Film Pitch

Title - Paths

Genre - Urban Drama


Time Period - Contemporary


Location(s) - South London (Tooting, Purley Way and Brixton)


Budget - Low


Target Market/Key Demographic - Teens 16+


Logline - This films falls into the genre of urban thrillers as it is set in London's council estates. Two boys who are roughly the same age yet different in many ways meet in conflict.


Treatment - There are two characters that are at conflict with each other of the death of one's brother, the boys are two different people in terms of their look on life, one is trying to leave the hardship of living  on estates and focus on his school work. Whilst the other is a gang leader involved in criminal activity, the two's path cross when the younger brother of the gang leader was involved in an accident which resulted in his death, this was caused by the second character accidently when driving his car. after much bullying received from the gang the two finally meet on a road to settle their difference.

Evaluation

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms of media & conventions of real media products?

Our teaser trailer breaks codes and conventions of many urban thrillers. Our main influences were movies like KidultHood, Bullet Boy and Ill Manors. One of the main convention we broke was with our character casting. We had an Asian protagonist (me), which is something you don't see often in urban thrillers, the only movie in that genre that had a Asian protagonist was Ill Manors and Shifty, in both movies was played by Riz Ahmed played one of if not the main character. Majority of the urban thrillers that you see have predominantly African Caribbean ethnicity, such as Noel Clarke and Ashley Walters.
Our mise-en-scene was very conventional to the urban thriller genre, our characters where wearing black hoodies, tracksuits, casual trainers. This is very stereotypical view on the teenagers of London today and also characters in Urban Thrillers. Our setting was in both Brixton and Tooting. We decided to set our trailer there because these areas would be very familiar to our key demographic, as the majority of them would be from in and around London.


How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary text?

Our teaser trailer works will with our ancillary text (film poster and magazine cover), as they all convey the theme of our film. Our film poster hasn't got a lot of colour as it is very dark, we got our influence from the Kidulthood poster. it has all the main characters lined up against a wall, the colour seems like the picture was taken at dusk. The colour scheme of the KidultHood poster is very dark bluish as is very similar to our film poster. Another influence is the background, in the KidultHood poster has vague resemblance of a run down estates, our film poster is the blocks on Brixton. Our magazine cover has Ainsley in his costume, with a background of city behind him, this represents the character's dream as he wants to leave the hood and enter the city. I think it works well, especially the magazine cover as it sticks to its conventions, as it mostly focuses on one character. If you see our teaser trailer and then see our magazine cover, you will be able to understand each bit to our poster.

 

Audience Feedback...

Our audience was what we expected. Many people liked our teaser trailer, but we expected the audience to be confused by who the bad person and the good person is. We did this deliberately so that the audience think that both characters are the bad guys, however, when they go see the film, they'd see that only one is and the other is trying to change. Majority said that they liked how 'its set in area's in which we call all relate', we were trying to reach out to the youths of today as this is something that many young boys and girls go through. They like the soundtrack to our teaser trailer as well as it gives an emotional touch to the environment, almost a bond between the characters and their environment. In psychology, psychologist suggests that the environment plays a big part in defining our character.

Regarding our magazine cover and film poster, many people said they both worked well together once I had explained what our film was about and said they would like to look into it. They really liked the setting (the brixton estates), they said how it is very familiar with the youth of today and it 'pays a homage to the past of South London'. They especially liked the magazine cover and how the character of Ainsley position amongst the background of city. 



How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation phases?

This year we used Final Cut Pro X instead of last years IMovie to edit our film. There were many implications, because it was a brand new software it did take us quite a while to get used to it, this unfortunately did shorten our editing time. However, what we lost in time we made up in the editing stage. Using the Final Cut Pro X did make our movie more professional, for example, by using the blade tool, we were able make it more precise, that was something that we couldn't do last year with IMovie. We were using the same HD Camera as last years but this time we had a mic so our scenes with dialogue could come out clearer, the mic on the camera isn't as good as the mic so the quality sound would not of come out as good. We used PhotoShop to put together our movie poster and magazine cover, we used this because we've used PhotoShop numerous amounts of times before and are very familiar of it, this is also a very good software as a lot of the professionals use this. We were able to make our poster and magazine cover look more professional. We uploaded our movie and audience feedback video on to Youtube, which was the 3rd most widely used search engine, which is even more surprising considering it is a video website and not a search engine.

Our Actors Contract and Shooting Schedule

Actors contract

Our media studies group agree to abide by health and safety rules, not make you do anything you are uncomfortable with and to let you know as soon as possible if any shots are cancelled or are rescheduled.

As an actor/actress, I agree to arrive on time, not to make any commitments on agreed filming dates, listen and act upon the groups directions, act professional and sensible when on set, bring any agreed props and costumes and let any member of the group if there is a problem as soon as possible.

Name (Please Print)................................................

Signed ...................................................

Shooting Schedule

Day	Summary of shot	Location	Props	Character needed
1	Establishing shot	Housing estates of Loughborough	None	None
2	Dolly shot	Main road, Tooting	Car	None
3	Long shot	Side road, Purley	None	Shahrukh
4	Meduim shot	Outside of the housing estate  in Loughborough	None	None
5	Close-up shot	Side road, Purley	None	Shahrukh & Ainsley
6	Dolly shot	Side road, Tooting	Car	Ainsley
7	Superimposed title shot	N/A	N/A	N/A
8	Split screen        ---- Medium Long shot	Side road of Tooting and Purley	None	Shahrukh & Ainsley
9	Superimposed title shot	N/A	N/A	N/A

This is our shooting schedule, however, in certain days we had make a few changes to the props and may have added a few more shots.

Star Trek, The J.J. Abrams Issue Analysis.

The new and highly anticipated Star Trek: Into Darkness was the big talk in the most recent Empire issue. This magazine cover breaks the conventions for majority of magazine covers as it opens out to a long poster. 

The magazine cover is entirely based on the Star Trek movie, it has the futuristic city in the background, with the 4 main character in the front. The colour of 'Empire' is a similar if not almost the same colour as Chris Pine's (Who plays Captain Kirk) top. From the magazine cover, the audience can already tell who the good and bad guys are. Benedict Cumberbatch's character John Harris is in very dark lighting and can just about see his facial expression, whereas the other 3 characters you see very clearly.It is very rare that you see a female character on the front cover who isnt a 'damsel in distress'. Also, there are no other promotions for new upcoming films, just a few small mentions of them at the bottom. The main eye-catching text is is the J.J. Abrams in the same colour as the 'Empire'. It is written that this issue of Empire is dedicated to J.J. Abrams, says that 'How a film became the most powerful director in the galaxy'. This is a big claim as it is saying that he is bigger that Steven Spielberg, Peter Jackson and Michael Bay.
Also, following the conventions of Empire magazine, at the bottom it tells us news of 'The New Star Wars', Empire always link in upcoming movies with the main movie in the front cover, especially if they are in the same genre. Star Trek and Star Wars are similar genres, Sci-Fi.
We could use the idea of having an exclusive poster with all the actors from our film into a poster only available for selected Empire Magazines. This would increase our audience range as Empire is the most bought film magazine, so by many people buying the magazine and a few people getting the exclusive long poster, theres a chance they might be tempted to go out and watch the film

Official Paths Teaser Trailer.

This is our final teaser trailer as part of A2 Media Advanced Portfolio. Our movie is called 'Paths', as it depicts that everyone has a free choice and each different paths have different consequences and rewards.

Use of a Car in Our Teaser Trailer

In one of my previous post, I said we wanted to incorporate the use of a car in our teaser trailer. Fortunately, we did use a car in our teaser trailer, and it is one of our mise-en-scene used in the film. Ainsley used his car as the car our characters would be driving.

In my opinion, I think we used the car to its full potential. We got our ideas from the movie 'Collateral', a lot of the movie is shot in the cab of Jaime Foxx, we thought we would use that idea  for our teaser trailer. Majority of our teaser trailer is centered around our car, we have scenes with Ainsley and I in car just before the robbery, a lot of the panning scenes are done by holding the cam in the car as it is driven around.

There were some difficulties with using a handheld cam while the car is being driven, for example, when the roads where bumpy or had pot holes in them, there was nothing we could do to prevent it, thus making the video shake and making it look amateurish and this would inevitably lose us marks as it says in the spec to avoid camera shaky-ness. There were a few scenes that where shaky but we tried to work our way around that as much as possible.


A scene from the classic Pulp Fiction. We re-created that scene in our teaser trailer.

Our Final Film Poster and Magazine Cover

These are our final magazine cover and film poster. We used photoshop to create these as we were very familiar with it and had used them in As and GCSE Media. We got our influence for our from KidultHood movie poster. As you can see the colour scheme is kinda the same and estates in the background is also very similar.

Hangover 3 Trailer

This is the trailer to final instalment to the very famous Hangover franchise starring Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Justin Bartha and Zach Galifianakis. The Hangover Part 1 was and still is the highest grossing comedy film of all time directed by Todd Phillips (Due Date, Project X).

In the trailer, it begins at a funeral with someone singing almost opera like, we then find out its the character of Zack Galifianakis, 'Alan'. This somehow is amusing to the audience as he is the comedians in the film with stupidity and ignorance. This kinda gives you a mix feeling of emotion as it is funny with Alan singing and the character of Bradley Cooper, 'Phil' saying "My God, he's got the voice of an angel'. There is an element of sadness as it is someones funeral, we catch a glimpse of Jeffrey Tambor's picture so there is a hint that it might be his death, in the movie. The music abruptly changes to the rock and glimpses of Las Vegas's buildings.

There are a variety of shots of the 3 characters doing what they do best; causing mayhem. There's a voice over saying "Someone needs to burn this city to the ground", this sets the audience in the mind of an action-comedy. The following shots are a mix of both gun shooting and someone being killed, and also comedy scenes with "Alan", in this scene there is no music, the very quite sounds in the background, the music resumes with a long shot with silhouette figures running in the distance and the a handheld shot of "Alan" running from a guy in a pig mask.

Throughout the trailer, it shows both action scenes and comedy scenes, however the comedy scenes are very obvious, the music stops and the attention is all on the characters, whereas in the action scene have music and are very quick paced, maybe to suggests the pace of the movie.

In many trailers, especially in horror and comedy films, they show the funniest/scariest scene at the end, and the trailer has been no exception. The last scene sees "Alan" driving with a giraffe in a cage and it suggests that he kills the giraffe and causes a huge accident in the background. If someone who has seen the previous Hangover films, will know that this is typical "Alan" behaviour.

Fast and Furious 6 Movie Poster

The new poster for the upcoming Fast and Furious 6 movie is really basic. The movie is the sixth and final instalment of hugely popular franchise. The movie stars Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson and Michelle Rodriguez. The teaser trailer was first shown on the half time SuperBowl spot along with the new IronMan 3 and the new Star Trek: Into Darkness.

The 2 poster shows both Vin Diesel and Paul Walker, standing next to their car on an empty and deserted  highway looking into the horizon. Right next to them, there is the caption 'All roads lead to this', this concretes the fact that this is the final movie. In the poster, the camera seems to be on the floor with Vin Diesel and Paul Walker in the centre of the poster. Their clothes are very casual, and also their body language. Paul Walker seems to be leaning on his car with his hands in his pockets, whereas Vin Diesel seems to be more serious, almost seems to be walking towards something or even someone. There have been speculations that Vin Diesel's characters "Dom", his girlfriend, who seems to have died in the fourth movie, she returns but against Dom. Maybe she is the person that Vin Diesel is going towards and Paul Walker is just leaning back and just observing.

The cars the two are leaning on are muscle cars, Paul Walkers car is Blue and Vin Diesel's car is red. Blue is associated with trust and peace and loyalty and integrity, this is very much like the character of Paul Walker, Brian who was an ex-cop (suggesting the peace and integrity) and has been with 'Dom' since the beginning and is always helping him out (matching with trust and loyalty). Vin Diesel's car is coloured red, which may indicate they are ready to take action, or they may be passionate about what they are going to be doing, or again it may mean that they are feeling angry. This definitely matches 'Doms' character, he feels passionate about knowing his girlfriend is still live, he is ready to take action (his body language shown in the poster) and also feeling angry for what his girlfriend (who is played by Michelle Rodriguez) 'Letty' is still alive.

 The background of the poster is very basic, it is very bright sunny day with the blue sky with only white puffy clouds there. As the sky and the ground join, the horizon is practically white and you can't see it, this is maybe a connected to the movie as the people don't what will happen with the situation of 'Dom' and 'Letty'.

The reason the poster works well is because of the simplicity of it, there are only the main character(s) and their cars on an empty road. I was thinking that we could do something like that for our film poster, for example, we could do something like our two main characters (me and Ainsley) jus on an empty road to symbolise their tight friendship or their vast complex simplicity of their situation.

We Finished Our Filming

The group and I have hopefully finished our filming on Thursday. We met up in Tooting to do our final bits of our teaser trailer. It was extremely cold so we may have rushed it. I think we got some really good shots that day, my favourite shot was a POV/low angle shot from inside the boot with me closing the car boot. We also added some dialogue whilst in Ainsley's car just to show the difference in character; my character was confident and willing to do the robbery whereas Ainsley's character was not feeling upto the it and wanted to back away. We also used props, we had a small BB gun, this would be really relevant later on in the film as that would be the same gun that is pulled and used against my character.

We are sill yet to edit it, and once we have edited it all we can see if there where any scenes we missed and then add them later on but for know, we have finished the majority of our filming. 

Today's Filming

Today, our group filmed in Valley Park. I would say today was very successful as we got a variety of shots today and all were very effective. We filmed a lot of shots with only one character in focus, in one shot it was Ainsley and another shot it was me.

Both our characters did the similar shots but were in opposite directions, for example, if Ainsley was caught walking from left to right down a street in a medium shot, my character was right to left to signify that they are two opposite characters. This also gives a feeling to the audience that they are going to meet up for their final confrontation. The two characters were dressed similarly, Ainsley had a black hoodie on, and I also had  a black hoodie with a black Nike jacket on top.

We did run into a trouble with the police and were questioned why we were filming and did waste a bit of our filming time. I asked if it was okay for Salim (our camera man) to film them while they were talking to us as it would of been very effective in our trailer- as it shows that these two 'friends' have been in trouble by the police before. However, they didn't feel comfortable to be recorded as they wouldn't know where it was going.

To end on a positive note, the group as a whole think today was very productive and can't wait till Wednesday, the day we hopefully finish our majority of our filming. On Wednesday we are looking to shoot where the robbery goes wrong and their fallout.

Our Teaser Trailer in the SuperBowl

One of the biggest sporting events took place on 3rd February, the SuperBowl, this is the final of the American Football league and during the half time, many celebrities come out to sing in front of the huge crowd. This year was the reunion of Destiny Childs, Alicia Keys and many more. During the half time, there are also a few commercials for new upcoming films, most likely big blockbusters. This years blockbusters are all highly anticipated sequels to hugely famous and very successful franchises. This years trailers were Iron Man 3, Star Trek: Into Darkness and Fast & Furious 6 (the trailers are below)

To get a trailer into the halftime of SuperBowl, it is reported to cost $4million for 30 seconds. I thought this would be a really great idea as millions of people watching the half-time events would watch the trailer and get more people interested to watch the film. 

However, it is a big risk as our film is not a big blockbuster, many people would not want to waste their money to go and see our film, but some people still may want to see our film. Most films that have been placed in the halftime have been huge successive films and most are sequels (as is this years). 

There aren't only films, there have also been game trailers for hugely successful game companies, the most obvious one being the Call of Duty series.

I still believe that putting our trailer in the halftime SuperBowl spot would be a great success.

Ideas for the Magazine Cover

Our group decided to make our magazine cover like a split screen showing two sides of our main character Ainsley good and bad side on each side. The group and our teacher think this is a great idea as the film focuses on the choices and consequences of Ainsley. We were thinking of having a dark and light shade on each side of the split screen. On the dark side we would my character in the background emphasising the bad side as my character pulls Ainsley into the gangster and street life which he tries to avoid.and the other side which is the lighter side which would be focusing on the good boy side of him.

I got the split screen idea from the George Clooney and Ryan Gosling film 'The Ides Of March'. The film has a split screen poster. This film or poster has nothing to do with our film but the idea of its poster is very similar to our film poster.

We Started Shooting!

On Thursday 17 January, we started our shooting for our trailer. Since we were going to use a car for our trailer, Ainsley is the only member of our group that drives, he brought his car in and we decided to do some shots from the car as a trolley shot. We have many shots such as the camera being placed on the dashboard, shots from our side view mirror, and pan shots of the car driving past.

 One of the best shots we captured was a pan of the police, we drove past the police with the camera in the side mirror and capture a van and a few officers in uniform. We thought this would be a vital shot for our trailer as it sets the tone that there will be conflict, plus it is a stereotype in urban films for there to be police either in the trailer or in the film.

A few problems we faced was the traffic was quite slow so a lot of our footage did get kinda un-interesting and boring. However, the main problem we faced that day was that during our driving, the road got bumpy with pot holes and speed bumps, so many part of the footage is very shaky and that is something that is frowned upon in the marking criteria. However, the group will try to sort something out, we might have to go out and film again. We were also thinking of filming at night as it will also be more effective as many more teenagers are out in the evening and would be more connecting to our demographic.

Jack Reacher Poster

Jack Reacher is the new Tom Cruise film which came out recently. It is an adaptation of the popular Lee Child novel 'One Shot'. While the film was in production, the original working title was "One Shot", it was directed and written by Christopher McQuarrie. The film entered production in October 2011 and finished January 2012, it was filmed entirely in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The movie has rallied a lot of rumour of Tom Cruise winning his first Oscar. The film was scheduled for release on December 15 but was delayed due to the Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting. The film was released on December 21st in the USA and December 26th.

The poster has Tom Cruise in the middle of poster with the camera on a low angle showing he is control, he has some scars on his face showing that he just had a fight and because his eyes looking past the camera, this could suggests he is looking at his fallen victim, this is emphasised further with gun in his hand. Also, with the car headlights on behind him, this gives Tom Cruise's character more darker and more mysterious. Everything behind him is blurred out by the shallow depth of field behind him and he is in full focus, this also emphasises the fact that he is main character and the man person in the film.

The poster has really influenced our poster with the main character in action on the poster.This was a really good idea for our poster. We could have our two main character (Shahrukh and Ainsley) in action. we could have a black background just to further emphasise its a very dark rivalry between the two characters.

The idea of the main character being bruised and being the main 'object' in the poster gave us an idea that we could use for both film poster and magazine cover. We could use it for our film poster by having either my character or the character of Ainsley scruffy and really gritty looking in the front of our poster suggesting he is fighting someone or something, maybe the life he is living, maybe he is fighting to change for the good. We could also use it for magazine cover, by using the same idea, this would entice the reader to read into the film and watch the teaser trailers and maybe go watch the film.

Our Ideas

The group has decided to carry on with a revenge urban thriller. We decided to follow in the footsteps of Noel Clarke's KidultHood and AdultHood as a sort of urban action thriller. Our film is set in Brixton, the heart of South London, in a very urban and gang affiliated area. We chose this area because I grew up in Brixton and is famous for its gang activities. As in the film, there is also alot gang activities and fights, it fits well with the scene. Other scenes in the film will be done in college in Tooting Bec, it will our college Ernest Bevin College as the one of the character has to chose between being a gang member or carrying on with education and college.

For the costumes, many characters will be very casual; dark jeans, trainers and black hoodies. This is the very common dress code for youths in today's urban area's. There will also be scenes in a school uniform with the younger brother.