3. Theories
• Primary and secondary audience theory;
• Bands have an already existing target audience-the fans. Due to us making a film on a band
the main primary audience will be fans of the (fictional) band. This specific target audience are
the most likely to watch/download or talk about the film which is vital for any films marketing
and success at the box office. The music industry is one of the most influential and powerful
industries in the world which is why we adhered to our primary audience as music-lovers.
• As a result the original and primary audience for our film is the fans of the band. However the
film does have an expanding secondary audience. Our film has the advantage to both be
about a band and music, two distinctive ideologies and therefore two different secondary
audiences. Music fans in general could potentially be interested in the film due to prior
knowledge of the music or the story of the band. Having a large secondary audience can be
just as beneficial as having a large primary audience which is one of the reasons we decided
to make this documentary.
4. Barthes 5 Codes
Although we haven't executed all of the 5 codes, we have applied a couple; Referential and
Enigma code.
The enigma code refers to a mystery within a text, and drops hints that something is going to
happen or has happened, but is not revealed until the end. We have used this in that we have tried
to hint that something happens to a band member but have not said what. We have hinted that
there has been a death within the band, by using shots at a church, and Alex in a black suit,
inferring that he has been to a funeral. By hinting that something happens but not revealing the
plot, we are enticing the audience to come and watch our film. In hindsight we could have hinted
more towards a death within the band, however we have the advantage that our audience will
already be fans of the band, and will know that someone has died. We used this in our stride, so
tried to concentrate more on the ‘behind the scenes’ side of the band, and what caused the
destruction of a band member.
This part links into the referential code of the theory, as the audience will have to have some kind
of external knowledge of the band to know that a band member has died or that something horrific
happens to the band. Again we relied on the audience’s external knowledge on the band, so that
we didn’t have to hint too much towards death in our trailer.
5. Cohesive and non-cohesive
• These theories simply mean the joining together of something, or something which it not
joining together.
• Our trailer is a mixture of both of these theories. It is safe to say that our trailer is non-
cohesive, as we have used a mixture of shots, made to look like they are taken over a long
period of time. We did this because we wanted to show the band’s life over many years, so by
using a non-cohesive model this worked well for us, so in our trailer we felt like we have
challenged conventions for a trailer. However if we were to make the whole film, it would go in
a more cohesive order, as we would show the band from the start before they were famous, to
them becoming famous, then the ending being it all going wrong. This would be a very
conventional way to make a film, so if we were to make the whole film, we wouldn’t have
challenged conventions as much as we have in the trailer.
6. Sound
• Diegetic and non-diegetic sound
• In our trailer we have decided to only use non-diegetic sound. We have done this for many reasons.
Firstly, it was much easier to not have our actors saying anything because we wanted our footage to
look natural and real life, and if they were to rehearse lines then it would take the idea of ‘real life’
away. Some would say that celebrities aren’t real and are just a representation of the media’s
construction. So our actors were regular people trying to represent a celebrity who was trying to
represent ‘real life’. This is a confusing concept as it is, so by taking out the diegetic sound of the
actors, it made our idea slightly less confusing, and easier to film, along with trying to make it look
more realistic and natural.
• We did film some shots that will have had diegetic sound in them, such as interviews with different
people. However after putting them in, we found that they didn’t really make sense, as we found
ourselves having to explain who the people we were interviewing were. This then took to much f the
attention off of actual storyline of the trailer.
• The track we chose to use is ‘step out’ by Jose Gonzalez. We chose this because we both liked the
song anyway, and we felt that it built up well, and would fit perfect for the theme of our trailer.
However the song is a very long song, so we ended up cutting it down by quite a lot, so that it didn’t
get boring for the viewer.
7. Editing
• It would be safe to say that we don’t think the way we have edited our trailer isn’t challenging
conventions at all. We haven’t used a large range of transitions, however we didn’t want to. By
only using a select range of transitions it kept our video smooth and fluent. Because we have
used so many different clips, keeping the transitions simple worked in our favor, as we didn’t
want to overcomplicate the trailer, and the viewer. In a couple of the clips, we have edited the
hue and saturation, we only did this to make the clips seem less dull and more professional.
Again we didn’t want to do anything too abstract as it wouldn’t fit in with the theme of our
trailer.
• The borders on our film trailer sometimes change, we did this because we wanted to make
some of it look like some of if had been shot using a camera phone. By doing this it made our
film look more natural, and less staged, as if we were doing a real documentary on a real life
band. A lot of our clips are only short because we wanted our trailer to be more of a brief
summary of the band’s life in the spotlight, than a trailer building up to something. Due to this
we has a lot to fit into our trailer in a short space of time. Overall we didn’t challenge
conventions with our editing, however for us, it didn’t seem appropriate to do so.
8. Ancillaries
• For this project, we have done two ancillary tasks, a film poster, and a cover for a film
magazine. Both of our ancillary pieces challenge conventions, however we haven’t challenged
them too much. Both of our pieces are done in black and white. This was because it kept our
work linked together, and made it much easier to connect the three pieces. Even though our
trailer isn’t in black and white, colour isn’t the main focus of it, so we didn’t want colour to be
the main focus of our ancillaries.
• For the cover of our magazine, we kept it very mainstream. We researched other magazine
covers, and based our cover around conventions of them. We did this because we felt that the
more we challenged conventions of usual film covers the less professional our cover looked,
henceforth we kept our cover conventional.
• For our film poster, we were slightly braver and challenged conventions more. We took a still
from our trailer and used it for our poster. However we chose to only use the silhouette of
Alex, because we didn’t want to give too much of our trailer away. Keeping the poster in
monochrome colours it kept it simple and linked the poster well with our other tasks. We
covered the majority of the poster in the title of the film, because we felt like it challanged the
conventions of a normal film poster, but didn’t look to outrageras.
