RESEARCH: TITLES

Production Company: Lions Gate Film Presents

Director: An Edward R.Pressman Production

In association with muse productions & Christian Halsey Solomon

A Mary Harron Film

American Psycho

Actor 1:Christian Bale

Actor 2: Willem Dafoe

Actor 3: Jared Leto

Actor 4: Josh Lucas

Actor 5: Samantha Mathis

Actor 6: Matt Ross

Actor 7: Bill Sage

Actor 8: Chloe Sevigny

Actor 9: Cara Seymour

Actor 10: Justin Theroux

Actor 11: Guinevere Turner

Actor 12: Reese Witherspoon

Casting by Billy Hopkins, Suzanna Smith & Kerry Barden

Costume Designer Isis Mussenden

Production Designer Gideon Ponte

Music Supervisors Barry Cole & Christopher Covert

Music by John Cale

Editor Andrew Marcus

Director of Photography Andrzej Sekula

Co-Producers Ernie Barbarash, Clifford Streit, Rob Weiss

Executive Producers Michael Paseornek, Jeff Sackman, Joseph Drake

Produced by Edward R. Pressman, Chris Hanley, Chirstian Halsey Solomon

Based on the novel by Bret Easton Ellis

Screenplay by Mary Harron & Guinevere Turner

Directed by Mary Harron

RESEARCH: DISTRIBTUION COLLAGE

I watched a presentation on the FDA website by Kezia Williams head of theatrical distribution at Pathe, on how distributors work to create a successful and exciting new marketing campaign for each film, on the film distributors' association site. In this presentation it was explained by Chris Besseling of Pathe, that major movie marketing companies will position a film to make it stand out to the rest, they can do this by having a USP such a major movie star titles, literacy adaptations or cast director.

I watched Kezia Williams deliver a presentation on what theatrical distribution at Pathe does. Williams shared that distributers work to create a successful marketing campaign for each film. I investigated the different aspects of the marketing campaign for 'The Joker', the main aspects I were looking for were:

• Film website

• Film posters

• Film trailers

• Facebook

• Instagram

• Twitter

• Cross promotion/ product tie-ins (like Heineken and James Bond in SkyFall and Spectre, Toyota and Star Wars)

• News articles, interviews, award ceremonies

To display my research I decided to make a collage of all the marketing tools I had collated. As this film has been produced by a large conglomerate, Warner Bros, all aspects have been thoroughly covered: there are many film posters, interviews, trailers and online presence. The emphasis is on their online presence, their social media pages on Twitter and Instagran are extremely active: new daily posts reminding audiences and drilling it into them that The Joker is coming out.

One aspect of The Joker that drew a lot of attention from the media was the connotations to mental health issues. Joaquin Phoenix is presented as a regular working class man who already is issued and when provoked, he falls to his evil temptations. This was so effective as it is shown to be an issue which could affect anyone. This prompted audiences to talk about the film, ultimately creating excitement around the film.

RESEARCH: ON THE SET

Brief account of learning to use the cameras and tripods, what filming terminology to use on set and good practice in editing

This account is about what I learnt and what equipment we were shown when we were shown how to use the Canon cameras and Manfrotto tripods. 

Cameras and tripods. In groups we passed the camera around and each of us practised how to handle the camera, insert the battery and memory card. When you pass the cameras around you should say 'yours' and 'mine' to avoid the risk of dropping it.  We learned how to set up a tripod and to 'bubble' it using the spirit level to help make the camera balanced and in focus. We explored the camera such as how to focus.  The exposure on the camera is adjusted by moving the dial up and down. 

White balance (WB) is the process of removing unrealistic colour casts, so that objects which appear white in person are rendered white in the photo. Proper camera white balance has to take into account the "colour temperature" of a light source, which refers to the relative warmth or coolness of white light. You adjust it by selecting the ‘WB’ on the camera, it will then come up with little pictures representing difference colour tones that are used in different lights which will give a more realistic effect.

180-degree rule. We learned about the 180 degree rule.  The 180-degree rule is a cinematography guideline that states that two characters in a scene should maintain the same left/right relationship to one another. When the camera passes over the invisible axis connecting the two subjects, it is called crossing the line and the shot becomes what is called a reverse angle.

On set We then learnt the terminology used in the film industry on set. The director shouts 'Standby' before filming to ensure that everyone is ready and when they are, they reply 'Standing by.'

When the director shouts ‘rolling’, everyone on set must be quiet, then he /she shouts ‘action’ which tell the actors to start. After the shoot, the director has said the last ‘cut’, he / she will say ‘strike the kit’ which is the film crew's cue to pack away, put the batteries on charge and ensure that the footage is uploaded. 

Good practice in editing. We are using Final Cut Pro and iMovie on the iMacs in the media studio. When uploading our footage, we should create a folder to keep the shots. These folders are called bins and the unedited footage from cameras are called rushes.