Task 5- How did we attract audience

Task 7- Looking back at preliminary task

Just by looking back at the preliminary task and comparing it with the opening sequence we can the huge difference in effort we had to put and the skills we had to have. First of all the storyboard for preliminary task was already made, so we didn’t have to make anything new. In contrast in order to make the opening sequence we had to brainstorm ideas and then decide what about our thriller should be. However it didn’t take so much time about deciding what the storyboard should be. The premlin task already had a script attached to it, which just needed to be followed. We didn’t have to think about the shots, there were simply several shots and nothing to struggle about, while filming the opening sequence we had to think about the kind and the huge amount of shots which should be used. For our thriller we had to go over and over again about the storyboard and the kind of shots we should use. We were also deciding about the shots we should use and their sequence. The main reason is that we wanted to create a sense of thriller and maximize the amount of tension for audience. Throughout filming our premlin task we tried to complicate it and add different shots in order to make it more interesting for our audience as well as more challenging for us to film. For our opening sequence we needed pro list. Costumes, specific actors and sets, whereas for the premlin task we didn’t need it all as everything was already planned and we just needed few props such as chair, table., etc.  The mise en scene for premlin compared to our thriller was really easy to set up as we were filming it in the editing suite where we just had to move around tables and chairs. We also didn’t have to think about which actors we should choose or do they match up the character. While for our thriller we had to choose different props and also choose specific actors which would match up the characters.

During the filming of premlin task we had only few kinds of shot we used which were close-up. Medium, and wide shots, over the shoulder shot and extreme close ups. Whereas for our thriller we had much more shoots we used which were, establishing shot, extreme close ups, low and high angle shots and many others. It was very important the use of shots for our opening sequence, but not really important for the premlin. The sounds for our two different films were also very contrasting. For the premlinary task most of the sound was diegetic and we didn’t have to worry about anything else. In contrast for the opening sequence we had to create the music which introduces us to the thriller, match up the sniper shot and the two guards kicking and hitting the prisoner. Overall premlin compared to our thriller didn’t have any non-diegetic sound and everything was natural. The soundtrack we created made the forests look mysterious and dangerous and also signifying danger.  It was quite difficult to match up different moments in the opening sequence such as matching up the sniper shots/reloading with the sound and also the two guards hitting and kicking the guard.

It can be easily seen how much progress we got since the premlin task. Our knowledge and skills really improved. We learnt a lot of new things such as adding in sound effects and creating our soundtrack, how to edit the sound and its volume and of course working with final cut pro. While editing the premlin task we used the final cut pro really briefly and didn’t work with it with much detail. While editing our thriller opening we had to use many new technologies such as final cut pro in great detail, having to master it over time in order for our thriller to look professionally edited and completed.

 

We have spent quit a lot of time for editing our opening sequence. It is significantly important part because in order to create meaning for the characters professional and successful editing must be done. The beginning of the movie started off slowly. We had one type of shot at the beginning to make the beginning scene to have slow pace. Afterwards when the action began we created pace by speeding the shots up. We used cross cutting between sniper and target to speed up the action and build the tension to make this scene appear important to audience. In order for the sniper and look realistically we edited the sniper target zoom in final cut pro. Moreover gun shots were added in after effects to make the shot and therefore film to look believable.

Task 4- Who would be audience for our media product

Our movie is going on in Russia, Siberia, so a lot of russian audience would be attracted.  However our actors are mainly british and the movie would be filmed in britain too, so our audience traget are british people.They live in the major industrial cities, where cinematography is improving from day to day.  Mostly people who would be interested in our movie would be “tribe” of rahs, people who had experienced being a worker of government and also people who like watching action and thriller.

The music style they listen is mixed, they are music lovers, they don’t have specific type of music they only listen to. My audience is interested in different types of  of genre in TV serials, which is detective and government fighting against terrorists, overall series where specific group of people are fighting against terrorists, or mafia, or gangsters. They like watching movies like James Bond, Born movies, Hana, Salt, long kiss good night and other ones which involve action and thriller. Most of these people are already working. They wear their costumes as everyday cloth and go to work.  Our audience are mature and progressive young generation.
As an example our perfect member of our audience is 22 years old, he is working in an office as a progressive, ambitious new employee. He is not some clerk, he is working in the sector of managment of creativity. His mind is full of new ideas and thoughts.

 People would like the film because it  have both thriller and action, it is similar to some famous movies like James Bond and Born movies and also it is set up in quit an interesting place, in Siberia, Russia, which is also a reason which would attract Russian audience.Mostly our movie would be watched by our audience in the cinemas, but obviously also on DVDs.

Task 3- What kind of media institution might distribute your media products and why.

We have been deciding for quit a while and finally came to a decision to choose Vertigo to make our film. Our film is going to be take place in Siberia, Russia. It is about a female agent and a male agent fighting against 'bad guys',the bad guys in our case are Russian agents. The genre of our film is action and thriller. Our actors are mainly from Britain and the movie is going to be filmed in Britain as well.

Vertigo Films is a UK Media company founded in 2002 to create and distribute commercially driven independent cinema. UK movie making companies aim only for British audience,not worldwide. So most of the companies that make British movie are not famous, although Vertigo is probably the most famous and profitable and popular among all of the film making companies.

The most famous movies made by Vertigo are: Pusher: Sweeney and Street Dance.

So we think that Vertigo will invest money for our film for further development. The reasons for that are first of all the plot of the movie is quit interesting, it takes parts of similarity from James Bond movies, Born series, Hana and Salt. It is interesting because the storyline of the movie is quit unique in the way that it contains both thriller and action like in some very famous movies. We have also interesting set up of the movie, the action is going on in Siberia, Russia, so some Russian audience would be attracted too. Obviously as it is going to be our first made movie, it wont make much money, however there are some solutions to it. Vertigo is not specialised on certain type of genre, it makes different kinds of movies, however movies made by them have low budget. Vertigo mainly target male audience, in the evidence of that are the movies like < Sweeney>, < Pusher> which are action movies.

The main strategy to make more money is done through campaign marketing. To increase the movie's income it could be advertised in different ways, like: Making an iphone App which will contain for example our soundtrack from the movie, another way is to create a web-site or place information about our film in facebook. Also DVD sales and ancillary markets could increase our income. A good advertising campaign will increase distribution. As an example the film Street Dance, which had low budget appeared on the cinemas in Russia, this is unusual, unless it has a good advertising campaign, which the movie Street Dance had this increased it's opportunity of making money around the world. Moreover, a county like USA could buy over a successful movie, like Street Dance and take it to USA to distribute it so it would would run in there. Vertigo doesnt have the opportunity to distribute the film in the US because they din't have the financial muscle so it would be available for an american distriutor to pick up. If the movie  it gets picked up by USA company, Vertigo will benefit too and probably get some proportion of income out from Street Dance

As an example: Dark Knight Rises made an App for iphones of their soundtrack.

Making a facebook page would be useful to, as move people will know about the movie

Task 2- Representation of social group

Dayana is playing a female agent who is a professional, serial killer and who rescues the second agent, who is played by Maks. You don’t usually see female agents rescuing and helping males so the idea of our female agent rescuing the male agent subverts the stereotypical representations of such movies. Moreover it is also a positive representation of females; because females are usually the victims and are much weaker in most of the movies.  There are several movies that are similar to our movie in terms of the positive representation of women. One of such movies is Salt. So basically it is about a CIA agent who goes on the run after a defector accuses her of being a Russian spy. The movie if full of action and we see how the Russian spy is being chased by the negative characters and how she fights against them. She is the main actor in the movie and therefore this is a clearly positive representation of women. Our movies are similar, because both of them have female as the main actor and both of the actresses are action characters. Another movie which is also similar is the Long Kiss Goodnight. It is about a women suffering from amnesia begins to recover her memories after trouble from her past finds her again. During the whole movie she is trying to survive and fight the negative characters with her male partner. She fights, kills, escapes and do all sorts of other action things during the movie. This is also a positive representation of women, because even there is male actor who is seen mostly in every bit of the movie, she is still the one who is the main character of the movie. It is similar to our movie because it also has female and male actors who are acting together and fighting against negative characters; moreover in both movies the main action character is the female. Another good example is the movie called “The Brave One”. It is bout a woman struggles to recover from a brutal attack by setting out on a mission for revenge. Same concept again, the whole movie she kills and seeks for revenge. This is also a positive representation of women, because we see her having most of the power over other people. She is the main actor and the storyline is about her life.. The social group Dayana represents are females aged 17 to 25. Moreover Dayana will attract male audience, because of her appearance (good looking blond woman).

                                                       

                                                   BINARY OPPOSITION

Men:                                                                                                                              Women:

Strong                                                                                                                Weak

Heroes                                                                                                                Minor 

Leader in a household                                                                                          The listener

Instrumental role                                                                                                 Expressive role

Breadwinner                                                                                                       Home-maker

Tough and thick-skinned                                                                                     Too emotional

Multi tasks                                                                                                          Single tasks

In our movie this idea of men being dominant over women doesn’t exactly work. In our case we have the male agent being caught and controlled by the other characters and the female agent who actually rescues him. There is a positive representation of women, as she is the one who saves the male agent. While in our movie the idea of men being dominant over women is subverted. There is a negative representation of men, because we see the male agent being controlled and tortured.

Maksym was playing the male agent who betrayed the USA agent (played Mike Timpson) and therefore was meant to be killed but actually was rescued by the female agent Dayana. In such movies (action/thriller), u don’t see a male actor being rescued by female. So this subverts stereotypical representation of male actors, as they are the ones who are the main heroes. There are some news articles about female spies and agents which influenced us about having the female agent. Probably the best example would be the Russian spy Anna Chapman who was recently caught by the FBI counter-intelligence Chief Frank Figliuzzi. Miss Chapman was close to seducing a sitting member of the Obama administration spurred agents to swoop on the 10-strong spy ring of which she was a part. The idea of us having a female spy/ agent is similar to this article as it is telling about a Russian spy being caught. Another news article which has some similarities with our film is about Israel's fearsome secret service which has developed a new breed of super-spy - seductive young women.  The article is about new female spies and they have been developed in Israel. This is similar to our movie, because we also got a female spy.

Deadly: Israel is deploying female spies to seduce the enemy into handing over secret information

  

The bad agent who was meant to kill Maksym was played by Mike Timpson. Mike Timpson was playing a tall, well-dressed agent who actually was killed by Dayana. Social group that Mike represents are 40-50 years old people. Mike is the oldest character from other characters playing negative roles. This means that he is the most respected one, who also has the most power. Mike’s target audience are again 40-50 years old people and possibly some teenagers (as Mike could become their idol). Nowadays most of the people sitting in the government, owners of industrial/big companies with significant profit and other enterprises are owned by people aged 45-65. Old people have got most of the power. They are experienced, hardworking and clever. They have lived longer than younger people, they have already faced most of the problems and got through them, they are much more intelligent than younger ones and that’s one of the reasons why we took Mike to be the main negative character. He had also the power over the younger agent. 

The data illustrates the income of families by age and proves that families which have older male as the head of the family have more profit.

  

This graph indicates the average income earned by different people with different age and actually proves that older people have bigger income than younger

The two guards who carried and brought Maksym to the main agent were played by Anri and Mikael. Both of them have darker skin than other’s which signifies them being a negative character, as in most of the movies people with darker skin have negative roles, so this is a stereotypical representation of middle east people. Social group that Anri and Mikael represent are teenagers aged 16-25. The target audience could be both females and males as both of them could attract some of the female audience as well as some male teenagers who could like the personality and behaviour of both Anri and Mikael.  

In early stages of movies made by Hollywood the main actors were Russians. This is mainly because of the cold war and Russian post revolution. In most of the movies the negative actors were Russians. Some of the examples of such films are: From Russia With Love; Rocky Balboa 4; Top Gun and others.

However nowadays the idea of Russians being negative has changed into Middle Eastern being negative. The main reason for that is the recent terrorist acts made by Arabs, the explosions and the September 11 attacks which were made by  a series coordinated terrorist attacks launched by the Islamist terrorist group al-Qaeda upon the United States in New York City and the Washington, D.C. areas. So in modern society the stereotypical enemy mainly of USA are Arabs and some of the Middle Eastern countries.

How our film develops/challenges forms and conventions - Task 1

Editing Task

On the next day after we finished shooting we all as a group came to the editing room to start the process. We sorted the shots into three different folders. In one of them we placed all the shots that are going to be probably used, in the second folder we placed all the shoots that we don't really like and consider as rubbish and in the third folder we placed the shots we think were the best for use. We didn't delete any of the shots, in case they would be needed during editing.

We didn't use much of the continuity devices. One of the cases when we used it was the eye-line match between Maks and Mike, however we had to cut Maksym's point of view shot on Mikes pointing the gun on him. We did this to make it clear for audience that the main  character is going to be killed soon and a gun shot will be heard, also we showed Mike being more powerful and in control of Maks by using a high angle looking at Mike. At the beginning we used match on action shots when one of the guards was hitting Maks who afterwards felt down. It helped us to show story line and  create the atmosphere.

It was so easy to find out the pace we should use for our opening sequence. When we just started to edit the beginning ( Maks and two guards talking up the hill) was quit short and I didn't feel that there is something wrong with it. However later on the whole group realised that we should make the beginning last longer, so audience can clearly see what is going on. The part of the opening sequence when the action began we thought that  audience would like to see straight away what is going to be so we decided that it would be better  if we just showed the whole action part  with fast pace. So basically we edited the beginning of the movie to be slow compared to the action part, which is fast

Our main actor got most of the camera time. We showed him as being victim in our opening sequence. In order to achieve this we added sound of our main actor being hit when guards kicked him, this made audience feel sorry for the main actor as they saw him being hit. We also wanted to show that our main actor doesn't have much power as he is being physically controlled by the guards. This was showed as we could see that during the whole opening sequence (except ending) our main actor was visually lower than other characters. Another example which clearly showed him not having power was the low angle shot looking at Mike who was going to kill him. The opening sequence finished with a close up of Mak's face looking at his saver Dayana and making a thanks gesture with his hand. This was a typical James Bond hero shot.


It was quit important to us the use of sound in our opening sequence so we were carefully checking and listening again to the sound which we created and used. Both non-diegetic and diegetic sounds were used, however not much of non-didgetic sound was used in order for the opening sequence to look more natural. So the film starts off with a diegetic sound of wind howling. Than non-didgetic sound kicks in and we can see the two guards with the prisoner.Afterwards as the three of them came nearer we could her the diegetic sound of footsteps. The non diegetic sound  signifies  a mysterious, dangerous and deep forests of Siberia. The use of such music made it clear for audience that the opening sequence starts negative and this is shown afterwards as we see the two guards holding, kicking and beating the prisoner. We can also hear prisoner's groan as the guards were hitting him. We could hear his groaning until he was thoughn on the floor. As the black bag was taken away from the prisoner's head the non-diegetic sound lowered d own in terems of volume and Mike began to talk. As he finished talking the non-diegetic sound stopped and we saw the sniper zoom followed by diegetic sound of  sniper shot. After the first shot we hear the diegetic sound of reloading which was followed by second diegetic sniper shot and the non-diegetic sound started again.  In my opinion it is quit important to use the sound effectively and right and that was what we were aiming for. The hardest bit  i think was matching the sound of prisoner being hit.


When we were just introduced to final cut pro i never thought that i would be able to use it. But once i got involved in using it, day by day it became easier for me. We spent quit a lot time for editing, in order to make it better. We were trying on different shots and if we didn't like it we had to start all over again. We wee carefully going thought the whole process and agreeing together if it works. So as we worked quit hard on it i dint think there is much to change if i had to do it again. I quit liked the process of editing, first we struggled a lot but then it was allright. I think we worked well as a team. I was mainly advising on which shots to use in which order and what music we should use, while other were more focused on working with editing.

If we compare editing the premlin task and editing the opening seuence i can say for sure that the second task was much more fun and was more interesting than the premlin one. First of all in premlin task we didn't have so much shots to edit, so they were limited. The storyboard was boring, whereas making our own storyboard for our opening sequence gave us more stimulus to work on editing and making it look good. We did much more work in editing the opening sequence than the editing the premlin task. Premlin task was easier to edit as we had one dialogue in the whole thing, while in editing the opening sequence it was quit confusing and difficult to edit because there were a lot of ways how we could edit it and order the shots.