Question 7

In our prelim, the audio quality was not very good. This made the entire prelim look like an amateur piece which ruined some of the better quality shots. We overcame this by using more foley rather than relying on the camera's audio quality. This proved quite difficult as we had to ensure that it was perfectly timed to prevent it looking unprofessional. Linking with the audio issue, my group decided that it would be a better idea if we tried to film as much as possible indoors to ensure minimal audio problems.
We gained an understand of steady camera shots. We realised, from doing the prelim, how important it was to use a tripod or a moving device when filming, so that the shots were not static or jolted. From having this advice and information, we were able to improve our camera shots, ensuring that they were of a high standard, still and fitted well with each shot. Realism was a big part for us as a group, as we wanted to make our film opening serious and look professional, rather than comical and fake. Therefore, we learnt from our prelim, that in order to make the shots more realistic, you shouldn't incorporate slide transitions, because it isn't realistic, but more power point, which was not our aim.

Question 6

Question 5

Question 5

This video includes annotations for our doubled film opening. We did this in order to explain the choices we made. For example, music choices, location choices and character choices. Within this video, we also explain how our film will attract and address the audience and why we did this. This links back to our target audience. When making our film opening, it was very important as a group to make rational decisions, to base it and fit it around not only our themes, but our target audience. This ranges from institution choices, to music choices, to title choices and to actor choices. We wanted to attract our audience by not only creating enigma and making it exciting and thrilling to watch, but to also make it relatable to our target audience, representing todays society and the twenty first century. Furthermore, in order to attract our audience, we went with the high and well known, Universal Studio's because we felt like our film would become a big blockbuster and felt that they could help with the appropriate advertising.

Also, another way of addressing the audience would be the violent props/icons that we used within our film. This clearly represents the violent and aggressive content within our film and also representing real life situations in our society today, making the audience not only feel frightened but apart of our film, which was one of our intentions. We not only wanted our audience to feel engaged with our costumes and actors, but our story line and theme also, as we show that it could happen to anyone.  

Question 4

Also, when researching who would our target audience be, we created a survey, asking over 100 men and over 100 women what they're preferred genre was. This allowed us to visually see and understand who is most likely to come and see our film, based on personal preferences. Here are the results:
As you can see, from the results, we concluded that men ages 16-28, would be our target audience. This was because the men clearly demonstrated their personal preferences and the types of films that they like to watch. However, although not as many women said that they preferred an action film, we also were able to gain the information, that some women do prefer this type of genre, style and theme. Therefore, we did not want to limit our target audience by only basing our film around men aged 16-28, which is why we felt it was important to bare in mind that there will be a lot of women and a lot of people of variety ages that will want to come and see our film. It just allowed us to gain a rough understanding.


Here are some typical profile screenshots of who we think will be the main viewers of our film. We think the average age will be teenagers and males and females between the age of 16- 28. We think this because those of that age are more likely to have the spare time and be exposed to gaming, films and social life that contain action and violence. 

Question 3

Question 3

What institution's would distribute our media project and why
Media institutions are companies that own a large amount of companies in various mass media such as television, radio, movies and internet. The top 6 media institutions are Comcast, Disney, News cooperation, Time Warner, Viacom, CBS Cooperation.

Our film is most definitely a block buster, this means that one of the big 6 movie institutions will be producing and distributing our film. Block busters are made to make lots of money. Blocker busters will be advertised everywhere and will pay a lot of money to be distributed into well known cinemas and to get advertisement on TV during big events such as the super bowl or the champions league final. Ideology is a world view, attitudes and beliefs which an individual, group or society holds to be true or important. These vary between cultures, but it is seen as the way in which the culture should function.

After deciding what genre our media project would be (action/Thriller) we looked to see which film institutions distributed the most Action/Thriller films. After looking for a while we found that Universals Studios has produced and distributed a lot of Action/Thriller movies. Universals product portfolio is full of Action/Thriller movies and is definitely their most common genre. I would say that majority of Universals films are aimed at teens e.g. Jurassic World, Fast and Furious, Kick Ass and Ride along. Universal Studios slogan is also "Jump into action", personally I think the slogan shows that universal wants fast paced films by saying jump into because jumping into something is usually a fast motion. Universal also use the word "action" in the slogan, the definition of "action" is the process of doing something, typically to achieve an aim. This shows me that Universal studies want to achieve their aims and objects as quick as possible and at a very good standard, this shows me that universal studios are motivated to work hard which would be good for us. Because Universal studios is well know to distribute films of our gene we thought that it would be a smart decision to use them to distribute our film. We also used Diamond production, they aren't mainstream but they believed in our film so we believed in them.

We did research into some other companies as well and found out that Paramount mainly does drama and Comedy, DreamWorks mostly does kids films and animations and Warner Bros does mostly comedy and drama. So are decision was that Universal studios would most suit our film because it was the most common movie genre that Universal distribute.

Below is the director of Doubled talking about institutions used in the film and why we used them.

Question 2

Question 2- How does your media represent particular social groups?

 

 Within this post, I begin to talk about the target audience. This is so that I gain a good understanding of who our target audience is, to understand the social groups we wish to aim it at. I then begin to talk and answer a variety of questions in order to establish the answer to this question.

 

Point 1) The social groups that we believe our media is targeted at.

Point 2) What were the survey results and how did this help you

Point 3) The results and how this helped us to understand the social groups, and then goes onto age, gender and race.

Point 4) The ages of our media and how this will benefit or affect the social groups

Point 5) Stereotypes and camera angles within our media

Point 6) The costumes that we chose, and why we chose them. How this benefits the social groups.

Point 7) The make up and hair within our media.

 

 

 

 

 Within this video, I begin to say a little bit about the audience. This is so that, when learning about the representation, that it was not only clear what our target audience was, but also our aims in representation. For example, in the clip I begin to say about the ethnicities within our film. We not only wanted to include a variety of ethnicities to highlight equality, but to appear to a wider audience, creating the correct and appropriate message whilst doing so. I also speak about ages. The reason why our media representation is about ages, is because we feel like it is not only important to appeal to our target audience but to also encourage the idea of younger people being powerful. We felt as a group that many films, only have middle aged men and women playing the main and dominant characters. However, in order for our media to stand out, we thought we would make our main, dominant characters younger in order to not only be different, but so that our audience feels like they can relate to it. Futhermore, on the stereotyping subject, we also found that the typical vulnerable character is a white, young female. I also talk in the video about how we wanted to contrast this idea, by making our powerful main character a white female also, this is so that it stays away from this stereotypical film structure, but also giving the audience what they want by seeing something different but also familiar. I also go on to speak about the different costumes that we chose and why. We felt that this was important because the characters committing the heist, played a big part in our film opening. In order to ensure that all genders were seen as equal, we not only dressed them in the same colour, but the same outfits and props too. We didn't want any gender to feel weaker or stronger than the other, because as a group, this was not the message we wanted to create. 

Question 1

Genre Research
Our genre being action, gave us a wide variety of films to turn to for inspiration. We chose this genre because it was the majority vote in our group, we also had previously come up with a storyline for an opening that would fit with the action genre which was convenient. Action generally consists a person or group facing a number of different challenges. This means there are more likely to be chase scenes, fights, and life threatening situations, all of which have been included in our film opening. In multiple famous action films there is a villain for example Die Hard is an action film about a detective who encounters a terrorist and must take on a group during a heist. A typical stereotype of action films is that many special FX are used which highlights the impressive modern use of technology making it look new, different and appealing to a wider range of audience. Action films typically have the most enigma, leaving you feeling on edge throughout and leaving you wanting to see more.

 

 

Codes & Conventions

Commonly set in big cities, action films revolve around modernised areas rather than quieter places to give a busy atmosphere building up enigma and tension.

 

 

 

Sequence Development

• We initially had the idea of doing an army themed opening, basing it on a boy named Sam who grows up to be a soldier, which has been his dream since he was a child. We were going to show his growing up through a timeline style starting at age 3 of real footage of a child saying he wanted to be 'Soldier Sam'. All our group members liked this idea and we had thoroughly planned the shots we were going to take, the risks and how to overcome them however we concluded that the  shots would've been too hard to shoot in the time frame we had. We appropriately went back to 'step 1' of our individual film pitches, having agreed we were going to stick with the genre of action, and discussed ideas and thoughts towards a new opening. This is when we discovered the Heist idea would turn out to look effective if we managed to pull it off seeing that the preparation time we had was shortened due to the change of storyline. We put in many extra hours so we had made up for missed time to ensure completion by the deadline. To begin with, with our initial plan of the Army storyline we were going to mainly focus on getting close up shots to show that the film was based purely on an individual. For shots that Sam was not going to be featured in, we would make it a long shot to show lack of importance to small detail. 

Narrative

We decided we wanted some enigma rather than a lot in our opening to diminish confusion. The audience will be questioning why the characters are in the house, also they will wonder why at the end one of the characters say they are looking for their sister. Often in action films there is a lot of enigma throughout as the film is usually a constant cycle of enigma and solving enigma similarly in Luther and Sherlock.  Audiences tend to sit on the edge of their seats when watching a film with a lot of action, spectacle and enthusiasm as it connects directly with their feelings. Film openings make it hard to show layer of meaning (Semantic code in Barthes' theory) however at the end where the scripted scene occurs and the character says 'What do you mean you haven't found my sister?' this could have a number of different interpretations therefore showing a layer of meaning. We have included the symbolic code by using props such as balaclavas to show the nature of our characters. Balaclavas symbolise danger due to the lack of facial features exposed creating a sense of unease to the audience and sympathy for the young girl in the house alone.

9 shot grid

 

 

 

 

 

Codes & Conventions

Evidence of how planned opening fits with research into codes/conventions of genre and audience

The genre of our movie opening is like a crime/thriller movie so this involves research into other films that are similar and what makes those films the genre that they are.

The movie above known as the town was a big inspiration for us as it has scenes that replicate the effect that we want to create for our audience when watching a crime/thriller movie. In our opening we chose to use a big van at the start to show the criminal characters inside of the van. Although the van we used was fairly different it still creates the same effect. In terms of the actual characters in the town they are all wearing the same costume when engaging in their criminal activity. Although our characters were not wearing all of the same costumes we made sure that everyone was wearing black and most importantly were covering their faces with a mask of some kind. In terms of the genre crime/thriller i think that the hiding of the face is a very significant and key factor when fitting in with the codes and conventions of the genre. The whole idea of a criminal is to not get caught so it makes sense that both sets of characters in the town and our movie opening would conceal their identity as much as they possibly can.

In the town also the scene in the van is quite slow paced as their is a shot of one of the criminals looking out of the window in slow motion, but then all of a sudden it becomes much more fast paced as they jump straight out of the van and begin their criminal activity. We have kind of gone for the same feel, although we do not have any slow motion shots, when our criminals jump out the van the opening will gain a lot of pace as they then descend into the garden through the backdoor into the house. The use of weapons is also apparent in the genre, in particular guns. As seen in the image above the criminals have guns so we have also equipped our criminals with their own weapons.

In terms of audience we looked at the batman film the dark knight. We thought this would be helpful because of the age group they are looking at. They will be looking at mainly boys who are of 15 years old and above. Which also is the same target audience as us. This film is extremely fast paced which we think is why mainly teens in particular boys will like our movie opening because of the fast pace and action that it has. The whole idea of criminality adds an excitement to both the batman film and our movie opening which we think will attract the target audience.

First Draft (of Final) VS Final Draft

Fonts for Titles and film name research

Titles for our movie opening

The titles in our movie opening are one of the most important factors in getting the highest mark possible. If the titles are wrong this can be costly as we could lose a lot of marks. Below are the following titles that we will use throughout our movie opening.

 

 SM studio's presents

A Never Forgotten Production

Melissa Hariz

Spencer Stevenson

Max Duffy

Megan Thomas

Casting by Amanda Lee

Costume design by Lisa Moore

Music By Nathan Hall

Edited by Niall Waters

Production design by Willow Childs

Director of Photogrophy by Lucy Sapwood

Co- Producer  Rachel Headly

Produced by Frankie Croft

Written and Directed by Archie Smith

Audience

Audience

 

We are going to advertise our film in many different ways. The first  way in which we are going to advertise our film is by producing a movie 'trailer'. The trailer needs to be of high quality because the trailer is what attracts most of the customers. The trailer will be available on youtube. This is a great way to reach our target audience because Youtube is widely accessed. The second method of advertisement are with posters. This is a more simplistic way of advertising the film and is more old fashioned, but it is still very effective. The posters will feature on the sides of busses, posters on train stations and on billboards at the side of the road.

 

The promotion that we are going to use are: Advertisement, Sponsorship, direct marketing and public relations

 

Sponsorships

In terms of sponsorship we have Paramount pictures at the front as they are going to be one of the main producers for our movie. The other sponsor will be SM cooperations which is our own producer that we will use at the start of the opening. We will also use product placement in our movie so we will basically be advertising other products to make more money.

 

Direct marketing ploy

In terms of a direct market ploy to help promote our film we will be going out and handing out our own 'little' posters to advertise the film and will also be doing questionnaires. In the questionnaires we will basically be asking people if they heard about the film and if not definitely telling them that they should go see it! Along with this we will also be doing some kind of sales promotion which is on the next slide.

Sales promotion

As we are conducting our direct market ploy we will also be offering a sales promotion. This will be that if they can get all of the questions right in a quiz then they will get movie vouchers for a discount on the movie or perhaps that they will get a free popcorn or drink when they buy tickets for the movie. This will be videoed and shown on things such as Youtube as an advert so it will help get the film a lot of exposure which will ensure that a lot more people will be willing and wanting to go and watch the movie but also that a lot more people see it in particular our target audience.

Timeline

Timeline of Openings, Timings, Titles and Sound.

 



 

Shot list & Shooting Schedule

Shot List

1. Shot of Melissa, Megan, Max and Spencer inside the van
2. Individual tracking shot of each individual character moving
3. Shot of them all leaving the van
4. Shot of max jumping over the fence, shot of the others entering through the side gate
5. Shot of Melissa and Spencer breaking through the door and unlocking the lock
6. Shot of Megan on the phone whilst Melissa and spencer are entering
7. shot of Megan running to the stairs, then hiding in the cupboard
8. shot of Megan (other character) rummaging around the house, with gun
9. Shot of Melissa and Spencer entering through the kitchen
10. Shot of Max rummaging through the house
11. Shot of Melissa, Max and Megan going up the stairs and checking the hallway
12. Shot of Melissa entering Megans room
13. Shot of Max walking around the room
14. Shot of Megan walking out the wardrobe and out of the window
15. Shot of Megan, Max and Melissa hearing something, running and checking the wardrobe
16. Shot of Megan taking off her mask, revealing herself

 

Shooting Schedule

As a group, we have sat down and planned the best and most practical filming days. However, we not only had to take into account everyone's personal schedule's but also the weather forecasts.

24th November 2015- On this day we plan to film the Van scene. For this we will need Megan Thomas, Melissa Harris, Spencer Stevenson, Max Duffy and Mr Stevenson. For the props we will need to have a gun, black masks, black clothing, black shoes, Van, Camera equipment and Max Duffy's house. Within this scene we plan to film the van scene, lasting around 10 seconds, then the exiting of the van. We will film this between 10 am - 11 am. We chose to do this scene first because it allows us to get an idea of camera angles and so that we can work in chronological order to the rest of the film opening.

24th November 2015- Later in the day we plan to film them entering the house. For this we will need a rucksack, bag of tools, gun and previous equipment. During this shooting, we plan to get a range of camera angles, including high angle, close up, birds eye view and a tracking shot. We will also need all the previous people needed for the scene. The reason why we chose to film this scene later on in the day, was so that we could go back, download the previous footage and see where we could have gone better and whether or not we needed to reshoot scenes.

25th November 2015 - On this day we plan to film Megan's character Ellie, on the phone talking to her dad, then hiding in the wardrobe, then jumping out the window. The reason why we wanted to film this scene next was also to gain an understanding of chronological order, and because we still needed to film outside and we didn't want to rely on the weather any other day. This was successful because it allowed us to gain an understanding of all the shots we had already.

26th November 2015- This is our last day of filming and we plan to film the rest of the characters rummaging throughout the house. We wanted to do singular shots of the characters to add variation to the shots, and to gain an understanding of individual characters. This was also so that we could show a variety of shots in an effective way. This filming was all done inside Max's house, and we used the tripod and camera to gain good shots.

We found that using this shooting schedule, it was really useful because it allowed us to fully understand and organise when and where we plan to film and shoot the different shots we need. Without the shooting schedule we found that it would have been very difficult to understand and organise when we plan to shoot. This was also vital because we needed to choose appropriate dates that were suitable for everyone in the group.

The shot list did change because we needed to do more and extra filming, however we just continuously  adapted the shooting schedule to make it easier to organise for everyone.

Film Language

Film Language

Camera

Frame- There are six different types of frame work,

• Extreme Close Up
• Close Up
• Medium, Shot
• Long Shot
• Extreme Long Shot

Angle- There are four different types of angles,

• Worms Eye View (From the ground)
• Birds Eye View (From the sky)
• Level (Level with whatever is going on in the movie)
• POV (Point of View)

Movement- There are seven types of camera movement,

• Pan Right to Left
• Tilt Up and Down
• Tracking Shot
• Steadicam
• Hand Held 
• Zoom In
• Zoom Out

Editing

 

• Transition e.g. Cut in, Cut out, Fade in, Fade out
• Matches e.g. Eye line match
• Duration

Sound

Sound doesn't always have to match the image that we are seeing in a movie. A lot of the time the
sound will work perectly with wat we are watching but sometimes it is completely diferent

Script

Script:
*They sit in the van, loading weapons*
*They exit the van, max goes a separate way and jumps the fence, the rest go through the gate and begin to unlock the door*
*Once entered through the door- Megan goes and checks a room, Spencer and Melissa goes off and Max checks upstairs*
(Megan on the phone) - No, I definitely heard something. Dad....they're coming into the house
*Runs to the stairs- hides in wardrobe-
*Others check upstairs*
Megan goes out the window
*The others hear something- run inside the room*
Megan ( Jade) - I can't believe she's not here. I can't believe my sisters not here'
       

Title research

Title research

OUR FOLLOWING TITLES WILL SAY: 

SM studio's presents

A Never Forgotten Production

Melissa Haris

Spencer Stevenson

Max Duffy

Megan Thomas

Casting by Amanda Lee

Costume design by Lisa Moore

Music By Nathan Hall

Edited by Niall Waters

Production design by Willow Childs

Director of Photogrophy by Lucy Sapwood

Co- Producer  Rachel Headly

Produced by Frankie Croft

Written and Directed by Archie Smith

Film title sequence:

 Many movies have employed unusual and fairly elaborate title sequences since the 1930s.on, music,
 still images, and/or graphics. In several movies, the opening credits have appeared against a
background of (sometimes moving) clouds. For example,  The Wizard Of Oz. Since the late 1950s,
movie title sequences have been a showcase for contemporary design and illustration. In a motion
picture, television programme or video game  the opening credits are shown at the very beginning
and list the most important members of the production. They are now usually shown as text
superimposed on a blank screen or static pictures, or sometimes on top of action in the show. There
may or may not be accompanying music.


We researched the film 'Spiderman' and focused on the titles that they used. The reason why we did this was because they include a similar genre of violent action, so we wanted to be correct with the titles that we chose. For example, these are titles from Spiderman's opening sequence.

Film Poster

Film Poster

 

 

This is our film poste/ front cover. We chose to do black and white effect to make it seem more dark
 and sinister. We then wanted to add scratch effects in order to make the poster stand out and create
the effect of beaten violence. We also put the suitable viewing age, in order to highlight how old you
have to be to be able to watch it. The title font also represents the scratches and violence within the
image, and makes it bold and stand out.

Target Audience, promotion, advertisement, marketing ploy, sales promotion

Target audience

 

The target audience for our movie is 15 and over. We have chosen this as our target audience as we feel that the film will appeal to all ages above 15 due to the graphic and action packed content. The reason why we chose the film to not be available to under 15's is because the content will include gore and action, which we don't think is visibly appropriate for that age group. It could also cause our viewers stress and anxiety.

Primary: People who enjoy heist films
Secondary: People who enjoy action films

Action films are stereotypically associated to male audience,  as it has been thought that males are drawn to 'violent' films. For example, Die Hard had figures of a mainly male based fan and audience, due the violent and action content within their film.
 

 

Audience

 

We are going to advertise our film in many different ways. The first  way in which we are going to advertise our film is by producing a movie 'trailer'. The trailer needs to be of high quality because the trailer is what attracts most of the customers. The trailer will be available on youtube. This is a great way to reach our target audience because Youtube is widely accessed. The second method of advertisement are with posters. This is a more simplistic way of advertising the film and is more old fashioned, but it is still very effective. The posters will feature on the sides of busses, posters on train stations and on billboards at the side of the road.

 

The promotion that we are going to use are: Advertisement, Sponsorship, direct marketing and public relations

 

Sponsorships

In terms of sponsorship we have Paramount pictures at the front as they are going to be one of the main producers for our movie. The other sponsor will be SM cooperations which is our own producer that we will use at the start of the opening. We will also use product placement in our movie so we will basically be advertising other products to make more money.

 

Direct marketing ploy

In terms of a direct market ploy to help promote our film we will be going out and handing out our own 'little' posters to advertise the film and will also be doing questionnaires. In the questionnaires we will basically be asking people if they heard about the film and if not definitely telling them that they should go see it! Along with this we will also be doing some kind of sales promotion which is on the next slide.

Sales promotion

As we are conducting our direct market ploy we will also be offering a sales promotion. This will be that if they can get all of the questions right in a quiz then they will get movie vouchers for a discount on the movie or perhaps that they will get a free popcorn or drink when they buy tickets for the movie. This will be videoed and shown on things such as Youtube as an advert so it will help get the film a lot of exposure which will ensure that a lot more people will be willing and wanting to go and watch the movie but also that a lot more people see it in particular our target audience.

Risk Assessments

This is our risk assessments that we did as a group in order to identify the hazards that could take place within filming. We wanted to identify how these hazards could be overcome and solved. For example, in the first one we discussed how the camera equipment can be ruined and how we can prevent this from happening. We will then rate how dangerous the hazard is on a scale of 1-10.

Teacher Feedback

Teacher Feedback

our teachers had watched our first draft of the opening and they gave us their constructive criticism.