Welcome Moderator, this is my A2 blog, I am Constance Dwan Candidate Number:1188 Below is my short film, "Checkout" and my two ancillary products to accompany it. On the pages above you can find my four evaluation questions as well as a page on my radio trailer and one for my film poster.
The construction of our radio trailer relied mostly on editing and creating a engaging and enticing narration and structure. We wanted to instantly convey genre whilst simultaneously drawing an audience in we felt that the way to do this was to start the narration with, "Once upon a time" as this suggests the beginning of a fairytale. To fit with the conventions of a professional radio trailer we ensured we had all the institutional information presented at the end this included a selling point, "A modern day fairy tale", the name of the film "Checkout" and the release time, "July 2015".
To record the radio trailer we used iMovie, we took the audio clips from our actual film footage to act as the quotation clips in the radio trailer. We used the voiceover tool to record the voices of the two narrators, (Myself and Georgina), and then added the music over the entire collection of audio clips.
A difference between our radio trailer and the professional radio trailer, was the certificate rating as research proved that this was only used in larger blockbuster feature films and not in short films. Other than this exception out radio trailer fits to the conventions of a radio trailer.
The usual time limit for a radio trailer is 30 to 35 seconds we made sure we were in this time bracket as we didn't want to make the trailer too long, giving away to much or too short and not give enough information.
Over all the radio trailer is effective and successful in attracting and addressing audience, as it draws in an audience, provides them with enough dialogue to be intrigued in the film and finally gives them the information regarding watching the film and when.
After creating our first draft of our radio trailer we previewed it to a small target audience focus group. The feedback we got was both helpful and reassuring, as it was said that the trailer was effective in captivating and addressing and audience. Although we were presented with a suggestion as to how to improve the trailer to make sure it is as good as possible, it was though that perhaps the sound of the quotes taken from the film were not clear and crisp enough to be heard. We sorted this problem by lowering the background noise go the clips and raising the volume of the dialogue,when listening to it again this proved successful.
Today we did research into the backing track that goes with a radio trailer, we wanted something that conveyed our genre of film as well as something that directly links to our film. We found that usually the main music or a certain soundtrack piece from a film is what is used in a radio trailer, this is called a leitmotif, these are used in films such as The Hobbit, Titanic and The Breakfast Club, they connect a certain song or musical piece to a certain film or character from a film helping to make an association between the two. This led us to chose the main soundtrack song from our film as the backing track for the radio trailer thus linking the two.
Below is the script we wrote for the Radio trailer, we chose to use three different voices, one to act as the main narrator as is conventional with professional radio trailers, one to be a contrasting voice to the narrator to add interest and excitement to our trailer and the final ones being the voices from our film.
The narrator, (in purple), is a clear and distinguished voice, which acts as the method of hinting to the audience the plot of our short film. The second narrator, (in red), acts a contrast voice to the initial narrator suggesting a confrontation or issue, which again hints at the plot. The final voices, (in black), are quotes taken directly from the film which give a flavour of our film and provide context for the audience without giving to much away.
Once upon a time... Shh quiet in the library
There lived a young girl she was young and looking for love
Why cant real guys be like the men in my stories
When one-day love found her
I see you got my sticky notes
But is all, as it appears to be?
“I love romance stories!”, “ours is a better love story though, right?”
Today we mapped out a script and thought about what we wanted to include in the radio trailer. We wanted something sweet and original. We decided to start it off as if it were a story, this instantly gives away the themes of the film and gives a suggestion into the plot line.
Following on from previous research, we had to ensure we stuck to typical codes and conventions that go with a radio trailer and so made sure we included factual information such as what, where, who and what. We also wanted to use our tag line of "Shh quiet in the library" which gives hints as to the genre and style of our film. We followed this up by thinking about using a snippet from the film itself and perhaps using the music from our film or a sound effect taken from it.
Today we created the final film titles to appear at the end of the film followed by an official end credit role. We chose to do this electronically as we felt it would look weird and unprofessional to go from our film title appearing electronically to a stop motion real life titles.
We started by using the sticky note heart we had previously created on Photoshop, and putting the image into PowerPoint. We then added movable sticky notes onto it using screenshots of the sticky note feature on MacBooks. To add text to these we used text boxes which we then placed at angles to fit over the sticky notes and look as if they were written onto the notes. We had to decide on a text font that would work well with our overall look and thought that a handwriting font would look the most effective.
