Certification

The British Board of Film Classification guidelines (18)

18 works are for adults and can contain strong issues such as:

• very strong violence 
• frequent strong language (eg 'f***') and/or very strong language (eg ‘c***’) 
• strong portrayals of sexual activity
• scenes of sexual violence 
• strong horror 
• strong blood and gore
• real sex (in some circumstances)
• discriminatory language and behaviour

There can be strong and detailed portrayals of sex at 18, including full nudity. There are no constraints on nudity in a non-sexual or educational context.

Very strong, crude and explicit sex references are permitted at 18.

An 18 film or DVD might also contain depictions of real sex if it is justified by context, as long as the film or DVD is not a sex work.

At 18 drug taking may be shown but the work as a whole must not promote or encourage drug misuse.

(At first we thought we were going to have the cirtification as 15, but after creating our film trailer we decided to use an 18)

Film Awards

We want to use film awards in our trailer to create a more professional look and as it is a convention of real film trailers. Film awards are used in real film trailers to promote the film to the audience. As our trailer is a youth culture and is an 'indie' style, we want to use a recognisable but individual film award.

After researching other films with simular genres to ours, we have decided to use the official selection film award with the 'East End Film Festival' and then the 'SXSW Film Festival' awards.

Audience Feedback

 

After designing several posters we decided to ask people their opinions of them. We firstly showed them our trailer and then ask them which poster they felt fitted the genre and feel of the trailer best. We did this as we were slightly biased because we have created them and all had different favourites, we could also gain constructive criticism about what they liked and did not like about the posters. 

Production company

We have been researching into other trailers production company openings and how we could use this in our trailer. Our production company is called 'Chemical Productions' as it goes with the content and meaning of our trailer, for example, the 'Chemical' aspect relates to the title of our film 'Fluoxetine'. It also ties in with the content in our find as it is about drugs and the effect of fluoxetine, a drug with increases serotonin (a happy chemical) in the body.
One idea of how we could use this in the production company opening is to have drugs falling and then the name 'Chemical Productions' falling along with the drugs onto the screen.

 

 

 

Above is an example of how we want it to look, however we are going to film it ourselves to reduce the likelihood of 'copyright'

Strapline

For our strapline/ tagline review (a branding slogan typically used in marketing materials and advertising) we want to create the 60s style of strapping to be used for promotional purposes.

An example of how we could use this is the 'POW' images used in comic books and cartoons, such as batman. However we would then change the words to a review of our trailer/ film, such as "The best mod film since Quadrophenia- The Daily Mail".

Artists such as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein are major inspiration of the 60s pop art.

Using colour

This 2012 Tropfest short film finalist is similar to Fluoxetine in the way it is all about a boy and how it it mostly black and white.
We have been looking at this short film to see weather we should incorportae some colour into our trailer. In the short film it is incorporated by using lots of editing so one colour is shown at a time. However we are thinking of using colour in the title, or the reviews.
To see if this is a good idea we will experiment with out title in both B&W and with some colour.
We can also look at more 1960s mod films to see how and if they use colour.

Poster Ideas

Here are some of our poster ideas which will accompany our trailer and website.

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

In our first cut of our trailer 'Fluoxetine' the introduction shows a young boy, in a parka and jeans, in an isolated area. The use of the block house shows intertextuality with The Who's, 'Who's Next', album cover. The Who was a major inspiration for our trailer as they were a very influential band in the 60's and 70's, a key feature of our trailer.
'One boy's journey' 'To find himself' 'Through a different era' is the anchorage text used to give the audience more information about the story of the trailer. However we still need to change the text which accompanies these  images, the text is 'Lucinda Grande', white and bold on a black screen, however after researching other posters, such as the Beatles and the Who, we aim to resemble the conventions of these texts.

After this we aim to include a clip of the boy and his father putting boxes into the boot of a car and then standing together, this will show that their bond is still strong as they are leaving the isolated place, however the death of his mum has caused them to move and could potentially cause friction between them.

The idea of using the pages from the 'Mod' book allowed us to represent to the audience how he is imitating the lifestyle of the mod culture and how he is idolising the mods. However we felt that there are slightly to many clips of the page turning so we will need to delete some of the less important ones.

For the current title at the end of the trailer it is just a plain black screen with 'Fluoxetine' on it. We are going to change the font of this, as it is the same as the anchorage text at the beginning, and we feel that this looks amateur at the moment.

Another aspect which we need to change is the music as at the moment the music is a recorded and has talking over it, this was only done to show the feel of our trailer. We are currently researching into other '60's rock' soundtracks that we can use for our trailer.

Audience Feedback of our Rough Cut

Here is some constructive criticism of our first rough cut of our trailer.

Website Inspiration

Jake Bugg's Website (Artist Page):

The website uses a black and white, and colour music video when you enter the website. We felt that the website resembles the feel and look of our trailer, but even though it is a artist page it shows the conventions of film website.

When you enter the website 'Jake Bugg's' music videos are automatically played. The website also includes black and white tabs at the top and side, along with links to Facebook and Twitter.

Jake Bugg is an English singer songwriter, his work is influenced by Arctic Monkeys, The Beatles and Jimi Hendrix. He also helped us with character development as we felt he portrayed the image we were looking for in our main character.

Jake Bugg's Website

Taglines

We have looked at several quotes about 'youths' to help us find inspiration for our tagline:

Everybody's youth is a dream, a form of chemical madness.

F. SCOTT FITZGERALD, "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz"

 

From this quote we liked the 'chemical madness' aspect as our trailer is about drugs, prescriptive and non-prescriptive, hence the name FLUOXETINE. 

A youth without fire is followed by an old age without experience.

CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon

One aspect of this quote that we liked was the idea of a following/ further life. Our trailer shows the boy acting in the moment and not looking into the future and therefore we felt this quote would have fitted it well. 

 

Our Tagline:

 

"In order to find who I was, I lost who I was"

We chose this as our tagline as it tells the audience more about our film in a subtle way. 'In order to find who I was' is shown through the boy and his father moving house, to Brighton, following his mothers dreams of being a mod. 'I lost who i was' is shown through the boys behaviour becoming increasingly disruptive and him misbehaving throughout the trailer, for example, taking drugs and drinking. Therefore aspects of the tagline shows him loosing himself in the lifestyle of a mod.

 

Fluoxetine - Teaser Trailer - Rough Cut

Recording in Low Light

As some of our scenes will be filmed at night or in the evening, with low levels of light, we have found that the footage will sometimes become grainy. We have done some research into filming with low levels of light and into the camera we are using (Panasonic HDC-TM10).

1) "None of the Panasonic cameras, except the DVC30, can record in IR mode (nightvision). You do have MagicPix mode for recording in low light levels. That will cause the video to exhibit extreme motion blur. MagicPix also allows you to use the LCD as a light source." -a solution form www.fixya.com

2) Another feature of the camera is scene mode, one of the scenes is 'low light mode', which will help us when filming at night.

Website (creating)

To create our film website we used wix.com. We choose a simple design at first as our film aims to create a sustained mood of adolescence, isolation and conformity. 

In the image below, a first draft of our website, we have used the images of Harry (the protagonist) in Sheppy. We used these images as it one of our key locations in the film, however it does not reveal to much about the content. The images also reflect a sense of isolation and seclusion. We have edited the images to create a more indie feel to the website. 

The initial design of our website

This a second  design for our website, as we have contemplated our trailer being in black and white we thought it would work well if our background was grayscale also. The title is in bright red, as it is one of the colours of iconic mod circle. The photograph is of the main protagonist being isolated in one of loactions.

Creating the 'Police Lights' Effect

Attempt 1:
For our first attempt to create police lights we started by covering two torches with blue and red transparent plastic, however as we were filming at night the torches did not give off enough light to enable us to see the actor sufficiently.

Red and Blue plastic sheets

Torch

Attempt 2:
For our second attempt we used car headlights and held the plastic sheets over them. To create the flashing effect of the sirens we moved the sheets quickly on and off of the headlights. This method worked better as the headlights acted as a key light in the scene. Overall this method was useful, however the blue and red did not show up very much so the colours will need to be enhanced on iMovie.

Car Headlights

Red and Blue plastic sheets

Day 2 of Filming

On the 13th January we filmed some more shots for our trailer at our second location -  Brighton. We took out actors down for the whole day so we could use a range of lighting and also took a variety of clothes so our actors could change to ensure costuming was not the same through out the whole trailer.
It was a successful filming day and we now have more footage to continue editing our trailer.
The pictures below are of Sarah and Nicole filming some of the shots.

Experimenting with black&white

We have been considering producing our trailer in black&white due to our research into the Mod era showing us that it was common and popular back then.
With some of our location shots I have edited the saturation and exposure of them to transform them to black&white to see if the trailer will look suitable being fully edited.

Props- Fluoxetine packaging

One of the most important props of the trailer will be the Fluoxetine box due to it being the whole focus of the film.
We did some research into the different packaging of Fluoxetine by going into a chemist to look at the boxes they had in stock.
A common theme between the packaging was bold bright colours along with white spacious areas and bold plain black text.

This information is useful for the box we will use in the trailer and also for the typography of the title as they will be linked together.

Location #2 - Brighton

For our next filming location we chose to use Brighton. There are many reasons for using the seaside town. Firstly when the boy moves away from location number 1 (Sheppey) he moves away from an isolated area to a more busy and popular area. Brighton is perfect for this because it is a very busy place to due people living and visiting the area. It also very popular due to the pier and the arcades and fun fair rides.
Another reason for choosing the location of Brighton is due to the 1960s riots. The 1964 riots were between Mods and Rockers and were famous due to the amount jailed due to the event. Due to the underlying theme of mods in our trailer we thought linking the Mods and Rockers riots in would be perfect by using the same location.

Fish Tank trailer deconstruction

We chose to deconstruct the trailer of Fish Tank due to it being the same genre; a social realism film.
The protagonist in Fish Tank is a teenage girl who has a difficult childhood due to a problematic mother and also getting involved with the wrong group of people, ending in her getting into trouble. Throughout the trailer clips of her dancing are included showing this is her escapism and the contrast throughout the trailer of her troubled teenage life and dancing creates a variety of emotions from the girl.
This timeline deconstruction goes through the trailer shot by shot analysing the shot type, colouring of the shot and also what the shot is portraying. The sound used in the trailer is also analysed in the timeline by showing when scores are used and other sound techniques for example dialog and diegetic sound.

Film Companies

We have looked at a few film companies that we think are possible to produce our film, overall we decided BBC Films was ideal to make Fluoxetine. BBC Films is the feature film-making arm of the BBC. It is firmly established at the forefront of British independent film-making and co-produces approximately eight films a year. Working in partnership with major international and UK distributors, BBC Films aims to make strong British films with range.

Intertextuality

As Fluoxetine has a strong connection with the 60s mod era we thought it wise to make some intertextual references.The Who was a huge part of the mod movement, so we looked at many of their iconic picture, we chose this album over to replicate in a shot as it would be easy to recreate and as an album cover it is recognisable. We used this monument in Sheppey to create a replication of the image, in the trailer we will have the main boy around and on the structure to recreate the image better.

Target auidence and Certification

Our film, ultimately is about breaking the chains of a conforming society, and wanting to do their own thing. As the protaganist and all the supprting cast are in the range of 17-18 an audience of this age will instantly relate to this. However we didnt want to certify the film at 18 then ignore the audience a couple of years younger that might be struggling with the issues the Fluoxetine deals with.

These are the requirements for a 15 film, written by British Board of Film Classification:

• strong violence
• frequent strong language (eg 'f***').
• portrayals of sexual activity
• strong verbal references to sex
• sexual nudity
• brief scenes of sexual violence or verbal references to sexual violence
• discriminatory language or behaviour
• drug taking
• At 15 drug taking may be shown but the work as a whole must not promote or encourage drug misuse.The misuse of easily accessible and highly dangerous substances like aerosols or solvents is unlikely to be acceptable at 15.
   

Location #1 - Sheppey

Our first location for our trailer is a serene, isolated place. We choose to use this as this is the place that the boy and his father are leaving to attempt to forget the memories of their late mother and husband.
After researching several locations we have decided to film this part at The Hamlet of Shellness on the Isle of Sheppy. 
Here are some location photographs we took of Sheppy:

Storyboard

Here is a copy of our story board. We will use this is allow us to plan what will be filmed in upcoming weeks.