Rationale

Rationale

 

The question I have chosen to do for my assignment is: A short film in it’s entirety, lasting approximately five minutes, which may be live action or animated or a combination of both, together with both of the following: A poster for the film and a film magazine review page featuring the film. The poster and review will depend a lot on the genre and the target audience of the film.

   As I have decided to have a target audience of teenagers and adults, and somewhat of a romantic-drama genre, featuring a character dying at war, the poster in particular can not be brightly coloured, with positive, optimistic language used. I’m going to use a lot of dark colour, like black and brown, for the poster, to reflect the sadness present in the movie. I will also use white, to symbolise a character’s wedding dress and her innocence as a character. There will be a very small amount of text on the poster. I would like to have a film title, a tagline and then the director/producer/main actors etc. featured in very small text at the bottom. This is so that there is a sense of mystery and down to the audience own interpretation before the watch it. I would like the font for the title to be very formal looking, almost like it has been typed with an old-fashioned type writer. The photograph on the poster will be the main focus point. It will be of a bride, either with a mascara-tear stained face, or just staring, sadly forward. She will be wearing a soldier’s hat and standing with her hand in a saluting position. This in itself will trigger questions before the audience watch the film and will then be a good source of advertisement and will attract an audience in. I want the poster to be very simple, so it is completely down to the audience views and interpretation, as a way of advertising. The idea of the focus point being on the image, and very little text used came from a variety of posters I have seen, but mostly from a poster advertising the movie ‘Les Miserables’. The main image is of Hugh Jackman, with the line ‘Freedom is mine’ underneath. After that, the only text is the title and the words ‘coming soon’. I wanted to create this kind of layout and framing on my poster, because I think it works well and in this case, less is more.

   The review will be from a magazine, so will have a lot of common magazine traits. For example, big, bold title fonts, to introduce the article, page numbers at the bottom corners, large photographs of scenes in the movie, font size variety etc. The title of the movie will be the largest font and will be at the top right of the double page spread. Under this, there will be a tagline, possibly a pun, regarding the movie. Then I will include a small paragraph, briefly describing the genre and gist of the movie, perhaps including some of the stars and crew involved in the making of the movie. The left page will be entirely a photograph of one of the scenes of the movie. The next page will be the article. It will be simple, clear font that is understandable and easy to read, rather than brightly coloured with an unclear font, which will put the reader off. The photograph will be of the main character, in her wedding dress, crying, laying in her bed by herself, clutching a photograph. The audience won’t see the photograph, which again brings a sense of mystery and concern. It will trigger questions and already tap into the emotions of the viewers, especially the females of the target audience. The overall tone of the review will be positive and quite informal. The idea for all of this came from a film review I saw of Twilight in the Empire film magazine. The layout looks very clear and professional and the photograph draws you in. I want to achieve this kind of style for my review.

   The movie itself is going to be about a woman who’s husband is a soldier in the army. It is going to be a modern film, rather than going back in time to World War II, which is more common. The film is going to be mostly silent, as none of the characters will have any lines to say which will be heard by the audience. There will be music playing over the top of the film, which will change depending on the storyline and will reflect the atmosphere and mood of the characters at the time. The music will also get quieter and come to a complete stop at a point in the film where I want to draw attention to the feelings of the main character. If this doesn’t capture the feeling I want it to, I will instead create a muffled sound of music, instead of stopping it all together, to show isolation and confusion. The storyline is going to be that a couple are together and become engaged. The man then has to go off to war in Afghanistan. The woman then has to go about her normal life, going to work, living alone, etc. A particular scene, which is one of many that I will be using photographs from for advertising purposes, is where she tries her wedding dress on in front of her friends and her mother. At one point in the movie, she learns that her soon-to-be husband has passed away at war. This will be when the sound will alter. The most powerful scene, other than this one, will be when she puts on her wedding dress in her bedroom and lies on the side of her bed where her fiancé’ once slept, clutching a photograph. (This will possibly be the photograph used for the film review.) The colour pallet of the movie will start off bright and optimistic, reflecting the atmosphere, but will slowly change to dark and dull with low key lighting.