FMP - Week 1 Overview

For the start of our FMP it was the research stage, and there are many areas I need to look into to allow to understand the foundations of how to sculpt my story and produce a movie trailer. Firstly I looked into the factual history behind file-sharing and Napster. I wanted to make sure that all the things I knew made up file sharing was true and wanted to understand the realities of where file-sharing spawned from. From here I learnt the true stories of Sean Fanning and Sean Parker. Originally I was lead to believe that

Parker was the pioneer of Napster but actually through research and documentaries I learnt that it was actually Sean Fanning who dropped out of school with the idea first. 

He had quite an interesting story of how he used to sleep at his uncles business with a sleeping bag next to his computer because he was so obsessed with getting this idea off the ground. This is a good foundation that I can progress my narrative around. Now understanding what file sharing spawned from it also allows to more to choose how to condense and mould the boring facts around file sharing into something easy to interpret and make visually enticing to the audience, preventing them to just skip the trailer at the start. 

I also looked into other case stories of other file sharing websites and there owners such as Megashare, to see I can cross the stories together to get an overall more thrilling experience. Looking at these showed me how serious the area is with a guy called Kim Schmitz who was sentenced to 80+ years in a US prison due to mass copywriter infringement. I can use this to vamp up the tension and risk between the characters actions during the story. 

I then started looking at the basics of a movie trailer, and what makes the foundations of trailers. The rough guide that people follow to show the story of a trailer; Theory of Equilibrium. From this I learnt the basic do's and don't of movie trailer which allowed me when analysing other trailers to see the similarities and understand why the included certain clips. Therefore from this I started to look at numerous trailers to start getting some inspiration and ideas behind what I can base mine on. From these trailers I started to pick out features that I liked and that influence me.

Watching numerous trailers made me distinguish between a successful and boring trailer, and the different effects a trailer can have on the viewer depending on the way it was edited and understand. For example the trailer to The Wolf of Wall Street was very seat gripping and made me want to go out and have a big party, however watching the trailer to Lone Survivor made me want to go out and explore the world/join the military. This effect on me shows the power of a movie trailer and how it can influence someone. After watching both these trailers I instantly wanted more and had to watch the films, if I can come to understand how they did this then it will help me in creating a successful and enjoyable project.