My films setting

 

I am going to shoot my film in this setting, the park allows a wide view which would be useful for the characters in my film, the road leading up to park will be useful for introducing the plot and will also provide the audience with the feeling that the whole film isn't set in a single park.

the music i am going to use for my film

http://www.freesound.org/people/digifishmusic/sounds/42796/
http://www.freesound.org/people/Flick3r/sounds/46094/
http://www.freesound.org/people/Flick3r/sounds/46186/
http://www.freesound.org/people/Flick3r/sounds/46147/

The sonar sound will be played over the titles, this will give the idea that they are looking for someone, this will set the scene for the agents searching for the hitman.
im going to use this music as it is fast paced and could lead into a climax/anticlimax, or into other music. The fact the music is fast paced builds the audience up and prepares them for action sequences, the music gets gradually loader and faster, this will be perfect for when the agents are chasing the hitman. The audience will be expecting something and at the end of this sequence which leaves me with the choice whether to have something happen or not.

My story, beginning middle and end.

A professional hitman has been assasinating people without a trace for years, the problem is he stopped killing, everyone thought he was dead, until his trademark was on a body in the UK. Immediatley after this another body was found with the same mark and it became apparant that he had just set up shop in the UK.

The secret services had to take this very seriously and acted straight away, but the problem was they were chasing  a shadow, after he has gone there is no evidence of him ever being there, no footprint, fingerprint not even a bullet. After months of tracking any lead to the hitman whatsoever they began to develop an idea of who this man could be and who he is affiliated with. After tracking down affilliate after affiliate, criminal after criminal they had a solid lead on the hitman.

They had been tracking him for ages, now the agent had him in his sights, it was such a relief to know they finally had him, but it was not over yet. A good agent is inconspicuous to a civillian or a normla criminal, but to this assasin he sticks out like a saw thumb. The agent followed him for a short while, the agent thought he was doing well, contacting the others quietly and not giving anything away, but then the hitman turned a sharp corner, the agent followed quickly to see the hitman was running, towards a wood. Despite the agent's suspicion, the assasin was not spooked, he knew exactly what he was doing. He knew their would be no cctv no auido surveilance and very little coverage in the woods, he was luring the agent into a trap. They were running through the woods for minutes but it felt like seconds, the adrenaline rush from the agent kept him going, the cold desire to add another to his rapsheet kept the assasin going. cutting through some think bushes the hitman disappeared, until the agent cam close enough, the agent was attacked with a branch, easy to find and an effective weapon, but he had trained for this day in day out, he knew how to handle himself. It was just the agent and the assasin, no backup no friends just the two of them, but only one of them would make it out. The agent eventually disarmed the assasin and with one crack to the head he seemed to be out, but was he?

music analysis - A Man Apart

The films starts off with some fast paced deep beat music, with a mixture of photos which look like the case file to a crime case with pictures of suspects and a victims of a crime. Using things that connotate the idea of crime is effective in action movies as crime is often a theme in action movies and is what motivates the hero or protagonist to do what they do. This intro lasts a fairly long time, this could be done purposely to add suspense and allow the audience to build up anticipation and excitement for what is going to happen. To introduce the film we hear a voice over telling us about the borders of the us and their drug habits, the things being introduced don’t make us think of a comedy or horror films but instead they fit the genre well and make us wonder how the things being talked about fit into the story. Using Vin Diesels deep voice to read them out works very well as adds to the power behind the words. The first shot of importance is an establishing shot, this introduces what the film is about. The shot is of a cocaine factory with about a dozen workers all cutting up the cocaine and military attire clad men all armed with machine guns, this is very effective in grabbing our attention as it gets our adrenaline going and we get ready for the action to start taking place. We aer introduced to a young guy driving a nice Mercedes who is in contact with a guy who is hauling cocaine off of a boat, we then find out they are small time dealers compared to the people who run the show this adds to the anticipation of the action as we want to find out who is in charge and just how powerful he is. The first scene with the Sean (the protagonist) is dark with connotes that they have to do what they are doing under some sort of cover, then the talk of the assault gets us excited and the shot/reverse shots with Sean and Demetrius, this is a good way to introduce the characters and lets us see how they react to each other, which gives us an idea of their relationship.

Poster title analysis - Faster

The font of the title is bigger and in a different to the rest of the writing on the poster which draws attention to it. Now that the audience has been drawn to the title they look at the name, 'Faster' This makes the audience asks questions like , 'who is faster?' 'Faster than what?' once the audience asks questions they are interested in the film, and when they get an answer or a clue they become more intereseted in the film, the clue to the questions in this clip is the bullet speeding through the title, this connotes that the film is gun related and that someone is maybe quicker at drawing or firing a weapon. The title is placed across the chest of the man on the poster, this draws attention to his size and his masculinity. Now that we are aware of the sort of person in the film we can make a prediction of what type of film it will be.

Poster title analysis - resident evil afterlife

The title of this film gives us a lot of information and suggests a lot:

• The use of the colon tells us there is more than one film in the resident evil franchise.
• The E in evil is much bigger and more pronounced than any other E on the poster which draws attention to the type of film it will be and also makes it obvious that 'evil' will be one of the themes.
•  The fact the title is in a different, much more interesting font than the information about the release takes you away a little from the fact the film in fiction, and tells us the film is not just ordinary.
• The fact the character on the poster is leaning on the title and it is slanted gives us the idea that she can combat the resident evil in the film, and that she is potentially the protagonist.
• The backdrop is dark and it is raining which gives us the idea the film is not set in a nice place.

Poster title - gun

The title of Gun is big and bold, this draws attention to the name of the film and also the poster. The font and size of 'GUN' gives us an idea of what sort of film it will be, and the blood background behind the title helps reinforce our idea that it is going to be an action film. The blood background makes us think of violence, and that is exactly what we expect of an action film, pair this with two massive guns and the poster gives us a very clear idea of what sort of a film it is going to be, adn what it is going to be about, guns.

Media Questionnaire

Media Questionnaire 

Are you a fan of action films?   YES/NO

What is your favourite sort of action film?

·        Action/adventure

·        Action/comedy

·        Sci fi

What is your favourite action film?____________________________________________________

How many dvd’s do you own?

·       1-25

·       26-50

·       51-75

·       76-100+

How much are you prepared to pay when you buy a DVD? £_______

How often do you visit the cinema a month? ___________________

                                                                        Results

Q1) 6/6 people said yes.

Q2) 4/6 people said action/adventure

1/6 people said action/comedy

1/6 people said sci fi

Q3) 1/6 people said Avatar

1/6 people said Armageddon

2/6 people said Batman: The Dark Knight

1/6 people said the expendables

1/6 people said Transformers: The Dark Of The Moon

Q4) 2/6people said 26-50

3/6 people said 51-75

1/6 people said 76-100

Q5) 5/6 people said up to £10

1/6 people said " it depends on what film it is but about £15"

Q6) 4/6 people said 1

2/6 people said 2

My results show me a multitude of things, as all of the people that did the questionaire liked action films it made the results more helpful. Everyone's favourite film was a very well known, high budget film, this is not great for me as my film will not be a high budget blockbuster. 4/6 people said they like action/adventure, this is my genre and therefore my film is more likely to be popular.

Target audience

The target audience for my film is predominantly males aged from about 15-45, although i hope both females, and other people out of the age range will still be interested in an action film. From an action film my audience is going to expect to see good guys adn bad guys, but more importantly conflict between the two. The audience is not going to be happy with some biccaring they will want to see punch ups, chases and a story, it would be almost impossible to create die hard spec fights, fast and furious spec chases or an inception spec storyline with (a) my budget or (b) the length the video can be. Although my clip will not be a world class movie it could easily include a chase scene a fight scene and the foundations of a story. Although the audience will expect these you could not make a short film of just fights, adn chases so i am going to have to build up the tension with music and build up clips where thre auidience will be wondering what will happen next.

By next wednesday

I will have:

1. Interviewed at least one of my actors and uploaded a picture of them.
2.  Taken pictures of my location and explain why I want to film there.
3. Taken pictures of my costumes and explained why I want to use them.
3.  Finished my storyboard and uplaoded a picture of it.
Uploaded an animatic of my storyboard.
4.  Analysed another opening two minutes to my genre.
5. I will have explained the beginning, middle and end of my film if I was goingt o make the whole thing.
6.  I will explained who my target audience is and why sort of things they are into.
7.  I will have made a questionairre of at least five questions and asked at least five people and will have analysed the results.
8.  I will analyse the music from at least theree films.
9.  I will choose music I will use and upload it.
10.  I will analyse titles from three posters from films from my genre and will explain what my titles will be like.

Sound track research

http://freeplaymusic.com/
http://www.freesound.org/
http://www.shockwave-sound.com/
For my soundtrack i am most probably going to get a non copyright bit of music off of one of the websites above. The music needs to be fast paced and at the right volume, if the volume is too high then the music will over shadow the footage adn if it is being played over the top of footage then the sounds of the clip will not be able to be heard. On the contrary if the music is too quiet then it will not have the desired effect. The music has to have fairly low beats otherwise it may sound like the soundtrack to a different genre film like a romance film.

Horror stereotypes and cliches

Romance films, stereotypes and cliches

Action film cliches and stereotypes

The expendables part 1

From the word go we see some rugged army men performing a seige on boat that has been captured by pirates, this is an instant attention grabber for any action fan. The heroes are dressed like hard as nails killers, with their dark army gear on and their big guns, this shows how tough they are which makes the male audience want to be as tough and as manly as them. Another feature that is apparent at the start is how dark the scene is, this doesn't only set the scene and let us know when abouts in the day it is set, it also makes us concentrate more to make sure we don't miss anything. We see the bad guys dressed as if they have just come from or currently are somewhere hot, and the fact they are speaking in a foreign language suggests to us they are Somalian. The Somalian pirates are holding prisoners at gun point and are about to kill one with a machete, on camera, when the good guys come to the rescue, which fits in with a well known action stereotype of the hero arriving with seconds to spare. After this a man gets ripped in half by some sort of gun, this excites the audience because a fight is about to break out and because one of the guys we want to be is even cooler as he is in posession of a very powerful gun. Now the heroes do the impossible, as they always do, outnumbered they still demolish the enemy very quickly and easily. During the firefights we see blood spurting out of the bad guys that get shot and we even see someones head get blown off through a scope, although their is nowhere near as much blood and guts as in horror films, action films still show a fair amount of blood not only to make it more realistic but also to make the film more manly, which is what the audience are looking for. The shots we get that are looking through infared cameras connotates the heroes high tech equiment. When two of the good guys start to fight and one of them is very vulnerable and almost submitted there is a hgih angle shot to show the character's vulnerability and a low angle shot to show the others dominance.

Crime

First idea for script

agent 1 – got an eye on the target, he’s walking towards you.

agent 2 – ETA?

agent 1 – 30 seconds.

agent 2 – copy that.

(30 SECONDS LATER)

agent 2 – He’s in sight.

agent 1 – good don’t lose him.

bad guy (on phone) – yeah I can sort that; he’ll be out of your hair by tomorrow.

agent 2 – Target has just passed, I’m following him.

agent 1 – (worried and confused) He’s going into the woods, where is he going?

agent 2 – I’m not sure, but ill soon find out.

agent 1 - be careful (name).

agent 2 – he’s running, he must have been tipped off.

agent1 ­ - chase him!

agent2  -I’ve lost him.


Agent 2 -  WOH!!!
Bad guy - DIE!!!!

Representation of gender stereotypes

Saw 2 opening scene

Saw 2 starts off how a horror movie should. It starts with a black screen which is interrupted by a light turning on getting a little bit brighter but a buzzing noise is is present which gets louder and louder and then some spooky music plays and gets more intense. This is an excellent idea for an opening horror scene as we are wondering whats going on around the light but the music is making us more uncomfortable and tense wonderign whast about to happen, we are then treated to a big anti-climax when the camera pans quickly to a vent in the wall, hardly the bloody carcass we think we are going to see. With the anit-climax we are put at ease but then almost instantley put back on the enge of our seat by the camera panning over the place, which makes it clear that now it is someone looking around a dark dank room and then see his gruesome face which shows bloody eye and  a mask like contraption around his neck called 'teh death mask' with teh inside laced with nails. Things like this make the audience interested in what is going to happen as the film goes on and ion the back of your head you know the best is still to come and to any horror fan this would be very exciting. The setting of the opening scene is important as it prepares the viewer, if the opening scene was in a sunny field with daisies and a picnic you would propberly switch off but as it is set in a dark, isolated minimalistic room you are going to have an idea of exactly what the film is going to be like. Minimalistic describes the attire in the opening scene, just wearing some pants and a death mask, the fact that he is almost naked makes him vulnerable which adds to the  scariness.