PRODUCTION PORTFOLIO UPDATE

14/9/14 | PLANNING | OUR FILM TITLE

We brainstormed ideas for our title as a group. We thought of perhaps just calling the film ‘Erica’ as this is the main character’s name and does not give too much away about the film, providing a sense of mystery. We also looked at other psychological horror film names. We liked the way that a lot of film titles used just one word as it snappy, grabs the attention of the audience and makes for an intriguing title that doesn’t giveaway much, if anything, about the film. Therefore we also considered titles such as ‘Sinister’ as they are quick and catchy.

In the end we decided on simply calling our film ‘Erica’ as we thought this had the greatest intrigue and mystery to it, and it is the main character’s name so it is relevant to the film.

14/10/14 | PLANNING | OUR FILM TITLE CREDITS

We went back to the Art of the Title website in order to study how professionals use title credits in their film openings. We watched The Conjuring opening titles and Pacific Rim opening titles. Using this research, we plan to have these credits coming up in this order at the start of the film:

·         Name of the director

·         Writers

·         Producers

·         Executive producer

·         Editor

·         Starring characters: Erica,  Hannah, Chloe

·         Music

·         Distribution company: Momentum

·         Production company

·         Any extra such as ‘A James Wan Film’, for example as we saw on the opening credits of The Conjuring.

·         Title of the film

In terms of how to present the title credits, we have thought of embedding them over Erica’s mental forms. We want to make the font block capitals and easy to read so it looks clinical and medical, which sets the scene.

14/10/14 | PLANNING | OUR PRODUCTION COMPANY

We looked at many production company names by going onto the Art of the Title website. We researched production company names such as Dream Works Animations, Metro Goldwyn Mayer, Working Title Films and Eon Productions. These gave us inspiration to make our own name original and stand out from others, and it gave us options for words we could use such as ‘Productions’, ‘Films’, ‘Studios’ or ‘Pictures’.  We decided our production name should also be personal to us. We liked the word ‘vault’ as it suggested secrets or something hidden and mysterious, and we wanted the number 15 in it too as this is our age. Therefore we came up with the production company name: ‘Vault 15 Productions’.

14/10/14 | PLANNING | OUR DISTRUBUTOR

Today in class we watched a video from the Launching Films website, the Film Distributor’s Association microsite. It was a short animation on distributors and what they do, and I learned that a distribution company helps discuss how to promote a film with the producers, directors, cinema exhibitors and external partners like publicists. They then decide on a release strategy, and create marketing campaigns through promotions, screenings, public relations and social media to create a ‘definitely want to see’ buzz among the target audience.

We chose Momentum as our distributor as it distributes more niche films which we feel our film is, as well as dealing with horror films such as ‘Woman in Black’. Momentum also works with first time companies, which we are. We didn’t feel the bigger companies like Warner Bros fitted our film as they generally do not work with first time companies.