Storyboard Planning Process

Storyboarding was a useful process for planning as we were able to seewhat shots we wanted to do, the timing and how well the shots would work together - this process also forced us to work together in a team, discussing ideas and making team decisions. we decided to work as a democracy, sticking with the idea that most of the team liked, despite if another member hated it.


I feel that the storyboard helped mostly in allowing us to plan how long we wanted each shot, as we wanted to stick with the teaser trailer conventions and keep our shots short.

Target Audience Research

After deciding that we wanted to go down a different route to last year, and create a mature drama film. We decided that the ideal audience for the film would be 28-45 year old women, as they would be able to relate to our character, not through the abuse, but the stress of life.

To be sure that we met the needs of our target audience, we handed out a questionnaire to our specified age range, gaining their opinoin on details about the film, magazine cover and poster - this allowed us to gain all of the information we required about our target audience and compare their opinions to those of our age.

I feel that our film agrees with Laura Mulvey's 'Male Gaze Theorey'; this theorey explains how films are shot through a male's perspective, showing women as an object and often inferior to males. Our film agrees with this as the main character is a woman, clearly being inferior as she is beaten by the man.

We decided to give our film an 18 age rating as after research we realised that our film shows great deal of violence and abusive language as well as a very adult related theme - this age rating also helps us to aim out film at an older audience.

Magazine Initial Ideas

We decided to use Total Film as our magazine design because it is a simple design that often deals with big films coming out soon.

Our initail idea was a simple image of our beaten character in her wedding dress, as we thought that this would attract the audience, as the contrast in the wedding dress and bruises would intrigue them and make them want to find out more.

The colour theme that we chose was dark red and black font with a white background - we felt that this was a mature colour theme that would appeal to our audience, as it made the magazine look quite stylish; having a three-colour theme also sticks to the conventions of a magazine cover.

We made sure that the top stories were on the left as this is also a convention, as magazines are stacked with the left side showing, so the top stories must be on that side to attract the audience.

Features of a Film Magazine

Film magazines usually follow giudlines and stick to using the same features each issue.

This magazine example is missing a tagline - this is similar to a slogan for the magazine and is intended to attract the audience more; this is why Total Film magzine uses the tagline "The Ultimate Movie Magazine".

Institutions

Deciding the institutions for our film was very important, as the institutions are the companies who promote and produce the film; institutions also have their own style or specialty, so we had to decide on the right one.

As our major Distributor, we decided to use Warner Bros. Pictures, as they are giants in the film industry and have been involved with great drama films - Warner Bros. also have the ability to distribute worldwide, dispite our film being aimed at such a niche audience.

A secondary institution we chose was Film4 Productions, as they are a British institution that specialises in drama films and backs British films often.

Planning Our Teaser Trailer

For our teaser trailer this year, we created a story that deals with domestic abuse and wanted the trailer to reveal a sense of danger, but not give away too much information about the abusive relationship storyline.

Firstly, we needed to understand our genre, so we researched some films with similar themes to ours, such as 'Dangerous Intentions' and 'When No One Would Listen' which both deal with domestic violence.

Through researching these films, we discovered that it is the female that is always abused, as this works well with the stereotype of women being more vulnerable than men. We also learnt that in these films, the woman always reacs in a way that creates a dramatic storyline, whether it is running away or fighting back, so we must find a way to create a similar type of drama in our film.

Being a British film, we should also take notice of Nil By Mouth - a successful British drama film, that deals with domestic violence in a working class household - in the synopsis which we read of this film, it emphasised that the family is working class, which we took on board, realising that films about domestic violence are usually set in working class households, except for a few exceptions, like 'Sleeping With The Devil'.

Film Poster Analysis

This poster is for a film named 'Sleeping With the Enemy', staring Julia Roberts as a wife being abused, much like in our film, which is why i thought this would be a good poster to analyse.

This was an odd film poster as it defied some conventions, such as not having a release date, which indicated that it must be a teaser poster; the poster also has an unusual tag line, as it is rather long, compared to usual short and witty ones.