The Report
Reflection is a thriller movie
that takes place in the 21th century. It’s a about an ordinary 18 years old
girl who experienced an unordinary past. The script describes the first eight
opening minutes of the movie. It helps to imagine the scenes and atmosphere.
The DVD cover and the film poster look mysterious and there awake the attention
of the audience. Both have no conventional central image. Their including the
colour code conventions of a thriller that I worked out during my
pre-production progress. The used typography is serif and bold.
I developed and explored the
conventions of a thriller to produce my own one. To make my film as good as
possible I started with creating my own relatable characters. I did that first
because I needed people that seem real with complex and realistic personalities,
backgrounds and characteristics. If I don’t know my characters how should my
audience understand them? And if the characterization is not detailed enough
the audience can not relate to them. On example for not detail enough
characters is the movie “Welcome to the punch” (2013) you can’t relate to the
characters so you don’t care about them.
To include all the important
key codes of my chosen genre I compared many different existing film posters and
DVD covers to produce my own two print based final pieces. It was important for
me that I cover a range of different production years. This gave me the
opportunity to compare how the film posters developed from year to year and to analyse
the differences and similarities between each of them. With this research I found
out what a film poster for a thriller has to include. For example if you look
at the poster of the movies “Before I go to sleep” (2014), “Black Rock” (2012),
“The box” (2009), “Hostage” (2005) and “The Net” (1995) you can see that there
are all different but all of them have the same colour code. Black, white and
red are the most used colours. Apart from the central image of “Before I go to sleep”
all the used pictures are showing the protagonist but he is not looking into
the camera. I broke the general amount down to the main items that my poster
includes.
The second part of my
preproduction was in the form of a script. It helped me to imagine my
characters in action. Familiar locations like college classes or realistic and
personalist homes (with family pictures and not perfectly tidy) or familiar
situations such as a lunch break chat in the cafeteria, arguments with the
parents or friends making my story look realistic. The use of voice over helps
to fill in missing information. It also builds a relation between the protagonist
and audience because the voiceover is in the first person so start to feel like
knowing the protagonist.
Intended is Refection for a
teenager audience. I targeted my audience with a direct addressed blurb and subtitle.
The age of my protagonist (18 years) is picked on purpose because it will
attract my target audience age group. The protagonist is a girl that will
attract female teenagers to see the movie and she looks good that will attract
male audience to see the movie. The main characters are all teenagers and ordinary
personalities what makes it easier for the audience to relate to the
characters. Also if my target audience are teenagers it might also attract
parents because their could relate to their own children because of the same
age.
My film poster will not
attract just my target audience it will catch also other people’s attention. I
did a plain and really geometric layout and the used material reflects the
meaning of the title. On my poster is not a release date or central image what
makes it more mysterious. I want the audience to think about what the movie
could be about. The audience might start to think about why the ‘E’ is mirror-inverted
written. In the moment when they read the direct addressed subtitle their get a
helpless clue, which will make them think about what kind of mask it is about.
The star ratings show that you can aspect a good movie but the ratings aren’t
from big famous magazines. Because of the 15+ age rating you can aspect
different content in compare of a 12+ movie. This thriller contains strong
violent scenes therefore it’s not suitable for persons of 15 years and under.
For my DVD cover the most targeting aspect is the blurb. Again a direct
addressed text. It’s written in the first-person to create confident and to
try already to relate the reader to the protagonist. The blurb is not a summary
or explanation what the movie is about. It is a good possibility to make the
audience's curios. The text makes you start to think about how you are and the
reflective material proves you self-sense. Overall all effect of the use of the
reflective material engages the audience in to the story. If you look at the
cover or poster you see a reflection of yourself. If the audience looks again
in to the ‘mirror’ after their red the blurb or just the subtitle their might
see them self in a different way. I want them to think about their self-sense
and self-representation.
The film poster of the American horror-thriller film “Black Rock” compared
to my film poster has a lot similarities. The names of the tree main
actors are shown on both, but mine are at the top. The title is in each poster
not in the middle but in the lowest third because the human eye likes thirds.
That means that we notes things more when there are not placed in the central
middle of a picture or are. I used a serif typography because 17 out of my 20 examples
used a serif font. The layout is very similar to the layout of the “Black Rock”
poster but the biggest difference between them is that my poster has no central
image. The title from “Black Rock” is written in a not transparent red capital
letter font. My title is written in white complete covering capital letters and
one of them is mirror-inverted. It is the first ‘E’ in the word reflection
because the name of my protagonist is Emily and that reflects the reflection of
herself. On both posters is no exact release date shown.
My production progress was time intensive. I started to construct my
layout to know what kind of photograph should use and to know where to place my
negative space. I dragged different pictures in to my layout to compare them
and to see which compositions are working and which not. I searched
online for pictures as inspirations for a picture that I could take. My fist
poster with use of own pictures (first picture from the left) looked too much
like a sins fiction movie. The both posters in the middle are not made with my
own pictures and you can’t really red the credit blogs. The last one on the
right hand side is my final one. You can see a development from each design and
it was helpful for me to try different versions.
Overall I believe my final piece looks similar to real productions. My
DVD cover contains all requested details and my film poster as well. I included
the format standards and my design fit in to a DVD case. I must keep in mind
that this production is maybe a bit future unrealistic because the production
is more expensive that a normal on paper printed design. Also my geometric line
up is nor completely perfect. I should also think about to add the blue Irish
age rating symbol.
I watched the BBC2
documentary ‘How to Die: Simon’s Choice’ produced by _____. The moving 90min
documentary shows the last moments of Simon Binner who was diagnosed with an
aggressive form of motor neurone disease in January 2015 and given two years to
live. It made me cry and I never thought about this issue before. Simon had to
go to Basel, Switzerland where he made appointment in the second largest
assisted suicide clinic to die. 
