Poster Ideas

The first poster idea

When planning out my poster I had two main ideas in mind. One of the ideas, my intial one, was fairly obvious with a title at the top and featuring the main character posing as the image. There wasn't going to be a background and the audience's attention was intended to be directly aimed at the main character. I would have quotes and various reviews surrounding the poster as there would be a lot of free space. The character would be wearing his sunglasses and clutching a gun. I was using genre conventions so that people would know it was a crime film.
My second idea was me trying to be a bit different. Instead of focusing on the main character which seemed like the obvious choice, I decided to focus on Hao Zheng. He doesn't appear all that much in the trailer meaning he is somewhat mysterious, but it is made clear that he is the enemy. Without him the gang wouldn't exist and there wouldn't be a plot for the film, so when looked at this way he is the most important character. The title in itself "Chasing the Dragon" is a reference to Hao Zheng and Nathan wanting to kill him. I had some good shots of the Hong Kong skyline that Howard had filmed for his abandoned project and I thought they would make a good background for the poster.


Second poster idea

The Hong Kong skyline



In the end I decided on the second poster as I thought it would be more interesting and less typical. I took elements of the first poster into account and decided to have quotes and reviews around the poster as well.

Extras for Posters

Some things had to be borrow from the internet to make my poster look professional. These are things such as company logos. Here are the ones I used on my poster:

Here is the Weinstein Company logo which I got from http://cherrylane.stage.analogmethod.com/getattachment/599168c9-eb1a-4738-93df-80ba09d83e43/-!06-10-01-The-Weinstein-Company-and-Cherry-Lane-M.aspx via google images.







 This is the Miramax Films logo which I got from http://images.wikia.com/logopedia/images/2/2a/Miramax_1987_Print_Logo.png via google images.









                                                                                                          

And lastly the Trigger Street productions logo which I got from http://www.waterfrontfilm.org/images/films/Trigger_Street_Web.jpg via google images.

Film poster analysis

I decided to analyse a professional film poster to compare it with my own. The poster I chose to look at is for Django Unchained, a spaghetti Western dealing with the problems of the slave trade. The film is by Quentin Tarantino who tends to make violent films which is what we intended to do. The title is at the bottom underneath the characters which is what I have done with my poster. The names of the actors are above the title and there is a tagline at the top which I have done with my film as well.

However, there are some major differences between the two posters. The two main good characters are featured on the poster of Django with the bad character on the left. In my poster only the villain is featured on the poster. In the background of my poster there is a Hong Kong skyline, where as there is no background on the Django poster. Django deals with the problems of the slave trade, whereas my film is largely focused on a single person rather than a problem. This person is Hao Zheng who is featured on the poster, and I think this also explains why there are a few characters featured on the Django poster. Django wouldn't feature a background on the poster as the characters and the problem of slavery and the main features of the film, so the poster focuses on the characters with Leonardo DiCaprio's character representing the problem of slavery.
 

Trailer

Final Trailer

This is the completed trailer for Chasing the Dragon, made by my group consisting of me, Haydn, Abdul and Howard. I think it turned out pretty well.

Magazine Cover

A2 film poster

For the second part of the task, we were required to create the front cover for a magazine featuring our film.

Total Film magazine

Here is the magazine cover. The font is plain and white, with the title "Big Screen" being embellished. Against the dark background I think the font is quite eye catching. I got a few ideas from an issue of Total Film magazine, and used a reel of screenshots from our film at the bottom like they did in their issue. I wasn't allowed to use different films as they weren't made by me, so I just used frames from our trailer.  Along the side I used the titles of films that were coming out soon, and in a bubble I included "Special interview the cast of The Hobbit". I used a picture of Matt posing with his gun as the main picture, and a transparent picture of Abdul in the background. 

AS Music magazine

The house style is similar to that of my AS work in which I made a music magazine. You can similarities in layout of the text and the frequent use of red, but ultimately I feel you can see the progression that has been made from AS to A2. The AS work is more simple, it is just a picture with words edited on the front, but in my A2 work I feel I made better use of photoshop and the tools it offers. The logo for the featured band "The Currawongs" was just a bird that I filled in black on Photoshop, whereas in my A2 work the logo for "Chasing the Dragon" is hand drawn and edited on Photoshop.

The Chasing the Dragon logo

Filming

PROBLEMS WITH LOCATION:
During our filming the most frequent problem we faced was the location of our trailer. Initially we wanted to use Howard's dad's Chinese restaurant  This wasn't a problem and the location seem ideal. We wrote a lot of the script with this location in mind, e.g. we were going to use a panning shot which looked through the fish tank at everyone sitting at the table. The restaurant also had stairs which was vital to the script at the time. Due to the limited days we were allowed to use the restaurant however, we had to change location. A friend said we could use his garage so we got everyone that was going to be in the film and began setting up our cameras. We realised on arrival however, that the room was too dark for us to film in and nothing showed up on the cameras, so we all had to walk home in the rain and wait another day until we could film. We began to try and get the drama room in the school for use as we were running out of time and options. The drama room also had a prop cupboard which could be useful, we knew they had a gun prop which we could use.

The next issue we faced was getting everyone together on the same day. As our main actor didn't attend our sixth form, we had to pick a day when he was able to film. We did a few days of filming, getting different people we needed in on different days. As our use of the drama studio was limited, we realised we wouldn't have enough time in there to make the intro of our film, which started off at the meeting (in the drama studio). To get around this problem we decided to do a trailer instead, meaning we could visit different locations and giving us more freedom. This meant rewriting the script of course, but it wasn't difficult now that we had two new group members. Most of the dialogue used in our finished trailer was already in the original script anyway. Additional locations we used were the car park at the front and the one at the back of school, my house and the surrounding area, and the bowling alley in the town.