Lizzy and Helena's website preparation

Lizzy and I spent a long time looking at film websites before we designed ours. We realised, that almost all the more recent sites we looked at had welcome pages im which the trailer is shown along with a large picture..and THEN the option to 'Enter site', rather than go straight to a home page. We have decided to do this as we think its a very current theme to do, especially with Rom Coms. It will make the wesite look more professional and will also give us a chance to show off our trialer.

We will then go onto the home page, which is undoubtedly one of the most important pages. As you can see from the template it will show lots of options on where the user will want to go to in the site, along with the option to see the trailer again. The website is an important selling point for any film, therefore we think it's very important that we get it to look as authentic as possible, in order to give our film versimilitude and be taken seriously.

We have decided to use a mixture of Serif page plus, in which you can do things in webpage size, and Dream Weaver, where we will be able to work in code too. Using both of these programs well give us the best of both worlds in being able to use something relitively easy, but then having a chance to alter it in the dream weaver, in order to give it a professional edge. Of corse this is just the plan for how the progress will go, but we are prepared! -Helena

Website template/Layout - Rough

This is the template for our website, its very rough so apologies, we are just getting to grips with the programme "Serif page plus" We used it for out poster but it is very different for websites. From making the templates we know where we want to put all our titles photos and what content we want on the website. We wanted things like premier photos, interviews and a photo gallery along with our trailer which will appear on the website twice. The websites will have the same kind of colour scheme that our poster had, Reds, whites and blacks for the titles and Autumn colours for the photos and hyperlinks. There will be recurrent themes of leaves.
We have decided to have another photoshoot where all the characters are involved so that we can have photos for them on their biographys. Maybe we will have photos of ourselfs as directors to put on as well. Watch this space.

- Helena & Lizzy

Final draft of poster...For now!

This is our final draft! I managed to overcome the size problem of the photo by cropping the photos and then enlarging them. The photos were too big before to fit on the page completely. But we realised that cropping them and making them close up makes the audience focus on their eyes and face more making it more romantic. We are very please with this final draft as it is how we imagined it to be. We think it looks very professional especially with the font used at the bottom of the poster. (which we found from a very use full website source) We were also pleased with the 5 star quote from Empire a known film magazine and with the date of the film realise, February 14th which again goes with the love theme.
Possible improvement that we have been thinking about are: Putting "from the directors of Max Kill" mine and Helena's last film, this is common of film posters and rearranging the photos so that all the written information is inbeween the photos.
We hope you like it!

-Lizzy

Conventions of a Romantic Comedy

Romantic comedies are movies with light-hearted, humorous dramatic stories centered around romantic ideals such as a "true love" or the "perfect couple." Romantic comedy films are a sub-genre of comedy films as well as of romance films.

One of the conventions of romantic comedy films is the encounter of two partners in unusual or comic circumstances, known as the 'meet cute' situation. In our film we have developed quite an idividual 'meet cute' situation where they meet over the internet. Therefore when meeting each other in realy life it leads to quite comic circistances in order to cover up the lies they have told each other.

The film has morals and idealogies that believe in true love and having faith that love will conquer all. This is shown as, stereotypically, the characters have to fight to make sure their relationship works out. It all works out in the end and, of corse, there is a happy ending.
-Helena

Storyboard

This is our storyboard of out film:

We drew each picture when talking about what kind of shots we wanted in our trailer. We followed it quite well when filming and made sure we covered all of it, but at the same time we didn't completely stick to it. We let our selfs film shots that we thought of at the time too, this gave us the freedom to use our spontaneous imaginations and is going to give us a wider range of choice when editiing. Therefore this storyboard is a very lose idea of what our film will be like. Although not all the shots may not be exactly the same, it is a good idea of the order and structure we are using to make the trialer.

We have tried to get a range of shots in, both long and short, in order to show variation in the trialer and to show off our knowledge and abilities. We haven't choosen lots of complicated shots such as tracking on a dolly or big swerves as it's only a small trialer therefore we wanted to pack as much in as possible.

We have a mixture of angles and use different lengths to give different effects within our shots. For example the close up shots are usually used to show moments of intense emotion. A particular example of this in our tralier is the entreme close up of Lucy crying. It intesifies the emotion for the audience and gives them an idea of the kind of things in the film.

We also have shots they set the scene, giving the audience an idea of our location, a very important ingredient to many a Richard Curtis Rom Com. Therefore we took the oppurtunity to take a pan of the beautiful Oxford City Sky Line. This is not only an impressive shot to use as it shows our variation and ability, but it also is a striking view that draws the audience in. We also have other shots that quickly set the scene of the room or the moment, day or evening that the part of the film is shot in. An example of this is the shot of the 'Wine scene' with the three women sat around the table. This gives a good idea of mise en scene.

We chose to have a birdseye shot of some hands typing at a computer, that is used more than a couple of times through out the trialer. This keeps the theme of the fact they met on the internet in mind and is nice idea of bringing everything in the film back to the fact the whole relationship started there. We are also using black outs as a dramtic effect in the trailer. They are often used in film trailers and give emphasise to the line before. They are also a useful device of moving on in the trialer to a new setting, character or subject.
-Helena

Website Research

I Have been looking at websites, at the information that is on them and what kind of methods they use to get their information across. The love actually one is very complex, it has videos of each character in their particular scene. This means lots of hyperlinks all linked to pages of videos, I hope that for our website we can do a similar thing but instead of videos have information about each character. The colours and themes of the website should match the poster and the font we use in the trailer. Below is a link to the website:

http://www.loveactually.com/

I have also been looking at the You've got mail website, the website has made use of the theme of mail, it uses the same sounds and logos that are used for email to tell us a bit about what the movie is about. It to has hyperlinks to different sections, the hyperlinks are quote from the film "Do you think we should meet" etc. It uses the same font that is used in the film and on the poster, even on the dvd. I hope our websites ends up being a bit more advanced than this one, a bit more modern, with more detail, more photos of the characters.

http://youvegotmail.warnerbros.com/cmp/0frameset.html

Another website I have found it the Music and Lyrics website, this has loads of stuff for people to do, view pictures, downloads, "create your own 80s glam band" and other such things, it is a very high standard website. I like the photo that is used on the main page, but it would be impossible for Helena and I to create something like that first hand.

http://musicandlyrics.warnerbros.com/

-Lizzy

Poster Research

When thinking about the kind of poster we wanted to create, we started by looking at muliple Rom com posters. We particulary liked the poster for 'I Could Never be your Woman'...



We really liked the two simple pictures that focused on the two main characters faces. Showing expressions that fitted their personalities. The fact it's pictures of both a woman and man, tells the audience that straight away it's going to be a love story.

The font is simple but effective, the colour red captures the audience and emphasizes certain words. The flower gives the poster a girlier feel, but doesn't give the impression that it's not something boys could enjoy too. I think it's subtle but effective as it pays that little bit more attention to the female audience, the kind of audience who are more likely to see the film.

We also looked at a very similar poster from another Rom Com called 'The Holiday':



Once again it follows the classic conventions of a Romantic Comedy poster. The two pictures show loved up couples who are the main characters. The font is simple but pretty and overall it captures the essence of what the film is about.

Although we could have gone for the classic 'lean' convention that is shown in many film posters such as 'Pretty Woman', we dicided that the this theme often shows seductivity or immaturity in characters, which is not what we want to convey. We want to convey a mature relationship that is based on love.



Along with the poster we are currently creating we are looking at creating a poster similar to that of '500 days of Summer'..



This is because we like the idea of multiple pictures that build up an essence of character in the poster. We also have alot of fantastic photos from our photo shoot that would be a shame to waste as they have a lot of potential. After playing around, we quickly came up with a very ROUGH copy, just to get an idea..



-Helena

Film Pitch

Pitch:
When Ben's friend sets him up on an internet dating account he doubts that he'll ever find love. But when he gets typing to the beautiful but blonde Lucy, the possiblity of finding happiness becomes more and more hopefull. When the descision to meet is made, both Lucy and Ben find themselves getting into hilarious ordeals, in order to cover up the ridiculous 'white lies' they let each other in on. Will these fabrications get in the way ,or will the beauty of blossoming love in the Autumn prevail?

-Helena

Film poster..SO FAR.

This is a DRAFT of our film poster. Just wanted to show our progress:



There is still a lot to do, such as a border and more information etc...but it's well on the way to looking very professional. -Helena

A problem we found about this poster is that the photos will not stretch to the edge and have enough space in the middle to write information in. We are trying to overcome this problems by trying with different photographs. -Lizzy

Film Title!

We have finally come up with a film title, with great help from our beautiful and creative friend Alice.

@ccidentally in love

Lizzy and I think it's a fantastic title as it includes the internet theme that's the main plot in our film. A pitch will be up soon to explain this mysteriously amazing title!

-Helena

Blooper Reel

The bloopers from our film (mind you this is only a small proportion) We have decided to use Adobe Premiere pro 1.5 as its installed on our laptops and we can spend time out sides school editing if we need to. This was an excellent practice for us both as we would love to use some new techniques such as a split screen effect. Enjoy :D

-Lizzy

'It's a wrap!'

We have officailly finished filming our film! Yesterday we spent the afternoon finishing off the remaining shots in the film and today I filmed one last one (Lucy walking into a glass window!). The whole process has gone surprisingly smoothly, compared to the trials and tribulations we had last year, such as lighting and tripod issues. But I feel we have come along way since then and Lizzy agrees, for example, we planned out our locations and the time of day we shot in much better this year. We made sure there was always an appropriate amount of light and took the framing and mis en scene very seriously.

We should hopefully be able to start editing by Friday, a much quicker advance in the project than we thought. Soon we will be able to upload a Pitch and our story board ,which we have worked hard on to get the shots how we wanted!

Here is a picture of Lucy and Rob to further whet your appetite for our film!

Beautiful.

-Helena

First day of filming 26/10/09

A very productive day, we completed at least half of our film, the shooting went extremely well, the weather conditions were perfect and the only issue we had was low camera battery which was easily resolved. We plan to schedule another shoot for next week and if everything goes to plan we shall we ready to edit by the second week of term.

-Lizzy

The Photoshoot For Poster

We got our two main actors together, Rob and Lucy, dressed them in wintry clothing and took photos of them in the roles of their characters. We used a digital camera to take these photos which was a new experience for Helena and I, we had taken photos before but never for a purpose, having to tell the actors what to do, instructing them to move in a certain way was very exciting, we got a feel for what it will be like directing them in the filming process.


Here is a sneak preview:


This photograph could be used for a number of things, either the side of the website or a poster.

Over all Helena and I think that the photo shoot went extremely well, was a better outcome than we could have hoped for. Especially as we took the photos at the back of the school Field.

-Lizzy

Inspirational Trailers

500 days of summer.
We have chosen to look at this trailer as it is for a film with similar ideas to our own. We liked the way the music went with the montage of footage from the film, we hope to use a similar idea but without the voice over instead replacing it with a few short scenes from the film to give the audience an idea of what the film is about. From looking at the trailer we have taken notes of what we need to include, the production company logo for instance and the release date of the film should definitely be in the trailer. We liked the way the montage followed the couples relationship and we are going to use similar shots.

valentines day
This trailer is less emotional than the first, it captured the comedy elements that we wanted at the end of our trailer. We want to show that our film is a comedy and so wanted to end it with something humorous just as in this film "thank god it vibrates" is the ending line showing the audience that this is a rom-com. We are going to take elements of both trailer to make our trailer look right for out film. We want it less epic than 500 days of summer and more towards to comedic side of Valentines day.
-Lizzy

Welcome to our blog!

Just a post to say welcome to our blog. We have started discussing our film and have come up with a very good idea of a rom-com based synopsis, around the life's of two single loners who look towards the Internet for help. We have been inspired by films such as "You've got Mail" directed by Nora Ephron and staring Tom Hanks.

Below is a link to the trailer, although the trailer isn't a teaser trailer it uses the same kind of ideas that we want to use.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCetfaS7GAoWe will update later with a full synopsis of our film.

-Lizzy