Making our Production Company Logo

Film Titles

As a class we decided to research into some horror film names to see which were successful and which ones we really liked, this would help us think of a film name that would be strong and effective that will strike the audience and entice them into wanting to watch the film to find out more.  
Here is a list of film names that are really powerful:


5. The Exorcist- ‘one of the minor orders in the unreformed Western Church but now suppressed in the Roman Catholic Church.’ An exorcist is someone who practices exorcism. I like how the title of the film depicts who the main character will be in the film, in addition to giving the audience an idea on the narrative of the film.   

6. Psycho- This is a short yet effective name. One word named films are often striking and depicts a lot. Psycho was one of the first Slasher films around and the name of this film has the idea of Slasher in it, as it is short and hard hitting. The definition of Psycho is ‘a deranged and/or psychopathic person who is mentally ill or unstable’ and ‘one who displays violent behaviour.’

7. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre- I like how the name of this film is the name of the location it is shot in. The fact that Texas is a large area creates a feeling of mystery. I think this is something we could incorporate this into our film title as our film is set in a forest on the Isle of Wight.

8. Paranormal activity- The definition of paranormal is ‘beyond the range of the normal experience or scientific explanation.’ With this in the title it gives the impression that very strange things will happen as it is named ‘paranormal activity’

Delay With Filming

Unfortunately our plans to film over the weekend have been halted due to the weather conditions. Over the weekend (18th-20th) it snowed, this meant that it would be too dangerous to travel to our chosen location. In addition there would be terrible continuity in the film trailer and the shots would not go together well, also the snow would make the scene lighter which would take away the effect of horror in our film trailer. It would also have been too cold to shoot in the weather due to the costumes that are being worn and how cold it was.

Peter Greenaway

Peter Greenaway is a British film director. His work ranges from feature length films, short films, paintings and novels.  I have been informed that he uses in most of his work.        Some of his most successful and well known films include:

The Cook the Thief His Wife & Her Lover (1989)

The Pillow Book (1996)

Nightwatching (2007)

The Draughtsman's Contract (1982)

Drowning by Numbers (1988)

When I visited his IMBD page under ‘Trade Mark’ it says “The number 92 is prominent in his films: 92 "Falls" in The Falls. 92 languages in The Falls. 92 suitcases belonging to Tulse Luper, a character in The Falls”. His film “Drowning by Numbers” also features numbers as a key element; the three generation of women, all with the same name, then both visually and spoken numbers appear in the scenes which count from one to 100. The same story is repeated three times.

Another Trademark that Greenaway uses in his films is that they often feature strong manipulative female characters.

Also Greenaway usually shoots scenes in hospitals, where characters are bedridden and immobile.

These are all brilliant trademarks that are all noticeable in his films.

I think I will be able to use Greenaway’s trademark as further inspiration for both the film plot and trailer.

Problems with filming

Over the Christmas period it hasn't stopped raining.
Therefore we have been unable to go out to shoot any footage because we didn't want to risk the equipment out in the rain.
Also if we shot footage in this weather, when it came to editing the footage together there would be serious continuity problems as one shot would be on a clear day and the other on a rainy day.

Quentin Tarantino

Quentin Tarantino is a well-known American film director. As a film director he has to guarantee that the film narratives he creates will be successful and pleasing to the audience. As well as directing he also, screen writes, produces and acts this shows that he takes part in every aspect of behind the scenes work in the films that he makes.
Some of his most successful and well-known films include:
Reservoir dogs (1992)
Pulp Fiction (1994)
Jackie Brown (1997)
True Romance (1993)
Kill Bill (2003)

His most recent film out is Django Unchained and will be released in UK cinemas on the 18/01/2013.        
Throughout the genre and narrative of his films you can see a consistent pattern as these films all fall under the genre of crime/ thriller. In his films he has applied Vladimir Propp’s theory of character functions. There is always a ‘villain’, however this may not be a main character but there is always a villain. The role of the ‘princess’ is always filled however, in Kill Bill Tarantino has reversed the roles and the ‘Hero’ is played by a woman and the ‘Princess’ is played by a man, by doing this Tarantino has broken the usual conventions of film by swapping the roles and making the female appear more powerful than the male.

Trademarking

Tarantino’s films contain many trademarks that are used as a ploy for the audience to remember his work and if they like his films then they will be enticed to watch another of his upcoming films. His films will usually include one long unbroken take during which a certain character is followed around. This trademark helps the audience recognise the film as a Tarantino film. The long break is a powerful element as it has a component of the Enigma Code, this is effective because you don’t know what is going to happen next, and therefore the audience are left wondering what action is going to occur. Another trademark in a Tarantino film is that there is always something Dutch included in the films, this could be a name of a character, a brand name on an object the character is using, or even a street name. Tarantino also uses unconventional storytelling devices such as the chapter format he uses in the film Kill Bill: Vol 1. This way of naming the film a though it were a book is a unique idea, I believe we could incorporate this aspect into our discussion of film trailer names.

Tarantino’s films are very influential and the way he has trademarked his films is a very good idea. I believe this is an Idea we should include within our trailer.

Narrative Theorists

I was looking through my old GCSE media studies books from when I was studying film trailers for the first time, and I came across all of my old notes about narrative theory and the four main narrative theorists: Vladimir Propp, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Rolande Barthes and Tzvetan Todorov. We studied these in class recently but however I decided to go home and research them into more depth and once I had found my old notes I decided to use my old notes along side my Alevel notes (which are more in depth), as well as then research more about these theorists.

 

Vladamir Propp

Propp studied folk tales and legends from many different countries and noticed they all were very similar. They appeared to be about the same basic problems and the same character types appeared in most of the folk tales.
During his study Propp identified 32 basic categories of action which he called ‘functions’, as well as identifying a set of basic spheres of action or character functions. He focused on the way characters in folk tales tended to be types rather than individuals. here are the main eight that he believed were used most commonly throughout film productions:

• The Hero (who is on the quest)
• The Villain (who opposes the hero)
• The Donor (who helps the hero by giving him a magical tool)
• The Dispatcher (who starts the hero on his way)
• The False Hero (who tempts the hero away from his quest)
• The Helper (who helps the hero)
• The Princess (who is the reward for the hero)
• The Princess' Father (who rewards the hero for his efforts)

These characters don't necessarily have to be people just so long as the item or person holds the same responsibility as the name given, for example the princess it stereotypically the winning prise for the prince. So this could be a human or even a valuable object. One character and item can also posses two of these theory characters. However not all texts are conventional with these principals. This is why Propp can be an unreliable way of deconstructing certain texts.

Claude Lévi-Strauss

Lévi-Strauss was a structural philosopher, he was interested in binary oppositions, for example, night/day, good/bad/, light/dark, inside/outside. Lévi-Strauss realised that these oppositions often structured texts such as stories, plays as well as films.

Thinking about advertisements, washing powder companies rely on the ‘before/after’ contrast, whereas when you think about News Reports they tend to be structured as binary opposites, the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’, that way it enables them to present a story easily.

Rolande Barthes

Barthes was interested in concepts such as negotiated meaning between institution and audience. He argued that the audience produces new meanings when reading a text, the audience would do so by making use of previous experiences as well as the text itself.  The cultural content of consumption becomes as important as the content of the text. He described texts as networks which can be related closely to the current multimedia texts, For example websites and the different ways in which the audience interacts with these texts.

The most well known of Barthes’ theories is probably the enigma code. The enigma code in its simplest form is the hook or the mystery that needs to be resolved for the audience. For example a series of a TV show could use ‘Next time on …’, ‘The adventure continues…’ or ‘Come back next week to find out what happens’. Trailers for new films use the hook more often as a film trailer is a non-linear narrative and the trailer would show frames from the film and usually end with a frame which uses the hook method as it just ends on a ‘cliff hanger’ which then hooks the audience in to see what happens next.

Tzvetan Todorov

Todorov suggested that there are five stages to a narrative:

• Equilibrium
• A Disruption of this equilibrium by an event
• A Realisation that a disruption has happened
• An Attempt to repair the damage of the disruption
• A Restoration of equilibrium- which could be a new equilibrium

These stages can be applied to fictional and non-fictional texts and can be used as a good starting point for identifying the structure of a text.

For example, when thinking about advertisements again, food companies can use this narrative form, where the mother has to make a quick nutritious meal for her family who then become a perfect family when confronted with the meal as a restoration to the disruption (hunger).