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