Welcome Back! Film Poster presentations.

Learning objective:

To identify elements of film posters through research and planning for use in a film poster you have created..

Key words: 
Enigma.
This is a puzzle or a mystery contained within the text. A fim poster or trailer, for example will only give snippets of narrative, not the whole story in the hope that the audience will come to see the film to find out the rest.

Your film posters should be complete or nearing completion.
On Thursday April 23rd you will deliver a short presentation to the class describing aspects of your poster. The presentation and poster will be marked as an assessment task.
You will need to consider the following when describing your work.

Genre: 
How visual and technical codes have been used to classify the film genre.
Lettering/Font styles
Characters
Body language
Setting

Theory:
Have you applied Propp or Todorov narrative theory to your work? Say so!

Film industry:
What can you say about how the film industry promotes its films?
Reviews. Distribution. Social Media.
Have you included aspects of these in your post.

In addition, you need to make the following pieces of work available and easy to find in your orange folders:

1. Two or three examples of posters from the genre that you are dealing with. ONE of these should be annotated with the main conventions clearly indicated.
2. A short synopsis of your film which was peer assessed.
3. A mood board showing four backgrounds which will reflect the setting for your 'film'.
4. A mood board which shows four film titles using relevant fonts for the genre you are dealing with.
5. A mood board which shows iconography of the genre you are dealing with.
6. An A4 plan showing a rough design for your poster, this needs to be annotated with the conventions of film posters visible.

The order for Presentation is as follows:

1 Jordan Daniels

2 Joseph Groves

3 Charlie Kirk

4 Joseph Lewin

5 Albert Moyo

6 Conor Stirup

7 Jayson White

8 Kieran Wright

Success criteria:

Year 10 Written task success criteria
Knowledge of the concept of genre/narrative/representation
Awareness of relevant theories
Demonstrates knowledge of the convergent nature of contemporary media
Use of media terminology/key words
Quality of written communication

Homework: To be submitted on Monday 27th April by e-mai to Mr Ealey.

Create a mood board containing at least four examples of how enigmas have been used in film posters.

March 10th Film Poster preparation.

Learning objective:
To organise my folder with the pre production research I have carried out.
To identify and to create a mood board of iconography relevant for my film poster.

By now you should have four pieces of work in your folder as research for the creation of your own poster.

When you are in a position to submit these tasks you are to design your own poster using paper and pencil. Your designs need to have all the conventions of posters annotated and prepare to take photographs of the main characters in your film. See Mr Ealey with your designs.

• Two or three examples of posters from the genre that you are dealing with. ONE of these should be annotated with the main conventions clearly indicated.

Below is an example of an annotated film poster

• A short synopsis of your film which was peer assessed.
• A mood board showing four backgrounds which will reflect the setting for your 'film'.
• A mood board which shows four film titles using relevant fonts for the genre you are dealing with.

TASK 1:
Print each piece of work out and put into your folder for marking.

TASK 2:
Create a mood board which shows iconography of the genre you are dealing with.

Below is an example of a mood board showing British Gangster iconography.

Film Posters. Synopses and loglines

Lesson objective: 
To identify the difference between tagline and log line.
To prioritise the characters and events of my 'film' in preparation for a film poster creation.
To carry out and receive peer assessment on log lines.

Keywords: Tagline and log line, synopsis, characters, setting, genre.

In preparation for the poster that you will produce for this half term's main assessment you should by now have:

• Identified two posters from the same genre as your film.
• Be able to discuss the visual codes on those posters and say what makes them successful.
• An idea of a title for your film which will appeal to the primary target audience.
• Know who the main characters are in your film.
• Know where your film is set.

Your next task is to write a one paragraph synopsis
(The plural form of synopsis is synopses.)

A screenplay synopsis summarizes a screenplay for a reader such as an agent, director or producer. 
If the reader likes the synopsis, he or she may ask to see the screenplay itself. 
A screenplay is a script development of the synopsis.
A synopsis includes only the most important or interesting parts of the story. 
It must clearly show the necessary elements of the screenplay so the reader will know that you understand how to structure a script for a movie.

A big part of writing a successful synopsis is being able to come up with a log line.

• What is the difference between a logline and a tagline?

A “logline” is a movie’s concept boiled down to one or two sentences:

On his deathbed, a father tells the story of his life the way he remembers it: full of wild, impossible exaggerations. His grown son tries to separate the truth from the fantasy before it’s too late.

A “tagline” is a short, clever one-off found on a movie’s poster:

An adventure as big as life itself.

A logline can be thought of as the shortest possible pitch of a movie — what a writer could use to sell an idea to a buyer in just a sentence or two. Taglines are used by marketing departments to sell movies to audiences.

Task 1: Use the handout provided to write a log line for your film. 
Refer to the spider diagrams from last lesson.

The logline is at most two sentences that sum up your screenplay. You can think of the logline as the description you might read on the website of a movie theater or in the information box of the program guide on your television.

Here are some examples of good and bad log lines:

AFTERGLOW (1997) – Two unhappy couples cross paths.
BAD -- What exactly is it in this film which makes these couples interact, and what make them interesting to watch?

ALL THE RIGHT MOVES (1983) – A Pennsylvania steel-town. ambitious and hot headed high school coach tries to spoil a football hero’s scholarship dream.
GOOD – This gives a fairly clear sense of what is at stake and what the concerns of the movie are (character).

BIG NIGHT (1996) – Two very different brothers promote their struggling 1950s New Jersey Italian restaurant by inviting Louis Prima and his band to take part in a sumptuous dinner there.
GOOD – The plot line seems to hinge on the characters. There is a story through line.

BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY (1995) – An Iowa housewife, stuck in her routine, must choose between true romance and the needs of her family.
BASICALLY GOOD – Gives a sense of the character and the story

DENNIS THE MENACE (1993) – Comic strip moppet plays pranks on Mr. Wilson.
BAD – Though it is clear how shallow this film is, there is no attempt to give the reader a flavor of what makes the pranks interesting or different.

EDWARD SCISSORHANDS (1990) – A suburban mother brings home a freaky young man who has scissors instead of hands.
SO-SO – Though this certainly describes the start of the film, it does little to describe the film’s tone or central stranger in a strange land message of the film.

FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE (1965) – A man with no name and a man with a mission hunt a Mexican bandit for different reasons.
GOOD – A taut description of two characters, their conflict and their mission.

GRADUATE (1967) - A college graduate, home for the summer, has an affair with the wife of his father’s business partner, then falls in love with her daughter.
BAD – Describes the plot outline but fails to give the setting (What time frame? The 60s mean something in terms of Hoffman’s revolt) or any sense of the central conflict of the film. What are the interesting conflicts? Who is this graduate (we need adjectives), what does the wife character want?

Introduce the main characters and setting in one paragraph. Include the names (who), their occupations (what), where they live and work (where), the time period of the story (when), and the reason you are telling their story (why).

• Type the names of the characters in all capital letters the first time their names appear. Thereafter, type the character names in the usual way.
• Characters that should be included in the synopsis are the protagonist (hero), the antagonist (villain), the love interest, and any important allies of the protagonist. Less important characters can be left out or not named in the synopsis.

Task 2: Peer assessment. 

Swap log lines with a neighbour and write down the positives and negatives of what they have done.

Task 3: Source four possible backgrounds for your poster from the Internet .

Make it clear to the target audience where your film is set, where the action will take place.

Save the backgrounds on a moodboard created in Adobe Photoshop.

Name the document Poster 1 - moodboard.