Hello and welcome to our group blog, thank you for taking the time to look around and we hope you enjoy are blog! The best way to navigate around our blog is by clicking on the labels on the right hand side of the page.
Under the research and planning label, you will find evidence of all the research, planning and development work we did as a group during 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 completed their own evaluation. You can access our responses to the evaluation questions under the individually named Evaluation labels, please make sure to click older posts at the end of the blog page to see the rest of our posts.
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 Evaluation.
You can also filter our posts by labels or date, and there is a blog archive if you want to look through chronologically.
You will also find a link to the Class Film Blog which contains links to the other group blogs from our school.
Once again thank you for taking your time to read our blog and we hope you enjoy reading and watching the content on our blog!
From,
Aidan Szczurek, Candidate number- 1770
Jeremy Kumarathasan, Candidate number- 1400
Daniel Gittings, Candidate number- 1230
Having had several meetings to come up with an idea for our
film, we came up with a variety of different ideas of a variety of different
genres. We then did research into our ideas and finally chose to do the
Zombie/Action genre, as we thought this was unique and it was something that
would be very fun to do. We researched this genre and films of this particular genre, from this we learnt about the typical conventions and how films followed them or even challenged them. We focused on characters, themes, events and iconography.
.
Below are different aspects of the research and how the research was applied.
Click on the image to enlarge
Click on the image to enlarge
How we applied our research to our opening sequence:
The film focuses on the survival of protagonists, they work together as a team to survive in the apocalyptic world. One of the survivors then sacrifices his life to kill some Zombies- this was inspired by 'I Am Legend'.
Our USP is the fact there is a rival group, and the narrative is based on the conflict which develops among these survivors.
We end the sequence with a cliff hanger as an unknown person knocks the survivor out- this keeps the audience engaged as they'll be willing to find out what happens.
Narrative Structure:
When it comes to the narrative structure of films they all tend to follow a similar format, and this is what Todorov's Theory highlights. Despite what genre the film may be, it still follows the conventional structure and it is as follows.
Our opening scenes consists of two of the 5 parts. The films starts off with the the equilibrium where everything seems fine as Daniel says 'we've seen nothing for hours, let's get back to camp', this makes everything seem fine. But when Maran sees the Zombies is the begiging of the distruption and this goes on to develop when a few Zombies are killed and they start chasing them. The later stages of the film is based on what happens to Maran after and how both rival gorups overcome each other and the Zombies.
Narrative Technique:
Example:
Why it was used?
Ellipsis
When Daniel and Maran are running away from the Zombies
.
As it was chase scene it was important we maintained a
fast pace, so we can’t show the entire journey as it’d be too slow and
tedious and therefore bore the audience. So we have to ensure we maintain a
well paced sequence to keep the audience thrilled and engaged.
Enigma code
When Maran was knocked out by an unknown person.
It will raise narrative enigma, and make the audience
question many things such as who is the unknown person, where is Maran, will
he survive, what’s going to happen now? These questions will make the
audience want to watch on and find out.
Cliff hanger
When Maran was knocked out by an unknown person.
The audience will want to know what happens next after
such a breathtaking chase.
Sound bridge
When Daniel loads, a sound is used rather than repeatedly
showing the shot of him reloading.
This makes the sequence slightly faster paced as you don’t
have to cut back to the reloading shot all the time. It prevents the sequence
from being slowed down.
Parallel
When the Zombies are moving towards Daniel and Jeremy.
The use of parallel editing allowed us to build up tension
as the Zombies were getting closer, as the audience will feel more engaged
and involved in the action, which is vital for them to have a good viewing
experience.
We followed Vladamir Propp's theory when it came to the characters.
The Villains- The Zombies play the villains in our film and are the ones who are behind the disruption.
The Hero(es)/Protagonist(s)- Daniel and Maran are the heroes introduced in the opening sequence of the film. Although Daniel's screen time may be small, he sacrificed himself for others which portrays him as a hero.
Form:
Click on the image and then zoom in if necessary to view content.
We did our research on titles for the Zombie/Action genre and they are often
in dark colours, hence why we used a dark red to represent our bloody theme. We
used Live Type to execute the best possible text.
The music we used works in synergy with the action on screen, this helped us raise the tension and excitement. Having done our research we found out that films like Resident Evil have similar music. It took us a long time to find the music, but it was the best one we found. The music was found on 'www.freeplaymusic.com'
Style:
The video below highlights all the factors we took into account when editing to get the perfect style for our genre.
In our film we wanted to challenge the stereotypes on race, gender and age. We did this through the process of casting and how we represented each character.
Age/Gender Young people in this day and age are often seen by others in a negative way, young people are represented as rude, rowdy and mischievous hooligans. We subverted these stereotypes in our opening scene/film, as the young people involved are caring and very unselfish.
The stereotypes of the younger generation has been a result of what happens in the modern society and how the media represent these issues. For example the London Riots from 2011 emphasise the hooligan side of young people, the way this issue was portrayed in the press and other forms of media focus fully on the negative aspects, and this is something we challenged in our film.
Overall in film the representations vary, in films such as 'Attack the Block' you see the more rough side of youngsters whereas in 'Zombieland' you see the more brave side.
We conform to stereotypes of men doing more of the physical work, as the two missionaries in the opening sequence are males and are out there to kill the Zombies.
Later in the narrative a female character is produced she challenges the stereotypes of females as she is seen as more physical and doing similar jobs to the men- such as killing Zombies and fighting the rival group.
These two images (above and below) show how young people are represented in a positive way being the problem solvers rather than the problem starters.
This image shows one type of stereotype there is of young people in the modern society.
Protagonist- Maran Race
A few images showing Maran in action in the opening sequence.
Brave
Young
Intelligent
Leader
The lead role is played by a British Asian male, this represents the nationality in a positive way rather than just using them as a token character. He is seen as Daniel's friend and guide, this is evident when he says 'nice shot' and 'slow easterly wind, they're getting closer'. Throughout the sequence he's on an equal footing to Daniel and they both work as a team.
However, during our initial planning we did contradict our aims on challenging these stereotypes by Maran being the one who sacrifices himself and Daniel being the one who survives and plays the protagonist
Although our film may challenge many stereotypes with Maran, a British Asian, playing the lead role it is not something which will shock the audience. This is because Britain is a very ethnically diverse place, and having a British Asian will not be seen controversial but the norm and something that'd be welcomed.
A few images showing the Zombies, and shot of me with the Zombies during the Big Shoot.
Although it's hard to tell we did ensure our zombies came from different ethnic backgrounds, this would ensure we had a positive representation of other ethnicities and equal representation of them too. We also tried to get an equal number of both male and female zombies, this would help us represent both genders in an equal manner.
If we could reshoot our film we would try to organise more female Zombies. Although we did try organising as many females, due to other commitments a lot of they were unable to make it.
We wanted to make our film a purely British Zombie film, therefore we did our research on different production companies and distribution companies. We wanted to ensure we had a strong British reach and therefore it was important to get the correct media institutions behind our film and therefore we chose a distribution company and created a production company according to that.
Click on the image and then zoom in if necessary to view content. Distribution Strategy:
We will start small and then increase the number screens as we believe our film has good potential and therefore it'll become popular over time. Like mentioned before, will be responsible will hold the domestic distribution rights and the international rights will be sold to other small companies. The film will be distributed in popular cinemas in the UK such as Cineworld and Vue rather than small independent ones.
'Momentum Pictures' also distributed the highly successful film- 'The King's Speech'. Although it may be a different genre we still think it's distribution strategy was very good and could potentially help the success of our film. This film started small, in terms of the number of screens it was shown in domestically and globally, however this grew dramatically due to it's success from 395 cinemas in the UK to 536 and 4 cinemas in the USA to 2584.
Since our primary target audience is the 16-24 year old males, we will go for a Summer release to ensure we can get as many of them to the cinema. This is also a very popular time of the year for films to be released.
When we exhibit our film, we will stick to the traditional cinema release so no use of 3D or IMAX, however after cinema release we intend to release our film on both DVD and Blu-ray. We will ensure it's accessible through all means, such as the internet, so will have a symbiosis relationship with companies such as Netflex.
The rating of our film is 15- this is due to the many scenes with very bloody and gory visuals, as it will not be appropriate for younger audiences. We also explore the apocalyptic world and in order to be as realistic as we can with our approach, we had to restrict younger ages from viewing the film.
Primary Target Audience
Secondary Target Audience
16 - 24 year old male audiences.
We chose our primary audience to be the 16 - 24 year old males mainly because it is one of the biggest markets out there when it comes to films, as this is the age group who go to the cinema the most.
It is also the age group and gender which our film will appeal to the most. This is due to themes which have come up in previous Zombie films and games such as ‘Call of Duty’.
The main actors in the film are of a similar age to the audience, allowing them to relate to them and look up to some of the positive representations of them- such as the selfless act to save people’s life.
Secondary Audience- Older fans of both Zombie and Action films of both genders and 16 - 24 year old female audiences.
The Zombie-Action genre is very successful and has been enjoyed by people of all groups, so it’d be a massive flaw if we were to isolate them from this film and narrow down the target audience too far.
The film follows many conventions of the genre; therefore older audience can still be familiar with the genre.
Later in the film a female protagonist is introduced, she will be an aspirational character and therefore appeal to the 16-24 female audience.
Our film will be British film as mentioned before, so it'll definitely target many British audiences as well as the primary audience and secondary audience.
One of the biggest British markets our film will attract is the British Asian community. The starring of a British Asian playing the lead role is one of our strong USPs and this will definitely attract this market as previous British Asian films such as 'Bend It Like Beckham', 'Slumdog Millionaire' and 'Bride and Prejudice'. Audiences like this ethnic diversity to films and this is evident from the success of these films.
The film will be marketed in appropriate way to ensure we reach the audience, so the rapid growth of viral marketing will play a big role, as our primary audience are very native to social networks, this will work well to our advantage. To ensure we widen our audience reach and get out to our secondary audience and other potential audiences we will have the more traditional forms of marketing such as TV spots, bill boards etc.
We ensured we attracted our audience successfully, therefore we had to do our research and understand what our target audience want in their films, and we then applied this to our film. We also decided to apply our knowledge of uses and gratification.
Click on the image and then zoom in if necessary to view content.
Audience Pleasure:
We deliberately included many elements in our film just so they appeal to our intended target audience as well things they'd enjoy.
The action we included in our opening sequence would definitely appeal to our intended our audiences especially the primary audience. We ensured we had a variety of different types of guns shots, as we didn't just want similar shots of the Zombies dying- therefore we had a scope view one, an over the shoulder shot and so on.
The build up of tension is something audience will enjoy/enjoyed. This is what I got from my feedback. The way the Zombies got closer was something people liked.
The variety of different camera shots we have will allow the audience to engage with the action as they get closer therefore feel involved.
Daniel dying, although may not be a positive thing, was something which we thought would be appreciated by the audience, and therefore they will sympathise for him- again ensuring they are engaged throughout.
We made the zombies as realistic as possible, therefore we'd be able to make the audience fear them and that'd be a sign of us reaching our target of getting a realistic outcome on the Zombie make-up.
Suspension of disbelief worked well in our film, except with two things initially. When the Zombies came closer it'd be a natural and realistic thing for Maran to shoot the Zombies, which we didn't do and we only see Maran shooting one Zombie. The one thing we couldn't fix was how realistic the explosion at the end was, realistically the fence should have also been exploded and this is where some struggled to suspend their disbelief, which is understandable.
It was important to ensure our film was made as realistic as possible therefore we wanted to make the Zombie make-up look real. This is so the audience are more likely to suspend their disbelief . We also got positive feedback for the realism to an certain extent.
Click on the image and then zoom in if necessary to view content. We would attract our audience through a variety of different marketing techniques.
We would attract our audience through a variety of different marketing techniques. We intend to follow a traditional form of marketing by setting up a viral campaign on both Facebook and Twitter. Considering our budget we will create a game to target a core audience, such a first person shooter. We will create both TV spots and a theatrical trailer.
After I did screening of our film to a variety of different people of both
genders and different ages I got them to fill out a questionnaire. Below I have
attached a few of the many questionnaires including both genders and a variety
of age group.
From this it was clear we were successful with some things and not so successful with others.
Many liked the way we constructed our shots, and the overall direction of our opening sequence. This shows how much we benefited from our re-shoot and rethinking our shot types.
There was a clear divide when it came to the success of the special effects such as the gun shots and explosion. Some said the explosion looked a bit 'fake', this is something which we expected as we thought the same as the fence should have gone flying too.
Our narrative seemed to be simple yet effect as the majority understood the over plot and weren't confused and this is a positive.
When it came to the genre they thought our film was there was a huge variety between Zombie, Action and Horror. Although most of them mentioned one or two of these not many said Zombie, so this could be something we would improve on.
Below I have attached a few of the many questionnaires including both genders and a variety of age groups.
Other than having a good narrative, we need the support of technology to produce our intended idea on the screen.
Below is our directors' commentary, we talk about the following:
What would we do differently with the benefit of hindsight?
What do we know that you didn’t know before?
What could we have done, but didn’t.
Software:
The main software we used was Adobe Premier, and having used that for our
GCSE project we were very experienced with it and knew what we were doing. We
were confident on how to use all the tools, such as the razor tool, pen tool
etc. We were also able to use other forms of editing on Premier such as the
speed and duration feature, which we used to apply either slow motion or to
speed things up.
While editing we included a variety of different editing techniques such as match on actions and sound bridges. We also did non-linear editing, as we were able to move all our shots around as we wished and shot them different orders according to set-ups and how easy they were relative to other shots. Before we did any of our shoot/editing we made an animatic on Premier, this allowed us to get a general idea of our timing, music and shot lengths.
For all the special effects in our film (there were a lot), we used After Effects. Below are two videos where I discuss how we achieved different effects, what worked and what didn't.
Our film heavily relied on technology as without them our final product will lack realism as the gun shots and explosions just wouldn't work. My overall learning curve when it came to this was high, I grew in confidence and ability when it came to doing this during the course of the project. I became quicker and better at adding the
Hardware
We used Canon HV30 to shoot our sequence, it was very good and were able to focus on a lot of key things. We made mistakes when using the camera as some of our shots were out of focus, however we rectified these mistakes in our re-shoot and eventually got to grips with all the techniques.
Since we shot outdoors we didn't have much lighting to actually do by ourselves, we just checked the weather for our shoot days.
Before starting our starting our film opening we had to do a prelim task. This task helped us brush up on our already existing film making skills as well as develop new techniques which we would apply to our film opening.
Task for the prelim:
Continuity task involving filming and editing a character opening a
door, crossing a room and sitting down in a chair opposite another character,
with whom he/she then exchanges a couple of lines of dialogue. This task should
demonstrate match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180-degree rule.
Task for opening sequence:
To produce a 2 minute opening sequence for a fiction film. It
must have titles throughout, copyright-free soundtrack, understanding of
continuity editing and clear generic signifies.
The whole process we went through for our prelim task was fairly similar as what we went through for our opening sequence, however it was was the depth we went into and the amount time we spent on each factor which were different.
Time was very limited for our prelim task, although we never had a lot of time for our opening sequence we did have enough to time carefully thoroughly think through everything and aim for perfection with our final product.
Click on the image and then zoom in if necessary to view content.
In the video below I talk about our prelim, highlight some of the similarities and differences between this and the opening sequence. I will also talk about the whole editing process.
With our prelim we only had one chance to get the all the shots we needed, whereas with our opening sequence we were able to go for re-shoots therefore our shots were better and well planned. We didn't really consider a target audience for our prelim
as our main focus was to exhibit a variety of different skills when it came to
shooting and editing. We simply came up with a topic, shot list, storyboard and
script. This was also due to the time we had, it was limited and we didn't want
to give ourselves too much to do. However, having showed a few people, they all
liked the twist with ‘the G’. With the opening sequence audience was one of the
highest priorities, as we ensured everything we did would appeal to them. After
a screening I did myself, I got the people to fill out a questionnaire from
which we received highly positive comments; this showed we had been successful with
our audience research.
Team Work
As a team we all worked well, we evenly distributed jobs and we were all very efficient when it came to completing them. There were hiccups during the course of this project, things didn't according to plan, however as a team we managed to overcome these issues- for example we had to shoot 3 days after school in a row to ensure we'd have all our shots in time for editing, and in order to do this we had to make sacrifices which we all did. Sometimes we did disagree with each other, but I think this helped us get the best final product we could as this meant we clearly thought about everything we did such as the idea, editing, music, effects etc.
As a film maker I think I have developed in confidence and skill. The process of both these tasks have made me think about and understand the whole film making process and what you have to consider. I have understood how important things like location, costume, script and so on are, as well as the technical side such as the editing techniques like match on action and transitions are. The fact our prelim wasn't perfect was arguably the biggest factors contributing to the quality of our film opening. We knew what we had to look out for and where our weaknesses were, therefore we were able to rectify it. For example, match on action, we knew the key and minute details we had to look out for, which we did for our opening.
