Dear Moderator,
Hello and welcome to our group Foundation Production blog. The best way to navigate around our blog is by clicking the labels on the right hand side of the page.

Under the Research and Planning label, you will find evidence of the all the research, planning and development work we did as a group during the pre-production, production and post-production stages of our project.

In order for you to see exactly what each candidate contributed to this process, we have also included individual contribution labels named for each group member. All research planning and development posts contributed to by the named candidate will appear when you click that label.

Each member of the group has also completed their own evaluation. You can access our responses to the evaluation questions under the individually named Evaluation labels.

Our finished Film opening sequence is at the top of the blog, and each candidate has posted their preliminary task video sequence as part of their answer to Q7 of the evaluation.

You can also filter our posts by label or date and there is a blog archive if you want to look through it chronologically.

You will also find a link to the class film blog which contains links to other group blogs from our school.

Thanks for your time I hope you enjoy the content of our blog.

From Sam, Yadash and Chris.

This blog is now closed. We had lots of fun on this project, hope you like our work :)

This shows us on our shoot, preparing our props and our roles as actors. We also took these shots to make sure that our costumes were fine and no imperfections showed up on camera.

While trying to find royalty free music, we first looked blindly through google, to little success. We then found this video:


Which informed us more about copyright free music, as well as linking us to many useful sites.

The website which we found most useful was incompetech.com as it had a lot of music and a useful search engine which allowed you to search in moods and paces as well as just by genre or name.

To match our genre, we decided to search the website using the keywords 'action', 'suspense' and 'agressive', and we managed to pick 3 tracks to narrow down the choice, and we have listed them below with their descriptions:

Mechanolith:
Superlatives abound in this giant orchestral/industrial piece. To be played loud. From the original soundtrack to "The Last Stand of the Mechanolith".

Satiate:
This track just never lets the audience rest. There are a lot of uses for this sort of piece. It is also available with just the percussion, and just the strings... both of which are quite different from the combined.

Steel Rods:
Smashing on a dumpster while pulling off some imitative counterpoint. Dark, mysterious and unnerving.

In the end we chose to go with a subtrack of 'Satiate', which was the same track but without the melody, aptly named 'Satiate Precussion'. The balance of suspense and action makes it suitable for our piece.

The track can be listened at:

http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/?keywords=satiate

Macho Male Characters----> Developed through the application of these conventional character traits to an Asian Character

Gender Representations:

All of the characters in our opening sequence are Males.

Males in Action films often take a very macho, trigger happy attitude, depicting them as courageous and brave. Such a character is James Bond from the Action film franchise James Bond, he is depicted as very macho and courageous, we drew most inspiration for our characters from James Bond as he is a very archetypal action protagonist.


The cocky and confident attitude our protagonist
shows, as well as the power that he demonstrates are signifiers of conventional of male protagonists in action films

Our two agents come across as brave and macho, through the mise en scene of the suits and guns and the fact that the suits juxtapose the setting, showing the audience that the agents don't really belong there,yet vulnerable through the use of camera such as long shots and voyeur shots to make the agents seem vulnerable and powerless as in comparison to the space, they look small .This sets them up as victims in our sequence as the negativity of vulnerability outweighs the positive representation of the agents. Similar representations are made in the ending of Casino Royale, where the victim is portrayed as powerful through the mise en scene of his suit and luxury car, however, there are some long shots of him, which connote that he isn't as powerful as his appearance suggests.

All in all, in our sequence, males are represented positively as macho, courageous and brave, however the victims in the sequence are also represented in a negative light as vulnerable.

Women in Action films are often represented as vulnerable and weak, this allows them to take up the conventional action role of "Damsel in distress". If our movie was to make it into production, we would include a lead female character who would take this role...

Age:

Agent 1 and Agent 2

Protagonist- Ryan Hunt

Age is a factor that we as a group didn't have control over, due to the fact that we were acting in the sequence. In order to overcome this, we decided to portray our agents as young, inexperienced and low ranking agents, this is made clear to the audience when one of the agents asks, "How are we meant to know what to get if we don't know what it looks like". This is quite unprofessional dialect which highlights the fact that these agents are inexperienced.

This inexperience is highlighted through their reactions to the situations that happen, such as when the tracker malfunctions and they panic, this shows a negative representation of age as it shows that inexperience makes a bad agent.

Our agents also have positive representations of being strong, brave and courageous enough to fight a superhuman, however, as we want them to be seen as the "bad guys" in this scene, the negative representations must outweigh the positive representations so that the audience doesn't sympathise with our "bad guys" too much.

The Protagonist in our sequence, is also a young character who is positively represented as he is seen to be very strong, because he kills two agents and has the invisibility and heads up display that the other agents do not have, and cocky because he intimidates the second agent before going on to shoot him.

has positive representations as he is seen to be quite cocky and confident in his abilities which shows a positive representation of teenagers.

The positive representation of teenagers in Hollywood Action films and British made productions are often negative, looking at the youth as anti-social or intimidating and rude and even both some times. An example of an action/sci-fi film that does this, is "Attack the block" (2011), in this film, teenagers and youths are negatively represented as in the first 5 minutes, they "mug" a nurse, this represents the youth as quite inconsiderate and juxtaposes their evil against someone who helps to save lives.

I think that due to the positive representation that our film shows for teenagers, of courage, bravery and strength, our representation of youths is quite unconventional.


Minorities

Dev from Slumdog Millionaire

In our Sequence, we have an agent who is of Asian descent. This character is representative of the demographics in London, which is quite a multicultural city. The character is positively represented for the most part as he is shown to be a government agent, which is a positive achievement. The indian agent is also shown to be the calmer of the two which shows experience or bravery especially when compared with the other agent, who seems very stressed out, this agent puts up a fight against the protagonist to save his life instead of fleeing which again shows bravery and positively represents this character. There are not many negative representations of this agent in our sequence, as he has more knowledge of the mission and seems to have more experience than the second agent as the second agent asks the first agent many questions about the mission, again, this shows positive
 representation of the agent. One of the biggest negative representations of the agent however, is the fact that ultimately, he dies which represents him negatively as weak and inferior.



The British film industry has been very successful recently in the genre of British-Asian films, such as Bend it Like Beckham (2002) and Bride and Prejudice (2004) and Slumdog Millionaire (2008), so it would not be unconventional for an Asian character to appear in a low budget British production.

Our other two characters are more conventional Hollywood action film type
characters. We have our archetypal male white protagonist, who is portrayed as the strongest in this clip due to the fact that he has more "abilities" than the other two agents, though he is dressed in the same way as the other agents, he is shown to have more power through the use of the invisibility cloak and the heads up display. This is a very positive representation of the white male social group as it represents them as strong and cool.

We also have another white male character that assumes the role of second agent. Again, this character is quite conventional as often in Hollywood action films, it's usually white males that take up the roles of strong, yet "disposable" characters. The characters power is shown through the characters iconography such as the use of the gun, showing power and the suit, which connotes success. These representations are quite conventional of Action films as usually, white males are shown as powerful and successful. However, In the clip, it's observable that this character is quite stressed under pressure and takes the offensive route in order to defend himself, this represents the character negatively as it is his job to deal with such situations, and it reflects quite badly upon him that he is stressed under the situation.

In order to prepare for our shoot we made a storyboard so as we could see all our shots. We colour coded each type of shot with a different colour post it note so that it would be obvious by colour balance whether we had too many of one type of shot.
Key:

• Green - LS
• Orange - CU
• Pink - MS
• Blue - Title

This helped us to make sure we could all were on the same level in terms of what would happen in our sequence and it gave us a clear minimum as to what to shoot. Of course when we were shooting we knew that we had to shoot more than just the shots on the storyboard just in case something didn't work as well as we had hoped but having the storyboard as a reference point helped to make sure we filmed something that could become coherent in post production.

The main point that draws us to Focus Features is their success with the low budget film "Brick". Despite having had a low budget of $480,000 dollars, Focus Features managed to gross more than $2,000,000 in total.

In terms of distribution platforms, as our target audience is 16-24 year olds. I feel it would be more effective targeting them via mobile platforms and online availability after theatrical release. Although Focus Features do not have an infrastructure for online distribution yet, it would be quite cheap for them to put one into place considering that it's father company, Universal already posses such an infrastructure. Also, Focus Features has a lot of experience in distribution of DVD and Blu-Ray and we could use this effectively to appeal to our secondary target audience who may not want to visit the cinema.

Our marketing scheme will be fairly low profile, with much of the advertising being done on web and mobile platforms in order to better target our core target audience of 16-24 year olds.

We plan to use Viral marketing as well as social networking sites in order to generate interest for our film. Inspiration for the use of the web platform comes from, "The Avengers", where an aggressive 360 degree marketing campaign was used, heavily relying on the web platform. We plan to follow this scheme, however without the use of high profile TV spots and Billboards.

Our film will initially only be nationally exhibited in Cinemas, we will use the 2 biggest UK cinema chains in order to exhibit our films, these are; Odeon and Cineworld.

Our opening sequence serves to represent certain social groups through use of characterisation and our characters' roles in the narrative

We looked at the opening sequences to "The Matrix" (1999) and "Attack the Block" (2011) to look at how they constructed their narratives.

The matrix opens with numbers as visuals. As audio you hear a conversation between two characters. They make reference to a main protagonist "Morpheas" before hinting at a greater danger by saying "Are you sure this line is secure." The visuals then transition into the high contrast shot of a city cop with a flash light  A fight scene then breaks out between Trinity and a set of cops.







Attack the block opens with a shot of the sky with an asteroid of some sort in it, which then pans down onto a London tube station  as fireworks go off, this shot lasts and astonishing 53 seconds. The camera then cuts to a character walking while on the phone. She talks about it being fireworks night, further establishing setting, and then puts away her phone when she see's some youths, who then mug her.



What we found from looking at these sequences is that they both consisted of a conversation which establishes some plot points and then are followed by some sort of action or fight scene. For this reason why made our opening sequence follow the same structure

As we were acting ourselves we wanted the script to seem natural to us and hence only planned a rough gist of what was going to be said:

Sam: Who steals a government project, and hides it in this dump?
Yadash: Somebody stupid enough to steal a government project
Sam: What are we looking for anyway?
Yadash: Intel wont tell us, we don't have the clearance, that's what I've got the tracker for anyway
*Gets out tracker*
Yadash: It's just round here
Sam:Ok You ready?
*They both get out guns*
Yadash: Yeah
*Turn corner*
Sam: There's nothing here
Yadash: Tracker says there should be
Sam:Double check it's right
*Yadash checks*
Yadash: 'Da hell?,It's gone haywire
Sam: Somebody's messing with us
Sam: Come out
*Chris appears and kills Sam*
Yadash: Stop, I will shoot
Chris: Try me
*Chris gets shot at, before shooting Yadash*

This progressed into the final script on the day of the shoot, when we fine tuned it:

Sam: So you're telling me that this guy steals a top secret government project and hides it in a place like this?
Yadash: well if he's stupid enough to steal from us he's stupid enough to hide it here
Sam: How are we meant to know what to get if we don't know what it looks like?
Yadash: That's what I've got the tracker for
*Looks at tracker*
Yadash: Should be round this corner
Sam: Ok, get ready, we don't know what's round there remember
*They get out guns and turn corner*
Sam:There's nothing here
Yadash: tracker's definitely right
Sam: Double check
*Yadash checks tracker*
Yadash: Crap
Sam: What is it?
Yadash: Its gone haywire
Sam:Some one's messing with us
Sam: Come out, come out and we might not kill you
*Chris appears and kills Sam*
Yadash: Stop or I'll shoot
Chris: Try me
*Chris gets shot at before shooting Yadash*

Reasons why we thought the second version of the script was better:

• The start seems like it has flowed on from another conversation, making it seem as if the two characters had been talking before they enter the scene, as would make sense.
• It seems more conversational, the first script seemed like Sam was asking a continuous stream of questions and Yadash was giving pre thought of answers
• It flowed better and seemed more fluent
• The second one builds up more tension when turning the corner, as opposed to them just walking around the corner, the sharp turn allows them to turn in a way which seems professional.

Initially we failed to plan for weather and had to cancel a shoot because of it, however as we had the entire half term free to shoot we made sure to look out for the best day to film according to the weather, and organised our schedule based on that.

In the end we chose "Coalition" for our main title, as it has Sci Fi lettering style, while having a grungy texture. We chose "Birth Of A Hero" for our superimposed titles as it was simple and easy to read, while seeming grungy and epic.

The location we chose to shoot in was a set of garages which were secluded from the street. The reason we chose this was because it provided the required outdoor setting, but it was very secluded.

The corner from the alleyway to the garages is very sharp and so provides us with a point from which the conversation can go from talking about the package they are about to pick up to looking for the package.


The garages themselves are very run down and deserted, this will give a grungy, dilapidated feel to the scene's setting. The garages themselves clearly indicate an urban setting, while the seclusion gives us the space and isolation required to film, meaning we wont be interrupted much during the shoot.

Our core target audience for the media product is the 16-24 year old age group with our secondary target audience being 40+ professionals. Though we have a primarily male target audience, we also appeal to female audiences who enjoy the genre.

In order for us to decide our target audience's age group, we researched some statistics as to the percentage of viewers of certain age groups at a cinema. This survey was taken in 2011

After realising that our target age group would be 16-24 year olds, we had to research what gender were most interested in the Action and Action Sci-Fi genre of film. To do this, we investigated the viewership of Skyfall (2012) and the percentage of male vs female raters for Iron Man (2009) on IMDB.




This research allowed us to come up with our Primary Target Audience and our Secondary Target Audience.

For our production company, we thought up of 'Clockwork Productions' which connotes that our films are more gritty, logical and complex than most. To add to this effect we animated both 'O's to mimic the clockwork motions with cogs, and introduced smoke bellowing in the background. The font we chose was very simple and clear, and we capitalised the title similar to the titles of 'The Weinstein Company', 'Focus Features' and 'Working Title Films'

From gauging our audience for our media product and knowing the genre. We had a good idea of what enthusiasts of the Action Sci-Fi genre expected in films in terms of conventions and had to implement these conventions in order to gratify the audience.

Action is one of the most popular genres of film today and this survey shows us that it's extremely popular with Males. We decided to have Sci-Fi as our sub-genre in order to widen audience appeal to a greater audience. The thriller elements further widened the audience reach inviting fans of other genres to watch this hybrid.

Conforming to expectations

As our sequence is the opening sequence to an action film, we would have to include some form of action in the 2 minute opening which we delivered. We exploit the thriller elements which tricks the audience into thinking that the opening sequence will just be the agents looking for the "project". However, there is a great plot twist as the Protagonist uncloaks behind one of the agents, which fulfills the expectations of the Sci-Fi fans that were expecting use of "futuristic" technology. The immediate take-down of the agent after this fulfills the expectations of the action fans as it is action packed and also, creates a fight scene between our Asian character and the Protagonist.



Building up Enigma

We built up enigma quite successfully in our sequence through implementing elements of the thriller genre. We used the tightly framed shots showing only the agents' hands and shoes in the beginning of the sequence raising questions in the audiences' minds such as, "who are these people" and "why do we not see their faces?". The thriller style music adds to this, helping to create a more enigmatic feel and working with the framing and composition .

We also have enigmatic code when the agents are walking along and we cut to When the two agents turn the corner, the audience are shocked when they see nothing there, as they only had the same information that the tracker had given them, this throws the audience off track leaving them disorientated as the Protagonist uncloaks and shoots the agent.

Audience Feedback

As a group, we created an online questionnaire that we distributed amongst our target audience. We were lucky enough to get some good results and feedback showing us that we were successful in attracting our target audience.


Our feedback shows us that we were successful in creating an opening sequence which conveys the Title and Genre of our sequence to our audience, as well as showing the audience that it was a more independent film made by a smaller production company.

From our online survey that was conducted, we found that we had an average rating of 7/10 for our opening sequence. This shows that we were quite successful in appealing to a variety of audiences and that fans of the Action Sci-Fi genre were attracted to this film.