My Role within the group

Because of some disturbances within the groups unfortunately I was unable to stay with the same group from my foundation portfolio, which meant that as a group we had to figure out what everyone's strengths and weaknesses were so that we could help one another and combine our strengths for the effectiveness for our film. My main role within the group was being the main character within the film as I was the member with the most confidence about being filmed and performing to a high standard. However the other two members of my group gave me suggestions and input about what I could do to improve my performance as well as telling me things which would help our group such as standing in a different position for the magazine cover. I also had the roles of making the scripts for the voice overs as well as performing the voice overs for the trailer. Last year my role was to do the schedule and to organize what shots we needed on each filming trip, however this year I was able to expand on my knowledge and gain experience within all areas of the coursework rather than in one aspect.
  My weakest areas are editing which is because I had to learn editing by self-taught techniques because i did not know how to use Final Cut Express and so I had to look up certain things such as how to insert transitions as well as how to render the clips and I looked this up by asking our technician as well as looking things up on the internet with an application called YouTube.

Challenging the conventions

Within our trailer we challenged the conventions of a typical war film. This is because our film has the typical conventions of;

• Location- in an abandoned place which is perfect for a battle scene between enemies. Or long empty streets with little housing.
• Natural ambiance lighting from natural sources such as lamppost lighting as well as natural lighting form the sun and surrounding reflections.
• Typically all males feature in the film, to show assertiveness and firm decision making.
• and many more...

However as a group we have decided to challenge the conventions of a traditional war film, this is because we wanted our trailer to be rememberable for our target audience. 

   We challenged the conventions of a war film because we decided to have all female characters and actors within the film. This challenged the convention of a war film because typically there would have been all males within the film which would have meant more of a materialistic view to the film as well as the target audience having a different judgement and a different view of how they would percept the film. By having all females we challenged the convention of a war because typically back in the day, women were not allowed to fight in the war. So this also advertised and promoted women's rights and feminism within a generic time for the country.

    We added in artificial ambiance lighting within the film to give the film a more of an edge feel to it for suspension and adrenaline rush.By having the torch as a source of artificial lighting this gave the scene at the end a more of a clearing to the suspected visual representation of the film. We challenged this convention of a war film because of the effectiveness in which it produced as well as how it linked to our trailer effectively which gave the trailer something to flow by as well as having an uncovered section within the film to intrigue the target audience.

  We changed the location of shooting our film to challenge the conventions of a war, this is because of the effectiveness of which we found with other locations as they produced the atmosphere to accompany the acting and representation of the war with the contrast of the music which was made, produced and directed by Emma.

As you can see from our film poster that we have challenged the conventions of a war film poster as well as challenging the conventions of a war magazine cover, below are the examples and our magazine cover and the film poster.

Story Board

Watch the story board right from the paramount and touchstone screen through to the billboard at the end.

final film poster

Magazine development

This picture was taken so that we could get a different perspective compared to the film poster. This is because  within the film poster we have focused upon a single individual character to have the feeling of total alone ness within the picture for emphasis and affection to the target audience. At a first glance this is just a simple picture but in fact it symbolizes their solitude as a character and an individual about how alone they are in something so serious and life changing.  We did consider having both of the characters looking into the camera to have that connection with the target audience, however we wanted to capture the power and portray it in way of an emotion. An emotion of looking up and having just that tiny bit if hope which will help them conquer their mission. The key concept of this picture is something very small but it is very significant and this is the position of my hand ( the one in the army gear ), As you can see from this image you can see that both characters look very distant, but by having the hand connection they symbolize unity and becoming one and it also creates and portrays a stronger connection between both characters.                                                

This was one of our first ideas for our film magazine.  We thought that this kind of position may portray a sense of fear as both of the characters are trying to hide behind the tree suggesting that they are running from something.  However we found that this kind of magazine cover didn't suit trailer conventions and the angling of the characters also looked strange.  In hindsight we could see that there wouldn't be enough room around the characters for text, the tree trunk takes up the center of the cover which draws in most attention and Laura's positioning it too twisted, a more direct angle such as Jess' would have worked better.  It presents our main character as very vulnerable for our magazine cover, vulnerability is something we could use in our poster however for the magazine we wanted to create a sense of power to imply more things about the film.          

                                                                                                       Improved

                  Original          

These are our two different magazine covers which we had to change and improve upon due to the target audience feedback as well as not having the requirements for the target audience. The target audience feedback suggested to us is that the girl in the army outfit is to much blended into the background and the so the magazine cover did not have the affect in which we wanted it too. So by having taken in our target audience feedback we decided to take into account all of the possibilities for our magazine cover.

 The difference between the two magazine covers are; changing the colour of the text at the top of the magazine cover as well as for the exclusive  text which is located within the magazine cover at the middle left side of the magazine cover. We also elaborated on the background colour of the trees as well as the composition of the outfits and how they were lifted with the use of colour enlighten tool. Emma was the more professional and most educated when it came to Photoshop so she was the one to make all of the changes as we wanted more of a professional look to the magazine cover rather than an amateur doing the magazine cover.  We also changed the title of our film with font, this is because we decided to have our logo included upon the magazine cover, this is because at first we just substituted for a different font style due to us not of already completing the trailer. 

Green screen

The green screen was used within our research and planning because we wanted to research about the best possible ways in which we could present our trailer and poster, as well as showing how our skills have developed from our foundation portfolio to our advanced portfolio.  But after doing some trial runs on what the outcome would be we decided that this would not be effective within our trailer because of the realism behind it. This is because all backgrounds we could find for the green screen made the trailer look amateur and completely unprofessional. We mainly used the green screen within our research stage of our coursework which allowed us to experiment about how we could use the green screen effectively or to see whether it would work or not.  By experimenting with the green screen we was able to gain knowledge and information about how to use the green screen as well as how professional photographers use green screen to create film posters and magazine covers.
 
During the research stage of researching magazine covers and how the are combined with different methods and forms of applications and softwares, we came across a convention which was the background of the covers. Which was commonly a hazy background or a background which looked like it had been technically modified to fit the purpose of the cover. By looking at this conversation we attempted to use the green screen to re-create the magazine covers which we had researched. The reason why we attempted to use the green screen was to try to have the professional approach on the magazine cover. Although the outcome which happened was unbearable, this is because no one within our group used the green screen before in our foundation portfolio so we was unsure about all of the different factors which could affect the outcome of the picture.

A benefit of using the green screen is that by capturing shots and still images with the screen would increase the professionalism of the film poster as well as almost imitating the film posters we have researched which could become more appealing to our target audience. It also allowed us to re-take the still images as often as we like rather than having to wait for the most appropriate weather moment.

In conclusion with using the green screen it is clear to us as a group that we could not use the green screen to add professionalism within our promotional package, this is because we were not comfortable and confident when using the green screen as well as trying to combine the appropriate background with the possible picture. We also felt as a group that we lacked the knowledge of how to use the green screen effectively to get the best possible grade for our film poster.

Film Poster Collage- war