Hanna Wong

Movie Trailer Evaluation

For my second task, I was given the task of creating and producing a film trailer within a specific theme criteria, the theme that I had to base my film trailer about was ‘Gritty British Realism’ this meant that I had to create a film trailer about not what people think about Britain, but the reality of it all. For example, I wouldn’t include people having tea parties and or happily eating ‘bangers and mash’, but instead the opposite which will include young people making the wrong decisions and may sort of involvement with drugs and having a troubled life.

If I were to base my trailer around what people think about Britain, then I would’ve failed this coursework because the aim of this coursework was to have a better understanding how to incorporate different ideas and thoughts that link to drugs, violence or bad decision making. In addition, this will help develop skills that were used in the preliminary film as well so in the near future, if I were to make another film, I wouldn’t have such a problem using different skills, methods and equipment.

Before I started my film trailer, I had been given several ideas about what my film trailer should be about, many of the ideas had interesting aspects to it but it didn’t really ‘excite’ me. My initial was to have three boys, sitting on a wall in a childrens park, skipping out school, smoking and then reminiscing about their past about how they were all innocent, when they were still in school, doing all their work, listening to every word the teacher says, the time before they started rebelling. After that, they have a conversation about whether they should change for the better or stay as they are now, and this causes an argument which makes all the three boys go separate ways. Fast warding to the future and all three of them have three very different lifestyles which leads to different consequences and this just shows how important decision making is when being a young child and how it could affect their future. I came up with this idea when watching different soaps, films, other AS media students’ film trailers.

The film trailer has a specific theme and genre as that is what I was supposed to do, ‘to create a film trailer within the Gritty British Realism’ theme/genre. My film trailer consists of several elements of the Gritty British Realism genre but weren’t mentioned or expressed as much, and they are; rebelling/disrespect, drugs, bad decision making and many others.

Though my film trailer consists of these elements, it conveys an important message to the audience which is ‘Your life is what you make of it’ meaning

Hanna Wong

whatever the audience does in their life, it will affect their future or has already affected it in either good or bad way which goes to show how important it is to make the right decisions for their future be it good or bad.

Before the filming process had begun, there were several problems that I anticipated would occur which meant that I had to make arrangements for various things as I knew I couldn’t just waited for them to be solved on their own. For example, before the filming, it was agreed that I have 3 boys of my choice to be the protagonists in my film trailer, but during the filming process, only 1 of the boys were filmed as agreed. The other 2 boys couldn’t be my protagonists in my film trailer because of other reasons, lucky, because I had anticipated that this sort of problem would occur, I had understudies for them. This is part of the reason why directors of films should always be prepared for several problems to occur during both the filming process and the editing process.

Another problem that I found difficult to solve was the lack of time I had to both film and edit my film trailer. This was due to the fact that my protagonists were often absent of busy which meant that both my filming and editing processes had to be delayed. During this time, I spent a lot of time thinking about what I should do for my film trailer that would be relevant and how I could improve the ‘paper work’ aspect for this coursework. So I decided to create an online ‘rekki’ which meant that I had to go on the internet finding different places/locations/areas that I might use which also meant that I didn’t need to go outside and look physically when I can do that on the computer. Later, I then solved to problem by asking my course teacher to help me film in the holidays meaning that I was able to film what I want, and what I needed. I also called in the understudies to film as well.

When I was able to film, I realised that my original storyline/plot was far too long for a film trailer which meant that I had to cut/not film some of the storyboard scenes out. After having done this, I was able to film what I needed and I filmed additional things to make my trailer look really gritty which was relevant because I wanted to emphasise on the grittiness of Britain today. This also meant that there were several changes in my ‘paperwork’, and my filming process.

During the filming process, because I was able to film what I needed and what I wanted, I was able to finish filming all the footage just over an hour meaning that it didn’t take long for my filming to be finished. However, I wasn’t able to edit on time because I was helping another student with her film as well. In this

Hanna Wong

particular students’ film, I had to be the protagonist which meant my editing process was delayed.

What I have represented in my film trailer is that many people think that people who live in Britain have an easy life, and that there are no problems in their life and so on. I wanted to prove this stereotype wrong by presenting the reality of British citizens of today. This is very similar to the realism that I was trying to convey through my film trailer, which was that not everyone in Britain has an easy life, there are some people who, under certain circumstances, are the way they are today and what made them the way they are now was partly due to their decision making, to either change for the better or for worse, its’ their choice.