Intertextuality in our Production

When planning our production, we studied intertextuality and so looked into our own intertextual references. Looking at our product throughout the editing process, some of these have become particularly clearwhen looking at some of the films that we have studied as part of our research. The most obvious use of intertextuality is through the use of colour as a form of representation.


This colour usage can be found in many films produced over recent years: Schindlers List (1993); Unbreakable (2000) and The village (2004).

All of these films have chosen to use colour (particularly red) to draw attention to certain aspects of shots. In our production, we have eclectically borrowed the idea of using colour to draw attention to our female (child) protagonist, specifically choosing the colour red to represent the theme of danger. The image from Schindler's List was one that we particularly referenced when planning our production; the idea of the young girl in the red coat is very similar to our footage. However, the use of the colour in contrast to the dark forests in M. Night Shyamalan's The Village, is another aspect we have chosen to focus on as the main setting of our teaser trailer is the woods.

Aside from the intertextuality in the form of colour usage, aspects of our plot are also referenced to other texts. For example the kidnapping storyline could be connected to Gone Baby Gone (2007) - this particular films UK release was postponed due to it's similarities to the Madeleine Mccann case, which is something that we have been particularly careful and senisitve in avoiding reference to - or Taken (2008), which focuses on a much older female being kidnapped, but is based around the same idea.

Although intertextuality appears throughout our production, all of the main plot ideas and shot types that we have used have been our own, and we have only borrowed ideas from certain aspects of other major productions.

Completed Filming - Shooting Schedule

Below is a photo of our completed shooting script as we have now finished filming the necessary footage for our teaser trailer. This shows the dates we filmed each section; the locations; the cast and crew present and the costumes and props necessary.

Completed Filming

Now we have collected all of the necessary footage for our teaser trailer, it is time to move on to the editing stage of our production. For this, we will be using a combination of different programmes such as Adobe Premier Pro on Windows, and also Garageband and iMovie on Macs.

As we begin to use these programmes in our A2 year, we will update our progress in posts and also explain how we have explored different techniques and tools that we did not last year, or we did not have access to (having only gained access to Mac's in our A2 year).

Alongside our editing, we will now also begin work on our ancillary tasks.

Viral Marketing

A lot of people, especially our age, spend a lot of time on social networking sites such as Facebook and YouTube. Therefore viral marketing would be a good idea to help in promoting our film.

One of the films that did this and in doing so achieved considerable awareness was The Dark Night. They began their viral marketing process by utilizing the film’s tagline “why So Serious?” and also launching an official website featuring the fictional political campaign of Harvey Dent, with the caption “I Believe in Harvey Dent”. The site was expected to interest fans and have them participate in online puzzles and games. One of these included fans to send e-mails and as they did pixels would be slowly removed, revealing the first official image of the joker; it was ultimately replaced with many “HaHas” and hidden messages that said “see you in December”

Including puzzles and games within our website could be a possibility as I like the way that fans can get involved and be excited to see what’s going to happen or what they are going to see next. But at this stage we wanted to focus more on Facebook pages ECT and hopefully these pages will, in time, advertise our website.

Another film that tackled viral marketing was Cloverfield.

They began by making each character create a MySpace page advertising the film. The main attraction on these pages was the teaser trailer. But the name of the film was not featured in this. Fans become aware of this and the unnamed film began to be discussed all over the internet; on blog’s and many more networking pages. This led to more fans. After this a website was released and puzzles and games were featured the same as The Dark Night.

I think the way that Cloverfield built up their fans and then released a website was effective. Hopefully when marketing our film we can follow in similar footsteps as it seems to work.

Viral marketing obviously can play a big part in making different audiences aware of new films. The internet attacks so many different demographic groups allowing maximum awareness.

Viral marketing is definitely something we will be doing.

Final Casting

As we came up to the final stages of our filming, we finalised our cast list which became as follows:

• Child - Chloe Hill
• Villain - Russell Denny
• Mother - Emily Wright
• Father - Sam Morris
• Female Police Officer - Elizabeth Boulamatsis
• Male Police Officer - Steven Bourner
• Newsreader - Alexandra Watt

Ancillary Products

When discussing how we would spread the work for our ancillary products, we decided that Amy would take on the majority of the work concerning our website, with input from the rest of the group. This then left us with posters and magazine covers. We decided that Emily, Elizabeth and I would then divide the workload of these remaining products between us with input on planning from Amy. We would all individually sketch designs for each, and then bring these together to create our final products.

We agreed that this would make an equal spread of workload as we would all be involved - whether in a small or large role - in all aspects of the ancillary tasks. We also decided that, as Amy was taking on a large task in our website, we would create a series of posters, and possibly several magazine covers so that we were having an equally sized role.

Magazine Cover Designs

Before creating our magazine cover featuring our film, we all individually sketched some ideas for our group production and brought them together to create the best/a mix of them. Below are our rough individual sketches and short explanations of why we have used certain conventions:

Emma:

For my design, I chose to focus on the use of Empire Magazine as this is a well known production that would well advertise our film. I also thought the traditional red font of the magazine title would fit in well with the ideas that I had for it.
In my sketch I have included the magazine title at the top, and run the film title 'Wednesday's Child' across the middle of the cover. I have also included the traditional convention of a barcode, price and issue date on the bottom left. Along the bottom of the cover, I added a banner advertising smaller articles included in this issue of the magazine, and have included other titles at the edges of the page advertising the larger articles as typical of a film magazine.
The colour scheme that I imagine is mostly dark with the exception of the headings and the girl in the centre of the cover. Cohesive with our trailer, she would be depicted wearing red to demonstrate the danger, which will stand out against the dark surroundings. The cover in general will be very dark and full of shadows to portay the mystery-thriller genre.


Elizabeth:

My sketched design for the front cover of a magazine consisted of the basic conventions of any film magazine. Therefore, within my design I used the header and layout of the internationally-known film magazine 'Empire' since it would advertise our production very well and result in a wider audience income. The use of the colours of text throughout my design consists mainly of black, red and white. This fits in well with the red header of 'Empire' since it doesn't look out of place. I've included in my design an image of the main character, centred in the middle of the page so that the young girl looks lost withing the busy scenery surrounding her. I tried to use different locations that we used within our filming such as the trees, grass, leaves and muddy footprints from the forest, the pink rug from her girly bedroom, as the backing to make the character seem more eye catching since the blonde hair, pale skin, and red clothing signifying danger gives our audience clues to the mystery/thriller genre. I added the various traditional conventions such as a barcode, price, extra banners advertising other films coming soon, and a subheading 'Monday, Tuesday.. Child?' linking to our film, also by including '... child' instead of the actual name of the trailer adds even more tension, making our audience want to know more.

Emily:

For my front cover I have tried to design an image that is in cohesion with our trailer. I have chosen Empire magazine to promote our film as its one of the biggest and successful magazines and would hopefully be the best choice in order to advertise our film. I am going to keep in the typical conventions of the magazine; using the red EMPIRE title with the tagline below, date and price between the M and a barcode. For my design I have chosen a close up image of our main character (Chloe) as the background, with our title 'Wednesday's Child' in the centre. I have also left a triangle shape in the bottom corner in order to place plugs as other extras within the magazine. When designing it I wanted to keep to a colour scheme which consists of: Red, white and grey tones.

Looking at Making a Website

When looking into the possible free sign-up sites we could use to create our film's website, one that particularly caught our eye was Google Sites. We realised that it would be fairly simple and also due to being linked with Google, it would be a trustworthy site for us to sign-up to. After we created some sample sites to learn how to use it, we realised that with some practise it could be a possibility for our own site.

Here is a link to the Google Sites homepage: https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin?continue=http%3A%2F%2Fsites.google.com%2Fsite%2F&service=jotspot&ul=1

Along with our research, we also found other possibilities for creating our website, but ruled them out for various reasons such as sign-up fees and difficulty to use. Some websites even offered to create the whole website at a price. Here are some of the sites that we came across:

• http://www.weebly.com/
• http://www.wix.com/
• http://www.webeden.co.uk/
• http://www.magix-online.com/uk/website_maker.1527.html

After we began to experiment with Google Sites some more, we found difficulties with certain areas of it, and also realised that some sites could look rather blog-like. We realised that if we wanted to create a more professional looking promotional site for our film we would need to find another option. We decided that it may be better for us to use a programme that we were slightly familiar with and for this reason, we turned to Macromedia Dreamweaver which we have used in the past to create websites in other classes, although only at GCSE level. As we already had some background knowledge on this programme, we would be able to learn to use it more effectively to create a cohesive and professional looking website as we experimented.

Ancillary Task Research - Emily Wright

Ancillary Tasks

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Ancillary Task Research - Elizabeth Boulamatsis

My presentation below shows my research of various advertising campaigns e.g Websites, DVD covers, Magazines etc. We all individually done this research to give each other a greater insight of what our advertising campaign should be like for our type of genre.

Ancillary Research

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