Fishtank - Trailer Deconstruction and Inspiration

Fishtank - Trailer Deconstruction

Andrea Arnold utilises the Fishtank's teaser trailer to depict the protagonist Mia as a misunderstood teenager, bound by her disadvantaged family background. The trailer includes stock images of the council estate she resides in, reflecting Arnold's Preferred Reading that Mia has been failed by society. The high angle shot of Mia looking down the stairs at her mother after their argument portrays the separation between the pair, and the lack of love and closeness. This notion of Mia lacking affection is crucial to the narrative as she seeks love from her mother's boyfriend, Connor.

Arnold places the trailer against a soundscape of a dramatic non-diegetic soundtrack alongside the diegetic on-screen sounds. The music is parallel to the pace of the trailer, building tension leading to a climax that we see at the end with Mia dancing. This gives the audience a subtle insight into the narrative as Mia's dream of becoming a dancer becomes apparent.

Inspiration - Rocky II

Rocky - Inspiration

We wanted to include intertextuality to add familiarity to our teaser trailer. Upon watching the Rocky II running scene we wanted to replicate this in our piece. We felt that the montage shots tracking Rocky kept continuity throughout the sequence, while portraying the archetypal sense of masculinity.  To replicate this within our teaser trailer, we filmed various backwards tracking shots of our protagonist running through various locations. The example below is a vertical tilt high angle shot coupled with a low angle of the protagonist's feet. As you can see we took inspiration from Rocky II, while making the sequence our own by including the close up shot. 

Our Final Piece

Our Final Piece

This is our final piece 'QUICKSAND'.

In our final piece we demonstrated a variety of media skills and technologies, both in the planning of the piece and the post-production editing.

Our favourite and arguable most crucial shot is the varying shots of our protagonist running. We used match-on-action shots throughout to show continuity, as well as including an extreme high angle shot of him running towards the camera.

The most difficult aspect of our teaser trailer was retaining subtlety while clearly depicting the protagonists struggle. One way in which we did this was by shooting the protagonist in the same setting both alone and laughing with friends. We wanted to depict how even when he is surrounded by others he feels alone.

via GIPHY

If we were to start this project again the weaknesses which we would focus on particularly would be our shots of symbolism. Masculine symbols such as the boxing scene, running and close ups of perspiration could perhaps have more relevance to the plot. Similarly, we could perhaps experiment more with sound, incorporating maybe a voiceover or on/off-screen diegetic dialogue.

Dunkirk website deconstruction

Dunkirk website deconstruction

Before creating our our own website for our teaser trailer 'Quicksand', it was vital that we assed the quality of current websites for film prodcutions that are successful on a large scale. This allowed us to discuss what we belived worked well and what could be improved, as well as discovering potential  inspiration thtat can be applied to our final piece. 

• I decided to look at current website of large budget movies to see how their promotional package was designed for mass coverage. When entering the 'Dunkirk' website, the trailer fills the page and immediatly begins to play. This is a clever technique as it ensures the audience will watch the trailer and create interest towards the film already. Once on the actual websie page, I noticed that it has a very dark colour sceme which not only fits the pallet of the promotional poster but also the film itself. Aswell as this the typography was the same too. 
• There are direct links to 'Watch trailers' and the 'official sountrack' in the centre of the page, encouraging viewers to explore the film further.
• Additionally, there were links to 'Order now' and the 'Web VR game' which again encourages sales for the production. 
• The layout of the website is very neat and symmetricle which is very asthetically pleasing but provides a professional appearance too.
• Noticably, there were linked social media handels including Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, thus expanding the promotion of the film over several platforms.

2nd Survey analysis

Survey analysis

We asked the question 'What examples of symbolism would you identify with masculinity?'.

This Prezi presentation displays an analysis of the results gathered from our survey that we created on Survey Monkey:

Prezi presentation of our survey analysis

Origins of social realism

Origins of social realism - How it has shifted over time 

• At the beginning of the 1960s, there was a new appearance of feature films which challenged some serious social issue which were current at the time. These films were describes as 'New Wave' films which was said to be largely influenced by the French new wave.
• Since its origin British social reasism has pushed boundaries within film inorder to represent real Britons in society, and has impacted the rrest of the world.
• 'After the war'( in 1902) highlighted struggles of a war serviceman returning from the war to unemployment and was one of the first films to use this genre to create a soicial protest.  
  
• Durig war time, many realist films helped relieve tensions of the class-bound society and the change in ginder roles.
• As cinemas reopened after the war, many saw it as a place to relieve stress for hard work, companionship, release from tension and where they could discover some confirmation of the values of humanity
• The new wave films often adressed issues around masculinity which is now a common theme within British realism.
• Many early films dealt with prostitution, abortion, homosexuality, alienation and relationship problems. There were factory workers, office underlings, dissatisfied wives, pregnant girlfriends, runaways, the marginalised, poor and depressed. 

Media Theorist - Fowler

Genre theorist Alastair Fowler (1989) stated that "an individual text within a genre rarely if ever has all of the characteristic features of genre". To an extent, our teaser trailer conforms to the conventions of our genre (social realism), for example the way in which the social struggles of underprivileged collective groups are told to an audience via individual stories. Fowler's recognition that media texts rarely display all characteristic features is one we felt crucial to creating a successful media product. Media products that follow rigid characteristics and conventions are often dull and childlike, manifesting in the form of fairytales or fantasy fiction. With a more complex social genre such as social realism, we felt that it was important we experimented with genre.

We did this through the following techniques:

1. used a lack of dialogue
2. used symbolism and experimental editing rather than naturalistic straight cut edits
3. used only one protagonist in the trailer to convey isolation - typically social realism texts portray a group of characters
4. subverted the stereotypes of the collective group being represented in our piece - although he showed signs of hyper-masculinity our character was fragile and vulnerable

Website Deconstruction - Avengers Infinity War

Website Deconstruction - Avengers Infinity War

The immediate focus when the open the page is the bright colour picture with all characters from the new film. The bright deep colours attract the viewer instantly to look deeper into the picture.

The bright centre on Iron Man's chest draws attention straight to him, as he is the initial character of the franchise. 

The title, written in gold bold font has been carried throughout all of the films and stands out well against the black background, showing strong marketing skills and continuality

The contrasting colour palette is complementary to the website and poster creating a brand for the franchise.

All characters have similar facial expression showing that they are on a mission to defeat something.

The larger character above the others, Thanos, is made obvious that he is the antagonist as he is larger than the rest, and the ring behind him highlights his importance. 

The solar elements of the website help assist in understanding the sci-fi action genre.

There are links to the trailer which takes you straight to a video inserted onto a separate page. 

There are links also to social media and the logo is shown in the top corner, in different format to the rest of the poster to help it stand out.

Also, they have chosen to not use a tag line, perhaps because Marvel is such a secret and anticipated franchise, where things are kept secret until the release of the film. 

The marketing on this poster is effective, as there are links to tickets as well as merchandise. 

The empty space around the bottom and corners helps to highlight the importance of the characters and how central they are to the movie. 

-Caera Mendez