Evaluation of my opening sequence 'The Drop' Question 5

Q5: how did you attract/address your audience?



After analysing films like Adulthood and Shank , we decided before filming that we would use a young teenage cast . This helped attract and address our audience because with a young cast , our audience will be able to relate and possibly identify themselves with the characters, which would then intrigue and therefore attract them to watch our media product. from our audience research we know that our target audience are interested in a lot of action in-between scenes , we endeavoured to provide them with this by adding a chase scene that we filmed and added at the end of our opening scene. The clothes that we made the main male character wear helps to portrays him as urban which addresses to our audience because we target urban students. The use of props, in this case , what type of clothes the character is wearing to address a target audience has been used in the clip below from Adulthood:

Evaluation of my opening sequence 'The Drop' Question 4

Q4: Who would be the audience for your media product?


The target audience for our media product is both male and female students ages 13 to 19 in the UK who have an interest in thrillers. This is our target audience because we thought that the concept of our media product would only appeal to teenagers, and after showing our opening sequence to a group of adults we found out that this was true. Comparing our media product with another British film like Adulthood we then realised that due to both our films having mainly an urban cast adults won't be interested in the concept because they can't relate, therefore that's the reason why our target audience is both male and female students ages 13 to 19 in the UK who have an interest in thrillers.

Evaluation of my opening scene 'The Drop' Question 3

Q3: What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why ?

Having researched British film production companies and distributors, we feel that companies that specialise in and have successfully produced and distributed low budget British thrillers are the companies most likely to distribute our film . Due to the fact that our media product is low budget ,  a media institution like Vertigo Films might show interest  in distributing our film because Vertigo Films has a history in supporting low budget films like London to Brighton and Bronson.

Evaluation of my opening sequence 'The Drop' Question 2

Q2: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

My media product represents men in there mid 20's as powerful and mysterious and even though there is no dialogue being used, this is shown by a variety of low angle shots and the fact that John Smith's face is concealed until it is finally revealed in a couple of the last shots at the end.




The use of the props ,which in this case is the black suit ,
also helps to show how John Smith's character is powerful because people who wear suits tend to be of high status. The use of suits to portray a character as powerful and mysterious has been used in various films, for example in Collateral Tom Cruise's is wearing black glasses and a grey suit which adds on to the mystery of his character, this is shown in the scene below:

The young character of Samuel (The young male protagonist) is represented as passive , this is shown by a variety of tracking shots , along with the use of props which is his black jacket and bright grey jeans. Showing Samuel's character as passive is unconventional since so many other products have shown the social group known as teenagers as aggressive and irresponsible, an example of this is the show skins.

Evaluation of my opening sequence 'The Drop' Question 1

Q1. In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our opening sequence uses conventions common to many thrillers, for example when we edited the short chase scene that we filmed in London ,we intentionally made quick cuts and camera angle changes because after analysing many thrillers, we realised that they tend to use quick cuts to create a lot of suspense and anticipation along with different camera angle changes to increase the pace and intensity of the scene.Our opening scene also uses the thriller convention of lighting because we filmed during the early morning to make it seem like the main character is calm and safe therefore surprising the audience when the plot takes a turn of event.
The use of this editing technique has been used in the following thriller films (and many more) :

INCEPTION                                                   BATMAN: THE DARK KNIGHT 


              

We decided to use the thriller conventions that are mentioned above because we agreed that by using these conventions the audience would recognize them and therefore making it easier for them to identify the genre of our opening sequence. We also used another thriller convention which is the use of sound , in our research we realised that thrillers tend to use atmospheric music as a way of building to a climax, this is shown in the opening scene of The Dark Knight.

So yet again in order to make it easier for the audience to identify that our opening sequence is a thriller , we  used the convention of using climactic music throughout, especially during our chasing scene. Our media product does not contain any dialogue,  which can be seen as challenging thriller conventions mainly because during my research I have observed, that thrillers tend to have dialogue that keeps the audience captivated and interested in what is happening in a scene. So with our opening sequence we had to rely a lot on the music to build suspense which could be seen us unconventional for a thriller because thrillers tend to have more then just music , which in this case is captivating dialogue. 

Our opening sequence 'The Drop'

Foundation Production Evalution: Filming Draft

Technical difficulties encountered:

We experianced some difficulties with keeping the tri-pod steady due to the wind constantly shaking it from side to side , this was a big problem for us because it made the camera shake resulting in all the shots looking fuzzy and hard to watch.We solved this problem by getting one person to hold down the tri-pod while another person from our group would film, we also encounted a problem with the sudden change of light which resulted in the filming being postponed for the next day. This however was a good lesson to learn especially since our group were in the early stages of filming , we learnt that when you go filming, you have to get as much shots as possible and get those shots as fast as possible because the weather could change unexpectedly and delay film time. Apart from those technical difficulities mentioned above we did not experiance any more technical difficulties.

Technical decisions you made on the spot :

A lot of the technical decisions were made on the spot because I wanted to make sure that our group got a lot of different shots from different angles , for example in one of our scenes I wanted to portray one of characters as a powerful and authoritative figure. So we decided to take a variety of  low angle shots from the back , left side , right side and the front of our actor to make sure that we had a lot of shots to choose from. We did however discuss as a group before going out to film how the movement of the camera should be, for example we agreed that our main characters will have some panning shots in order to make them stand out and give the audience an idea of who the main characters are.


Changes from screenplay/ storyboard:

We did not have any problems with the screenplay whilst filming so we didn't have to change anything. However we did have to make some changes to the storyboard , due to the fact that on the day that we went  filming  we made a slight  mistake with the location and ended up on the wrong bridge. It was already late when this mistake happened and all we needed was one shot which was the chase scene, the light was slowly changing so we decided to just adapt to the situation and shoot on the wrong bridge. In conclusion we just made a slight change to the storyboard and added 3 more scenes.

Opening Titles

Today in class we began adding the opening titles into our opening sequence , however due to the fact that there are a lot of fronts we used that time to experiment and explore which fonts and backgrounds fit in well with our opening scene. By the end of the lesson as a group we have agreed to present the titles against a black screen because we felt that it fit in really well with the scenes , we also felt that having titles against a black screen is a good way of building suspense. I've spent some time today watching some opening sequences and observing what type of fonts have been used in different movie genres especially thrillers since that's what genre our opening scene is. Some movies I've seen so far are inception , catch me if you can , saw, jaws and meet the parents.

Titles

A couple days ago in class we discussed titles and the order in which they go , i learned that there are many ways to present the titles like for example they could be super imposed or they can be placed against a black screen. I also learnt how the font of the title can represent what type of genre the movie is or what time period the movie is set in, i have given it some thought and i think for my groups opening sequence, we should present the titles against a black screen because a lot of the movies we saw used this method , therefore if we used this method it will make our opening scene look more professional and it will show the examiner that we put a lot of thought into the titles.

Editing the first draft

Today I finished editing the first draft of my opening sequence, i'm really glad with what i edited and i'm looking forward to see what type of feedback the people in my class are going to give it once they have seen it. I have also learned how to make fast cuts to build suspense in a scene which will prove usefull in the future.

Filming and Editing for the first time

A couple weeks ago my group and I went to film some of our opening sequence, we set out to film me checking my watch and getting on the bus. We found the day very productive because we learnt a lot of different ways to use the camera to create different effects , we also learnt that taking the same shot from different angles can prove helpful in the editing process because you then have a wider variety of shots to choose from. We used various different camera angles like low angle shots and panning shots to capture the moving bus, however the tri-pod was very light so whenever we wanted to do some panning it was very difficult because the camera kept shaking. So we had to either hold down the tri-pod by one leg to keep it steady or go out filming when it isn't really windy which will save us time in the future. Once we got all the shots we needed we went back to school the next day and edited the shots together, due to us having a lot of shots it made the editing much smoother. Next time we go out to film my group will be prepared with new skills that we learned.

My trip to the BFI

A couple of weeks ago my media class went on a trip to the BFI in central London where we attended a 3 hour lecture , at the start of this lecture the chief of the BFI showed us some professional film opening scenes and how different techniques like sound and mise-en-scene can be used effectively to make our opening scene appealing and interesting. The chief then gave us a website called art of the title which explains opening scenes in depth and this website has proved very helpful , I've been using it lately to analyse different elements in opening scenes , for example the order in which titles are placed in and how long they are shown.
We then preceded to watch some other opening scenes that students from the past have made, we then had to give them a grade level from 1 to 4 and explain why we gave them the grade. This was useful because it  showed me what the examiners look for and what mistakes many students have made so we don't make the same mistake with my group. We were then told what opening scene concepts we should avoid doing like saw type horrors because it has been done too many times. The most valuable piece of information that I received the whole day was when the chief said that its less time consuming and better if we choose a location that isn't far from where we live, on a whole I found the day very productive.

Paul

Yesterday I watched the film Paul starring Simon Peg and directed by Greg Mottola on television , the opening scene showed how a little girl made an encounter with an alien spaceship, this opening scene was interesting because it did a good job of building suspense by not actually showing the spaceship. The audience assume there's a spaceship because of the clever use of lighting and diabetic sound. This scene showed me how by using lighting and diabetic sound in an effective way , you can create something that the audience does not see but knows what it is like for example the spaceship. I will definitely incorporate the use of these techniques in my opening scene , the film continued to be entertaining and very humorous , Simon Peg's character was made likeable and his comical timing was brilliant. On a whole I really enjoying this film.

Film Pitch

Pitch

Title: The drop

Genre: Thriller.

Time period: Contemporary.

Location: UK, London.

Budget: Low to medium.

Target market/Demographic: Young males and females aged 18-25.

LOGLINE:

This thriller is based in central London about a mysterious man who is wanted around the world for pulling off some of the biggest heist in history. But when he accidently clashes with three teenagers who find his bag which contains his loot, he sets about finding them, any way possible. From this point on the teenagers and the mysterious man are playing the game of cat and mouse within London but this game ends with deadly consequences.

TREATMENT:
This mysterious man who has successfully concealed his identity for more than a decade while travelling around the world is now has his sights on the most valuable diamonds kept in London. He is no stranger in pulling off a clean robbery since he has had many years of practice, performing some of the biggest heist in history. We see him successfully pull off this dangerous and risky heist however whilst he makes his clean getaway he suddenly gets spotted by an undercover MI6 agent.

The mysterious man also notices the MI6 agent and is forced to think fast in order to escape and get rid of the stolen goods so guided by the adrenaline he throws the bag off a bridge into what he thinks is the river teams, however he misses and the bag drops into the hands of three ordinary London teenagers who are suddenly caught in the middle of the mix, the mysterious man sees this but is forced to leave it with the three teenagers in order to escape from the MI6 agent. The teenagers were so shocked that they could only stand back and watch how the mysterious man got away with the MI6 agent chasing behind him. They teenagers then have a discussion whether or not to open the bag, until when they finally make the decision to open it to their surprise they find diamonds. They are now faced with the mission of trying to head to safety while avoiding the mysterious man who has managed to get away from the agent and sets about finding the three teenagers who have yet to rely how much danger they are in, the next 48hours will change their lives forever.

This type of thriller has been shown by films like 4,3,2,1 and Adulthood, to keep the audience on the edge of their seats because it has a cat and mouse element to it (for example here this element is used between the teenagers and the mysterious man). It captures the audience’s attention because it makes them want to find out if the teenagers successfully get away or if the mysterious man finds them before they get to safety, the use of this element in a thriller has been shown to be very successful by the popular movie Catch Me If You Can. 

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