Song Choice

While in lesson today we had an assitant teacher , while explaining to him our idea he pointed out that he had heard the term 'Indie Cindy' before , which made me remember where i'd got the inspiration from . which is a song by hadouken consisting of these lyrics

Hadouken! - That Boy That Girl lyrics
That girls an Indie Cindy, 
Lego haircut and polka-dot dress, 
I don't care if she thinks she's indie, 
how she's different is anyones guess


These gave us a great idea for our teaser trailer as there is a point where the character 'Chase' Is singing onstage , at first we were undecided on what to have him singing , but now we have decided these few lines above would be perfect for this section.

We also considered a track similar to this for the backing track for our actual trailer as we are undecided yet on what we are using. 
Although this doesnt emphasis the sad moment in the trailer its very upbeat and modern which goes well with the attributes of our trailer. As these songs are all made through technical programs on the computer it would be quite simple for us to make something similar or make a cover of one of them.

Research in to Independent Production Logos.

As our teaser trailer is going to be for an independent film we decided to look more into independent film company logo's as research to give us more reasoning behind our logo. We came to find that a lot of them are quite simple, yet effective which we feel is exactly what our logo idea is aiming to be.
We have decided to use a mixture of technology and photgraphy to create our logo giving us an interesting range of techniques which is much more creative. We like the idea of using graphical letters in order to encorporate the 'Productions' part of our logo rather than writing the word on our hand like we originally planned. In order to do this our aim is to use a blank piece of card being held by the person wearing the hat stating 'ANC'.

Casting Interviews

Going back to our previous post about changing characters we thought we should divulge more information about how we decided on our choice of actors.
We decided to be quite professional about it and choose a few people to interview for casting.


For the casting of Cindy we interviewed:
- Cindy Wellings
- Emily Porritt
- Vivienne Smith.




First of all we got told them what the film was about and about the character of 'Cindy'. Then we asked them to read a few lines from the script in the way they felt was appropriate. Cindy Wellings and Emily Porritt both delivered the lines appropriately and how we imagined them to be said. Unfortunately , we felt Vivienne's voice was too soft for the character of 'Cindy' as we felt she would be a more independent and strong girl.
To decide between CIndy and Emily we took into consideration appearance and how well they could conform to the typical indie style. We liked the fact that Emily is quite petite but she is a natural blonde whereas we always imagined 'Cindy' as a brunette. We also feel Wellings would suit the indie attire more than Emily would. This is how we came to the conclusion of having Cindy Wellings playing the female lead.


For the casting of Chase we intervied;
- Antar Adams
- Tom Merritt
- Zac Houili


We used the same casting process for the boys , We felt Antar and Zac both had good execution of the lines but Tom sounded too common as we imagined Chase as being well brought up and quite posh. Then we analysed Antar and Zac to see who fitted the role better appearance wise. We decided that Zac ctually looked too much like an Indie kid and that Antar seemed more opposite to Cindy. We felt Antar would suit the preppy look better so decided to choose him to play "chase".

Title Cards and Production Logo's ;

So in our last lesson with Mr Southworth he showed us some of the previous years teaser trailers. We had to pick out the features that made it a more effective teaser trailer , there were the common ones such as good use of angles and a variety of shoots aswell as a good use of mise-on-scene. One thing which was also apparent in most of the teaser trailers were the use of title cards. It wasn't so much the fact that they just used title cards but it was also the detail and research put into it to make it look like an official teaser trailer.
 

In the last trailer we watched 'I See You" we immediately picked out the starting image which is shown on the left.  This is a Rating Card appear at the head of trailers. It  indicates how closely the trailer adheres to the MPAA's standards. A green band is an all-green graphic at the beginning of the trailer , The same as the one in the image to the right. This card  indicates that they had been approved for "all audiences" . It signifies that the trailer adheres to the standards for motion picture advertising which include limitations on foul language and violent, sexual or controversial images.
 Its something quite simple that is only shown for about 2 seconds of the trailer but gives it a more proffesional edge. We feel it would be a great idea to add this to our trailer to achieve a high standard trailer and make it more realistic. When looking more closely at the image itself we saw that at the bottom there are two online web adresses. These are here as a link to websites which give more information about the rating of the film . Of course , taking into consideration that our teaser trailer won't have its own web page these will be fake adresses added to give a more realistic look.

Also towards the end of the trailer we noticed this specific title card towards the end of the trailer , again very simple and only played for a few seconds but adds a more professional feel to the trailer as it is seen in most production trailers. It basically gives information about who were the main people behind the making of the film itself. In this case you can see that the same names tend to repeated. This is because it is an A level teaser trailer so there for has few memebers behind the making of it. After close analaysis of the title card we saw the images at the bottom saying it has connections with dolby digital and new line cinema. We would like this to be incorporated in our trailer although the use of these specific images would be copy right , to avoid this we considered designing our own similar logo's that look similar but will rule out copyright. We also took into consideration the web adress at the bottom. On a title card in most professional movie trailers there is a web address that can be followed to give more information about the trailer and the movie itself. These need to be simple so that they can be easily remembered as it is only shown for a few seconds.
We also took into consideration the background of the title card , it is simple but effective as it is relative to the genre of "I See You " which is a horror. As our trailer is going to be a more up-beat and happy trailer our background would have to be brighter as a dark background is usually more appropriate for a darker atmosphere.

Finally , in the "I See You" trailer we noticed that the final part of the trailer is this title card.  This title card is crucial in a teaser or full length trailer as it states the date of film release or in this case that it is soon to be released. When looking at the still frame from this specific teaser trailer it appears to be quite simple and plain , when watching the trailer on youtube there is a slight migration of the words 'coming soon' from the top left to the lower right of the screen. It isn't easily noticed but gives an unsettled feeling to audience. This is a great way to make a simple title card more effective. Of course in our trailer we want the audience to feel uplifted and not unsettled so we suggested in the group to maybe add an effect to the words as they come onto the screen or have the words become gradually bigger. Similar to the previous title card , the background is effective for that specific genre and ours would have to be a lot brighter and happier , possibly the same background we choose to use which states the people involved in the making of the film.

We also discussed in class that we need to make a film schedule which includes a list of props as we found that mise en scene was a great contributing factor to an effective trailer. As nikita is unavailable during half term this gives us an extra week to make sure we have our film schedule completed to a high standard and ready to film the week we return to school.

Filming Schedule.

ANC Filming Schedule of INDIE CINDY

Date & Time	Scene	Location of filming	Props & costume	Description	Who is needed
2nd November	-Corridor scene	-School corridor -School lane -Locker room	-hoodies -leopard print top -jean jacket	-Two contrasting social groups walking past one another. -Antar chasing Cindy. -overhearing conversation in locker room	Antar Adams Cindy Wellings Connor James Chloe Mel
9th November	-Cindy bedroom video diary	-School lane -Nikita's house	-range of indie style outfits -hoody	-Video diary of Cindy speaking -video diary of Antar speaking	Cindy Antar

Storyboard animation:

This is our final storyboard animation. We feel it resembles our trailer slightly although the voice overs at the moment don't feel very naturalistic so this will need to be improved. I also feel the backing track could sound more natural and less edited. There need to be a few amendments with the script as well due to timings for each shot and not being able to fit all of the speech in without it sounding rushed.
I feel the ending works really well and leaves the audience wanting more which is the aim of a trailer so I am very happy with this.
The trailer at the moment is 1 minute and ten seconds and this is without adding in title cards  and the company production logo . Our ideas for these will be further explained in the next post.
Back to the storyboard animation I feel that with more time it could be improved a lot.
There are a few differences between the animation and our trailer (besides the fact that it won't be drawn images haha) . At 0:10 secs to 0:14 when cindy is first shown it will not be edited in this way. The reason I chose to use this effect was because in the trailer we are going to have the camera tilt upwards from her feet to her face and then switch to the master shot shown afterwards.
Another difference is at 0:20 secs to 0:22 , after I started the story board animation we decided that this would be an action match and then an over shoulder shot.  During the part where we see cindy as a cheerleader and chase singing this is going to be a split screen that starts with cindy and then chase's scene slides in from the right to show a split screen.
There were a few difficulties when making the animation such as problems getting the tracks onto HD movie as the macs were malfunctioning . I also had a slight disruption with the last three images , when scanned in they became different sizes but to resolve this I took the first image and put it in photoshop and then cut the numbers from the second and third images and layered them over the first image.
Overall I think once the title cards and company logo's are added and we've sorted out an official suitable track for the trailer it will be an effective trailer.
Of course there can always be ways to improve things which hopefully we can keep coming up with ways to improve it during the process of making it so it becomes the highest standard it can be.

NEW LOGO PLAN.

We have come up with the final idea for our logo. Our plan is to create an image which is abstract and is a reflection on the indie scene in society. We will be using a ‘New-era’ hat which will have our production teams name ‘ANC’ graffited on to it in a contrasting colour. This will be shading the face of the person wearing it. To compliment this we will have the palm of a hand closer to the camera with the word ‘Productions’ written on it in biro or tipex  in order to make it stand out.

I believe this idea is original and will be an interesting way to present our production team at the beginning of our film trailer. Things we need to consider are the graffiti which will need to be created on the hat. To create this we are planning to use a peer who specialises in art as a subject, so will have a clear insight in to the best way to create the writing. I believe that a stencil is going to be needed to be able to create the letters, so as a group we have decided on using capital letters but need to confirm a font for this. Bold lettering for ‘ANC’ will contrast with the swirly handwriting we are planning to write ‘Productions’ in.

Other things we need to consider is the price of spray paint and the cost of buying the hat. These things will need to be ordered over half term and hopefully finished by the time we return to school. We have already placed research in to buying the hat and it seems they are cheap to get hold of off of the internet.