Title Ideas

Ideas for Titles

We had to ensure that the titles kept the enigma of the trailer, while giving away as much as the plot as we could so that the target audience, genre and plot were clear, conforming to Syd Field's narrative theory.

We came up with the titles:

Every moment that changes your life, changes who you are

This shows that the character in the trailer has had her life changed by something. Although, we didn't think the wording was very strong.

After this we focused on the main factors that affect the character's life. We wanted the titles to be slightly poetic, this led to:

Depression is an internal battle

Isolation is a dream killer

These titles didn't give enough of the plot away, which left the audience confused. The internal battle and dream killer parts were too vague for the audience to understand the character's journey, which means that the trailer will not attract the target audience. 

To conform to common conventional titles in social realism trailers, there is often a rhetorical question. To refer to her pain being taken away by heroin and smoking, we came up with the titles:

If there was something to take the pain away

How much would you risk to keep it?

Again, the wording of this isn't very strong which would confuse the audience again. We decided that we wanted a rhetorical question as this promotes enigma and encourages the audience to want to see the film. It also a common convention of the social realism genre.

To create better titles, we listed a range of words that are related to the plot or character of the trailer. From this, we could develop ideas.

Depression

Isolation

Addiction

Adulthood

Risks

Struggle

Freedom

Responsibility

Oblivion

We decided to use the words fight, depression and addiction in the rhetorical question.

Can she fight to take back her life 

From the depths of depression and addiction?

We decided to use the words Freedom, Responsibility, Consciousness and Pain in the rest of the titles. This gives the audience an insight to what the film includes i.e. the character having more freedom but not being able to cope with the responsibility it entails. As well as giving an insight into the characters opinions on drugs, i.e. her being conscious rather than being high causes her pain because of the bad life she leads.

With Freedom comes Responsibility

With Consciousness comes Pain 

Font Research for Billings Block

To fit the conventions of a teaser trailer, our film should have a billings block in its end screen. We would like to create our own billings block using Photoshop to use as our end screen and I therefore researched fonts online. When I searched online for fonts used in film billings block, it led me to a thread where people posted suggestions which matched the font in the posted image.

The exact font which matched the displayed billings block was called 'Bee Too' which was on font site myfonts.com. The font did fit the appearance of that in a billings block but it cost £23.20 to use. I therefore looked at the 'similar suggested fonts'.

 

On the suggested fonts I found two similar fonts. The first was on fonts2u.com and was perfect for creating a billings block due to the simple concept of using lower case letter keys as accreditation shortcuts. For example, if I typed lower case a, the entire symbol of 'WRITTEN BY' appears on screen as one character. If I typed upper case A, the letter A will appear on the screen as usual.

 This font on dafont.com, a website I am familiar with, was similar to the one above in the fact it has accreditations as single characters. I will download this font and start to create a billings block for eighteen using inspiration from existing billings blocks online.

Evaluation

• Both fonts I found were unavailable to download on the Mac I was using so I had to free space on my computer to download the fonts there
• The fonts with symbols assigned to credits were easy to use rather than typing each credit individually and aligning and altering the size of the font for each word

First Draft Initial Feedback

After sending our first draft of 'Eighteen' for review and feedback, we received the following comments on which to improve;

Improvements	Action taken
smoke productions	we will create a new production company title and remove smoke productions from the trailer
awards screen goes on too long	We shortened the frame so it lasts only 3 seconds rather than the original 5
2nd critic quote isn't on long enough to read	We lengthened the 2nd critic quote to make it long enough to read
cut out writing '2 me'	We removed the clip of the actress writing ‘2 me’ on the mirror in the bathroom scene
titles - don't give away enough of the narrative	We will discuss the narrative and choose fitting titles which allow the narrative to be briefly outlines yet still enigmatic

Music Update

As we approached our first draft deadline, we had a list of things yet to complete in our trailer, we made a list of adjustments we needed to make in order of priority and we agreed that music was the most important thing to organise. We had asked my uncle to create music but he was still producing the song so we continued to research music to use. I made a list of artists whose music would fit our trailer and searched soundcloud for remixes and covers which are available to use commercially but most didn't fit as they were too electronic/rock.

I therefore lokoed on Youtube and searced for "The XX copyright free' ad we thought The XX's song Intro fit our trailer well the first result was a song by Jacoo called Crossing winds which was inspired by the Xx's song.

 

The song is an original piece recorded by the artist but we were unsure on whether it was available to use without permission.

 

As we were unsure if the song was copyrighted or not, I emailed the artist to confirm that we could use the song and he replied almost immediately to the email to verify permission for us to use the music. We will have to give credit to the artist in the caption of the YouTube video but ultimately, we think this music fits really well so we're going to keep it.

Deconstruction of Fish Tank (inspiration)

Fish Tank is a 2009 British drama film written and directed by Andrea Arnold. The film is about Mia Williams, a volatile and socially isolated 15-year-old who lives with her single mother, Joanne.

- Mia is seen to be trapped and isolated by this never ending circle of negative representation. The idea of isolation is symbolised through the horse owned by billy, as it is chained up, has little freedom and is malnourished.   

- As Mia failed the school system she lives at home with her uncompassionate mothers and uses dancing as a form of escapism. Dancing is her dream and once she realises she’s not part of that collective identity, she gives up all hope at being a professional dancer.

- Mia has no social group and no friends except from billy resulting in a loss of identity, this would be enhanced is she went to boarding school as she would be isolated from the outside world.  
- At the last scene she looks back at her sister as she knows she has the same self-fulfilling prophecy just like she did.

- Mia has two different relationships with Connor throughout the film, one as a father figure and the other as a physical and intimate relationship, however due to her vulnerability he takes advantage of her and her situation.

-  Connor is seen as a father figure from the scenes of giving her first aid, carrying her to her bedroom and encouraging the family to bond. However this father figure is vanished when he starts to touch her and eventually sleep with her. 

- The mise-en-scene that portrays working class youths are the high rise flats, caravans, track suits, drinking and smoking, all of which are common media representations of this class.

- The subversions included the young working class girl Mia, having an ambition to be a successful dancer, this subverts common media images of working class youths because they are usually portrayed to be lazy and undetermined in life.