Inspiration for Our Film

Another inspiration for our film was the film 'Precious', which itself was based on a novel called 'Push' by Sapphire. This movie shows an illiterate and obese girl who has been impregnated by her drunk and abusive father twice and lives at her dysfunctional home with her abusive mother. Her first born has down-syndrome and lives with her grandmother. The family survive in the ghetto and finance themselves from welfare.

The film poster is her walking on her own with cartoon drawn butterfly wings and a crown on top of her. This is shown to be how special and precious the girl is, the background is white to symbolise the purity of the girl, or maybe the girls character (as we know she is a mother of 2 kids).

This gave us an inspiration because of the way she carries with her life and goes on to raise her second son by herself even though she has all these domesticate problems. This is inspiring to our character as he would have to raise his kid despite loosing all his friends, not being able to go to parties and of course not being able to talk to girls (due to him carrying the baby).

Three Men and A Baby Poster Analysis

Three Men and A Baby is a comedy starring Tom Seleck, Steve Guttenberg and Ted Danson.  It follows the mishaps and adventures of three bachelors as they attempt to adapt their lives to pseudo-fatherhood with the arrival of one of the men's love child. It follows their change from their bachelor lifestyle to adulthood. Three Men and a Baby was the biggest American box office hit of 1987, surpassing Fatal Attraction and eventually grossing US$167 million in the US alone.

The movie poster shows the three guys holding up the baby with comical expressions, it shows the baby, being held by Tom Seleck, urinating on him. This shows the comical side of having a baby. They guys on the sides show their support, shown by the hands on shoulders and supporting the baby while it urinates on Tom Seleck. The clothes the men are wearing seem  to be quiet formal and behind a white background to show to show the purity of the characters.

This movie is very similar to our as it shows the change from the 'bachelor' lifestyle to the parenting life style. This is the case for our main character, he goes from being one of the most popular boy in school to being a fully fledged dad looking after his baby. 

Fast & Furious 6 Movie Poster

The new poster for the upcoming Fast and Furious 6 movie is really basic. The movie is the sixth and final installment of hugely popular franchise. The movie stars Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson and Michelle Rodriguez. The teaser trailer was first shown on the half time SuperBowl spot along with the new IronMan 3 and the new Star Trek: Into Darkness.

The 2 poster shows both Vin Diesel and Paul Walker, standing next to their car on an empty and deserted  highway looking into the horizon. Right next to them, there is the caption 'All roads lead to this', this concretes the fact that this is the final movie. In the poster, the camera seems to be on the floor with Vin Diesel and Paul Walker in the centre of the poster. Their clothes are very casual, and also their body language. Paul Walker seems to be leaning on his car with his hands in his pockets, whereas Vin Diesel seems to be more serious, almost seems to be walking towards something or even someone. There have been speculations that Vin Diesel's characters "Dom", his girlfriend, who seems to have died in the fourth movie, she returns but against Dom. Maybe she is the person that Vin Diesel is going towards and Paul Walker is just leaning back and just observing.

The cars the two are leaning on are muscle cars, Paul Walkers car is Blue and Vin Diesel's car is red. Blue is associated with trust and peace and loyalty and integrity, this is very much like the character of Paul Walker, Brian who was an ex-cop (suggesting the peace and integrity) and has been with 'Dom' since the beginning and is always helping him out (matching with trust and loyalty). Vin Diesel's car is coloured red, which may indicate they are ready to take action, or they may be passionate about what they are going to be doing, or again it may mean that they are feeling angry. This definitely matches 'Doms' character, he feels passionate about knowing his girlfriend is still live, he is ready to take action (his body language shown in the poster) and also feeling angry for what his girlfriend (who is played by Michelle Rodriguez) 'Letty' is still alive.

 The background of the poster is very basic, it is very bright sunny day with the blue sky with only white puffy clouds there. As the sky and the ground join, the horizon is practically white and you can't see it, this is maybe a connected to the movie as the people don't what will happen with the situation of 'Dom' and 'Letty'.

The reason the poster works well is because of the simplicity of it, there are only the main character(s) and their cars on an empty road. I was thinking that we could do something like that for our film poster, for example, we could do something like our two main characters (me and Ainsley) just on an empty road to symbolise their tight friendship or their vast complex simplicity of their situation.

The Dark Knight Rises Alternate Poster

This is the poster of the final Batman film made by Christopher Nolan. The poster composes a protagonist of the film Bane, the villain, walking away from the front of the poster. This creates a sense of mystery from the character as the audience is unable to see his face and he leaves no signs to what kind of person he is. The poster also consists of a broken batman mask which Bane is walking away from which indicates to the audience that Bane has something to do with the batman mask being broken. Also, the mask being broken has also indicated that the Batman is either defeated or even killed by the Bane character. This effect is helped by the dark, gloomy, rainy background chosen as it creates a negative mood for the audience and adds to the indication of a bad ending for the Batman. The poster also has a phrase composed in the top centre of the poster adding on to the negative effect of this poster as it states ' The legend Ends'. From this poster we could use the gloomy atmosphere used as the background as in our film, we have a gloomy and revengeful atmosphere which is like the one created by this poster. 

Hangover 3 Trailer

This is the trailer to final instalment to the very famous Hangover franchise starring Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Justin Bartha and Zach Galifianakis. The Hangover Part 1 was and still is the highest grossing comedy film of all time directed by Todd Phillips (Due Date, Project X).

In the trailer, it begins at a funeral with someone singing almost opera like, we then find out its the character of Zack Galifianakis, 'Alan'. This somehow is amusing to the audience as he is the comedians in the film with stupidity and ignorance. This kinda gives you a mix feeling of emotion as it is funny with Alan singing and the character of Bradley Cooper, 'Phil' saying "My God, he's got the voice of an angel'. There is an element of sadness as it is someone’s funeral, we catch a glimpse of Jeffrey Tambor's picture so there is a hint that it might be his death, in the movie. The music abruptly changes to the rock and glimpses of Las Vegas's buildings.

There are a variety of shots of the 3 characters doing what they do best; causing mayhem. There's a voice over saying "Someone needs to burn this city to the ground", this sets the audience in the mind of an action-comedy. The following shots are a mix of both gun shooting and someone being killed, and also comedy scenes with "Alan", in this scene there is no music, the very quiet sounds in the background, the music resumes with a long shot with silhouette figures running in the distance and the a handheld shot of "Alan" running from a guy in a pig mask.

Throughout the trailer, it shows both action scenes and comedy scenes, however the comedy scenes are very obvious, the music stops and the attention is all on the characters, whereas in the action scene have music and are very quick paced, maybe to suggests the pace of the movie.

In many trailers, especially in horror and comedy films, they show the funniest/scariest scene at the end, and the trailer has been no exception. The last scene sees "Alan" driving with a giraffe in a cage and it suggests that he kills the giraffe and causes a huge accident in the background. If someone who has seen the previous Hangover films, will know that this is typical "Alan" behaviour.

Star Trek, J.J. Abrams Issue Analysis.

The new and highly anticipated Star Trek: Into Darkness was the big talk in the most recent Empire issue. This magazine cover breaks the conventions for majority of magazine covers as it opens out to a long poster. 

The magazine cover is entirely based on the Star Trek movie, it has the futuristic city in the background, with the 4 main character in the front. The colour of 'Empire' is a similar if not almost the same colour as Chris Pine's (Who plays Captain Kirk) top. From the magazine cover, the audience can already tell who the good and bad guys are. Benedict Cumberbatch's character John Harris is in very dark lighting and can just about see his facial expression, whereas the other 3 characters you see very clearly. It is very rare that you see a female character on the front cover who isn’t a 'damsel in distress'. Also, there are no other promotions for new upcoming films, just a few small mentions of them at the bottom. The main eye-catching text is the J.J. Abrams in the same colour as the 'Empire'. It is written that this issue of Empire is dedicated to J.J. Abrams, says that 'How a film became the most powerful director in the galaxy'. This is a big claim as it is saying that he is bigger that Steven Spielberg, Peter Jackson and Michael Bay.
Also, following the conventions of Empire magazine, at the bottom it tells us news of 'The New Star Wars', Empire always link in upcoming movies with the main movie in the front cover, especially if they are in the same genre. Star Trek and Star Wars are similar genres, Sci-Fi.
We could use the idea of having an exclusive poster with all the actors from our film into a poster only available for selected Empire Magazines. This would increase our audience range as Empire is the most bought film magazine, so by many people buying the magazine and a few people getting the exclusive long poster, there’s a chance they might be tempted to go out and watch the film. 

Initial Ideas

Our initial ideas are about a coming to age drama about a young boy who is a typical 'London lad', he likes to go out, go clubbing, into sports and highly into girls. he goes to a party at one of his mates and ends up sleeping with a girl from the party. 9 months later he finds a baby at his doorstep with a note "He's all yours". So for the whole duration of the teaser trailer it shows how he goes from being the teen whos always out partying to a teen whos always in taking care of his responsibilities.

This projet can be compared to movies such a 3 Men and A Baby and Juno and novels such as Boys Dont Cry by Malorie Blackman. We decided this idea because we wanted to do something a bit more realistic and a bit more to the social dilemas facing many young teenagers of day and age.

Empire Magazine's 'The Hobbit' Posters

Due to the big buzz of Peter Jackson's new big blockbuster 'The Hobbit', Empire Online released 5 limited edition magazines covers in 3D showing the 5 main characters. The movie is a prequel to the very famous and popular Lord of the Rings franchise. In the posters, the audience can only see the main characters in their environment, the colour scheme of the posters emphasise the type of character they are. For example, Bilbo Baggins colour scheme is natural, maybe to show his type of character, Gollum's colour scheme is very dark, again to show his dark character and the Princess's colour scheme is white to show purity. These poster break the original conventions of the 'Empire' text in front of the characters, in this case the text is behind the character again emphasising the importance of the character. The business behind the 5 different posters is also very unique, as this is the first time that Empire have released 5 different posters that cost 6.99 (pounds), and if you check online, already 2 of the 5 have been sold out, showing that the film's key demographic have really shown an interest in the film and the posters.

Even though our film is not related this film, nor the type of genre, this advertising technique is influencing my group to produce 3 different movie posters. Since our film is focusing on 2 boys, we thought that we could make 2 posters focusing on the individual and the third one with the final confrontation at the end. We got this idea from the 'The Dark Knight Rises' posters. There are many individual posters with the main protagonist and then the final with only Batman, Catwoman and Bane, as shown below:

Anchorman 2 Teaser Trailer & Poster

This is the teaser trailer and poster for the new 'cult-comedy' AnchorMan: The Legend Continues. The first film, directed by Adam McKay (2004) and starring Will Ferrell, Paul Rudd and Steve Carrel. Even though the film was made in 2004, it is a tongue-in-cheek take on the culture of the 1970's, particularly on the new 'action-news' format. The film is #100 on Bravos '100 Funniest Films' and #113 on Empires Greatest Films of all Time.

The teaser trailer starts with a very patriotic voice over, with 4 character walking in front of big stage lights to create a silhouette effect, suggesting that this new film has a new set of characters, which would be very upsetting for the fans of the fist film as Will Ferrell and others made the film famous. There is a long stretched out deep tone with sounds of numerous footsteps walking in sync towards the camera. As they get closer the body shape of the characters become more prominent. The camera cuts to shot of their shoes, still in silhouette, as they stop, the colour is shown (just like image of the poster). This has the audience wondering who the 4 characters are. The camera cuts to medium-close up of Will Ferrell saying 'Hey America, did you miss my hot breath in your ear?'. This breaks the tension with some comedy one liners, the next few shots show all the original character all talking about what's we are going to expect from the film. Every line each character say has comedic feel to it. When it comes to Steve Carrell's turn he says 'And now its my turn to talk...', the people who have seen the previous film would know that his character hardly says anything but plays more a 'Charlie Chaplin' character, he was very clumsy. He was also not a bright character, this is shown in the trailer as he just stares at camera with a blank expression and his colleagues just look at him annoyed. Will Ferrell cuts in his normal voice and says 'Look its gonna be a fun movie' and then shows the tittle of the film with a background full of stage lights, suggesting that the film is going to be almost 'Hollywood-sheeque' and very glitzy and glamour. The trailer ends with Will Ferrell back in character saying 'Its time to do all over again, but this time I'm on top'. The use of this sexual innuendo was what made the character of Will Ferrell and the movie famous, and the fact that he is sipping what maybe tea, from a cup with their channels '#4' logo, which many ans of the first movie would remember.

The poster is very basic and doesn't give that much away about the film; it is still image from part of the teaser trailer. It shows 4 people in suits and shoes (which are not in your formal or normal colours, this gives it a comedic touch). They seem to be standing on a stage, as there are stage lights all around them, and the floor looks to be very polished as you can see their vague reflection on the floor. There are no actor’s producers or directors names around the poster, it is very basic it just says 'AnchorMan: The Legend Continues' in gold block capital; this is almost matches the old school 'SuperMan' comic book covers. This may be a comical way of saying that Ron Burgundy (Will Ferrell's character) is coming back in 2013 to save the audience.