Evaluation Post 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our opening sequence uses, develops, and challenged forms and conventions of actual film openings. We initially aimed to challenge several stereotypical conventions of characters, we did conform to most conventions of our chosen genre.

   

  We were mainly inspired by the following films:

• Casino Royale - stylistic look of the film, glamorous characters
• 21 - stylistic look of the film, plus layout of poker game and clothing.
• Taken - similar story-line, flawed male protagonist
• The Usual Suspects - style of titling in the introduction
• Rounders - lighting, style

Casino Royale's glamorous style

Taken, "Mills" doing bad for good reasons

Semi-circle of characters in 21

Opening credits in The Usual Suspects

Rounders lighting

Our plot is as follows: 
Blake, the ex-policeman protagonist, has had his partner, Rachel, kidnapped by a criminal organisation. The film follows his journey to locate Rachel and get her back from the criminals. To achieve this, he seeks information and help from an ex-police colleague, Jen.
The film's opening centres around Blake attempting to get help from Jen at a back-alley poker game.

Form

Our opening, with credits appearing on more abstract shots.

Usual Suspects' abstract opening credits.

We conformed to many of the traditional conventions of film openings. We included opening credits with media institutions such as distributor and production company, as expected of a film opening sequence. Generally, following this is an introduction to setting and the main characters, however sometimes this is flipped. Seeing as our sequence could only be 2 minutes long, we decided to have the main credits on more abstract shots without characters in them, and some overlaid onto the shots of Jen and Blake talking. The Usual Suspects was a very influential example to us that exhibited most of these features. We used music to build up suspense for the shooting at the end of the sequence, for the initial music I composed a short piece, and for the music during the shooting I found some royalty free music from incompetech.com.


Genre

Characters
There was the stereotypical male action protagonist in our film, however he didn't totally conform to the stereotypes in the end as we made changes. We made these changes to his character as we wanted to make him more easy for the audience to sympathise with. We conveyed him as a good person doing bad acts for good reasons, much like Bryan Mills in Taken, rather than characters like John McClane from Die Hard.

Bryan Mills, willing to do anything
for his daughter.

Our character Blake, willing to do anything to save
his fiancee.

Events
The card game is the main event, taking up the majority of the sequence. It allows time for conversation between Blake and Jen to introduce their characters to the audience.
The shooting is an unexpected surprise, but nevertheless typical of action films. It also marks the tone for death early on in the film. This fight at the beginning of the film was mainly inspired by the fight at the beginning of Casino Royale. This fight was inspiring to us as it was exactly what appeared in our heads when trying to picture the action genre.

Our shootout

Casino Royale's initial fight scene

Themes
The themes are very conventional of action films, our film is mainly underpinned by key themes of loss and revenge, Blake has lost Rachel and will what revenge if something bad has happened to her. This can be seen in other films including Taken, with Mills taking revenge on those responsible for kidnapping his daughter. Themes of life and death are also introduced through the initial shootout.

Bryan Mills takes revenge on those responsible

Blake has yet to want revenge, his character is still developing
within the beginning of the film.

Mise en scene
The lighting in the sequence was low key and cast shadows over much of the characters' faces, a very neo noir feature.

Narrative structure

Todarov's theory of equilibrium

Todarov's theory of equilibrium is used in most plots for films and books. For example, Se7en begins with a new detective working on cases in an equilibrium, then finding a strange series of murders, (the disruption to the equilibrium), and then he solves them to create the new equilibrium. Our film does not quite follow the theory however, we start with a disruption to the equilibrium, and show a flashback to a time during equilibrium. This was inspired somewhat by The Usual Suspects, which had transitions through time periods, however instead of using titles we made the shot of the ring more dreamy with effects and de-saturation.

Our de-saturated, dreamy flashback shot.

Propp's character theory (example)

Propp's character theory also had an effect on our plot. It affected all our characters as Blake is the hero trying to save Rachel, the princess. He is also in some respects an anti-hero as he does immoral things to help get Rachel back. Jen acts as a helper, helping remove obstacles between him and his goal, and finally the thugs acted as obstacles (antagonists) for Blake. We mainly connoted these characters roles through their actions and appearance.

Jen literally 'removes' the thugs in Blake's
way, she is the helper.

From the thugs more casual clothing and beady-eyed glances,
it is easy for the audience to tell that they are only going to
cause problems for Blake.

We also used Barthe's five codes. Semic code was used as the poker game in the unnatural setting creates an air of danger to the scene. We also used Hermeneutic code to build suspense, for example the shots of the thugs angry glares and the darkness surrounding the table.

The angry glares from the thugs helps to
 build up the suspense in the scene

Being unable to see the area around the poker game
 creates the unnatural setting for the audience.

Style

Our film's style, not quite as dark and

grey as that of Sin City, but certainly 

not as saturated as films such as Casino Royale.

Sin City's style

Although we aimed for the style of a glamorous action film like the James Bond films, we ended up with quite a neo-noir almost crime-thriller film, like Sin City. The low-key lighting generally associated with neo-noir and noir films was illuminated all our shots, and the minimalist design of our set added to this, creating mystery of location.

Evaluation Post 2: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Throughout our project, our main focus of representation was gender representation. Though we wanted identifiable characters, we wanted to break negative gender stereotypes and provide more developed characters. We conveyed these representations through dialogue, costume, and story.

Though we do include some recognised gender stereotypes, we do differ somewhat from traditional action films.

Blake is the alpha male lead in the film. Although he does conform to some action film male gender stereotypes, he breaks them too. His dialogue presents him as assertive and determined. He states he "will do everything" in his power to find the kidnappers and save his fiancée,Rachel. This clearly demonstrates the determination within his character to the audience, this quality is similar to most action film male protagonists. His assertiveness is conveyed when he calls the criminals "low life thugs", projecting his confidence as well, he has no fear of them.

Blake's "masculine" characteristics were inspired by the male protagonists in films such as the James Bond series, and Die Hard.

Blake in heated discussion with Jen.

Despite wanting Blake a recognisable lead character, we wanted to add depth to his character. We wanted to show the audience that he wasn't just some charismatic perfect male lead who gets all the girls and kills all the baddies. We wanted to make him more real.
We try to connote the fact that he is only doing what he is to save his beloved Rachel, and that he would do anything it takes to do so. In the opening we connote this through his dialogue, ("I will do anything").

Bond with the same determined expression

Blake visibly shaken after the shooting.

However, we wanted to further reduce the stereo-typicality of his character; we wanted to give the audience a view into this developing character having to adapt to change. One of the ways we attempted to do this was to have him look visibly shocked after the shooting.



Jen's character also threw gender stereotypes out of the window. Compared to most action film female leads, she is neither a love interest for the protagonist, nor someone needing to be rescued. The prior is connoted through Blake already having a fiancée, the latter through her strong actions when the criminals raise their weapons to harm her and Blake.





Jen's strong, hardened characteristics were inspired by female leads such as 'Lara Croft' in Tomb Raider (2001), (although she was more sexualised than Jen), and 'Ellen Ripley' from Alien (1979). Ripley in particular was portrayed with the sort of stereotype-breaking features we wanted.

Ellen Ripley in Alien

Lara Croft in Tomb Raider

Despite Jen's character not conforming to common gender stereotypes, in hindsight, Rachel, although not seen in the opening, would be conforming to the gender stereotype of the damsel in distress, having to be saved by Blake.

Evaluation Post 3: What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Universal Pictures would be our distributor, we decided this through our research on their past history of film distribution, and the sort of production companies they have worked alongside.


Our production company, FRP Studios, is a small company with great aspirations. We aim to produce films to mimic the style of glossy Hollywood productions. Our films, though British at heart, would be dual-nationality due to the US funding.

Our production company was inspired mainly by Dark Castle Entertainment, a division of Silver Pictures, which has produced successful small British films and worked with big distributors including Universal and Warner Bros. In 2012, Silver Pictures made a 5-year distribution deal with Universal Pictures. This was the main reason we thought Universal as the appropriate distributor for our film. Non-Stop (2014) is a recent film distributed through their deal, with many similarities to our film. It was very successful, and we believe our film would be received similarly if distributed this way.



We would first distribute the film to a range of UK cinemas, and depending on how well it was received, then begin a staggered release across the UK, Europe, and the US, selling the distribution rights to various companies depending on country. Like Non-Stop, some time after cinema viewings have finished, we will release the film on DVD and Blu-ray, and make it available on-demand via services such as Lovefilm, Netflix, and Amazon Instant Video.

Evaluation Post 4: Who would the audience be for your media product?

Initially during our research we constructed a survey of the favourite genres of students in our school, covering ages 11 - 18. Though the sample size was small, we found that generally most people did like films of the action/thriller genres.

Further research, including a study into genre preferences correlating to age and gender, confirmed our thoughts, across all ages there is a general trend to liking action and thriller films.

We decided our primary target audience would be fans of action films, and our secondary audience would be men and women aged 15-40.


Due to this wide range within our core audience, we decided to attempt to appeal to the common ground among them, we needed mass appeal to the audiences. We needed to include many of the conventions of action films and produce our film to a high standard to win favour among the film lovers.

Evaluation Post 5: How did you attract/address your audience?

We attracted and addressed our audience in several different ways. One way we attracted our audience was through applying theory of uses and gratifications, our main gratification being escapism. Our primary audience is action fans, our secondary audience is males and females aged 15-40, and our tertiary audience is British people.
Our final product had a quite surreal feel and look, the set revealing nothing about the place, only the characters and events. This is the start of the appeal of escapism.

The characters themselves we tried to make relatable for the audience. Blake is almost the stereotypical action alpha-male character, he is portrayed initially like this through his dialogue with Jen, however, the audience soon sees through his actions when weapons are pulled that he is not quite like this. Being middle-aged and middle class he is supposed to appeal to the masses and be instantly identifiable. Jen does not conform to the stereotypical female in an action film, as she is no 'damsel in distress', she is aspirational to the female portion of our audience, being strong and independent. This is conveyed through her dialogue, personality, costume, and actions.

I think the shooting appealed well to all our audiences as it came as a shock and a bit of a plot twist, even if the audience had expected it, they would invariably not have expected Jen to be the one doing the shooting, as this breaks stereotypical representations of gender within action films.

Majority of responses from 13-24

We made a survey to get feedback from our audience. Initially we asked for age and gender.

Although the results for the ages of the responses did not really reflect our previous research, the scale of our survey was limited to the people we could ask, and naturally we knew more younger people than old.

Majority of responses from males

Overall, feedback was very positive, with many aspects of our opening being praised.


I believe this demonstrates that we were successful in attracting and addressing our target audience.

What people had to say after watching our opening sequence.

Evaluation Post 6: What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

I have learnt quite a lot in the use of both hardware and software during the process of constructing our film opening.

Hardware

During the filming of the project I used the Canon Legria HF G30 camera. Although I had experience with this camera during GCSE, only during this project through experimentation did I work out how to change it to manual focus mode.

I had never used a camera jib before, but due to being very interested in photography and videography I did know a bit about them. Although no shots using this piece of equipment were used in our final sequence, we did shoot several shots with it, mainly shots of the table in a bird's-eye view style.

The lights were something else I had never used before, but knew a bit about, mainly due to having worked with virtual lighting in 3d animation software Cinema 4d. I learnt again through experimentation how to change the intensity of the light from the Arri floor lights, and learnt how to adjust the angles of the light hitting the scene. I also learnt how to adjust the shape and size of the ceiling fill light using the extendable rod.

Software

I had a lot of experience using the composition software Adobe Premiere Pro, but nonetheless managed to learn something new, as before starting the project I had never known you could have multiple sequences within the same project. Through the course of the editing sessions I also got to grips with and got into the habit of using the hotkey shortcuts, such as holding 'Alt' whilst scrolling in order to quickly zoom the timeline in or out.

Animating individual mask points

Although I had some past experience with Adobe After Effects, I had never really used masks much before, and learning how to make any shape mask and animate the locations of each point within the mask was a great new skill I learnt during the course of the project.

Evaluation Post 7: Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

I feel I've learnt a lot in the progression from the prelim to a full product.

The briefs:

The brief for the prelim:
"Continuity task involving filming and editing a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting down in a chair opposite another character, with whom she/he then exchanged a couple of lines of dialogue. This task should demonstrate match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180 degree rule."

The brief for the film opening:
"To produce a 2 minute opening for a fiction film. All video and audio material must be original, produced by the candidate(s), with the exception of music or audio effects from a copyright free source. It should be clear from your sequence who the target audience is. "

The brief for the film opening gave us a lot more freedom than the brief for the prelim task, however this could be viewed in hindsight as both positive and negative, as although it was great to have more control over what was going to happen, we had to take more consideration in planning a more filled-out story, and finding ways to apply what we had learnt during the prelim.

Pre-production:

When planning the prelim, a lot less work was involved than when planning the film opening.

Prelim storyboard

For the prelim, we made a rough, messy storyboard on a piece of lined paper, the function of which was purely to just get an idea of the shots we needed to film, whereas the storyboard for the film opening task was in colour and more neatly organised, greatly improving the efficiency of the project as we could all just use it as a visual reference of the required shots.

Film opening storyboard

For the prelim we made a rough shoot order list, just stating the location/setup and the required actors/props. Like the prelim storyboard, we did this in a very rough format. For the film opening however, we made a far more organised shootboard with the length of the shot, the shot no., a visual representation of how we thought the shot should look, the actors/pros involved, the location, and who was doing what on set. This really helped keep track during the shoot.

The prelim script

The script was another integral part of both the prelim and the film opening task. Our prelim script was thought up very quickly, scribbled on a piece of lined A4, we only had one copy, and we mainly used it just to work out timings and so that Thakshana and Mario knew their lines. The script for the opening sequence took far longer to write, included stage directions, and we ended up printing multiple copies for both us on set and the actors themselves.










Production:

There were a lot of big differences between producing our prelim task and producing the film opening project. Unlike during the prelim, during the main project we had to worry about lighting, a lot of props, a lot of other continuity features, and a lot more direction for the actors was involved.

Continuity in our prelim

The prelim task taught me quite a lot however, the focus on the obvious areas of continuity, such as opening and closing a door, made us think more about smaller aspects, such as in the main shoot where the chips were located in each shot. We also got to practice correct framing a lot more during the prelim, helping us in the main project.





Post-production:

The post-production of the film opening sequence was a lot more involved than the post-production of the prelim task. During the prelim task, all we really needed to do was place in the shots in the correct order and cut them to the right length so that the continuity flowed well. During post-production of the main project we had to do all that and more.

Continuity in our film opening

For the film opening we had to add titles, transitions, and use ProcAmp to grade the shots. We also had to use After Effects to create the special effects of the gunfire. We hadn't had to worry about After Effects during the prelim.
Had I been less experienced with the software, I think the prelim task would've given me great basic knowledge, a sort of starting slow and easing into the more advanced concepts that we used during the post-production of the main project.


I found working as a team more challenging in the film opening task. During the prelim I had been directing and behind the camera most, so was able to be in control and make sure we got the shots we needed, which is something I think I did well. During the film opening task, I was not directing or behind the camera so much, so found it harder to know when to input my thoughts on how to do something or if I should give better direction to the actors. During the course of making the full product however, any issues I had I learnt a lot from.