To complete to pre-production pieces I created a series of
research documents that have helped me towards producing a realistic and
professional press release and trailer story board for the series that I have
created.
In order to write my press release I studied a number of
press releases for previous series that have been aired on a number of TV
channels. This gave me an insight of how a press release is laid out and how it
is structured. I found that in many press releases a small but intriguing
description of the show is given to begin with, this Is used to draw the reader’s
attention from the very beginning. In my own press release I attempted to
provide a small but enticing description of how my series will be, using words
such as exhilarating and thrilling to appeal to the audience. I then went on to
give a detailed description of my characters and partially about their
backgrounds. This was seen in several of the press releases I studied prior to
writing my own. I finally discussed the cast, who had previous experience with
acting, also those who were debuting their acting career in the series and gave
a cast list.
It also helped me apply a mode of address, the
communication with an audience. It was important to me to keep the audience’s
attention throughout my entire press release. I aimed to not go off track and
to emphasise the exhilarating journey that my series would take the audience
on. When researching previous press releases I found when reading some I became
distracted and uninterested, when I wrote my own I intended to impose the
opposite feeling on my audience members.
When creating my Storyboard for the trailer of my series I watched
various trailers for TV dramas that had previously been created. I found that
many of them were short but memorable. I focused on dark and eerie dramas as
this was what I aimed to create eventually. In these trailers I noticed they
used shots such as low angle shots, close ups and long shots, I feel that these
shot types help to create the mysterious atmosphere in which I wished to achieve.
I also noticed that many of the images were darkened creating almost a
threatening atmosphere. This helped me in making the decision to edit many of
my images making them look dark and gloomy.
Many of the trailers used little sound; I feel this added a
lot of tension. In order to create this atmosphere on my own trailer I made the
choice to include no speech in my trailer, I have only used a quiet and eerie
piece I feel adds to the atmosphere. In addition to the music adding tension I made
the decision to use a dark colour palette, I fell it was fitting to the prior
choices I had made. I also found that this worked well in trailers I had
watched that were similar to the piece I wished to eventually achieve.
In many trailers I found that genre iconography was quite
specific, many were directed towards a female audience, I wished to appeal to
both male and female audiences widening my choice of storylines and themes. I
have both scenes that will appeal to the male and female audience; I chose to
do this as not many series have a diverse audience range. Finally I noticed
that no communication or direct communication with the audience added an intense,
penetrating atmosphere, this is what I aimed to create in my final piece.
Noticing that no speech was address to the audience and very little eye contact
was made with the audience I took these properties and interpreted them into my
own piece.
