Courswork

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.