3. For this we had to produce a film trailer which could either be a full
length trailer or a teaser trailer. For a trailer to be successful a trailer must
promote a film which will attract an audiences attention to then see the
film upon release.
For this the group I was in decided to come to the conclusion that we
would produce a full length trailer. Unlike the a teaser trailer which is
short and varies between 30 seconds in length to 1 minute a full length
trailer which tend to be a shortest 1:30 to 2:30. Due to us deciding to do
a full length trailer it made it easier when researching existing trailers as
we new to research into full length trailers. Typical Codes and
Conventions of full length trailers include:
• Being between 1:30 – 2:30 in length
• Featuring star roles from the film
• Featuring a soundtrack possibly 2 or more songs
• A fair amount of dialog
• Accreditation to production companies and distribution companies
• Billing block consisting of: Actors, Production Companies etc
• Sound effects for violence and fight scenes

4. From looking at the codes and conventions of a full length trailer it was very
helpful when coming to the construction and production of the trailer itself.
Firstly we researched existing trailers which helped us in terms of placement
of production company accreditation for example the Lionsgate placed
towards the start of the trailer helped us in the placement of where to put it
for our trailer. Initially we had a trailer which was near 2:30 but found this
length didn’t really work with our trailer genre as some of the clips we used
were slow paced and not fast paced like some trailers which are this length.
The decision to cut down the length of the trailer helped as it meant we
could take out clips which were slow in pace and use more upbeat and
faster paced clips. Also by listening to SFX used for fight scenes in existing
trailers gave a good idea of what to look for and apply to the fight scenes
which would used within our fight scenes. For this we googled cinematic
SFX as well as going onto YouTube and finding Cinematic SFX such as
crashes, hits and whooshes.
Looking at existing billing blocks and actor accreditation also helped as by
replicating this within our trailer would give it more of a professional look.
Overall by sticking to the codes and convention of a full length trailer
helped vastly as it gave us guidelines for producing a trailer which would be
similar to existing film trailers.

5. From researching the codes and conventions of Action, Crime and
Thriller film it gave a good indication of what kind of scenes/clips to
feature within our trailer as well as researching into existing trailers of
these genres. One main thing which helped was the pacing of the
trailers we noticed that trailers of these genres start of slowly and by the
middle and end are very fast paced. As well as the use of music which
also added to the pace of the trailer. We didn’t want to break the
codes and conventions for the trailer as it may of complicated it when
coming to the editing but also could have effected the clearness of the
storyline shown through the trailer itself. Also seeing Production
companies used within existing trailers helped in choosing them for our
trailer, we found that Lionsgate was commonly used so we felt they
would be ideal.
Aswell as hearing dialog from trailers from actors such as Jason Statham
and Ryan Gosling this also helped in the choice of dialog for the trailer
itself. And from this we decided to use dialog to explain part of the
storyline but also introduce characters.

7. For the magazine I decided to choose popular British magazine Little White
Lies. The magazine has a very individual style and doe feature some basic
codes and conventions for the magazine itself which include:
• An artistic front cover either painting, hand drawn or graphic design
• The front cover features an actor from a film which the issue will be
heavily based on who is facing forward making eye contact with the
viewer
• The masthead, date, bar code and price are featured all in a neat white
circle at the centre of the cover at the top
• The dimensions for the magazine are different from the typical A4 style
magazine
I wanted to make my cover as realistic to the actual Little White Lies cover
itself so I researched into the dimensions of the magazine and found out
that the size of the magazine was 20cm H x 24.5cm W, this meant I could
put these dimensions into the workspace on Photoshop to get this size and
work from there. For the logo itself I simply cut it out from an existing
magazine and sized it correctly to the size of the cover in Photoshop. I felt I
needed to stick to artistic side as this is pretty much the whole of the cover
for Little White Lies and felt moving away from this would defeat the object
of producing a Little White Lies front cover.

8. However when it came to image selection I chose not to use the typical
pose of facing front on and making eye contact. Instead I chose an
image which had the the character (Jason Dyer) looking towards the
right. I felt this image really worked well for the cover, however I needed
to position the text in the way that it would back up the pose of the
character. Initially I had positioned the film title underneath the picture
however I felt moving it to the right hand side would be more eye
catching to the viewer as that is where the position of the characters
eyes were.
In terms of typeface for the cover I had noticed from research that Little
White Lies has a very stylised typeface and move away from using back
typefaces. For this I looked into the font used for the film Drive which uses
a very stylised font which looks like its from the 80s. Also to make this
stand out I duplicated the text and off centred one of them and had
one in a turquoise and one in a pink colour which made it eye catching
but also stick to the artistic style Little White Lies uses. Colouring the text
also meant it stood out from the grey background which is a metallic
looking background which also was used to indicate the style of film it
was.

10. For the film poster to take the main image our group used a DSLR. In terms
of putting together the poster I used Adobe Photoshop which would give it
a professional finish and possibly would be software used to make actual
film posters. To gain inspiration for my poster I researched into posters which
related to the same genre as ours. I commonly found bold text with
spacing in between was a common style of font used. After seeing the font
on the film poster for Blitz (2011) I found the same font and decided to use
this for the font for the poster. In terms of body position I really like the pose
from the film poster Invictus as I felt it would tie in closely with a piece of
dialog used within our trailer and would feature Dyer looking over his
shoulder.
Codes and Conventions used for film posters:
• Clearly have the film titles name
• A tag line somewhere on the poster
• A Billing block at the lower half of the poster
• The film release date or Coming Soon
• Social media links e.g Website and Facebook
• An image of a main character
• Production companies and Distribution Companies

11. When I made my film poster I stuck to all of the codes and conventions
as I wanted the poster to look as professional as possible, however I did
use COMING SOON instead of an actual date which the majority of
posters use. I found a font which was very similar to the font they use for
the billing block called Steel Tongs which meant I could make a billing
block which looks very realistic. I also added award nomintation
endorsements which were made within Photoshop and all featured real
film festivals again sticking with the codes and conventions as well as
producing a realistic film poster.