Dystopian Trailer Progress Assignment

For the dystopian trailer project I am the scriptwriter. I have just finished the script and all we need to do is figure out when to go and film. There are 10 scenes in our trailer and each scene has multiple shots. The trailer will start out with a news report that we will film talking about artificial intelligence. We show that report one more time later in the trailer. We have a variety of shots from the front and back, establishing shots, medium shots, and close-ups and we also use both dialogue from the scene and several voice-overs. We are using the dance edit of the song Like a Criminal by District 78 to undertone almost the entire trailer. It's a techno song that represents the cold life that the people live being controlled by cell phones. When we have shots of the buildings we are likely going to put our propaganda poster on a few to demonstrate the propaganda aspect of life.

The story that is to be told through our trailer is that in a world where the iPhone 27 has gotten so advanced people don't think for themselves, they are practically zombies. The main character has a best friend which is uncommon in this society and one day the best friend suddenly vanishes. When the main character asks her phone where her friend is, the phone shows no recognition of the friend ever existing. That part is similar to people being "vaporized" in 1984. We then show the main character sneaking into a guarded library and finding a book that tells her who invented these cell phones. While we never show her actually obtaining a police uniform and traveling back in time, we show her in a police uniform running through crowds of people nothing like the ones previously shown in the trailer with a voice-over briefly explaining it. Through a few different shots the audience sees her go up to the person who invented the robots.

Our five dystopian characteristics are restricted thought (machines trying to get the main character to stop thinking about her best friend), figurehead or concept is worshipped (people think cell phones are making their life perfect), constant surveillance (a cell phone tells one of the police about a specific citizen and has the police go back in time and destroy them), dehumanized state (people walking around zombie-like), and the illusion of a perfect utopia (people think the phones are helping them).

Dystopian Trailer Assignment

Equilibrium. Kurt Wimmer. R. 2002
In the near future everyone's actions and emotions are rigidly controlled by the Cleric, and the highest ranking Cleric (Christian Bale) soon discovers that the government he's working for is not so great when they arrest his wife. He joins the resistance and plots to overthrow the government, while still being employed as a Cleric.

This trailer does an excellent job showing the different aspects of a dystopian society using a combination of words and clips from the movie. There is a good ratio of words to film and enhances the audience's understanding of the plot. There are voice-overs in the beginning explaining who the main character is as he bursts through a door surrounded by gunshots. This is a better way to effectively show who the main character is instead of just having text or just having film. The editing creates a basic plot of the movie but doesn't give the resolution, making the audience want to know how it ends. I would like to implement the editing techniques of voice-overs and text throughout my trailer to convey the characters and plot. I also want to have a few establishing shots mixed in to show the lack of freedom in the society.