Storyboard

I will now be showing you my storyboard so you can get an idea on how I want my film trailer to plan out like I will also be putting down the time so I know roughly how long my film trailer will be.

Lighting research

I will be not be using an lighting. The reasons for this is because I'm going to be filming all of my film trailer outside so all the lighting will be natural.

Research into film shots

To get the right effects on my film trailer I have looked at a number of different film shots which I believe will be relevant to use in my film trailer and also by creating different atmosphere's which I will want to happen seeming as it's a horror film so I want to make the audience be on the edge on their seats however it's also a comedy so I want to make the audience laugh at the same time.

I believe that using extreme close up's and close up's will be the two main ways for example I will be using the extreme close up's on the zombies face when I believe it is relevant the reason for this is because they always seem to do it in horror film genre's because it makes the audience jump especially if it happens at a random time.

The close up's I will be using again to create an atmosphere for example one of the key moments I will be using a close up is when the plague completely turns the mother of the railway children into a zombie this way the audience will be able to see the effects this plague is having on the children knowing their mother has been changed.

The third film shot I believe will make my film trailer look good would be by using long shots for example when I get to the railway I would like to take a long shot of the railway children running down towards the carriages as I feel this will be a good shot to include in my film trailer.

Treatment of film

The film I am creating a trailer for is called ‘The Railway Children and Zombies.’ It combines two genres; Period drama (a classically British film genre) and Zombie Horror (a genre British film makers occasionally dip into generally in a comedy way). The film was inspired by the literacy works of Seth Graham Smith who put a new slant on Jane Austen’s ‘Pride and Prejudice’ through re-writing it as ‘Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.’ The film’s combination of genres will obviously result in a product that at times will be humorous and at others horrific – the trailer will reflect this.

Films that have inspired this work include ‘Pride and Prejudice’ and ‘Shaun of the Dead.’ The films target audience will be cinema goers aged 15 – 24 who enjoy films such as ‘Shaun of the Dead’ and ‘Vampires Suck’ because it will be similar to these films in terms of genre. Obviously others who are familiar with the original novel ‘The Railway Children’ by E Nesbit may also be drawn to seeing a new comical take on this classic novel – as Austen fans were drawn to Smith’s work.

The plot of the film is quite simple, it follows the original novel only with a strange twist – the country has been struck with a strange zombie plague and the railway children’s father, unknown to their mother, secretly trained them as ‘zombie slayers’ before he disappeared in the war again the zombies (no one knows whether he is alive, dead or stricken with the zombie plague). When their mother becomes ill the children refuse to believe she has the ‘plague’ but soon realise when the kindly gentleman sends her a basket of brains. The children then have to stop the train reaching the next town because it has become obvious many of the passengers are in fact the un-dead searching for fresh brains. In short, this version of the story breaths fresh life into a popular tale.

In terms of the ‘look’ of the trailer I want to show a number of shots that show off the exciting nature of the film and give the target audience a taste of what they can expect from the film. The setting for the trailer and the film will be Victorian England in a country village new a railway station. Therefore the mise en scene will reflect this. In the trailer the main settings from the classic novel will all be featured in order to ensure viewers who enjoyed the text will be drawn to the film. The main locations of the film that will feature in the trailer include; the hillside where the children watch the train from, the station, inside the railway carriage and the children’s home.

Like many British films, the budget for this film is next-to-nothing and it will rely on its strong script, unknown actors and humour for its success.

Research into genre

The film genre I am interested in doing is a film about zombies. However I want my zombie film to have a twist so I have decided to do some research and have decided that it would be good if I mixd it in with the railway children which has been both a book and later released as a film. Another reason that made me decide to do a zombie genre film is because it won't require as much budget as other genre's such as action.

In zombie films it always seems to start with a plague that starts to spread until it takes over the population of one place and then you have the hero's. The hero's always seem to do quite well at fighting back the zombies and then in most films one of the hero's will get bite and will also turn into a zombie.

Zombie films are usually filmed during the night to create a tension and so the film companies can make it more jumpy for the audience. However as the film goes on it normally gets lighter this connotes that the good is overcoming the bad and then its complete day light again and usually the zombies die.

Synopsis of my film trailer

In order to give you an idea on what my film is on and based about I have came up with a synopsis so this way you can get a basic overview of what my film is about and see what story inspired me to base my film on this however it has a twist.

Synopsis:

In this film there will be three young children trying to fight off a zombie plague that has traveled all the way down the country to Cornwall. Can these children stop this horrendous plague and bring civilization back to the world. This story is based on the earlier book and film the railway children, however this version of the film has a zombie twist.

As you can see the synopsis is not very long the reason for this is because I believe this is enough information on what you need to know about the film and hopefully will make you want to watch the film trailer.

Questionnaire for film

I have decided to conduct a questionnaire on a website called survey monkey the reason for this is so that then I can get an idea on what people would like to see and then I will base my film trailer on that however some genre's I will not be able to base my film trailer about such as an action film the reason for this is because I do not have a big enough budget to stick to the common conventions of an action film whereas genre's such as horror genre's will be in my budget the reason for this is because I will only need some face paint in order to achieve this and stick to the conventions.

Another good thing about conducting a questionnaire is so that I can get people's opinions and feedback on what they would like to see and then base my idea's around that by doing this when my three products are released my target audience should be satisfied with it because everything I include will be based on the information I get back from my questionnaire.

I decided to start with the gender question first. Although I asked this question it doesn't really give me any information on how I should do my film trailer. However it will be interesting to see how the different genders would like to see different things happening in my film trailer.

As you can see in the piechart I have created a small percentage more of females answered my questionnaire compared to males. This may mean that they don't want to see as much gore as maybe a male would or they may have completely different interests or similar ones.

The reason why I asked about age is to see what the different age generations would like to see because there may be comparisons between the different age ranges such as the difference between how often they go to the cinema or how often they actually purchase a film magazine.

Out of the 50 people that answered my questionnaire around 70% of the people that answered were between the ages of 10-19 years and 20-29 years however this may only be because the younger generation have more access to the internet and they are more familiar with the website I created my questionnaire on. However now it will be interesting to see how the rest of my questionnaire is answered.

It was important that I asked this question because this is the genre I would ideally want to do my project on however if my target audience didn't like the genre I was planning on doing then I would of have to come up with new ideas and a different genre so that I know I satisfy my target audiences needs.

With 80% of my target audience saying that they do like zombie films it means that I can continue planning for my film trailer. However the 20% of people that filled out with my target audience said that they didn't enjoy zombie films that much however I believe that my trailer will be good enough to persuade that small percentage to watch it.

The reason why I came up with this question and felt it was relevant to include in my questionnaire is because this is a zombie genre television show and I'm hoping if people like this show then maybe I could use some of the camera shots and make up effects that they do especially if it is popular with my target audience then I think its worth doing.

There was a split opinion on this question with 50% said they do like the programme and 25% saying that they don't like the programme. The feedback I get from here makes it hard to decide whether or not to make my trailer similar to the programme.

The feedback I get back form this question should give me an overall indication whether or not I do go with it. If my target audience don't think it will work together well then I don't think it will be a major problem, if they don't think it will work I will just have to try something else which they will hopefully like.

As you can see from the graph the higher percentage of the people that filled out my questionnaire said that they think it will work well although there is not a significant difference between the people that think it will work and those he think it will not.

I believe this question is relevant to my questionnaire because I wanted to know what would make the people that fill out my questionnaire to want to watch my film trailer. There are a number of different answers for this question and I will be only picking the two most popular answers as doing all of them would be costly.

The two most popular answers were lots of gore and lots of zombie slaying. In order to add lots of gore in my film trailer it means that I will need use and buy lots of fake blood which won't be to hard to do. Having zombies being defeated throughout my film trailer won't be to hard however I might have to cast more people in order to do this.

I asked this question to see how often people go to cinema just out of interest really because this could decide whether or not my film will be popular or not. If people already regularly go to the cinema then it means that there is a good chance that they will watch my film however some people wait until films come out on DVD's which may mean that when my film is released that it will not make much money from people watching it in cinema.

From the feedback that I got back it seems like that the people that have answered my questionnaire seem to go quite often which looks really positive for when my film is released I'm hoping that many people decide to go and watch my film other over films that are released around a similar time.

I decided to ask this question because I was interested in where people would want me to film my trailer whether they would like to see a zombie film shot in a different location. I believe my giving the people the choice of where I should film my trailer and by doing this it will hopefully make them feel like their thoughts have been listened to.

As you can see from the graph a high percentage of people want to see my film shot at a train station. I think the reason for this is being that this is yet to be done so I think it will be interesting to see how people react to the idea when people find out about it.

I think that overall all of this feedback that I have got will help me come up with and make a really good film trailer and I hope that my target audience is going to be happy because I want to base as many of their ideas possible on my film trailer.