Progress Report - Pre-production

The media coursework was officially set last week and in this time myself and my two partners have been working hard on the pre-production planning and paperwork. We all created an idea for the campaign to focus on and conducted an analysis of each using a SWOT in order to ascertain which production we should proceed with. Due to factors such as how capable of filming the production we were with our limited skills and resources and which would work best as a trailer we decided to use my idea.

Once the basic idea was decided on we had to then carry out research so we could develop it into a full product. I researched three professionally produced trailers for current media products namely Cloverfield (Matt Reeves, 2008), Inception (Christopher Nolan, 2010) and Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino, 2009). This research provided a great deal of insight into the different narrative structures that could be used in a trailer. For example Cloverfield uses a continuous timeline from a fairly small section of the film, Inception uses a discontinuous timeline in which significant parts of the film are put together like a montage and finally Inglourious Basterds uses a mixture of the two with a continuous speech from Brad Pitt running throughout but also with clips from throughout the film added in with the speech running over them.

From this research we decided to use a narrative structure similar to that of Inglourious Basterds with some continuity but also with other clips from throughout the film put in. The continuity within our film stems from a section of dialogue which our female protaganist says. The extra clips are going to be used in order to enhance the meaning behind the speech and hopefully the combination of these will build lots of tension within the audience.

Further parts of our production were also guided by the research, for example whether to use diegetic sound, non-diegetic sound or both. Cloverfield used purely diegetic sound which did add to the verisimilitude of the production, Inception used purely non-diegetic sound in the way of music which greatly added to the tension and Inglourious Basterds which again is the one we decided to follow used a mix of diegetic and non-diegetic sound. This is a fairly conventional format for a trailer and hopefully this will lead to the audience being able to identify with and understand the messages we’re trying to portray through the trailer such as that of high tension.

Research into the advertising codes of practice and UK legal frameworks which might affect our production. The main thing we picked up from this was concerning the BBFC classification which would suit our film most appropriately. We had originally decided the film would be an 18 and the trailer a 15 because films that fall within the genre of thrillers are often in this higher age category. However, after looking at such variables as the tone and impact of the production, discrimination rules and rules regarding sex and violence amonst others we decided to classify our film as a 15 and the trailer as a 12A. This is because the content within the film idea and the content actually in the trailer seemed to lie within the rules governing the 15 and 12A age restrictions respectively.

After the initial planning and research was done we had to begin to actually develop the idea and put it down on paper. Up unitl this point the production idea was nothing more than a collection of vague shots that we could possibly use which made this part of the pre-production process probably the most difficult. The main contentions we faced were whether we were capable of filming the ideas, whether they created enough tension and whether they were actually layed out in the style of a trailer. The first idea for example ended up looking too much like an opening sequence and while this could be used as a trailer it did not meet the plan we devised from the research.