The Technical Bit: Part One:- The I-dent

Jessie and I worked together using Livetype to produce an original I-dent that coincides with the genre of our film opening. We researched the distribution companies that were involved in the films that we would place our film in the same group as in terms of genre and style, as well as an example of a distribution company that produces a specific genre of films.

Juno, a quirky teen romantic comedy, was distributed by Fox Searchlight, the branch of 20th Century Fox that produces a more 'alternative' type of film. The I-dent for Fox Searchlight is very general, as the company does not produce films specific to a genre.

A Cinderella Story was distributed by Warner Brothers. It is similar to our film in that it is about a teen relationship. Warner Brothers is another of 'The Big 6' Hollywood distribution companies that also distributes a number of different genres, including action with Sucker Punch (2011) and  Final Destination 5 (2011).









It is very rare to find a distribution company that only distributes films of one particular genre, but Magnet Releasing comes pretty close. It specialises in the distribution of only horror, action, comedy and Asian Cinema, which may not sound particularly genre-specific, but when you consider the number of genres that they do not work with, for example drama, romantic comedy, historical and musical films.


Having done sufficient research and experimentation, as well as the development of certain ideas, such as our 'Lego House Cinema' which we attempted to include a graphic in, but we felt that it did not flow very well and decided to nip our attempts to make it work in the bud, so that we could focus our attention on just one I-dent. we hope to, however, include 'Lego House Cinema' in our credits for our opening.
We chose the title 'Messy Productions' during a small 'brainstorming' session Jessie and I had with each other, and felt that the use of the term 'Messy' links with the theme of the scrapbook and also has connotations of the modern teen lifestyle. It also coincidently was the word used to describe teen relationships by my own mother. We thought that the contrast between the title itself and the simple layout of the I-dent would have an almost oxymoronic quality. We also thought that the title had a similar ironic ring to it as 'Working Title' does, as it would normally give the impression of unfinished or basically assembled piece of film, but the audience that we asked about the name responded that they understood the irony. However, since Miss suggested that it may not be an appropriate name, we will put the question forward when we screen our rough cut to a sample of our target audience.