Research into audience figures and what films are popular in our genre

Research into audience figures and what films are popular in your genre and why

The images above and below show the top 13 action thrillers according to IMBD. This is helpful for us as it is the same as our chosen genre and therefore shows us what storylines and generic conventions work best for our film genre.


The cause of the popularity for these films can be various options but some could be due to the famous Hollywood actor/actresses that star in them such as Keanu Reeves, Liam Neeson, Denzel Washington and Scarlett Johansson. As well as these well know actors, popularity for these films could be related to the budgets the films had. The bigger the budget the more props such as guns, or explosions etc. that can be used in the film making it more gripping and intense which is guaranteed to bring in a mass audience.


For example: Taken 3 with an estimated  budget of $48,000,000 got  $40.4 million on its opening weekend in the USA and is still in the top 15 films in UK cinemas list on the launching films website 6 weeks after its release.


Erin Parkhurst

Ideal target audience

Ideal target audience:

Male and female

Age: 15+

Interest: goes to the cinema often

Demographics- B, C1, C2

Typical profession: Media publishing, entertainment, accounting

Monthly spare- £1000

Watches TV for 10 hours a week

Online for 40- 60 hours a week


Holly Putt

Mind map of who our target audience is...

Holly

Moodboard on the look of your audience members

This will help us as a group to target this particular audience as we will then know the type of content they wish to be included within a thriller. Our main target audience are for people aged 15+ and therefore the content included must be suitable for even the younger people of our target audience.


Holly

Overall Storyline

Opening scene

• The girl gets locked up in a empty dark room
• The girl then escapes
• There is a split scene of two men talking to each other via phone call.
• After that there is a flash back to 6 months before where the man and the girl meet walking down the street and the 2 characters bump into each other. 

After the opening scene

• There will be different ways  of finding the device, which is needed to unlock secret information in MI5.
• The girl finds the device.
• As the girl leaves with the device she gets caught by the enemies. 
• After she gets caught, she is tortured in the room.
• (The start then replays up to the phone call) 
• The man boxing then tracks her through the phone.
• When he finds her, he explains he is working under cover for the enemies. 
• They then both create a plan to steal the device while in hiding and fall in love during the time spent together.
• They steal the device and give it to MI5.
• Finally the ending scene leaves both of them in the mission room setting out there next mission.

(left open for sequel)

Holly Putt

Genre Moodboard: Thriller/ Action

 

 

Genre Moodboards

 

These moodboards have been created to show the genre we have chosen for our film and to highlight the generic conventions and things you would expect from these genres.

 

 

 

Erin Parkhurst

Analysed questionaire

 
We will use this information in our own film opening to appeal to our targeted audience, as the information that we have found out from our target audience we can then apply to our film, we can then apply to our movie to help increase audience figures when distributing it to cinemas.


By Holly Putt 

Audience Questionaire

Audience Questionnaire

We have gathered a few questions for our thriller movie to ensure we have the correct content to help intrigue our audience. This will also give information/ ideas of where we could go with our movie so then it will appeal to a wide range of people.

What type of thriller would you most likely watch?

1.       Psychological thriller

2.       Action thrillers

3.       Spy thrillers

What is your favourite thriller?

1.       Black Swan

3.       The Impossible

4.       Taken

5.        Before I go to Sleep

6.         Lucy

Why? If other, what film?

 

What age range rating do you think thrillers are aimed at? (You can tick more than one!)

1. 12

2. 15     

3. 18      

What age range would you like to see a thriller based around?

1.       Young children

2.       Teenagers

3.       Young Adults

4.       Adults (25+)

What type of generic conventions would you expect to see from a thriller?




 

 

 

Holly Putt

 

Narrative, Genre and Audience of our film

The narrative to the film is clear in the opening of the film due to there being no state of equilibrium. The narrative shows that there is going to be killings and action taking place in the film. However, not long into the opening of the film when the story starts 6 months earlier, there is a state of equilibrium which shows the audience that something bad will happen in the film  (due to the very start of the film being violent/ dark) to cause a problem. The film will encounter a love story between two MI5 agents whilst coming up with a plan to steal the dangerous device which is in the hands of bad people. Although the love story will not be the main part of the film it will be in there.


The genre of the film will be an Action Thriller. This will be clear to the audience by having genetic conventions that connote the genre such as guns, knives and low key lighting. There will be a fight over a dangerous device between a bad group of people and MI5 agents. This also suggests that the film is a thriller to the audience because the viewers will be watching the film and wondering what is going to happen during the film and who will manage to gain access of the device at the end of the film. In the opening of the film there will be low key lighting whilst the girl is tied up. This will automatically show that there will have been some reason to why she is there and whether she is a good or bad person or not. When the next scene shows the same girl at MI5 headquarters it shows the audience that she is working for them and connotes she has been locked up (shown at the beginning of the film but 6 months later and re-played later in the film) working on a mission for the MI5.

The target audience of the film will be 15+ male and females. Although the film will be aged certified 15+, the main group of people expected to watch the film will be aged 20 - 50 due to some people under 20 may be slightly scared by the violence still and people over 50 may not want to watch a film based around a female MI5 agent in her 20's. Also, although the film will be targeting men and women, we expect the majority of viewers will be men because of the amount of women that stereotypically do not like violence and action.

The social grade of the people that will watch this film will probably be B, C1, C2. This is because the film will be created by our group 'Penguin Productions' who are independent and therefore will not be a blockbuster film that people of A social grade would probably prefer to see due to the quality of the film being different. However, will probably not be viewed by people of D and E social grade whilst the film has to be paid for to be viewed due to the cost of watching films and it being a discretionary item and not an essential.


People that watch our film may also like films such as 'Salt', 'Unknown', 'The Equalizer' and 'James Bond' films. This is because the film is a Thriller with action and spies in it. As well as this, our film is not a film that has comedy in it like other films such as Jackie Chan, therefore it is an Action Thriller that people have to concentrate on and think about what is happening in the film with a serious storyline.


Sophie Thomas

Why we chose the genre that we did

For our film opening, we chose a genre of action thriller. We chose this genre as we thought it would be the most interesting to create a film opening for and we had lots of ideas for our film opening that came into that genre. We created mind maps of 3 different genres -Action, Thriller and Romance- so that we could explore what each one involved and from that we worked out what genre we would like to do. We decided to merge the two genres of action and thriller as we felt it would create a better, more gripping film and also it allowed us to use a mixture of our ideas.

Erin Parkhurst

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Mindmaps of ideas for our film on three different genres

 

We decided to create a mind map on the romantic genre as our preliminary task was based around a romantic story line and so we decided to explore this root of genre more for our film opening to understand more about what was involved in a romantic movie. 

We had also done a thriller mind map as it enabled us to analyse more about what is included in a thriller and weather the iconography of some of these elements could appear in our film opening.

 

We completed an action mind map, as we would want to include a bit of action in our movie to make it more exciting for the people watching it. By doing this mind map it also highlighted to us as a group what was included within an action movie.

 

The institution we want to be

Penguin Productions will be an independent institution. This is because we would like full control over the storylines of our films, how they are filmed and what actors we use. However, due to independent British film institutions not having high budgets our films will be of a low budget and therefore not distributed to many countries or cinemas, therefore we would like American funding to help Penguin Productions use good technology and editing tools to create our film.

An example of an institution that we would like our production company to be like is Warp Productions. This is because Warp is now one of the most respected and successful creative independent companies working today. It has been behind an array of critically acclaimed and award winning films, including several BAFTA nominations and wins. Warp Films has become a major force in British film with a vision for creatively inspiring films and television drama and we would like our independent institution to be recognised as a good British Film institution.

Sophie Thomas

Resident Evil - re-make and evaulation

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Evaluation of re-make

After re-creating the film opening for 'Resident Evil' it will help us when considering our own opening sequence. This is because there are many different shots in 'Resident Evil' (also of different angle), there is also non-diegetic music, mise en scene and editing that we had to consider. For the establishing shots, we had to consider how we were going to make the shot look like people were walking round with umbrellas. We chose to use cocktail umbrellas and change the lighting to make them not look so bright during the editing process. We had to change the lighting throughout the whole editing process by making the whole film look darker, so the film looks set later on in the evening as in the original film opening of 'Resident Evil' it is set at night. If we were to improve our film opening we would film the remake in the evening to look more realistic and not have to edit the re-make shots so much.

The location of the film was shot in the school grounds, to make this look more like a street we did have many actors walk by with umbrellas and tried to make every shot look as close the original as we could. However, sometimes this did look unrealistic as there are not as many people as there would be in a real street although, it was the only way for this film that we could film having permission from the people in the background.

We are pleased with how steady the hand held shot is and that we created rain in the background. By making the location look slightly different to what it really looks like, it will help use when making our own film opening so that even if we do not have an exact location that we would like we can make the location look more like how we want by changing the lighting, having props and changing the atmosphere e.g. we added rain and people walking with umbrellas to look more like a street. We think that by creating this film it will help us when creating our own film opening because we learnt to use the editing tool well and it allowed us to film different types of shots which will help us consider which shots we would like in our film opening.

By creating this re-make it will help us consider what order we would like to put our film opening title sequence in and what font we would like them to be in. It will help us consider props, location and the duration of the film opening. The storyboard will help us consider how long each shot should be and consider what is in the framing of each shot.




Sophie Thomas

Independent research on film openings

Film Openings

When film titles had to start being in the film opening there was not much thought to where the titles would be placed and in what order and until the 1950s, the usual method was to present names and titles on cards, or against an unmoving backdrop. During 'Breakfast at Tiffany's' film opening there are many titles all put on the screen at the same time blocking the view of the shot. This is because the film titles were not a big part of the film and were just to briefly inform people of who was in the films.



Film openings have developed a lot over the years. The film opening sets the scene and is there to set expectations to the audience. The film opening often establishes the genre of the film, the location, the narrative and other aspects of what the film will be like. Slowly, title sequences evolved to become more elaborate pieces of film. The colour, font and where each titles is placed in the framing and what part of the opening scene it is put is thought about by the production company. Before the film starts there is often a logo to the production company/ distribution company which can also raise the expectations of the film to the audience and sometimes can help people think about the genre of the film. For example if a film is created by 'Walt Disney Productions' people often think of fairy tales/ cartoons, although Disney have created more then just cartoons especially over recent years. Also if films are created by 'Universal Pictures' people assume the film will be of good quality. This film opening is from 'Superbad'. Colombia pictures is the production company so people think this will be a good film due to it being a well known company. The bright colour and music in the opening suggests the film will be a comedy and the fact that the dancing is not very good.



Sophie Thomas

How we are making/ How we made our re-make

Before we made our re-making of a film opening we created a storyboard/shot list and a title timeline of the opening in order to ensure that we followed the piece as accurately as possible and created a re-make that matched the original to a reasonable standard.

For our re-make we used a HD Sony camera, tripod and dolly. This ensured that the shots were of good quality and so that the camera was not wonky and did not jolt and therefore the shots came out well and not blurry. For the shot of the girls legs gradually going up her body (male gaze theory by Laura Mulvey), we did not use the tripod, we did a hand held shot. Although this was  risk due to the shot could have been shaky, we think that the shot went well.

For the shot of the cars, we went into a car park to film one car after the next ensuring we did not get any number plates in the shot, this made the cars look like they were moving on a road. For the traffic lights we used images off the internet and have edited each photo of the traffic light to make it look like it went from green, amber to red.

The location of the film was in the school playground during the day, but by using editing tool we made it appear darker to look more like evening, managed to make it  appear as if it was raining and use cocktail umbrellas to make the establishing shot look realistic (like a high angle of real umbrellas). Using iMovie to edit the film opening ensured we could add titles (after looking at are title timeline) and add slow motion to certain shots as well as change the brightness and setting to the location.

Sophie Thomas

Storyboard - Resident Evil

 

Sophie Thomas & Erin Parkhurst 

 

The reason we created a storyboard for 'Resident Evil Afterlife' is to break down the opening into each shot and therefore make it easier to film the re-make. This is because the storyboard tells us how long each shot is, what shot it is and what you can see in each shot. When filming, this ensures each shot we take replicates the original film opening.

 

Sophie Thomas 

Resident Evil - timeline of opening titles

Holly Putt

 

Our group has made a timeline of the original 'Resident Evil Afterlife' film opening in order to help us put the film titles on at the correct times of our re-make to replicate the original. The timeline also allows us to see the duration of each title and therefore with our re-make we can make each title last for the same duration. By doing this timeline it enables us to see the order of titles that films have and therefore help us think about what order we are going to make the titles in our own film opening and for how long each title should be shown for.  

Sophie Thomas

Resident Evil opening

We have chosen to do a re-make of Resident Evil as it looks really complicated to make and would challenge us with our editing and filming skills, especially the male gaze theory as we had to ensure that the camera was steady to create a professional effect. Our group also decided to do this opening to challenge ourselves with the birds eye view from the original and applying it to our opening of Resident Evil. We over came this challenge by using cocktail umbrellas to represent to birds eye view of people walking around and in result worked very effectively. We also spent a lot of time on the shot list and time line so we have a remake similar to the original. By doing this it allowed us to perform more efficiently when creating the opening as we had focused knowledge on the original opening of Resident Evil.

Holly Putt

Why we are doing a re-make of a film opening

We are doing a re-make of a film opening in order to get an idea of how the filming and editing of film openings work. Re-making a film opening which gives us experience and prepares us for when we make our own film opening. The re-make will allow us to see the content and how much narrative is involved in the first few minutes of a film so that we get an idea of what to put in our film opening to ensure that we don't put all the action in at the start. Doing a re-make of a film also means that we can look at when and where the titles appear on screen which helps us when planning our titles as it gives us an example of how they should look and match the genre and setting of the film.

Erin Parkhurst

Cadidate numbers of Sophie, Erin and Holly

Sophie Thomas - 9271

Erin Parkhurst - 9231

Holly Putt  - 9243