Film Poster Criticisms

After producing the film poster for our film, we were told that it did not look like a film poster and that the poster looked as if it was promoting a band as opposed to a film.

We chose to create our poster like this because of the inspiration we took from the posters of films similar to ours such as The Breakfast Club, The Goonies and Stand By Me. We managed to find many similarities between all of the posters used to promote these classic teen films and so we used the research we conducted to aid us in producing our own film poster. 

Here is our poster:

Here is the poster for The Breakfast Club:

Our poster has many similarities to the poster used to promote the classic teen film The Breakfast Club. Our poster similarly features a group of teenagers standing together appearing united and has a tagline hinting to the narrative of the film. It was because of this poster, and others we found when conducting our film poster research, that we chose to create our film poster in this way.

Justification of the Criticisms

After viewing the first draft of our film opening we received criticisms from both our teachers and from fellow students. One of theses criticisms was that one of our titles "would not feature in a film" as it looked childish, low budget and is difficult to read. 

This is a small clip of that title and below is the justification of our title. We will explain why we chose to keep and not reshoot this particular title.  

Below is a small clip of a similar title that features in the opening credits of Napoleon Dynamite. When conducting similar film research we stumbled upon Napoleon Dynamite and considered it to be similar to our film because of its creative and low budget title sequence. As a result of this, we drew much inspiration from its title sequence and tried to present ours in a similar and quirky way.

It is because of this title that we chose to present our title in the way we did. It does appear low budget but we are essentially a low budget film and so we wanted to make it authentic and quirky, like Napoleon Dynamite, and we believe that our titles create this effect.
As an audience member you struggle to read the name on this title just as you struggle to read the names featured in our title but this is what makes our titles, and Napoleon Dynamite's, quirky, unique and low budget. 

Improvements To Be Made

Plans for the New Voice-over:



Possible Script for Voice-over:

We’ve been friends for as long as I can remember. When we were younger we were care-free and nothing else mattered. 

Those three took me in and gave me a place where I belonged. 

Our club started out as just being a bit of fun but it evolved into a place of refuge when we were older. A place where we could go and just have fun. We didn't have to worry about anything. 

We called our club, Connect Four simply because we that was our favourite game. We would meet two or three times a week and spend hours in our cabin. It would be night before we even realised, but we didn't care because we were having fun. 

As the years past our friendship grew and we became closer as a group. We never expected things to change… 

Teacher Feedback

Things that went well:

• Very clever titles
• Good music choice
• Nice mise en scene

Improvements to be made:

• Voiceover- not strong enough, needs more emotion
• Colour correction- needs to change and be improved throughout the time-lapse 
• Music volume- in some places it's too loud or too quiet. We need to get that balance right. 
• Transitions- something between the two panning shots to signify that we are the same people as the younger children. Possibly a dissolve or similar transition. 
• Lengthen some titles- the domino title needs to be longer; more time needed on Tilly Hawkins' name. 

Film Pitch: Teacher and Peer Feedback