Over the past two months, Disney's Cinderella is becoming more and more talked about in the media as it is quickly approaching its release date (27th March 2015 in UK). The main key happenings are:
Advance ticket sales outpace last year's 'Maleficent'
The luxury make up brand 'MAC' released a 17 piece collection inspired by Cinderella. All products are encased in powder blue packaging, with the iconic Cinderella logo and are named after Cinderella themed things. Such as:
'Evil Step- Mother' eye pigment
Lipstick in the shade 'Royal Ball'
'Stroke of Midnight' eyeshadow palette
Lipglass' in the shade 'Glass Slipper' and 'Happily Ever After'
Disney's choice of teaming up with a make up brand allows the film to entice a wider age range of audience.
The American dress company, Ashdon inc, announce their Disney Cinderella 'Forever Enchanted' keepsake gown and prom dress collection with up to 50 different styles of dresses. Again, this is Disney creating a wider audience, reaching out to teenagers as prom tends to occur at 'high school'.
Finally, on 11th February, a second exclusive trailer was released in the US, piquing the audience's interests and making sure the film is still widely acknowledged in the media.
The fact that Disney are releasing synergy across many different forms, is creating a wider audience who wish to watch the film.
As part of a film opening you need credits to tell the audience who stars in the film and who helped to make and produce the film. To make our credits look professional we watched other chick flick film openings and analysed how they presented theirs. The film we look at was 'Legally Blonde'.
The makers used a pink swirly font which suits the girly chick flick film well. Whilst watching the opening, we made note of the credits we hadn't heard of such as 'casting by', 'music supervisor' and 'locations manager'. We will incorporate these credits into our film opening to make it seem much more professional.
We decided to use a girly font in white for our credits - the font looks similar to a magazine font.
To film the last part of our film opening we went down to our local train station. This filming day was much more stressful as to ensure we get all the shots we want we also had to get on a train, but the train we needed to get on onlt gave us 40 minutes to film everything we needed to. This was a good thing as it made us much more efficient. We also used two cameras again so two people could film different angles and different shot types at the same time. We also didn't want our protagonist's face to be revealed until she's at the office to add mystery, so this was another obstacle we had to watch out for.
We filmed; two establishing shots of the train station, Samantha walking to the station, buying her ticket, walking through the ticket barrier, walking to the platform, getting on the train and her on the train.
For the first establishing shot, we filmed over the bridge; in the frame you can see the station itself and a train on the tracks going under the tunnel. The second, was of a fast train going past, we used a mid shot and stood close to the edge of the platform.
We used a tracking shot following behind Samantha walking towards the station and the second camera used a wide-shot of her walking towards it. We had to retake this shot a few times to ensure Samantha's face wasn't in shot. This camera then panned to show her buying a ticket at the ticket machine. At the machine, we used a zoomed in tilt up, starting from her shoes and stopping at her hand which is using the machine. A zoomed in over the shoulder shot shoes her selecting a ticket to London Marylebone. We then use a close up shot of Samantha's hand getting the ticket out of the machine.
When Samantha walks through the barrier we used both cameras, one of us filmed her putting the ticket in from behind and I was filming a mid shot from the other side of the barrier and follow her until the stairs in which I stop walking and film her walking down them. The other camera then waited and filmed her from behind coming down the second flight of stairs. I then had to rush down the stairs to the bottom where we filmed a close up of Samantha's shoes walking down the last few steps.
It was very difficult to film Samantha actually getting on the train because someone needed to get on the train and film her getting on and I had to film her getting on but from behind and then get on the train too! Was very stressful but we managed to get the shots we wanted.
On the train we filmed her flicking through a magazine and we saw the opportunity to use an over the shoulder shot.
Overall the day was very stressful but the small time frame allowed us to get the shots we wanted.
Last Thursday, my media studies class and I went into our local town to film the rest of our film opening. The weather was rainy and dark so we took advantage of this and used it to create pathetic fallacy as our protagonist is feeling stressed because she forgot her boss' coffee. The scene we filmed was when Samantha is running to get the coffee. Our actor, Molly, had to run into Costa Coffee and collect the cups of coffee and run back to the office again. We decided to film with two cameras so we could get a variety of different shots and angles of the same footage and would add continuity when editing.
We started with both cameras on the other side of the road to Samantha, and one camera used an extra long-shot panning her running into Costa, the other used a more zoomed in long-shot of her running.
For Samantha leaving Costa, we borrowed two coffee cups which added verisimilitude. We then filmed a mid shot of Samantha leaving the cafe holding two cups and start to run the way she came from.
To add variation we then used one of the cameras to film Samantha running away from the camera on the same side of the road.
Then we filmed a long shot of her running back to the office holding the coffee cups.
Where the screen shot says 'Title Text Here', we envisage this being where our film title will come up. We hope to add a transition so that it moves to the left as if Samantha's running after it.
Next Thursday we are going to film our train station scene, this is will be our last filming day.
