Some Content Research

Some Content Research

For our Trailer, I have decided to do some content research or rather some planning for the future asking for some advice from friends or family.

Firstly I had asked some family members about the idea of our trailer, (key to life)

Most of the replies were, “wow that’s going to be really hard to do” and “blimey that’s a good idea”, So after hearing this type of feedback from some classmates, teachers and family members I decided to ask a few friends that are currently at university, when I did some work experience over at screenology, However, the feedback was really similar to the feedback I already had for example “good idea man” from my friend George who does BMX cinematic work and also some photography. Finally, we also did a pole on our Instagram page ‘@Keytolifeofficial’ To see what our fans thought, and they really did enjoy our ideas so that was awesome!

After researching some narrative ideas I had come up with the idea that we were going to get our main actor Ellena to read a letter over the top of the trailer (or at least the beginning), we would include no title screens other than our production name, as well as this possibly some other communication between characters at the end of the trailer at the point of a twist possibly? After coming up with this idea I decided to ask my friends and family what they thought and once again we had a positive response. So as a group we were happy with this.

For our characters, we have decided as a group to have a few. We have also asked friends about our choices and believe if we pull it off things should look Professional. So we have Ellena (my sister in law) as our main actor, her boyfriend Sam as ‘her boyfriend that gets killed’ (but does he?) then my Dad, his partner and my brother as well as Sam as guests at the family party, then my cousin Ross as the villain in the movie who is the creepy ex-boyfriend seeking revenge on Ellena and making her complete the challenges. As well as this we have our backup actor Ella Winterbourne to step in for Ellena if she is ill or unable to come one day.

We will be using uncopyrighted content so we can put our trailer on YouTube after we have filmed it to show off to the fans on our Instagram page! We are also doing this because it’s harder to find good uncopyrighted music, this, in turn, creates more of a challenge and this is really what this project is about for me, testing my limits.

For our editing style, like the rest of my work, I love smooth Steadicam shots and I hate to shake the camera unless it’s truly necessary, so we have decided to go for a smooth flow and almost present the trailer as a short film showcasing some of the beautiful shots we can capture, I asked some people what they thought about making this trailer almost a short film and they really liked the idea and this is why. ‘When your watching a film trailer from a new unestablished film company you almost wish they could give you a bit more of the story to make you want to watch the film’ so I asked almost like a short film then, they replied ‘yes’ I played out this conversation between myself and my good friend to a few other family members and they all agreed that they’d rather see a bit more on a low budget production. So, I think this is the approach I will go for when producing the film.

Finally, colour grading for our film, like our trailer I believe we should go for a warmish tone throughout to match the trailer poster and also the expectations from our Instagram page followers. However, we may make things almost black and white in some shots to make things seem scarier, like in the Backwell location for example. I asked my friends and talked with the team to see what they thought, and they all agreed so, I believe the colour grading should be fitting with the locations.