Website Building

As part of our promotional package for a teaser trailer film, we need to create a promotional website. To start with I searched round the internet for a suitable and easy to use website builders. After trying out various websites such as Moonfruit.com, Webeden.com and 350.cm I found that these were quite complicated to use and were not really offering the appropriate layout for a film website. Therefore I spoke to a friend who has expertise in website building and he suggested Wix.com because of how easy it is to use. After testing this website out I found it to be extremely user friendly and no prior knowledge about html coding was needed. This website builder simply uses the drag and drop method and lets you make a page completely from scratch whilst providing help tips along the way.

Therefore in order to create our promotional package website for our teaser trailer, we will be using

Production Companies

I have researched into which production company will be best suited for our film.

Revolver Entertainment is one of the UK's leading ‘All Rights’ distribution companies, shaking up the industry with a unique approach to managing its enviable and edgy slate of Film and DVD releases. Many of Revolver entertainment's productions have been British action films for the youth generation in 'gritty' London such as, Shank and Kidulthood.

IFC Films is an American film distribution company based in New York, owned by Rainbow Media. It distributes independent films and documentaries. The majority of films distributed were dramas such as spring forward, American gun and fish tank.

Ken and Paul formed their production company Steel Mill Pictures in 2006 when they produced their first feature film, the Award-winning, critically-acclaimed "London to Brighton". Financed with private equity and completion money from the UK Film Council's New Cinema Fund, the film screened in competition at several prestigious film festivals around the world, winning many awards and accolades.

Poster Idea

Whilst searching Google Images for pictures of homelessness to create our moodboard I came across this image which I thought would make an excellent poster design. The image quality is poor due to the resizing.

The word "homeless" written along the wall could be replaced with our film title "Thick Skin". We could maybe use a graffiti style font to make it appear as if it has been spray painted on the wall. This would represent the grimey, London location. The title would be read first by the audience because they tend to read from left to right and therefore we need to sure it stands out against the rest of the poster. We could also recreate this image by having our protagonist sitting on the floor in front of the wall instead. Although I like the use of yellow and and dark tones I feel we should incorporate shades of blue instead as it makes the image appear more harsh and real, emphasising the struggle of being homeless.

We have decided in our next filming session we will also take a normal digital camera and see if we can recreate this image. Then we'll upload it onto Photoshop to experiment with placing the font.

Music Research; Existing British Dramas

We decided to do further research in order to decide what music to use in our coursework. As part of this research we looked at existing teaser trailer for British drama films and analyse what music was used.

London to Brighton

The trailer for London to Brighton starts with a somber sounding piano piece playing alongside an underlying continuous deep string sound. With these two sounds playing at the same time, it creates a serious sounding piece of music which is parallel to narrative the being portrayed on screen. Also the use of this continuous drone is slowly building tension for the audience. Then half way through the trailer the music suddenly changes to a faster paced track which greatly uses drum beats. This is used to represent the suddenly change of pace within the trailer. The use of a repetitive drum beat also makes the film seem modern because drum music has connotations of club music and youth.

This is England

The trailer is split up into sections because of the 3 music tracks used. The first is a song from the reggae genre. This type of music has connotations of a happy and relaxed nature. This suggests that the characters being portrayed on screen are a close happy friendship group who like to hang about together. The track is also relevant as it is of the time period in which the film is set (1980s). Then the music switches to more serious sounding track when the "villain" is introduced on screen. The indicates to the audience that the characters feeling towards this new character on screen is different to those in the friendship group. The use of a heavy repetitive guitar riff also indicates the change in narrative as the music is in complete contrast to the previous track. The final piece off music used it more calming, acoustic guitar piece. This juxtaposes the actions on screen as they are more violent and chaotic in comparison the overlay ed non diegetic music. this represents to the audience that although a lot is happening in the film there is also a serious side to the narrative and the characters lives.

The Football Factory

The Football Factory's featured music is the same non diegetic track throughout the trailer. By having the same piece of music that doesn't change volume or tempo, it makes the trailer feel longer and hints that there is something always happening in the film. The music is fast paced and quite electronic sounding. The pace of the track indicates that the narrative is also past paced. It also has a high pitched string sound and seems to get faster throughout the trailer which builds up tension for the audience.

Happy Go Lucky

Happy Go Lucky's sound track is similar to London to Brighton as it also uses two different songs during the trailer. The first is an upbeat sounding classical song which gives the impression that the film is generally happy bubbly film. Also the track includes the sound of a trombone which hints to the comedy element of the film as this instrument is usually associated with classic British comedy sketches. This emphasised by the humorous events and the diegetic, jokey dialogue. The second piece of music is a modern piece of chart music to represent the modern narrative of the film. The trumpets used in the track sound energetic and celebratory supporting the idea that the film is joyous and happy. Also thelyrics of song "the sun is in the sky ..." are also optimistic sounding lyrics to suggest the nature of the film and the personality of the protagonist.

After conducting this piece of research i have a better understanding of music used in British dramas. I have discovered that usually they use more than one piece of music to symbolise the change in pace or narrative in the film. The music also usually represents what is happening on screen. However another aspect I notice is that British drama teaser trailers also heavily rely on a voiceover or dialogue to compliment the music. For our next piece of research we will look further into voiceovers and what impact they have on the teaser trailer.

Fourth Day of Filming

Over the half term we have spent a lot of our time filming for our coursework. We have been filming in various locations such as London, Bat 7 Ball and Tonbridge. Here are a couple of photos from our filming day in Tonbridge on Friday the 29th of October.

Film Title

After requesting for people to vote on our poll via various social networking sites, we have finally decided on the title of our teaser trailer film. With a majority of 43% of the vote, our title will now be;

'Thick Skin'

Now that we have a title we can now test out different typography and poster designs.

Planning and Organisation

As it is the half term and we have about 6 weeks until everything has to be handed in, we have come up with a list of things we need to before we can actually start creating the poster and website and before we can finalise the teaser trailer. Our aim is to get most of this done throughout half term and the first week we get back to school;

After creating this list decided that as there of 3 of us in the group and 3 tasks to complete, each member of the group will take lead on one of the tasks. As leader we must ensure every bit of research relating to our own task is done and must organise who is doing it. We decided that Daisy will be in charge of the poster, Thea in charge of the teaser trailer and Jodie in charge of the website. Once we decided this, as a group we organised our to do list into who is doing what according to the task we are in control of;

Although the delegation seems unbalanced and that there is more in the teaser trailer column, this does not mean Thea will be doing all of these tasks. It just means she'll be organising who in group will completing them and she'll also ensure they will get done.

Music Research; Audience Suggestions

After conducting our audience research survey and receiving the responses we now have an idea that our chosen music is expected to be of the Grime or Indie genre. However as part of our research we have looked into songs which our respondents suggested who selected the "other" option to the question "In a social realism film based on homelessness, which genre of music do you associate with this". Here are our findings;

Said the People by Dinosaur Jr

The main part of this piece of music which stands out to me are the lyrics used. The constant repetition of the phrase "save me" greatly compliments the feeling our protagonist feels throughout the trailer. Also other lyrics such as "I've been staring into space" could be be placed parallel to the shots in the teaser trailer of the protagonist doing this action. The slow but heavy drum beat gives the song a melancholy and sluggish feel which could be used to represent how our protagonist is feeling when living on the streets. I also enjoy the gradual build of the guitar riff as it becomes louder and more powerful which could give impact to the trailer as pans out. The only downfall to this piece of music is that it does not sound very modern or from the Grime or Indie genre as it seems more Alternative Rock. However we could still try and overlay the vocal track from this song over a more modern sounding piece through the use of GarageBand to still incorporate the impact of the lyrics.

Street Spirit - Radiohead

The guitar riff played through this song mixed with the slight drone to the vocals gives the song a somber feel. This ties in well with the overall impression we want our trailer to give the audience about the terrible effects of being homeless. However this song may not create such an impact as we wish as the song remains the same tempo and volume throughout whereas we plan to have the pace of our trailer speed up as in progresses.

Tightrope - Janelle Monae

Although an excellent song, we feel this particular structure of track would not work well in our teaser trailer. This is because the song is an upbeat catchy song which would put the audience in a happy, celebratory mood. As our trailer is about negative impact of homelessness, the music would be in great contrast of what is being portrayed on screen. However one aspect of the song which we are considering incorporating in our own non diegetic music track is the quick drum beat as it makes the song fast paced and inevitably quite modern.

By looking at the songs which our audience has suggested, we have taken great inspiration for our own piece of music for our coursework. However we also need to take into consideration that we are not allowed to use copyrighted music and therefore if we were to take any vocals from the songs above then we would have to greatly edit them or create our own cover.

Female Representation within British Drama; Shameless Analysis

Shameless is an "offbeat drama about the roller coaster lives and loves of the dysfunctional Gallagher clan" based in Manchester on the 'Chatsworth estate'. It is an excellent example of British Drama within television, with a mixture of comical and hard-hitting storylines.

I have looked into how the females are portrayed within this drama, as it will help us to develop our character representation for our film.

The character profile pages on channel 4's website for shameless describe one of the main female characters, Karen Maguire as 'famous for her sexual skills'. Throughout the series, Karen is displayed as being a strong yet very sexual character. Karen has various sexual liaisons especially at the begin of the series before she is married. The most controversial is where she has a sexual affair with her boyfriends father. This is shocking for the audience as, generally speaking, it is unacceptable and immoral to behave in this way. The audiences sympathy is then very much not with her character. However, Karen later is diagnosed with Bi-polar disease and the audience are shown the deteriorating process that she is led on. The sympathy is now thrown back to with Karen. Her mother-in-law Mimi Maguire tries to cover it up and begins telling people that instead of Karen being in rehab that she is in prison for assault. Karen stands up to Mimi and says that she has nothing to be ashamed of by her illness and that its a mental health disorder but that she still a person. This reflects to the audience that Karen is a strong woman when independent. But as they see throughout the series, is easily tempted by men.

If we were to portray our character in the same way as Karen is reflected in Shameless, it would indicate to the audience that most women are like this. As this is not the case, we may consider aspects of Karen's personality, yet not all of them when developing our protagonist.

Mimi Maguire is definitely one of the Dramas most memorable characters. She is married to the drug-dealer Paddy Maguire and is equally as violent and ruthless as he is. She is very loyal to her family and even goes to prison in place of her son. She has very traditional beliefs about family. The family have Irish heritage and she is displayed to respect that. She is feared by other characters within the estate and can/has taken on any man just as well as a man could. Mimi is rarely shown as a sexual figure, perhaps because of her age and her motherhood, except for the short affair she has in series 7. Mimi's role within the drama is clearly as a mother and a business woman and her sexual side is rarely shown. if anything, she is viewed as equal to the men as she is feared as much as her partner Paddy.

Mimi is reflected as a much more aggressive and violent character, this could be useful as we were considering showing a rougher representation of our character. However, Mimi is shown to have very little feminine qualities other than motherhood. Her age, her size and her status in the family affect this. This would be an unrealistic way to represent our protagonist as she will be much younger and without children.

Maxine Donnelly is one of the few characters within the drama that has no blood relation to any of the characters. She is described as "saucy and full of life" and she "isn't afraid to give as good as she gets". She has only been around for the last two series yet quickly befriended Debbie Gallagher. She is displayed from the offset as being very smart and quick and knows easily how to work around people. This is displayed as her and Debbie go shoplifting regularly and Maxine is able to get the pair out of the situation quickly mainly using sweet talk. Maxine is well aware of her sexuality and in early episodes, uses this to her advantage. For example, showing her boobs to bouncers of a club to let her in for free. At first she is shown as care-free with little to tie her down. She later develops a relationship with local 'stud' Karl Gallagher. After a while, she secretly aborts a baby that was fathered by Karl. When he finds out the deceit he ends the relationship. This reflects Maxine as being a deceitful person that is inconsiderate about her loved ones feelings. This is further mirrored as she then begins to have a relationship with Karl's brother; Ian Gallagher. The relationship tears the brothers apart and after a number of events, Maxine calls off the relationship due to this. this gives her character some redemption and the audience are subverted to feel that she is not such an immoral person.

The contrast between Maxine's carefree nature and the seriousness of the issues she faces have been very well done by the Shameless directors. In our film, it could prove very effective to have a stark contrast with the age of our protagonist - the fact she is young and should be care free - and the harsh situation - of homelessness - she is found in. We will have to develop ways to portray this to the audience through further research.

Having looked into the main female characters within Shameless, it would seem that the young females are shown to be strong and independent women but with an equally strong sexual desire. This desire then forces them to conflict with their morals. This may lead the audience to believe that women who are strong and independent are led astray by sex. Also, the young characters, Maxine and Karen, have both been deceitful to their partners throughout the series with little remorse. This implies that young women can be deceitful and irrational. Within our trailer, we wish to reflect realistic portrayals of women and we must consider all ways of representation.