into the equation as this is the most effective method of marketing a film to the audience and will appeal to them depending on the genre of the film, but in this case, this film is likely to appeal to people who like biographical films.
Codes & conventions of magazines & posters were immensely important when constructing our own film posters & magazines so that we are able to show that our work is similar to & challenges forms of real media products, but also portrays messages.
In a film poster, the most common conventions found are the film’s title as well the name of the actors. If it’s a star actor in the film, it’s a bonus for the film producers as the appeal of the star actor will almost certainly guarantee people attending the cinema to watch the film. Also release date to tell the audience when the film is released. Another element which is found in nearly all film posters are reviews from film critics, which is a very powerful tool used by nearly all films when their marketing campaign is in motion. This will influence the word of mouth as it is one of the biggest ways in which popularity of the film rises. If critics give good reviews for the film, it is most likely that many people would start to talk about the film ‘Heroine’ and would have convinced many film audiences to go to the cinema & watch the film.
The denotation shows that the main character shows the main character, Nicole lying on the wall and the connotation of the picture is conveying that she is ‘down in the dumps’ as she struggles with her personal problem; which is emphasised by the tile of the film ‘Heroine’ i.e. addiction to drugs & the colour of the background is dark also emphasises the point that she is starting to lose herself & there is no hope for her overcoming her addiction difficulties. The feeling that the audience would feel whilst looking at the film poster might be sympathetic towards the main character, due to appeal of the narrative as it is of personal nature which would interest many people to see what eventually happens to Nicole & it might also interest them as it is a story of personal struggle which some people feel they can relate to the narrative. In other words, our unique selling point (USP) is the narrative as this is how we targeted our audience in the hope that it will hopefully appeal to them to go watch the film at cinemas.
There are many conventions that you would usually find in a film magazine cover. The magazine title ‘Focus’ appeals to film magazine readers instantly as it is a well-known film magazine , so this proves to be beneficial to our marketing campaign the fact that the film ‘Heroine’ is being reviewed in leading film magazine will broaden its appeal to wider film audiences.
The feature article photo is of Nicole, the main character of the film ’Heroine’ which promotes the character & more importantly the film. One half of her face is dark, whilst the other half shows her face in artificial light with the connotation trying to show that the two sides to the character, but also may convey that she is lost and confused. Many other conventions of the magazine are visible such as the secondary lead which is the story that should appeal to the reader if they aren’t initially attracted to the headline as well as cover lines to highlight other topics featured in the magazine
There was a clear difference in the construction of the magazine cover, film poster & the film trailer. The first step, however, are very similar as we first had to conduct a film poster, film trailer & film magazine analysis.
For our film trailer analysis, we individually had to analyse a biopic trailer & see the common codes & conventions that are often portrayed in them. The film trailer that I chosen to analysis, was ‘The pursuit of Happyness’ (2006) starring Will Smith.
This helped me gain valuable knowledge of the elements used particularly in biopic films such as the incidental music to go with the action on screen to help emphasise the mood of the film as well as having a powerful narrative, which the pursuit of happiness portrays very well after conducting a technical analysis.
However, the process of constructing a film posters & magazine differs somewhat from the construction of a film trailer. Codes & conventions of film trailer are conveyed differently to the conventions of film posters & magazine are ancillary texts and also different forms of media in comparison to the construction of the film trailer which is a form of media associated with TV as it is also more practical, hands on if you could say.
To summarise, the package proves to be successful with the marketing campaign that we have used with the film poster & film magazine. The advantages of using these methods would be that you not only have a trailer for people to see on TV, but also you have posters & magazine which increases awareness of the film being released into cinemas so using other texts such as these will help boost a film’s market campaign by attracting audiences to the cinemas. So, the key to having a successful marketing campaign is to have a marketing strategy is to raise as much awareness as possible for the film.
3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?
The audience research was the first step towards our practical work as this would help us see what the audience want from us. The indication were clear as feedback suggested that a film that appealed to most people was powerful narrative based story. However, we decided to go against what the audience wanted and we created a character based trailer and more specifically a biographical trailer as the group felt that this would be an interesting trailer to make & the idea was agreed by all of us enthusiastically.
From our audience research, the age of our target audience was from 15-18 year olds i.e. teenagers & young adults of both genders, which was targeted at all ethnicities .The title of the film, ‘Heroine’ conveys the point that the story of the film is related to an issue where these social groups particularly have problems i.e. drugs. Also, the questionnaire showed that what affected most members of the audience to go and watch a film was a trailer as it is the most often used form of media used by filmmakers, so our first step for advertising our film was to create a film trailer.
Having put together & completed our trailer, we carried out an audience feedback on our finished trailer to see what they thought of it. This was very important that we conducted this survey in order to see whether we had satisfied the audience’s needs, which thankfully, we did, having analysed the feedback that we obtained from the screening of our finished trailer.
From our audience feedback analysis posted on the blog, the results that our trailer made our audiences happy with the various technical elements that we worked well.
Surprisingly, we found that the element that the audience enjoyed most about our trailer was the variation of shots as we‘d expected our narrative to be chosen most frequently as the element they enjoyed most about our trailer.
Out of the 20 people we asked about whether the music i.e. non diegetic sound matched the action on screen. 85% of people agreed because they said the reason was the music used in the trailer reflected the mood of the character as well as convey the narrative. Also, all members of the audience unanimously agreed that our trailer conveyed many codes & conventions that are often found in a biopic trailer.
When asked whether they would want to go watch the whole, 80 % people of would want to go watch to go with reasons being that the narrative of the film really appeals to them. As for the 20% who said no gave the reason that the genre of the film wasn’t their type although they felt that the teaser trailer was of good standard.
Overall, I believe that our teaser trailer satisfied our audience’s needs having considered the feedback that was given to us in our audience research and working well on the construction of the trailer.
If we wanted view the film at cinemas, this mainly depends on our target audience. Because our film is a no-budget film, many big companies like Warner Bros, Paramount & 20th Century Film would certainly not invest in our film as our film would be classed as no-budget film are labelled as ‘’ non-profiting’’.
However, if our film was made on a low-budget, then we would be looking at distributors in the UK such as revolver entertainment, who notably distributed the film ‘Kidulthood’ which had a budget of £450,000. It’s clear that if we were able to show our film, then it wouldn’t be a blockbuster film because it doesn’t have the mass-market appeal i.e. doesn’t have the actor appeal or the director appeal, and therefore doesn’t attract huge audiences. So if our film was going to be viewed at cinemas, it would have to be distributed to local cinemas in Acton & Shepherd, which area full of many different people of various ethnic backgrounds.
The cinemas only available are Vue Cinemas, which is a worldwide exhibitor of films. As big movies have high priced tickets, our film would probably have low-priced tickets because it wouldn’t attract number of audiences as it is only being distributed locally so our film would only generate interest from members of the public who live in the area and wouldn’t generate huge interest from wider geographical locations. In that sense, our audience would target teenagers & young adults of all ethnicities but to a certain extent where not a huge amount of revenue would be generated by the full film.
