Opening title research

The opening titles are shown at the very beginning, showing the name of the film. Depending on the type of genre the film the titles are presented in certain way.




Diary of a Wimpy Kid is a children's comedy film. They used colorful light blue writing as this connotes soft and innocence, which is what most kids are like. The light but colourful writing will also attract the kids to the poster and will make them as there parents to take them to watch it. The word 'Dairy' are in a serious more boring font where as the 'wimpy kid' looks as if a child has wrote it which will also attract their target audience 'Kids' . This connotes to audience that it wont be a serious film as having that sort of font and colours is conventional of kids films.



 The A-team is a very well know action film. This title is from the most recent A-team film made in 2010. They have used silver colour with the font to make it look like it is metallic. The bullet wholes in the writing suggests to the audience that that this film with have guns and violence which is typical of an action film They have also chosen to use bold military style font making it look tough and professional. The black background makes the title stand out and be more in your face preparing the audience for what might come in the rest of the film.

The film insidious is a horror film. They use red writing as it connotes blood and evil, however some romance films do choose to use red in there titles to, but the way in which the audience is able to distinguish between the two is the font and the back ground. The font used in this makes it look like there are devil horns suggesting that the film will have evil and . Another thing done that adds a lot of effect is the shadows on the righting from what looks to be a fire this makes its look mysterious and evil look to the righting. All these aspects of the title suggest to the audience that film will be a horror.

The opening title of the harry potter film trilogy look like they are written in old type font something which you looks like it would be in an old hand written book which reflects the theme of the film which is magic and mystery. This title is a dark old looking sliver and the back ground is dark clouds much like you would see when its raining which will make the audience think that there is going to be a lot more serious and evil parts to this film compared to the traditional harry potter title which is gold. The P in the title is shaped the same as the scar on harry, the main characters forehead making the title fit in to there story line. The detailed and unique title makes it very recognizable which makes for a great marketing tool which helps promote and sell the film.

The bourne legacy is a action packed spy film. The titles of this film are in plain white block text, which each word being in a different size boldness which makes it stand out more and gives it a sense of being more sophisticated. It is quite conventional of an action film to have plain white text. The black background of the title makes it stand out more. My group are doing an action film quite similar to bourne and we are probably going to use the same type of font as we want our film to seem as professional as possible.














                                                                                                                                                     

Planning Targets

Research music - make music. Research titles - make titles. Animatic - comment on it. Video-blog your filming - I want to feel behind the scenes. Very good work so far!

Script

This is the script for our film. The pages should be read from left to right and may need to be enlarged so they are clearer. I am really happy with our script, not only in its contents but in its physical appearance as well, which is the result of research and analysation of other film scripts I could find online. The main script I read through, and took the format for my script from, was The Godfather (1972) written by Francis Ford Coppola and adapted from a novel of the same name written by Mario Puzo. As a result of me taking parts of the layout from this script, our script looks professional and has stage directions and dialogue that make sense to the reader. The script itself is simplistic, as would be expected from a 2 minute scene that cannot fit much in. However, we have still managed to include a sensible amount of dialogue which we can use to demonstrate shot reverse shot techniques in our film.

Questionnaire Feedback

The results from our questionnaire helped tell us a lot about our target audience. Results from the question about genre preferences showed that half of the 15-24 year olds we questioned favoured action over other genres. This tells us we are aiming our film at the right age group as most have an interest in action. Comedy and romance were liked evenly, with all the people who favoured romance being female and comedy being male, conforming to the stereotypes on those genre audiences

Our second question was about the number of times our target audience visited a cinema per year. Most said between 1-10, which is lower than we expected. Strangely only one of the people we questioned went to the cinema between 11-20 times a year, but three people said they went over 20 times a year. This suggests a lot of this age group watches films through DVD rather than going to the cinema.

Our third questions feedback told us that half of our target audience are likely to spend under £50 on films per year (including DVD purchases and cinema visits) and only 1 in 10 is likely to spend over £100. Not one person we questioned said they spent no money on films, showing that this age group is keen on films.

The fourth questions feedback was mixed, as it was hard to put the question as a multiple choice because there were so many different answers. After grouping our answers together into different categories we found that most of this age group is disinterested in dialogue driven or "clever" films, which ties into the fact that most of the age group enjoy action films. Half the people we sampled were divided into explosions and humour, which meant oddly enough relationships was the most interesting part of films for this age group, which was unexpected.

Our last questions feedback told us that the majority of 15-24 year olds had large DVD collections, with over half of the people sampled owning 41 DVD's or more. Few people owned less than 20 DVD's, which also shows this age groups interest in films and explains why so much money for action films is earned through DVD releases.

Questionnaire

Here is our film questionnaire. We're hoping to distribute it to at least 10 different people and we aim to cover both genders of our target age group of teenagers and young adults in our sample. This will help us find out about our target audience and what their interests are and their level of interest in our genre and different parts of films.

Story Board

Location Research #2

Our second location is Ashtead Common. This is where the majority of our film takes place. We chose to film here as a forest can offer plenty of dynamic shots and is visually interesting as well. Ashtead Common is near to our first filming location, Ashtead train station which means we can track our characters journey from our first set to the second without wasting a lot of screen time. We are filming down a stone pathway that leads deeper into the forest shown in this picture. This also shows the camera angle and shot type we will be using in our opening scene for this location.













We are also filming shots that take place deeper in the forest. We think the remote location adds to the tension as the action that takes place is private and away from the public eye. Another positive aspect to using this location is production-wise, we're almost guaranteed no disturbance from other people walking into shot or causing noise that disrupts the shot. This picture shows how one of our shots in our opening scene should look, and we want to change the focus pull of this shot between the background and the foreground where the tree is.












This is the spot in this location we chose to film the end of our opening scene at. Our main character will be slumped against this tree when he is shot by his attacker. We need to make sure the light from the background doesn't ruin the lighting of the shot, so we'll try to block this unnecessary brightness out.

Video Diary: location research

Location research #1

We have two locations we have picked to film at. The first is Ashtead train station, for the beginning of our film where we are introduced to the character the opening scene focuses on. We needed a train station that was not too big or busy for production purposes as it would have taken longer to film the shots in a loud train station due to all the background noise, and we didn't want that disrupting the scene or distracting the audience. Ashtead station is small enough too avoid this. However it also looks modern enough to still fit in with the modern storyline of our opening scene.

Another reason would be the fact that most of our opening scene takes place in a forest, so starting the scene off in a large busy city train station then jumping to a quiet, deserted location would've been too confusing for the audience, as well as not being very realistic. Filming at Ashtead train station allows us to track our characters steps between the station and the forest, as they are close to one another. This means we can link the 2 locations in a few shots, whereas getting our lead character from a large city train station to a forest would've required a lot of shots to explain to the audience how the character got from A to B.

Another benefit of this location is how you can see the trains approaching the station from a long way away, which is the idea for one of our opening shots. We want the cameras perspective to be from the station platform filming the train just as it comes round the corner, which is when our background music will start. This picture shows what kind of shot we are aiming at getting.

Influences on production

Our film has many different influences, which has effected plot, locations and our characters. Most influences and ideas came from action films, as obviously more of the ideas these films use would be applicable to our film as we are doing the same genre. The obvious influence to our film is the James Bond series of films, which links to our use of spies in our film. However in terms of plot, the main influence would be the Bourne film series, which focuses on the undercover government spy work which is a major theme to our opening scene. This scene in particular from The Bourne Ultimatum influenced the part of our film where our main character has to try to escape his pursuer through the forest. The idea of the audience knowing where the lead character is but always second guessing where the pursuer is hiding is a big factor to this scene, and one we are aiming to use in our film as well. However, we aim to give our scene a more tension-filled and sinister tone.

Other action films also influenced our choice of location for our film. For example, the above scene also helped influence our decision to use a train station as a location in our film as we can see that they use a normal, everyday environment that the audience knows well in order to make them feel closer to the action as they can relate to what they see onscreen more. This is the reason we chose a train station as our first location to film at. The Hunger Games and Indiana Jones both use forest environments in several of their set-pieces, and after seeing this in our research it helped us decide to set our opening scene in a forest. The forest scene out of Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows also showed us how that environment can be used effectively in an action film. The forests normal tranquil and natural atmosphere is contrasted heavily with the action conventions of guns and explosions, or in our films case crossbows and blood.

Our main character being a man follows most action films, which tend to have a male in the lead role. The list of influences on this are endless but include more or less every Jason Statham, Bruce Willis and Sylvester Stallone film to date. Our main character being made to look professional and sophisticated despite the violence his job entails was inspired by the lead character in the 2007 film Hitman where, as you can see in the poster below, the lead is dressed in a suit and tie and wears black leather gloves. There were 2 main influences for our villain, the first being the character Daryl Dixon from the TV series The Walking Dead. He is shown to be an expert hunter and his signature weapon is a crossbow. Our villain also uses a crossbow and several shots in our film show him to be hunting our main character, making it easy to draw comparisons. The second influence for our villain is Bane out of The Dark Knight Rises. He has half of his face covered making him seem more mysterious as the audience doesn't fully know what he looks like and he is an expert fighter and killer, a trait we are trying to reflect onto our films villain. Our villain also has half of his face covered which is again, inspired by Bane as well as other movie villains who wear masks.

Film institution research

These are the six major film institutions (the big six). Film institutions are very important as they provide the money for films to be made, and without them, no one would ever get enough money to make a decent budget film. These companies also own studios, providing places in which major films can shoot exactly what they want . The only problem with film institutions funding a film is that they like to have complete control over the project, so if you go to them for money your film may not end up being completely how you originally planned. They are all about making money, and this stops film advancing as an art form. However a lot of good films are made by studios and the film business wouldn't be what it is today without these major institutions.






Warner Bros studios was founded in 1903. It was formed by the four brother the Warner brothers, and was one of the companies to make movies with talking in it . They also famously started the original 'Looney Tunes', as well as many more successful cartoons. Warner Bros have a very wide range of films. They tend to make high budget movies, to make a lot of money, there films are shown around the world. Their films appeal to a very wide range of audience as they make films from many different genres.

Previous Warner Bros films include: 'Harry Potter', 'The Departed', 'The Dark Knight', 'Slumdog Millionaire', 'P.S. I Love You', 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory', 'Troy', 'Blade Runner', 'The Wrong Man'.










Paramount Studios was founded in 1916 and is one of the oldest film institutions. Steven Spielberg is a major partner with Paramount, he is one of the leading film director in Hollywood, and this is a major reason for Paramounts success as he has many fans and followers who will watch anything he puts out making most of his films instant money makers. Paramount are ranked as one of the highest-grossing film studios in the world. As with Warner Bros, they make a very wide range of films which targeting many different audiences with each film.

Paramount films include: 'Titanic', 'Transformers' 'Indiana Jones', 'Iron Man', 'Forrest Gump', 'War of the Worlds', 'Mission Impossible', 'Shutter Island', 'Paranormal Activity' .










Sony Pictures is another of the film studios in 'the big six'. Although you wouldn't think that Sony would be in the big six it does own Columbia Pictures, which is a much more well known company. Another slightly less well known, but still widely appreciated company that they own is Tristar Pictures. As Sony is are associated with gaming and electronics there film side isn't as well known. Despite this, they are still one of the most highest grossing companies in the world. Most of there money comes from the fact that they are already such a big company so people have heard of them so will trust in them. They also do a lot of advertising for there films through there other products.

Sony Pictures films include: 'Spiderman', 'Men in Black', 'Gladiator', 'The Da Vinci Code', 'Quantum of Solace', 'Hancock', 'The Pursuit of Happyness', 'The Adventures of Tintin, 'The Social Network', 'Bucky Larson: Born to be a Star'.




Walt Disney Pictures is probably the most famous film institution, mainly because most people grow up watching most of there films and tv shows. Disney are famous for there traditional family movies and cartoons but recently have been more action films for example 'Tron' and 'Pirates of the Caribbean' to reach out to larger target audience by doing something a bit more of teens and adults. They also own a large amount of institutions: Touchstone Pictures, Pixar, Marvel, and most recently Lucasfilm. Pixar are seen as one of the best film institutions in the world, as they consistently make excellent films. Their films are enjoyable for both children and their parents, making them a real money grabber. Pixar and Marvel a like don't bring out loads of films, instead take their time with each one, but the quality of the films arent has high as marvel , but are more 'fun'. This is what makes for millions of fans as everyone are on edge waiting for them to bring out the next film. Through these companies Disney manages to get a huge amount of money, and it is a big factor in their recent success.




Disney films include: 'The Lion King', 'Toy Story 3', 'The Avengers', 'Pirates of the Carribean', 'Beauty and the Beast', 'High School Musical', 'Tangled', 'Thor', 'Finding Nemo', 'Hannah Montana', 'Bambi', 'The Princess and the Frog', 'Alladin', 'A Bug's Life' .








Universal pictures is another major film institution. They have large theme parks around america which help promote there business helping them make more money. Universal like many over film institutions make a large range of film genres to target a large market of people. They are another company that go hand in had with Warner bros and Paramount that are in it more for the money then for the art form of making films it self. However they don't disappoint bringing out big budget films that have been highly successful and have made many films that are seen to be classics for example 'E.T' and 'Jaws'.

Universal films include: 'Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy', 'E.T', 'Bourne Identity', 'Despicable Me', 'Back to the Future', 'A Beautiful Mind', 'American Graffiti', 'Love Actually', 'Bruce Almighty', 'Jaws', 'American Gangster', 'Mamma Mia!', 'Jurassic Park', 'King Kong', 'Meet the Fockers', 'The Mummy'.









Finally 20th century fox another very large film institution well know across the world. 20th century fox was one of the film institutions that started a little later compared to the other big company's. This institution is owned by a News Corporation which also own the fox television channel which helps in making them a lot of money. The tv channel has pumped out many shows that the world has loved for many years. They sometimes even make films from the TV shows they play on there channel for example 'the Simpsons movie'. 20th century fox tend to make very high budget films again like many other institutions making a films for a wide range of genres. Many people criticizes them and say that company is nothing more then a logo where as these other institutions have more to show for like Universal with a theme park and Sony with its electronics. However 20th century fox still are widely well known institution.

Famous 20th Century Fox films include: 'Avatar', 'Star Wars', 'Independence Day', 'Home Alone', 'X-Men', 'The Simpsons Movie', 'Ice Age', 'I, Robot', 'Marley and Me', 'Taken', 'Minority Report', 'Prometheus', 'Die Hard', 'Speed', 'Alien', 'Eragon', 'True Lies', 'Titanic', 'Moulin Rouge!', 'Road to Perdition', 'Night at the Museum', 'Austrailia'.




It seems that many of the large film institutions started right at the beginning of film making are the most successful of production company's now days. Which makes sense as they have had the most time to evolve and grown to what they are now, giving the audience the best possible films they can make for us to enjoy.

Mood Board

 

This is a mood board with images relating to my film.

1) Heath Ledger as The Joker in The Dark Knight represents the villain in our film, who is crazed and has an off-kilter personality.

2) This picture of Howard Stark in Captain America shows the kind of costume our main character will be wearing, with a smart suit giving him a look of professionalism

3) This picture shows the kind of shot we are aiming at producing, with the background being the focus pull of the shot and the foreground blurred to draw the audiences attention.

4) Part of the inspiration for our villain comes from this character, Daryl from The Walking Dead, who is good at hunting and identifiable by his crossbow, which our villain will also be using.

5) This is the kind of briefcase we want for our main prop, with folders inside that can be made to look like they include top secret information.

6) This is an example of when a villain is all black, which connotes evil and darkness. This villain is Venom from Spiderman 3. This is why we chose to dress our villain all in black.

7) Jason from Friday 13th is an example of a villain being more menacing when you cannot see their face, which is why we decided to have our villains face partially covered with a balaclava.

8) James Bond is a representation of a theme in our film, which is spies and undercover government work.

9) This image shows a collection of film characters that use crossbows and bow and arrows, showing how popularised this prop has become.

10) The blood in this shot compares to the blood we'll be using in our film, with the violent nature of the shot appealing to our target audience.

11) This is a shot of a location used in The Hunger Games, a large forest. We'll be using a similar location in our film as we think it will create more tension and looks visually interesting.

Focus Pull

This tutorial I found on Youtube explains exactly what a focus pull and rack focusing is. We are more interested in a simple focus pull, as many of the shots we have in mind for our film would require a change in focus pull between the background and foreground of the shot to draw the audiences attention to different events happening in the film. This tutorial also explains the best type of lenses to use for focus changing when filming, which will help us if we do need to buy a lens for our camera, which we think we might.

Costumes

Our main character will be wearing a suit and tie outfit for our opening scene. This is to give the character an air of professionalism and show him to be of some importance in whatever he does. The briefcase prop will also let the audience know that this character is working in underhand activities and suggest he works within the government. The suit and tie should help to reinforce this imagery. He will also be wearing well-polished leather shoes to show the character is meticulous and thorough, which also connotes power and control. This will be contrasted heavily by the end of our opening scene, where the main character of the scene has been beaten by the villain and is killed in the mud. The way this character has been shown to be powerful only to be beaten by our villain only shows how powerful our villain is. If we can, we'd like to reinforce this imagery by having a shot early on of the polished shoes, then contrast this at the end of our opening scene with a similar shot, only showing the shoes dirty and caked in mud.















Our villain will be wearing an all black costume. Black trainers, black jeans, and a black jacket will make sure the villain is always associated with darkness, which has connotations of evil. He'll also be wearing a ripped balaclava, which covers only the lower half of his face. This makes him seem more dangerous, as the audience can see he wants to cover his face in order to protect his identity. The fact the balaclava only covers the lower half of his face shows this character must be in danger a lot as his clothing is ripped. The all black costume also ties in with the part of our scene where our villain is hiding in the shadows, spying on the main character.

Certificate Research

A films certificate is issued by the British Boardof Film Classification (BBFC) to state that in its opinion and by law a film, video recording or game shouldnot be seen or purchased by a person under the age of that certificate. Every film is analysed and issued either a U, PG, 12, 12A, 15 or 18 certificate.

The film that our group is making is an action film. A large majority of action films are rated 15. This is because the target audience for actions are 15-23 and if the film is rated 18 a large proportion of their target audience isn't allowed to go and watch or purchase the film. This means they may lose out on profit they could have made if the film was a 15 and a bigger audience could be targeted. For example, Taken 2 was rated 15, and the majority of its audience (38%) were 15-24 year olds. If it had have been rated 18 it would have lost a lot of this audience and earned less than its £8,000,000 takings. Another example would be Bad Boys 2, which had 64% of its audience made up of 15-24 year olds. However, some actions are still rated 12A and 18, although there are few that earn as much money as a 15 rated action film.

Our film follows the majority of other action films as it would more than likely gain a 15 certificate. This is because we plan to have a bit of violence and a shot of an arrow going through someones leg with blood showing, which may look quite graphic if we do it correctly and may be inappropriate for younger audience members. Our film is targeted at that age group anyway and we know the violence and blood in our film would appeal to their interests so we would expect and be happy with a certificate of 15.

Blitz: Opening Scene Analysis

     In the first shot we see (Jason Statham) the main antagonist of the the film laying on a sofa with a birds eye view his whole body. Strait away the audience will know that he will be the main antagonist as he is a well known actor who does a lot of crime thrillers. There is low key lighting and the non-dietetic music playing creating a sad atmosphere and already creates some enigmas with in the audience to what may of happened the night before? the first thing he does as he wakes up is pour him self a cup of whisky connoting that he may be trying to get something of his mind.

   The diagetic sound of the men's muffled voice coming from outside gets his attention. There is an over the shoulder shot of the Jason Statham looking out the window, its night time and there are three men trying to rob a car. This is the first indicator that he is the antagonist has he grabs his bat and goes out to stop the robbers.  A long shot shows him walking toward the first set of protagonists as they try rob the car it also shows the audience that they are down a dark side road. As one of the men put a knife to him you can see the very well known London red bus drive past establishing that this film is set in London. This along with the fighting that is going on indicates that this film is a crime thriller. During the fights there are a lot of fast paced editing to create excitement with in the audience. The next shot after the fight is the long shot in the same angle as before but this time all the crooks are on the floor and the antagonist (Jason Statham) standing above them after beating all three men up showing his dominance.

  As he starts walking away after his short dialog loud non-diagetic fast pase high tempo electronic music starts playing, this music makes the character look cool and more action focus. A quik cut is used on the drop and the titles are shown screen, the titles are fast pace and constantly moving making the audiance more exicted for the film a head.

The Holiday: Opening film analysis

       The film starts with a medium two shot of two young people on screen kissing with happy non-diagetic music in the background adding emotion to the scene indicating to the audience that the film is going to be about romance. The camera slowly zooms and we see that jack black a character in this film is the person making the music. This quite comedic way of starting to a film indicates that the film is a romantic comedy. This is confirmed when the non-diagetic soft voice of a female start talking over the clip which is quite a typical way of a romantic comedy starting there films.

   As the scene changes the title is shown in the left hand  side of the screen(the first third), this makes it stand out more as we normally look at thing from left to right. The title is in white capital letters as are all the other title such as actors, directors and film makers names. They have chosen to use white letters as it connotes innocence, purity and is often used along with the colour red for romantic comedies.

    Many of the shot types used in this opening scene are medium shots and close ups to show the emotion on each characters face. there is one establishing of fancy car being driven down the road and the audience get to set in a city, quite typical of a romantic comedy.

   We see different clips of different types of love as the non-diagetic sound of the narrator tells the audience which type of love each clip represents. Until finally a shot of a women sitting in an office on her own, the audience are unable to see her face this creates some enigmas in the audience is she the women who has been narrating so far.

Romance/(rom-com) Conventions

The Ring: Opening Scene Analysis

     In this opening two minutes of The Ring we are introduced to a teenage girl who is wearing  a school uniform this conforms to the stereo typical victim in a horror film so the audience already start thinking that she may be in danger. By the girls wearing a uniform suggests that she is middle/higher class because in the USA only private schools use uniforms. The film is set in a large mansion which is also quite typical of a horror film as it is a place that people can relate and when they are next alone at home they will think of this and get scared.

    At first there is only the diagetic sound of the rain out side this combined with the low key lighting connotes that this is not a happy film that it is going to be sad , scary and this also creates a lot of tension in the scene.   As the TV turns on, on its own she see the her stop and gasp, there is then a close up to the girls face to show the audience how scared and shocked she is. The next shot is a point of view shot of what the girl would be seeing as she come round the corner as if the audience are looking through her eyes, the director chooses to uses a reverse shot so it looks like the TV is looking at her back making the audience feel as if it has a life of its own and that her and TV  have a connection. The TV switches on by its self twice after the girl turns it off creating enigmas within the audience. She pulls the pulls the plug out and stares into the TV screen and there is a mid shot of her and the black TV but in it we can see a faint refection of her and the room. Something fly's past but the audience aren't able to make out what it is as the reflection of the TV is limited. The use of sound is used well  because even if someone who is watching didn't see the reflection the sound of a loud gust of wind will make them thing something has flown by.

   One of the next shots the girl is at the bottom of the stairs shouting for her friend with no reply. A high angle is used to make her look vulnerable. We can no longer hear the sound of rain anymore but an eerie non-diagetic sound creating tension and suspense in the audience.  As she walks up the stairs we see some sort of liquid coming out through the bottom of one of the doors. This creates more enigmas with the audience, where is her friend she was shouting for? is that her friend blood? what happened? There is a close up of her hand as she slowly opens the door, as soon as she opens it we see the girl stop in shot take a gasp from the prospective of the TV then quick pace editing to a of the TV zooming out then zooming back into her face screaming. Then to whole screen as if the TV was static suggesting that she had just been killed.











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Target aurdieance for a Thriller

     The typical target audience for a thriller would be 16 + this is because they include violent, explicit scenes  and physiologic issues that may disturb younger viewers. However these films normally aren't too over the top so that the film isn't made an 18+. A thriller is normally has quite complicated plot especially a physiological thriller this is another reason why there is such an age restriction as younger kids may not understand the film and enjoy it.

     Thrillers are targeted mainly at men with the gun fights, car chases and explosions. It is a true get away  from your average life men can sit back and pretend they are the antagonist  fighting against the protagonist and with there gorgeous lady friend. However women are part of the target market for these films, in most thrillers there is some small love story in the mix which most women like to go see it for.