Radio Advert Textual Analysis

In this post I will be looking at some radio commercials that advertise movies. This is beneficial thing to do because one of my ancillary tasks is to produce a radio trailer that promotes my short film. Researching radio commercials should give me a good idea of how a decent radio commercial sounds.

The following radio commercial is for the 2013 film "Gravity".

I think that this is a good radio advert because it promotes the movie well by doing a number of things. It uses positive quotes from critics as well as using clips from the actual film. It correctly uses the director's and the cast member's names to use their good reputation to promote the film. There are a number of the sounds used that,whilst being accompanied by the score, portray a feelings of isolation whilst also giving us a feeling of amazement and appreciation which are all feeling that we assume we would feel if we were in space. It is for these reasons that I think that most important thing that makes this radio commercial a good one is the dramatic music that is played in the background that gives the listener a small sample of the suspense that is included in the movie. At the beginning of the advert there is the soft sound of a piano which portrays a peaceful feeling and then, as the advert continues, the music builds up into a crescendo which implies that something big will happen in the movie like it does in the advert, such as a disruption of equilibrium.  

The following radio commercial is for the 1980 film "The Empire Strikes Back"

   

I think that this radio commercial is good because it promotes the film well and it also informs the listener on the certificate for the film as well as where and when the listeners can watch the new movie. Once again I think that the most important thing about this radio advert is the music used in the background. The music in the background is "The Imperial March" from the original soundtrack of the movie composed by John Williams. John Williams is very famous for producing the soundtracks for movies and the narrator does not hesitate to also promote his "magnificent score". The score starts immediately with brass instruments playing in forte and this grabs the listeners attention straight away. The music is intimidating and it makes the listeners want to hurry to the cinema to watch the new film and I think this is the biggest reason why this radio advert is a successful one.    


To conclude, I think that both radio adverts are good at doing what they are supposed to do and I strongly believe that the music used for the advert is the key to this. What I have learned from completing this post is that the music used in the adverts are either used to reflect the mood that the listener gets from hearing the advert, like Gravity, or to grab the listeners attention, like in the Star Wars advert. For my radio advert, I need to carefully select the music to do one of these two things and I know that this will now be my number one priority when making my own radio commercial.     

Ancillary Task: Developing My Movie Poster

In this post, I designed a very basic idea of I could use as a poster for my short film as part of my ancillary task. I had the idea of using school photographs of the characters in the film to create the poster. Also I had the idea of getting a photo of a silhouette to represent the mystery behind the narrator in the short film. For a background, I quite liked the idea of having these picture look like they were pinned on a cork board, however I also liked i idea of having the pictures look like they were randomly scattered across the floor. This is a detail that I can make a decision on in the later stages of developing my poster.   

After completing this post, I have now got a very rough idea of what my poster could look like. This is a good first stage because I can now develop the poster as much as I want but I will always have this first draft to refer back too.


After this, I decided to have a go at logging onto Photoshop and recreating this design using the real photographs of my actors to produce my final movie poster. There were many alterations made throughout the process, such as the title and the layout of the photographs, but I am very happy with the final poster.

In reflection, I am extremely happy with my final movie poster. There were many things that I decided to add and change from my original design however I feel that all of the changes I made make the poster even more effective. I decided to change the layout of the photographs, to begin with, because I thought that my previous layout was a little bit too random and it was quite difficult for the reader to analyse properly. Also I decided to add the writing on the bottom of the Polaroids to add a sense of mystery to each of the characters on the poster. Finally I decided to add pins on each of the Polaroids to give the poster an overall more authentic look which I think is extremely successful.   

Permission for Filming

In this post me and Charlie have E-mailed our head of year, Mr Jacob, to ask if we are able to use the Innovation Center to shoot our short film. This is crucial because if we do not have permission to shoot our short film in the Innovation Center then we would have to think of another location to shoot, that probably wouldn't be as fitting for our short film's plot, and we would also have to go back out to do more location recces and more risk assessments which would massively set us back in the production of our short film.

Here is the E-mail that we sent to Mr Jacob: 

Two hours after sending the E-mail, me and Charlie got a reply from Mr Jacob:

This is fantastic news for the production of our short film because we now will not have any setbacks due to locations for filming and not only this, but we can use the Innovation Center free of charge! This means that we will not be spending any of our budget on the location of shooting our film and we can now go ahead and book the Innovation Center to start filming through Mrs Garrod.

Script

Here is the script for my short film now called "Room". As you can see I have written the script by following conventions such as including slug-lines and the choice of font. 

After the completion of this post, I now here an idea of what each character will say and how the plot will unfold, although I am open to changes to the script once filming begins because I am aware that improvisation is sometimes the key to a good comedy and also a good film.

Storyboards

In this post I created the storyboards so that I can get a visual look and the plot of my short film "Room". 

After completing this post, I now have an understanding if how my short film could look. Obviously this will not be exactly how my short film will turn out because I am aware that improvisation is sometimes the best form of comedy so I am open to change however I think that I is helpful to have this storyboard as a rough plan so that I have a sense of direction when it comes to filming.

Audition and Casting Process

We knew that it was crucial to pick the right cast for our short film so with this in mind, I held an auditioning process in which I advertised the roles in the school newspaper and when I had enough replies, I sat down with the applicants and held an interview. Asking them questions such as "What do you think that you could bring to the role?" I was extremely impressed with all of the applicants however I knew that I could only cast four of them and myself to take part in the film. I thought long and hard about each applicant before I decided on who to cast for our film. These are the picture of the applicants that I finally decided to cast in our film:

Caleb Prouse

Richard Montague

Dave Jones 

Amber Mason

Lawrence Dobson

 Joshua Coombe (Myself)

After the final casting, I explained to each actor what their role would be and then I gave each of them the script that I had written so that they could look over their lines and learn them before we started filming. I also encouraged them to improvise whilst filming due to the fact that it is a dark comedy and that most of the time, improvisation is the key to what makes a comedy a successful one due to natural humor. 

   

Short Film Synopsis

In this post I have written a synopsis for our short film. This gives the reader of the synopsis a general idea of what the short film is about without revealing too much information about the film plot.

Set in a typical college, a group of friends decide not to attend their lessons. A narrator talks us through the situation, to the students surprise, they are able to hear the mysterious voice of the narrator and they start to question their friendship as the narrator begins to expose secrets about the students to the rest of the group.

After completing this post I now understand that one of the next things that I should do before progressing is try to give our short film a title. I now understand this because I now have a main plot and synopsis and me and Charlie will soon be starting to storyboard and write a script however we do not yet even have a title for the film that we are storyboarding and script writing for.