PLANNING: GETTING TO KNOW OUR CHARACTERS

To learn more about how to do this, I read an article Get to know your characters by giving them a questionnaire by Charlie Sierra on his website Film Escape. In this article, he wrote about a book called Riding the Alligator by Pen Densham. Pen Densham is an Oscar nominated filmmaker. He states the importance of developing your characters and getting to know the characters that are in your film.
Pen Densham suggests you create a list to ask your character so you get to know who they are and how they behave. However instead of a question, we decided it would be more creative to 'hot seat' our central character. For our character in our trailer Pan Perdu, we decided to interview our protagonist, Molly, through therapy sessions as she is a traumatized character, in order to develop the character further.

OPEN SOURCE HERE

PLANNING: AUDIENCE PROFILING

Audiences are often defined by GEARS. G stands for gender. Having looked at the BFI exit polls of films screened to audiences screened to some 150 people, I noticed that films involving action conventions and moderate levels of violence tended to be skewed towards a male audience. However, I believe that our film trailer would attract a similar number of male and females. I think that my audience will be mostly under 35. They are likely to watch TV programs such as Pretty Little Liars. It has been proven by the BFI exit polls that most people decide to see a film from the information they receive from a trailer they have seen in a cinema. I would aim to put my trailer before films like Don't Breathe and The Truman Show as they show resemblance to my film.

PLANNING: INSPIRATION FOR FILM

I created this board in order to give myself a more clear view on what my film trailer was going to entail. I set out to add the main themes and the things which would occur. Examples of this include maggots in food, surveillance cameras, the bloody sheets and the dirty communal showers. Allowing the audience to see this first could also give them an idea of what the films about and so will entice them in to watching it.

RESEARCH: AUDIENCES

PLANNING: RISK ASSESSMENT

Before we went to film at the lake we had to fill out a risk assessment to make sure it was safe.

PLANNING: SHOTLIST

My group and I made a shotlist to organise our scenes and allowed us to see the actors that were in it and the other props we needed. The shotlist also showed us what sounds or music we would have over the different scenes.

PLANNING: STORYBOARD

 

My group and I made a storyboard for our trailer to help us plan the scenes we were going to shots and also the order they were going to be in.