A2 Media - Advanced Production - Trailer Analysis

These are the films you have been asked to watch over the next week for homework. Choose one to analyse in detail, answering the same questions set for the 'Control' trailer. Here are the questions again:

What is a trailer designed to do?

Generate interest in the film;
Inform the audience about the release date?
Show off the stars of the film;
Show the film to its best advantage;
Create excitement/interest;
Tell people what the film is about, e.g. the genre;
Not give too much of the plot away;
Tease the audience by setting up narrative enigmas;
Showcase some of the best bits of the film;
Give details about the production team?

Does your chosen trailer do this?

Watch your chosen trailer several times. Then write one paragraph answering the questions listed below.

Q1. Discuss the use of codes and conventions used in the construction of this film trailer.
Q2. Consider the representations of people and places in this film trailer.
Q3. What does this film trailer tell us about the institutions involved?
Q4. Explore some of the ways in which this film trailer communicates with its target audiences.

Trailer for 'Let the Right One In' (2008)




Trailer for 'La Haine' (1995)



Trailer for 'Leon' (1994)



Trailer for 'Bullet Boy' (2007)



Trailer for 'My Summer of Love (2007)



Trailer for 'Brick' (2005)



American Trailer for 'Dirty Pretty Things' (2002) - hmmm, what gives it away?



Trailer for 'Eastern Promises' (2007)

Film Industry - Fish Tank (UK 2009) d. Andrea Arnold

Main Poster

Synopsis

Mia (played by newcomer Katie Jarvis) lives with her mom and younger sister and doesn't have any friends, or at least none that she likes. When her mum (Kierston Wareing) brings home a new boyfriend (Michael Fassbender), everything changes for her. It's not the polished, happy-go-lucky kind of story you'd see in America, but it's a gritty look at a girl who has few passions in life and is living day-to-day just to get by. So when Connor steps into her life, it sparks a bit of joy inside of her and gives her a new sense of direction, or so we think.

Q. What genre of film are the synopsis and main trailer suggestive of? Is there a cultural tradition in the U.K. of films like this? Are there any other film directors who work in this tradition?

Main Trailer



What is a trailer designed to do?

Generate interest in the film?
Inform the audience about the release date?
Show off the stars of the film?
Show the film to its best advantage?
Create excitement/interest?
Tell people what the film is about, e.g. the genre?
Not give too much of the plot away?
Tease the audience by setting up narrative enigmas?
Showcase some of the best bits of the film?
Give details about the production team?

Watch the trailer several times. Then write one paragraph answering the questions listed below.

Q1. Discuss the use of codes and conventions used in the construction of this film trailer.
Q2. Consider the representations of people and places in this film trailer.
Q3. What does this film trailer tell us about the institutions involved?
Q4. Explore some of the ways in which this film trailer communicates with its target audiences.

Production Companies

BBC Films - http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfilms/
UK Film Council - New Cinema Fund - http://www.ukfilmcouncil.org.uk/newcinemafund
Limelight - http://www.limelightfilm.com/

Q. List the details of the New Cinema Fund. What kind of filmmaker is it aimed at? What other films have been funded this way?

Distributor (UK)

Artificial Eye
http://www.artificial-eye.com/film.php?cinema=fishtank&plugs&qt=false&wm=false

Distributor (Worldwide)

ContentFilm International -
http://www.contentfilm.com/index.php/film_tv/contentfilm_international/new_films/762.html
Q. What kind of institutions are Artificial Eye and ContentFilm International? Who are they owned by? Where are they based?

Website - http://www.fishtankmovie.com/

IMDB - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1232776/

Reviews

Overview of the film - http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/movie/129893/fish-tank

http://www.newstatesman.com/film/2009/09/fish-tank-mia-arnold-essex

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/may/14/cannes-film-festival-andrea-arnold-fish-tank-review

http://www.channel4.com/film/reviews/film.jsp?id=175378%C2%A7ion=review

http://www.timeout.com/film/reviews/86764/fish-tank.html

Publicity



http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/video/2009/sep/10/trailerpark-drama

http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2008/07_july/28/fishtank.shtml

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/film/cannes/article6288427.ece
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/filmnetwork/A56696881

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/filmnetwork/A16714631 - background information on the director’s earlier film ‘Red Road’.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAhPNz9rAVQ

http://www.totalfilm.com/features/the-story-behind-fish-tank

Trailer for Andrea Arnold's First Film Red Road (2006)



Released in 2003, 'Wasp' is Andrea Arnold's Oscar winning short film that stars Nathalie Press as a struggling single mother determined not to let her four young children prove an obstacle in the pursuit of rekindling a relationship with ex-boyfriend Danny Dyer. Dartford (Arnold's hometown) is the setting for this troubling film.

Q. What kind of messages do Arnold's films appear to send? What does she appear to be interested in?

The Film Industry - Case Study: Shifty (UK 2009) d. Eran Creevy

Synopsis

From the website Eye for Film. After 4 years, Chris (Danny Mays) returns to where he grew up, it seems at first to attend a party, but his real motive is to catch up with his old buddy, Shifty (Riz Ahmed), who he left behind. Whilst away, Chris has settled into responsible adult life, with a mortgage and a good job, but he is shocked to discover that Shifty has started dealing hard drugs, supplied by the double dealing Glen (Jason Flemyng).

Although happy to see him, Shifty hasn't fully forgiven Chris for leaving in the first place, and we soon learn that the circumstances under which Chris left are more complicated than they first appear. They spend the next 24 hours together, with Chris watching Shifty as he deals to a variety of increasingly desperate customers from the community. Over the course of this day they are forced to confront the ghosts from the past that drove Chris away and the desperate and dangerous present that Shifty finds himself in, whilst re-discovering their friendship. Chris is once again given an opportunity to prove his loyalty to Shifty and to save Shifty from himself.

Based on Eran Creevy's teenage experiences, and boasting convincing performances from a cast of rising stars, the film cost just £100,000 and was funded by Film London's Microwave scheme, and delivered after a shooting schedule of just 18 days.

Main Trailer



Production Companies

Between The Eyes - http://www.betweentheeyes.co.uk/
Film London - http://www.filmlondon.org.uk/

Distributors

Metrodome Distribution (2009) (UK) (all media)
http://www.metrodomegroup.com/

Websites

Home - http://www.shiftyfilm.com/
Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shifty_(film)
IMDB entry - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1104126/

Reviews

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/dvd-reviews/6043814/Shifty-DVD-review.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/apr/24/shifty-film-review

http://www.eyeforfilm.co.uk/reviews.php?id=7396

Background/Publicity

On The Set Of Shifty - http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/filmnetwork/A31986741

Interviews with actor Daniel Mays and director Eran Creevy http://www.pyroradio.com/index.cfm/act/news_details/id/299

Funding by Film London: http://www.filmlondon.org.uk/press_details.asp?NewsID=938

Details of the Microwave scheme
http://www.filmlondon.org.uk/content.asp?CategoryID=779

http://microwave.filmlondon.org.uk/

Film Education site for Shifty - http://www.filmeducation.org/shifty/

DVD Trailer

ITN Press Release and Interview with Riz Ahmed



Riz MC / Sway & Plan B - Shifty

Video from the original motion picture soundtrack for Shifty starring Danny Mays and Riz Ahmed. The track features the film's star Riz MC as well as Sway and Plan B, and is produced by Blue Bear from True Tiger.




Questions on the Production and Distribution of Shifty

Q1. Production - From your reading - what does production involve? What was the inspiration behind Shifty? What were the difficulties of working on a low budget film? How did the Film London Microwave scheme help Shifty get produced? Where does the Microwave scheme get its money from? What other films have received money from the Microwave scheme?

Q2. Distribution - How does a company like Metrodome 'distribute' a film? How did Metrodome find out about Shifty? What is one of the most important ways a low budget film can find a distributor? How did being part of the Microwave scheme help Shifty find a distributor? Where is Metrodome based? What difficulties did Metrodome come up against as they attempted to 'market' Shifty?

Now watch these extracts from interviews with Ben Pugh and Rory Aitken (Co-Producers), Eran Creevy (Writer & Director) and the Kitchen Rehearsal Scene.

What do these add to your understanding of how this film got to be made?

A2 Media Case Study Marketing Campaign for Cloverfield (2008) d. Matt Reeves

Constructed specifically as a 'monster movie for the YouTube generation’, Cloverfield built a viral marketing campaign - and its own audience - through an enigmatic teaser-trailer, word of mouth and a widget. Its innovative uses of an alternative reality games and videocam techniques involve audiences in new and interactive ways.

With a very low production budget in Hollywood terms (£15m), Cloverfield became an instant financial success making £22 million in its opening weekend. It is a recent example of the power of viral marketing (sometimes called user-generated marketing) to create audience interest before a film's release and, most importantly, to get people into the cinema.

Whether or not Cloverfield is a good film is up to you to decide (critics are divided); but it stands as a great example of the way modern marketers are using a range of methods to attempt to reach their audience and sell a film.

The film's media language choice of an 'eye-witness' presentation of the story using a hand-held camera acts as a representation of our current technological age. Cloverfield's marketing also makes use of recent developments in technology and changes in audience activity and behaviour to create and sustain interest. The director (Matt Reeves) called the film 'a monster movie for the YouTube generation' indicating that the producers of this film were specifically aware that their target audience were Internet-literate young people. It is these people who have been the targets for the marketing campaign and have also been encouraged to be a part of it.

The Teaser Trailer



The first anyone knew of the film was a teaser trailer shown before the 2007 summer blockbuster Transformers. The trailer did not name the film and only gave a release date after showing glimpses of an apparently home-made video of New York being attacked by something, culminating in the shocking image of the head of the Statue of Liberty crashing through a New York street. By creating memorable images and using an unconventional method to present the events, the filmmakers were using a tried-and tested marketing device, the creation of enigma mystery. Creating audience curiosity is a great way to generate interest in a product. Those who saw the trailer would have been left wondering what they had just seen: What genre was the film alluding to (Sci-Fi/Disaster/Monster)? Why was the footage they had been shown more like their own home-movies rather than a slick Hollywood production?

Target audience

The trailer's placement gives an indication of the target audience, one which is a difficult market for advertisers at the moment: teens and, more specifically, young adults. These groups are becoming hard to reach for advertisers who rely on conventional methods.

Young adults tend not to watch TV on a predictable, regular basis and often have access to multi-channel cable television which fragments the audience across a range of channels. Devices like Sky+ mean they can record television programmes, watch them when they choose and fast-forward through any advertising. Alternative methods of viewing television programmes also make this audience hard to find. 'On demand'. downloads and YouTube split the audience further and this is the generation that is likely to wait to buy television programmes and films on DVD rather than watch them in traditional settings surrounded by advertising.

Alternative advertising methods were needed if Cloverfield was going to be able to attract the attention of the group of people who could be used to help make the film a success in the cinema. A specialised online and computer savvy audience was specifically targeted as their interaction with the marketing was vital in the film generating interest from another valuable audience group, the mainstream movie-goer. The story of Cloverfield's marketing shows how the online audience was used to create a buzz about the film to support a more traditional marketing campaign.

Building the campaign

The teaser trailer provided one piece of important information, the name of the producer JJ Abrams. This would have created a number of genre expectations. Abrams is the creator of Alias and Lost and so the audience could expect an element of Sci-Fi/Horror within this film and might anticipate a narrative that was complex, fragmented and laden with 'clues' rather than explanations. Web searches after the teaser trailer led the audience to a website named only as the date of the film's release (http://www.1-18-08.com/). This site slowly released photos which were time and date stamped to allow the audience to build up chronological glimpses into the narrative of the film.

Building ‘buzz’ and ‘chatter’ on the Net


The enigma and the slow release of information were both constructed to encourage discussion online in blogs, social networks and chat rooms, which was how the real marketing took place via 'word of mouth. Web-chatter was heightened on the release of a poster showing a decapitated Statue of Liberty, a devastated New York and the release of a second, more detailed trailer. Still maintaining the mystery, the trailer's exposition contained a chilling geographical marker identifying the location of events to be in the 'area formally known as Central Park'. For the first time the film's title was identified and the trailer was released online along with an official movie website (http://www.cloverfieldmovie.com/) which eventually provided links to MySpace and Facebook pages 'created' by some of the characters from the film. These regularly updated pages created a real-time story which showed the characters moving towards the eventful night and provided a back-story to the film itself. The MySpace blog was where the film's protagonist announced he was moving to Japan to take a new job at Slusho!, a Japanese soft drinks company, which explains why the film begins with a going away party.

http://www.myspace.com/cloverfield_movie

http://www.facebook.com/cloverfieldmovie

The Main Trailer



In addition a widget was available for download from the website. This piece of software could be attached to MySpace pages, blogs etc. and contained the first five minutes of the film with an introduction by JJ Abrams. To download and use the widget people needed to register their contact details.

This registration immediately entered people into a competition based on who managed to distribute the widget to the most people; a direct encouragement of more 'word of mouth' marketing.

They did the traditional stuff too…

Adverts were also sent to mobile phones, traditional posters and TV slots were also used and the culmination of all these events was an increasing public and mainstream press awareness of the film. The campaign was creating a deep curiosity as so much information had been held back and the only way for the audience to gain answers to the questions the marketing raised was to go to the cinema to see the film. As the character Hud said in the second trailer, with this much interest it was almost inevitable that people are gonna want to know how it all went down.

But that's not all...

Parallel to this campaign, a related story was being told through an Alternative Reality Game. The ARG centred around a fictional Japanese company called Tagruato and its subsidiary Slusho! and only a few direct connections were made to the Cloverfield plot. Home pages for Slusho! and Tagruato were put online. The former ran a competition for audience members to create adverts for the frozen soft drink whose USP was its addictive nature ('You can't drink just six') and the happiness it would bring its consumer. (Remember, Slusho! was the company the character Rob from the film was taking a job with.)

http://www.tagruato.jp/index2.php

http://www.slusho.jp/

Tagruato's corporate homepage looks like a conventional business website — even down to experiencing hacks by 'eco-terrorists' It appeared that Slusho's key ingredient, 'seabed nectar', might not be entirely safe. The site reported that a drilling rig in the Atlantic Ocean had been mysteriously destroyed.'TV reports' based on mobile phone footage showed huge chunks of debris being hurled from the sinking rig although there was no explanation for this phenomenon. Pictures from the scene were added to http://www.1-18-08.com/.

http://www.break.com/index/leaked-scene-from-cloverfield.html

There's more...

A Manhattan couple Jamie and Teddy set up a website to post video-blogs to stay in touch after Teddy had gone to Japan to work for Tagruato. Jamie assumed she had been dumped as she hadn't heard from Teddy for over a month when she received a package containing a Tagurato baseball cap, something wrapped in tin-foil (which she was instructed not to eat) and a recorded message indicating Teddy was in some sort of trouble. Interpreting this as a sick practical joke, she assumed he had a new skanky girlfriend and decided to eat the gooey product she received. Almost immediately she appears to become extremely intoxicated. Jamie makes a brief appearance in Cloverfield where the audience can glimpse her passed out on the sofa at Rob's leaving do in the opening scene of the film.

http://jamieandteddy.com/
Password: jllovesth

Marketing + movie = more mystery

The addition of a number of back stories to the Cloverfield tale, without giving clear ideas of 'cause and effect' encourages the audience to attempt to build a story for themselves; first of all to attempt to make sense of the promotional material and, after watching the film, to supplement the limited information provided by the film's highly restricted narration.

The marketing has created a 'Cloverfield universe' bigger than the events of the 90-minute film, but has held back on providing enough information to give resolution to all the mysteries. The film's story is told from the point of view of people who (just like the target audience) have very little information as to what is occurring around them; the characters just catch snippets of information in news reports and in conversations with the military (just like the audience).

The viral marketing, the ARG and then the video-cam style presentation all enhance audience identification with the characters and this heightens the shocking nature of the events we witness with them in the film. The desire to make sense of the events unfolding within the film has been played on for both the interactive and mainstream audience but the filmmakers are still holding back vital pieces of information: What does Slusho! have to do with all of this? Where did the monster come from? Do the military manage to destroy the monster? Do any of the characters from the film survive?

Cloverfield 2?

Could the actual film Cloverfield be just another element in a complex marketing campaign? Is the film an expensive advert for yet another product still to be made? There are online rumours already about a Cloverfield 2 with theories ranging from the sequel being told from another victim's perspective (plenty of people can be seen filming events in the film) or from a military or reporter's point of view. Maybe Cloverfield 2 will be a standard blockbuster movie with omniscient narration and a solid resolution. At this point the 'truth' is irrelevant. What is important is that people are talking about a potential second film and so the viral campaign has already begun.

Fan made trailers for Cloverfield 2...





Thanks to the English & Media Centre.

AS MEDIA - Unit 2 Section B - Careers in the Media - Skillset

Careers in the Media

To understand the workings of media institutions we need to get an understanding of the changing nature of employment and careers in the various media industries.

Skillset is the industry body which ‘supports skills and training for people and businesses to ensure the UK creative media industries maintain their world class position.’

http://www.skillset.org/

Make a note of the instructions before clicking on the link below.

Open up the 2006 Skillset Employment Census and go to pages 4 & 5 - PART ONE EXECUTIVE SUMMARY.

http://www.skillset.org/research/article_5136_1.asp

TASK – answer these questions…

1. What’s happened with employment on terrestrial TV?
2. What does this suggest about the traditional TV industry?
3. What’s happening in the interactive media sector?
4. Where is the industry predominantly based?
5. What’s the proportion of women working in the media? Where do most women work?

In Skillset’s ‘Survey of the Audio Visual Industries' Workforce 2005’ it revealed that since 1990, more women have entered the industry than men, and more black or ethnic minorities have entered the industry than whites.

In a similar survey from 2003 it revealed that just under two-thirds of people working in the media are under 35, two-thirds of all people working in the media have a degree and a quarter of those have a degree in media. Only 46% of those working in the media earn over £30,000 a year.

6. What does this suggest about the media industry?
7. What does it suggest about media representation?

AS MEDIA - Unit 2 Section B - Institutions and Audiences

INTRODUCTION - Institutions and Audiences

For this part of the media studies course you will learn how the film industry operates and explore how audiences are formed and use media.

The first two keywords you need to learn definitions for are – unsurprisingly – institution & audience.

Audience - Collective group of people reading any media text.

Institution – An established organization or company, e.g. the BBC, that provides media content, whether for profit, public service or another motive. This involves you understanding how the media works as a business, the relationship between institutions and the public and media as a form of power.

Q. Think about the number of ways you can ‘read’ something produced by the BBC?

TASK - Go to the Doctor Who website.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/s4/

Q. How can you, as a member of an audience, 'engage with' or 'view' Doctor Who...? How many different forms of ‘media’ are offered?

The name we give to this coming together of different ‘media’ is your third keyword:

Convergence - Hardware and software coming together across media, and companies coming together across similar boundaries. This makes the distinction between different types of media and different media industries increasingly dubious.

Q. How would you usually watch an episode of Doctor Who? TV, perhaps? Now think of the other ways you can watch an episode...

Q. What links these formats?

A. They’re all digital, your fourth keyword...

Digital technology has led to increasing uncertainty over how we define an audience, with general agreement that the notion of a large group of people, brought together by time, responding to a single text, is outdated and that audiences now are ‘fragmented’.

Key Points to remember...

In media studies we focus on ‘the contemporary’.

Q. What does this mean if, for example, we are to study the film industry in Britain?

We are also keen to focus on convergence as a key agent of change.

Q. Why is it so important?
A. Because it’s one of the most important things that’s happening now.

Q. How does the film industry 'converge' with the internet?

Finally, we are interested in how things are changing.

Within the context of not only convergence, but also ownership, technologies and globalisation.

More key words – ownership and technologies are pretty straightforward however…

Globalisation means - The shift in media distribution from local or national to international and the whole world at once. Culturally, describes the process of ‘sameness’ over the world, typified by the availability of McDonalds in most nations.

AS MEDIA - Unit 1 - Opening Sequence - Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkabhan

AS MEDIA - OCR Guide to Camera Movement

AS MEDIA - OCR Guide to Camera Shots