Influential Film Directors

Hayden has completed this research

Robert Siodmak was a German Film Director best remembered as a thriller specialist and for a series of stylish Hollywood Film Noirs such as: 'The Killers,' 'Criss Cross,' 'Phantom Lady' and 'The Spiral Staircase.'

Alfred Hitchcock was an English Director and Producer, also referred as 'The Master of Suspense.' He was involved in pioneering many elements of the suspense and psychological thriller genres. Additionally, his well-known films are: 'Psycho,' 'Vertigo,' 'Rear Window' and 'Rebecca.'

Frank Miller is an American comic writer, artist and film director best known for his dark comic books and graphic novels such as: Ronin, Daredevil, 300 and Sin City. All of his films have a unique plot and visual quality.

All of these directors are influential for their different ways of creating a film, and we want to apply all of their traits to our trailer: suspense, psychological elements, unique plot, visual quality and a stylish and traditional Film Noir. 

Initial Ideas

Over the past few days we have been generating some initial ideas. We have decided that we would like to make a film noir trailer (plus associated poster and webpage) because it is a new genre for us with some unique conventions which we are looking forward to researching these before putting our research into practise for the final products. We are confident that we will be able to make a successful film noir promotional package although I think that we will find more success with a niche audience because we are planning to give the film a classic/historical feel to our package.

I have created a mindmap of our initial ideas which are mostly based on our prior knowledge of the genre.

Our Initial Ideas

Additionally, below are the notes taken during our group discussion after deciding which brief to complete

Response to Brief

We have decided to choose brief number 2 (a promotional package for a new film including a trailer and two ancillary tasks) because we feel that we have the most experience with film trailers rather than any of the other briefs. We have also decided to do the webpage ancillary task because i have previous experience in making web pages and I think that it will be interesting and enjoyable to create a promotional webpage for a film, we have also chosen to complete the film poster ancillary because we don't have as much experience of creating print media as we do in creating film and we feel this task could be a good way to broaden our skills. Film promotional packs are important because they are how the audiences of films discover films. If a film had no promotion, most people would not know of the films existence and this would lead to very low revenues, which would likely lead to the production company making a loss on the film

Previous Experience

Before starting my A2 media I had completed both AS and GCSE media. For my AS media I worked in a group to produce a film opening, we were very successful in this task and so we have decided to work in the same group again this year. I think our success last year was due to the fact that we are all experienced in media studies and we are also good friends so we were able to work well together and split the workload effectively. This year I think that we could improve our time management because last year we found ourselves rushing at some points, so this year we are going to make a particular effort to plan ahead. The fact that we have started working before the summer should help with our time management because we are planning to get all of our textual analysis done much earlier than last year, which should reduce our workload and leave more time at the end of the course for exam preparation.

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