2. OUR FILM
• Our film is called ‘God of the Hill.’
• The word God obviously carries connotations to being powerful and omnipresent meaning that they are
everywhere. The reference for being everywhere is the fact that our main character works for a gang that is
spread out across ‘the hill’ which is our setting for the film.
3. SIMILAR FILMS/INSPIRATION
• Maybe not a direct similarity however in the same genre is the 2015 film
‘Legend’ starring Tom Hardy. Set in a 1960 London it is about the Kray twins
rise to power and their domination of East London, sort of similar to our idea
of being the dominant gang on the hill.
• Secondly there is the film ‘Fresh’ made back in 1994. The film follows a young
12 year old child (younger than our protagonist) who is a drug pusher who
wants out of the drug game. His Dad is a street bum and his sister is a junkie,
Fresh’s story is very similar to that of our character.
• Thirdly, definitely not the same film is the influence that the character David
Clark has in ‘We’re the millers.’ Clark is a veteran pot dealer who has not been
keeping up with his payments to his ‘distributor’ and as a result is forced into
being a drug mule. Again same sort of situation with the character being
caught in a bad situation due to his lack of commitment to his group.
4. WHAT GENRE CONVENTIONS YOU USED?• Firstly, as our film takes a lot of build up we decided to use slow and tense
music that adds to the fear of the unknown and the expectation that the
audience have of ‘what will happen to him?’
• We used low-key lighting to connote the danger to our protagonist.
• Our location of the garage at the end is very typical of the genre as it is un-
used, perfect for a gang looking to hide something or somebody.
• Our characters clothing however does not conform instead it takes an
approach to the modern day gangster as it should be remembered that films
have to be set in the context of the modern day, last year saw the trend of the
term ‘roadman’ which refers to somebody with high status on the streets,
intimidating and dangerous. We wanted to capture that with our protagonist.
This would meet our audiences expectations as it is something our target
audience of teenagers is accustom to seeing.
5. UNIQUE SELLING POINT
• Our unique selling point is the fact that it is modern with the use of a ‘roadman’ character. Not many
gangster films take this approach instead they play it safe to the traditional gangster films as they have a
good track record.
• Our character is also distinct and recognisable to the teenage demographic.
• There is not many films using a teenager as the drug pusher and if they are then they are vulnerable,
inexperienced and need to be helped through the process. Our character does not need this, he is a
professional at what he does he just happens to be struggling for money and wants a way out as he
sees the dangers of the lifestyle.
6. POSTER
Our poster conforms to the typical codes and conventions of a modern
day gangster film. Especially for a low budget film it uses the 5 star rating
to attract an audience.
We have clearly established our target audience with the use of the 15
rating, this tells the audience to expect violence and strong language,
something that our primary target audience would expect and want.
From this poster it is clear what characters we have, we have a character
who’s face is unseen which adds to the mystery of his character, the
character to the right of him has part of his face in the light carrying
connotations that he has two sides to his personality.
We also have a star rating along with a quote from a trusted critic. Which
whilst it may not be essential because some demographics do not care
about them, they are worth having as some people do look and use them.
The quote would mainly cater to a secondary target audience as our aim
is to attract teens because of the close representation our characters have
to this audience.
7. ONLINE ACTIVITIES
• In terms of social media we chose to use
Instagram and twitter. We used twitter more
simply because more people use it.
• Twitter is now arguably one of the most used
social media platforms especially by producers,
also realising the success of many other films on
social media such as paranormal activity
inspired us to do so.
• When we began filming we attempted to use a
hashtag (stayawake) however due to a change in
ideas we did feel this hashtag was suitable and
didn’t continue with it.
• Twitter also allows easier connectivity with the
fans as it is easy to put our a short tweet about
our plan of action and to reply to the audience.
8. TEASER TRAILER ANALYSIS
As you can see this is our teaser trailer for
our film ‘God of the Hill.’ The opening
universal logo is very quick as we didn’t
want to waste any time showing our
distributors.
The music is also very typical of the genre,
it begins with a sense of epicness and
builds up as the trailer goes on. It uses rap
music which is the modern day music
associated with our target audience and
our main character. Also the gunshot at
the end connotes some form of violence
in the film. We stuck to most over trailers
and only showed the name of the film at
the end.
Our trailer doesn’t give too much away, it
establishes that our character is going to
go on a journey from his normal home life
to a brightly lit garage, we ended the
trailer there to build up more anticipation
and create the feeling of suspense.
9. FILM FESTIVALS
We used the ‘BFI London Film Festival’ as a means to attract our
audience. A film festival is beneficial to the producers of a small
film as it allows them to promote their film in a place where it
can attract many people.
The deal for the audience is that they pay for a ticket to watch
any film available for viewing on the day, what adds to the
experience is the chance to speak with the cast and crew. We
used this as a way to get ‘God of the Hill’ on people’s social
media accounts where they would be tweeting about us and
therefore would attract an even larger audience.
As a company we also paid for the critics to attend as we
understand that for a small film it is essential to get as many
critics as you can, so there is a bench mark for where there
needs to be improvement, also other films such as ‘Whiplash’
owe their success to film critics and festivals so it was a logical
move to show our film there.
10. CONCLUSION
• So to conclude, we promoted our film in the way that any other small independent company would.
We have created a simplistic poster that would be easily recognisable to the audience with regards to
the genre.
• Our online activity has been our central hub of promotion for the film, seen as our target audience are
frequent users of twitter and Instagram we used these two pages as a form to attract our target
audience as they should theoretically be easy to find.
• We highlighted our film at the London film festival where it received a good reception from both the
audience and critics. This also allowed us to build a fanbase of people who would go to the cinema to
watch it etc.
• And finally our unique selling point of a modern day gang film is directly relatable to a vast majority of
teens as they know somebody who has participated in some form of illegal anti-social crime.
