Our Film so far...The Feedback

 

When our film opening was presented to the class, we were presented with both positive and negative feedback, I will now discuss the feedback we received. I will start with the positive comments. Over all our footage was told to be of a high standard, and people particularly had a preference for the use of the GO PRO footage which showed Point of View(POV)shots of both characters. The music for our opening was also liked and we were told it fit our opening well.

However as much as there was good points there were also bad points, or places we could improve our piece to make it that just a bit better. The title screen fonts were apparently not fitting for an action film and do need to be changed, and to also be matching too.
The fade into white at the end of the final POV shot was suggested to be black, which we agree with as it was our original idea to be black instead of white. Also the notion of our film having a '2 days earlier' kind of title at the end of our film has been taken on board an applied to our film to further the feeling of enigma.

We found the in class feedback to be very useful and insightful for further developing our film, and we hope our end product is of a high quality.

Our Sound Track

Analysis of previous student film opening

Risk Assessment

 

Filming Update

  

This is a video, documenting our first Day of filming.

Our Script

Our Shooting Schedule

Shooting schedule from HarryW5

Our Film openings Shot list.

 

Our Key Cast

Film Director- A films director is the person in charge of overseeing the film set, they are usually very creative and artistic in order to help deliver a unique and original film. A movies director works with everyone, from Technicians, make up artists, and of course, Actors. For our film we have selected Ben Mcstay for our director. We have made this choice as Ben is very knowledgeable, organised and has a very good over all understanding of how everything that makes a film go well works.

Producer- A movie producer starts his job from the birth of the films initial plot and idea, and oversees the whole project through till the distribution stage. Producers work very closely with film Directors and we have decided that in our group we will all have a part in the production role of our film.

Cameraman- Our films cameras will be operated by Ben McStay and George Lewis. The two both feel comfortable with the Camera and Tripod, and have a knowledgeable idea of a variety of camera shots, and they can both Visualise the shots that will be used in our film. I am unable to be in charge of the camera as I am an actor in our film.

Sound- George will be incharge of the boom mic used during filming on set. During the editing process I will be in charge of the Non-Diagetic sound and music played over our film. I chose to find this music as I have a clear idea of an ideal sound track to match our action sequence.

BBFC

Film Ideas & Group Pitch

In our groups pitch we discussed our two chosen film opening ideas of the action film genre. The first idea of a film we named Pursuit and the second idea named Abducted. Our primary demographic and target audience is males under 35, our secondary demographic group is males over the age of 35.

After our pitch to the class, we received feed back on the likes and dislikes in relation to our two films openings. From this information we learnt that over all, our second idea (Abduction) was favoured over Pursuit. This led to our decision to go for the second idea for our film opening. In our feedback, we also took in some ideas and suggestions, these included an Ariel or high angle shot to establish the setting. We see this as a challenge to undertake but do hope to feature this shot in our opening, as it is a strong idea that we originally did not think of, but would like to take on board.

We also learnt to avoid a specific part of our initial idea, this was the use of make up to create a gunshot wound. From feedback we learnt that because of our low budget, this may look shabby and look bad, and so we will avoid this so we do not lose marks on our over all grade for our piece. Also we have changed how are character is represented; the idea of a soldier is replaced by a more 'average' man as this leads to more enigma, according to our pitch audience.

In conclusion we have taken account of all the above mentioned points and suggestions and will take them on board. We will use the arial shot and change the soldier to a more 'every day' character, and combine aspects of both ideas.

Our Storyboard

Our Film Ideas

1^st Film Opening Idea

Soldier running through the woods persuade by two armed men. One of the villains falls behind and other continues pursuit, whilst trying to shoot the soldier and shoots his hip. When he releases he is out of bullets he drops his weapon to the ground. The soldier is wounded therefore he isn’t able to run as fast, the villain catches up with him tackles him down to the ground and punches him one with his right in the face and second time camera falls to the ground like of a point of view shot still hearing the punches in the background and blood trickling on the forest floor.

The first camera shot we shall take will be of the soldier running past the camera and then pan to the left tracking the soldier. Then keeping that position we will have the two villains run past after him. We will then go into a tracking shot if possible of the villains and the soldier. Then a shot just on the villains when one of the gives up the chase then one of the soldier still running. Then going back to the villain with a point of view shot showing the back of the villain and the solider, the villain who is still continuing the pursuit and tries to shoot the soldier and hits his leg so a long shot of the soldier being shot and wounded at the hip. Then back to the villain who goes to grab another cartridge but realises he has none left. So a mid shot of him dropping the gun. With a match on action of soldier limping and the villain catching up on him. Then a long shot wear the soldier gets talked by the villain. We then have a point of view shot from the soldiers perspective showing the villain punching him. Then the camera falls on its side show the blood from the soldier.

2^nd Film Opening Idea

The setting is in a wood in the middle of day, the weather is dry and over cast/fairly dull. A panning shot moves across the woods and switches to a long shot of another part of the wood, giving the impression of emptiness and isolation. Then the sound of footsteps becomes present and a man runs past a the camera, a jump cut moves to a shot from behind the man as he is running away from the camera. A gunshot is heard in the distance whilst a shot of the man running towards the camera is used. A collection of shots show him running until he stops to catch his breath and take in his surroundings. A close shot of his face shows his distressed emotions and sense of panic as he looks behind and sees his pursuer, briefly the man stares as the guy runs after him. The pursuit is then back on when the first runner is tackled to the ground and there is a fit as the last scene reveals the chaser.

Our Demographic-In Depth/ Target Audience Profile

My chosen member of our demographic to interview is my friend Joshua-Barr-Rostron. Josh is 17, and so fits are chosen demographic well: he is employed by Lincoln City Football Club as a youth team player.
As far as political views Josh does hold more slightly conservative views, appose to left wing beliefs.

Josh's favourite genre of film is comedy and genre; his favourite comedy films are Dumb & Dumber, The Mask and the Hangover series. More relevant is his taste of action films, his favourite being the Die Hard Series, which we found to be the favourite of others in our chosen demographic during our Target Audience interviews. His reason for this was because of the high budget action sequences, explosions, fight scenes and high tempo. Some of these conventions will be held in our film, e.g fight scenes & high tempo. By having these features in our film opening, we hope to hold high interest from our demographic for the rest of the films duration. Josh also likes films based on true stories such as 'Flight'. He says they bring more realisation that he can relate to as a member of the audience, this also links to his taste in books which seems to be mainly based around Autobiographies, by footballers such as Stephen Gerard and Wayne Rooney. This can be also seen as a link to Josh's employment as a footballer, and over all love of the sport.

In terms of Music taste, Josh's tastes were mainly of mainstream groups such as Oasis and Coldplay who both have a well established fan base. These two groups belong to a more 'Rock' orientated aspect of music genre, where as some other of Josh's favourite groups, Avicii and Daft Punk belong to a larger 'Dance' or 'House' music genre. Josh made it clear in our questions his strong dislike for any 'metal' or 'screamo' music, which he feels is "rubbish, pointless, and not real music".
 
In terms of book interests, what we learned from Josh plays no significance in terms of our film, however we can learn from his favourite film and music tastes. The fight scenes and high action Josh said he liked will be used in our film to meet the likes of our primary demographic, and we hope to seek further inspiration for any additional ideas to add to our film through studying Die Hard. This film is vastly popular through out those interviewed in our primary Demographic and we hope to attain a close standard to that of films in the Die Hard series. Through the understanding of Josh's music tastes we can build a picture that may help our films promotion. When we asked Josh about his favourite music, he told us he listened to a lot of his favourite music on YouTube. By gaining this key piece of information we can boost interest and knowledge of our Film through using YouTube, and other social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter for advertisement. An example would be a compulsive viewing advertisement clip at the start of an Avicii music video on YouTube of out film.

Our film may also be advertised by being introduced at the same time of another action film, to be another option to that rival film, and as a competitor. Josh likes to go to the cinema as often as possible, the perfect place to show our film opening perhaps in a trailer. This is better for advertisment than radio says Josh as you can gain a visualisation of the film, and can gain more excitment and anticipation for a new release that way. 

Target Audience Research

The first person we interviewed was in our chosen target audience demographic, males under 35. Our chosen interviewee was Mr Higgins, a teacher at our school, we also had a student (Andrew) who also represented this audience. As expected both people chosen to represent our chosen target audience shared similar view on action films, and what they both like in their favourite action film. A few of the things that our primary audience favoured were themes such as, a typical 'Good Guy' and 'Bad Guy' and Bruce Willis as their favourite action actor.

In our first interview with Mr Higgins he told us that he liked action films for the fast paced action, explosions and that his favourite action film was Die Hard, this being a film that meets most typical conventions of an action film. After listening to Mr Higgins' comments we have decided to include actions, and some violence in our film opening. By doing this we hope to further appeal towards our target audience demographic. We learnt from both Andrew and Mr Higgins that too much romance & bad story writing in the film lead to disaster and a poor film, and so we hope to avoid both of these things. 

After we interviewed the people in our Primary target audience, we looked at our secondary demographic which was males over the age of 35. The two people we interviewed for this were again teachers, Mr Cutts and Mr Johnson. Firstly we interviewed Mr Cutts who also was a fan of action films but preferred different things to those in our Primary demographic. Mr Cutts told us how he usually expects the Villain in an action film to be either English or Eastern European such as 'Hans' from Die Hard who was East German. 

 

 

 

In contrast to our primary audience though he preferred a small amount of violence used in an action film and felt it un-needed. In response to this comment we will not feature too much 'over the top' violence, but perhaps enough to still keep our primary audience interested during the film openning. Another contrast between our two demographic groups centered around romance. Our primary audience felt it to be a downfall of some action films and un-needed. Where as when we interviewed Mr Johnson who was another teacher over the age of 35, he felt romance to be a good aspect of an action film, an example he gave us was the James Bond film 'Her Majersty's secret Service'. 

 

In our film openning we will not feature any romance or romantic themes as we feel this would spoil any action sequences, and put off our primary audience. Our secondary demographic would not find this a problem as romance is not seen as their favourite theme in an action film.

Box Office data- Action

Below is the statistics of the top grossing films between 1995-2012. As made clear my chosen genre (action) is placed 4th out of the 14 top film genres. Action films hold a 16.81% market share and less than 1% behind Drama in 3rd place. Based on average film gross statistics, action films would come second out of the fourteen, top of the list being adventure.

 

  In the graph represented below, the market share held by action films from the years 1995-2012 is show in a bar chart. The chart shows market share in action films saw its peak in percentage hold during the year of 2003, a year which brought many sequels to big film franchises with films such as The Matrix Revolutions and Reloaded, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines & X2(the x-men sequel).

 

 In another table below we can see the highest grossing and most succesful action films between 1995 and 2013 again. Most of these films contained high budget and big name actors in the film production, some of the actors who played roles in the films below included Christian Bale(The Dark Knight/The Dark Knight Rises) and Rober Downey Jr (Iron Man/Iron Man 3). The use of these big names help attract audiences into movies theaters to see the films. Other data that is shown is the film is the film rating. The majority of action films attain a PG-13 rating or a 12A when being shown in British cinemas.

 

 

 



UK Film Council Audience Research- Our selected Genre

 In our Group we looked at some secondary research. This research was in the form of data collected by the UK Film Council to identify our target demographics in a specific genre. Our specific genre is Action.

                                                                                              

 

 

 

 

 

We looked at the demographic data concerning our chosen genre of 'action'. The data showed that the genre of action held a 50% enjoyable to watch percentage. This is a very high and significant percentage of the population that enjoy action films, which helped us decide upon action being our chosen Genre.

 Next we looked at this data to gain a even further and in depth understanding of the typical target market of an action film. The data highlights people in terms of gender, age, whether the are a parent or not & class. From this data here we can conclude the typical action film fan to be Males under 35, who are parents &
                                                                                    lower middle/ lower class.  

This data here shows market share and segment of each individual film genre. In the data it is clear that action films contain a 20% share in the film market of Britain. This is a very large and profitable segment to get into.








Conclusion:
We have in our group committed to making an action film opening. This is our favourite genre and mine, George's and Ben's favourite films are mostly action films. Our target audience for our chosen film Genre is Males under 35, who are probably parents, and middle to working class.

Fim Analysis of an Action film & its conventions.

Group & Genre

The Group that I am working in contains myself, George & Ben, and our chosen film genre is a hybrid of Action/Thriller. We chose this specific genre as we all share similar ideas for an Action or Thriller films, as well as being fans for this specific genre. From our collective knowledge we have made a few ideas for possible film openings.

Fim Openning analysis

Film Openings

Brief

The titles and openings of a new fiction film, to last a maximum of two minutes.