Ancillary Task- The Return Film Poster

The purpose of a film poster is to advertise the film that is released or going to be released. The poster tends to get across the genre of the film, in the poster I have created, it is clear that the genre of the film is thriller, this is shown through the imagery used. The characters are shown as being scared and uncomfortable suggesting that the three girls on the poster are the victims. Also, looking at my image (Rizwana) it is clear that the film may contain aspects of kindnapping/violence due to Rizwana have tape across her mouth and looking frightened. The scared facial expressions of Tovia indicate that the girls are tormented by the killer and is trying to escape from the killer. Also, by looking at the posters it is clear that the film is aimed at a teenage/young adult audience ranging between 15-24 and may be watched by a female audience but may also appeal to a male audience. Also, the black background of the poster and low key high contrast lighting further indicates the film is a thriller and connotes danger, fear and mystery making the three female victims seen as vulnerable.

In the poster, the title is shown in a white bold font which is larger that the other titles on the poster, this will therefore make the audience focus on the poster and this will be the first thing apart from the images of the three victims they will see , this will allow the audience to remember the name of the title. The title may also make the audince think about what the film could be about. ' The Return' may suggest that a charater is returning to the lives of the three girls on the cover of the poster, which could japadise their livlihood and wellbeing.   

The purpose of having institutional research on the poster, educates the audience about who is starring in the film and who the film is writen and produced by. Some audience members may want to see films from popular film writers/producers as they may like films written by a particular person so may intrigue them to watch the film based on who has written it.  

Another purpose of having a poster for a film is so that the audience can view the website of the film before watching the film so that they can gain more knowledge about the background of the film. On the website they will be able to view pictures and reviews on the rating of the film. Also, by having Facebook links and Twitter links, allows the audience to like the facebook page to show their support for the film which could allow other people to view the page and may decide that they too want to go to the cinemas to watch the film. This will also the production company to make more money as  the film will be advertised online gaining larger audiences.

The film reviews also allows the audience to see how good the film is, in our poster the rating given by two different organisations; The Guardian and Filmreview.com is a rating of four stars, this would immediately indicate to the audience that the film is seen as being good which may persuade them to go to the cinemas to watch the film.  

The production logos used in the trailer are the 'Miramax studios' and 'Blade productions' (which I

created as a subsidery production logo for our trailer), these productions logo may not have a significant impact on the film, however in some films such as disney films, the production logo will immedetely indicate to the audience that the film is a Disney as it is well known.

Subsidiary Production Logo

We wanted to create a subsidiary production logo that represented our thriller/horror film trailer. We came up with 'Blade Productions' as the name of our production logo as we wanted the audience to become aware earlier on in the trailer that it is a thriller/horror genre. We felt that the audience will become aware straightaway after looking at the production logo of what our film is based on; which is violent and contains events in which characters are killed in disturbing ways. This is a common convention for a horror/thriller films, the knife however connotes more conventions of the horror genre in comparison to thrillers where more guns are used.

Below is the production logo I created using the  Macromedia Fireworks programme:



The red use of colour for the blood effect connotes danger and violence; this suggests to the audience that the film is based around people being hurt and their life being at risk by a mysterious killer. The image of the knife used in the production logo suggests that the characters/victims in the trailer will be brutally tortured and killed. The use of the drain indicates that the girls have no way of escaping, the use of black in the drain connotes  mystery and death indicating that the trailer brings up questions in the audiences mind of what could happen to the three victims and whether or not they will be able to escape from the psychotic killer. Also, the black connotes the fact that the audience are unaware of who the killer is, intriguing them into watching the film at the cinemas for the motives of the killer for hunting down the three victims in particular. The fact that there is a high key low contrast of use of lighting around the plug hole with blood dripping down, indicates the future of the victims in the trailer suggesting that they don't have anywhere to hide and are trapped underneath the plug hole. This indicates that the victims could be confided in small spaces and there is no way that they can get away from this nightmare. As the victims are three girls the plug hole could represent the vulnerability of the girls as they are seen as easy target from the killers prospective as they won't be able to fight back and defend for themselves, suggesting that the killer sees their life as being worthless and he is pouring any traces of their memories down the drain.

Our production logo can be compared to the Miramax production logo; this because our subsidiary production and Miramax have similar conventions, in that when one looks at the two production logos, there is a theme of horror/thriller in both logos. In our subsidiary logo we have created a more obvious illusion of blood and violence which is more representative of our trailer which helps generate the idea that our trailer is a horror/thriller.

The Return rough cut

After creating a rough cut of our trailer, we showed it to the rest of the class so that they could give us ideas on how to improve it further. The class felt that we needed some sort of dialogue or voiceover to break up the background sound and the filming. This is so that the audience could develop a better understanding of story behind the trailer. They also said that the titles used throughout the trailer were useful in telling the story but the trailer needed a voiceover to back up the titles used.

Also, the class felt that the trailer flowed well showing a clear build up, as they liked , the range of shots and the beginning of the trailer was slow paced and it gradually build up and got to a faster pace, which added mystery and tension to the trailer. Also, the class were impressed with how the lighting was high key low contrast as the beginning of the trailer and dramatically changed to chiaroscuro lighting. The class felt that the chiaroscuro lighting was beneficial and created enigma and suspense, luring them into watching is to see what was going to happen to the three characters.

The also said in their feedback that we need to add some sort of sound effects when Tovia is stabbing the killer with a pen in the car scene. They felt that it needed some sort of sound effect that indicates that the killer has been stabbed with a pen, as it doesn't look realistic.

Interim evaluations of editing process and decisions/ improvements:

When putting the filming together on pinnacle, we decided to split the scenes of the three characters and integrate them into each other as we are creating a trailer, this is so that it creates an more effective effect and indicates to the audience that the film is a trailer as it looked like an opening to a film. We did this by integrating the Killer's actions of holding the knife and scraping it against the wall and sticking victim’s photos on the scrapbook to break up the scenes and to indicate to the audience what is going to happen to each victim, which makes it appear more interesting and intriguing.  

We felt that some of the shots were too long, so we decided to cut the length of each shot down and make them short and snappy, we felt this would create more of an impact and grab the audience’s attention. Also, we didn’t want to give away too much of what the film is about to the audience as we wanted them to go the cinemas to watch the full film to see what will happen to the victims and whether or not the killer will be caught.

Another improvement, we decided on was that we had far too many fades to blacks/whites, this made the trailer appear inappropriate as there was a fade after each shot which didn't make the trailer appear realistic. So we decided to get rid of some fades to black/white, after doing this we felt that this made the trailer flow better and appear realistic.

When looking back at the rough cut analysis we found that the 'earthquake' effect  on the 'Blade productions logo' was not realistic and didn't look appropriate so we decided to change the 'earthquake' effect to a still image with the title of the 'Blade productions' moving slightly in on the screen to make it look professional.

We also had difficulty with getting the font of the titles to the effect we wanted. We wanted to create titles that looked professional yet fitted with our genre of thriller. We overcame this by choosing a font which fitted with our genre.