Directors Commentary

This is our directors commentary for our opening 2 minute scene. We answer many questions about the finance, production and distribution for films in the same genre as ours. This should give the audience an idea as to the thought we put into our film and what films we took inspiration from.

Evaluation Targets

You've done so well this year Peter - so let's push ourself in the final stretch to really show our ability to reflect on our progress. Comment in detail on your findings from audience feedback. Revisit your recent posts and see if there are any more opportunities to use specialist terminolgy to explore mise-en-scene, ediiting and camera composition and comment on the way you intended to appeal to your target audience even more - there's so much to comment on to show how reflective you can be. Get working with your group tro complete director's commentaries and comment more on what you have learnt from others.

Final Edit

Final Music

A friend of ours is a music producer that has his own studio, and we managed to get him to make a soundtrack to our opening scene. We're really happy with how it has turned out as it has the exact tone and pace we are looking for, as well as being perfectly matched to the action on-screen. This is due to us taking our edited footage to the studio with us so he could see what happens on-screen and work out the timings of the track so the pace increased at the right moments. The only problems with the track is the length, being roughly 1 and a half minutes long and therefore not long enough to play over the whole scene. We need to try to work out a way of changing the track in our editing software so that it plays over the remainder of the scene. Another potential problem is the fact we couldn't completely finish editing the shots of our scene to the right length before the track was made, as there was only one short space of time that he had to make the track. This means once the shots are shortened or changed around there might be a few timing issues between the music and the action taking place on-screen, but hopefully we can maintain the effect of the musics pace matching the pace of the action.

Finished Titles

The titles I have chosen keep in line with the simplistic style used by films such as The Bourne Legacy and Drive that I found in my titles research. My titles feature a plain font in a neon blue colour, which makes them stand out more and lets the audience know the film is exciting and action-packed. The titles should leave no room for confusing the genre of my film for anything other than action, even when the action is yet to start and the pace of my opening scene is slow. I also like that the font and colour makes the text stand out and allows the audience to read it easily. Here is a screenshot of a scene in my film, featuring an example of the titles I have used.

My films main title card has a slightly different, simpler font as I felt it looked more professional. The colour remains the same as the fonts to carry over the same style so the scene has some consistency. The font size is also bigger so that the title fills up the whole screen, so the audience know this is the name of the film. Here is a screenshot of my films main titles.

Production Logo

We decided to call our production company Marl-Bennex Productions as we felt this was simple and just uses the names of my group. Our logo features a picture of a glass of cognac and a smoking cigar on a polished oak table, which connotes an air of professionalism and suave sophistication. I felt this makes our production company look like it has a good reputation which would put more of the audiences trust in the production company and therefore the film as well. I've also put the text in a gold colour and a smart-looking font to add to the production companys look of professionalism. Here is my finished production logo.

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.