Justification of Film poster Criticism

After viewing the first draft of our film opening we received criticisms from both our teachers and from fellow students. One of these criticisms was that one of our titles "would not feature in a film" as it looked childish, low budget and is difficult to read.

This is a small clip of that title and below is the justification of our title. We will explain why we chose to keep and not re shoot this particular title. 

Below is a small clip of a similar title that features in the opening credits of Napoleon Dynamite. When conducting similar film research we stumbled upon Napoleon Dynamite and considered it to be similar to our film because of its creative and low budget title sequence. As a result of this, we drew much inspiration from its title sequence and tried to present ours in a similar and quirky way.

It is because of this title that we chose to present our title in the way we did. It does appear low budget but we are essentially a low budget film and so we wanted to make it authentic and quirky, like Napoleon Dynamite, and we believe that our titles create this effect.

As an audience member you struggle to read the name on this title just as you struggle to read the names featured in our title but this is what makes our titles, and Napoleon Dynamite's, quirky, unique and low budget. 

Film Poster

This is our finished film poster, which will be on all our marketing campaigns and on our social media pages. It represents our friendship and how we have such a strong bond.

Bloopers

Below are bloopers from the making and the filming of our prelim task, we had a lot of fun in the making of 'Connect Four'. And I believe that these bloopers help us to portray this, here are the bloopers from our film opening:


 

Song included in our opening film

After much deliberation we decided, as a group, to change the song we used in our film opening. This was purely because the song we originally chose was not original. After a while it became repetitive and irritating which is not the effect we wanted it to have on our audience. So with this in mind we set out and spent a couple of days each researching possible music choices for our opening.

We each conducted music research and then decided which song we felt encompassed the themes of our film and our opening.

All throughout our film opening we include a song in the background but we had to choose carefully so it did not over power the voice-over that we have included.

Below is the song which we used in our film opening but this is the full version we only used a small part of it:




The reason we chose the song we did which is called "Brother" by Mighty Oaks is that it is a cheery, unique song which goes well with the theme of our film. Because the theme of our film is happy and friendship based so the lyrics match well with our idea we are going for. Because the lyrics talks about friendship and brotherhood.

Also we took into consideration the audience of our film which its mainly teens and researched other songs we thought our audience might like. But after analysing each song we decided this song was the most fitting for our film in particular.

After much deliberation we decided, as a group, to change the song we used in our film opening. This was purely because the song we originally chose was not original. After a while it became repetitive and irritating which is not the effect we wanted it to have on our audience. So with this in mind we set out and spent a couple of days each researching possible music choices for our opening.

We each conducted music research and then decided which song we felt encompassed the themes of our film and our opening.

Music feedback

We are hoping to include a small song in our film opening as well as other uses of sound and dialogue. These are the possible options we have found for songs that will feature in our opening:






After trying this song on some footage from our film we decided that the song choice was too cliche and did not include a unique sound. We asked for feedback from teachers and peers and the feedback was generally negative about the song. The comments included that the song was too repetitive, too cheesy and very predictable. These are all elements that we do not want our film to be. Therefore we decided to research other possible choices for songs that would be more effective on our film opening and which are unique.

Low budget film research

First draft of Connect Four

This is the first draft of our film- Connect Four. 

We met the deadline for our first draft which was good for group, but there are some improvements that we know that we need to fix. And in our next and final draft we will improve these factors accordingly. This will help us hopefully to gain a higher grade and make our film opening to a higher quality.

New voice-over

Possible Script for Voice-over:

We’ve been friends for as long as I can remember. When we were younger we were care-free and nothing else mattered. 

Those three took me in and gave me a place where I belonged. 

Our club started out as just being a bit of fun but it evolved into a place of refuge when we were older. A place where we could go and just have fun. We didn't have to worry about anything. 

We called our club, Connect Four simply because we that was our favourite game. We would meet two or three times a week and spend hours in our cabin. It would be night before we even realised, but we didn't care because we were having fun. 

As the years past our friendship grew and we became closer as a group. We never expected things to change… 

Shooting Schedule

This is the shooting scheduled which we shall follow, when we start filming our film opening scene. We have done this so we know what scenes, shots, location, Characters and props we are going to use each day. This will keep us organised and will help us to stick to the schedule, which will ensure that our task will be finished on time and we will therefore have enough time to edit our video to the best it can be.

Similar film research

Teacher and Peer Feedback

Above is an emaze PowerPoint of the teacher and peer feedback which we received from pitching our film idea and it shows how we improved to make our film opening as good as possible.

And then after our first draft of Connect 4 was finished and we showed to our teachers we received this feedback:

Things we did well:

- Very clever titles

- Music is good

- Mise en scene is great

- Nice shots (love the titles)

Things we need to improve on:

- Voice over needs to be re shot, because is not strong enough.

- Need to signify how the kids and older kids are young and old versions of each other.

- Music volume feels off

- Cut to "I'll follow you"

- Fix Colour in grown ups playing in cabin

- More time needed on the "Tilly Hawkins" title