1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
What genre of film have you made? How does it compare to other films of this genre in terms of structure, camerawork, use of sound, mise en scene and editing? You could refer to your research into other films of the genre for this. Also, does your product do anything that is new, interesting or original? Analyse any of these aspects.

Before starting our filming we had to plan out the storyboard and before that we had to select our genre, there were many possibilities, but in the end we decided to go with action as this would have been unique to all the horror movies our peers were planning. But action was also a hard decision as most Hollywood action films are funded in the millions. so we had to improvise with what we had so we decided to make a chase scene. Instead of having all the equipments, like camera cranes, or helicopters, we instead found a good location and had to work with it as it have a good stand or a establishing shot.

We managed to find a very good fast paced soundtrack which fitted with the sequence and sounded very professional, luckily it was royalty fee. But unfortunately because it was not our movies score so it wasn't made for it so we had to do some audio editing to get it perfectly lined up with the movie.

We also did not have any ‘big name’ actors to our film but we manage to fit in three amateur actors who fitted very well into our movie. We also did not have enough crew members for our camera and editing but instead we had one guy who used one camera throughout our opening scenes and did all the editing using programs like after effects and V-cut Pro. We also did not have the technology that big budget Hollywood films have to edit our film and to add special effects we wished to add. We manage to locate a good location for our chase scene in Castle field, instead of searching around the world for exotic places for our film.

We also managed to get another group to be our associated production for our own productions. Unlike any other film production companies we only managed to gather a few group of people who we intend to be our target audience, instead of having a hundred people watching it in a cinema. We would have loved to have our film to be produced by Universal but with all the low budget equipment and effects, we had thought that this film could possibly only be produced by Working Title.

Questionnaire

When we were finished, we distributed a questionnaire through-out our peers which are our target audience, and returned with an average of 7.9 out of 10

Rush Hour & Hot Fuzz

Contrasts between
Hollywood
and
Working Title

Like the films Rush Hour and Hot Fuzz, Our film has a very similiar way of how the two movies approached and attracted their audiences. Similiarly to both films, our movie has main genre; action and a sub genre; comedy. Both films have their main target audience but at the same they also made sure they attracted different interests. The only main difference between the two films is the organisations they came from. The film Rush Hour has been produced by big Hollywood companies, in contrasts The film Hot Fuzz has been produced by Working Title (UK).

We have thought that our film would be based and produced by working title, for a number of reasons; we did not have any of the technology and equipment Big Hollywood companies have used, We also did not have the amount of budget that we would have hoped for and that we did not have enough actors and crew members.

We also thought that special effects would not be as 'special' or 'brilliant' as Rush Hour. This also helped us to realise that our film is more of a Working Title productions instead of a big Hollywood company like Universal etc. Our film was also filmed in England which narrows our decisions down.

Red Commentary

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

During the production of our 3 films we learnt developed skills in 2 crucial parts of the filming process, the camerawork and editing. After the 2 pre-limenary movies we had become more comfortable, filming and knew which shots would be best for certain scenes. With the camera we found out you could manually change focus to give the depth of field to the main focus, we only found this out in the last stages of the film making though. We also used a tripod wheel attachment to make a tracking shot, but this wasn’t used in the final video because of limited time.

We already had some basic knowledge of Adobe After Effects, which we used in the credits.

But for actual film editing we had to learn Final Cut Pro, as it is the perfect program for it. We used it for audio editing and video editing and in the end compiling into a video file.

Final Cut Pro also has many features that came in handy in our work, like using transitions and special effects, e.g. fades to show passage of time. We also used tools like the splitter and roller, which allowed for easy cutting and lining up of the video to the music. Because we used other software the video ratios and resolutions were sometimes off, but using the video properties we easily modified the video resolution with-in the software. We also used Final Cut Pro to do audio editing as it allows modifying audio levels and sync video and audio.

After doing the first batch of editing we found out that we should always film more of a scene than needed, as you never know when you might need extra footage, because of audio timing or video lining up.

Later on in the production we started noticing that we had more video time than the limit 40 seconds more in fact, so we had to increase the speed of some sections which actually worked well with movie as it was a chase scene. We also had to take out some scenes that we liked to get it to the limit time.

We used the masking feature in Adobe After Effects to make the credits be in the video and interacting with the actors this gives a flare to the credits and making them a little more interesting for the viewer.

After doing the pre-limenary movies we noticed we were using mostly still camera shots, this think of made the movies boring, so we decided to have some first person and mobile shots for the final movie opening to make it more compelling and adding to it as it is a fast paced action sequence. We also noticed that filming this sequence would have been a lot easier if we had the allowance of multiple cameras as we had to repeat sequences like jumping of a tall wall 4 times to get each angle that we wanted, this certainly slowed down the film making and tired out the actors.

In conclusion we have learnt many new abilities via the using the camera and using the post production software, including changing depth of field, special effect credits, various types of shots, using a mobile tripod and many more

Pre-preliminary commentaries

The "Pen"

The "Lift"

Post production work

For Video editing I mainly used Final Cut Pro as this allows easy and fast editing, and the video can be compiled into a good size to upload.
I also had some previous experience with Adobe After Effects
so I used it to give the title and credits and extra flare

I used the Final Cut Pro built-in audio editing software to line up the song with the video making it more effective

How did you attract/address your audience?

The Genre of the opening sequence is Action Thriller. We have used many ways to show this genre type and to build up suspense, as the film opening is a crucial part to the rest of the film as if its good in the viewer’s eyes they will want to watch more. The action thriller genre has specific ways to get the genre of the movie across some of these could be mysterious characters, a hero character and a long action scene. We attracted our audience through actions sequences eg. Chase scenes, close ups and Incidental music. The target audience for our media product are mainly males aged from 15-24.This is because some scenes of the movie may not be suitable for people who are younger than this.
The film opening starts with a low shot of the area as the protagonists shoes come into scene, it then moves to a shot of the wall were the main character is then shown being chased by the antagonist. Although the opening scenes have no violence or behavior which isn’t supposed to be scene by someone younger than 13, it doesn’t mean that the rest of the movie may contain violent scenes.

What our main aim was to make our film action-packed but also a little child friendly by adding a bit of humour into it. Our opening scenes are made accelerating and full of action because our main target audience are men aged 20-24, but we also intend to make our film entertaining for teenagers aged 16-18. We added humour to our film because we thought these days most action-based films have comedy fitted into it. For e.g the film ‘Rush Hour’ is an action based film but at the same time the film has humour into it for entertainment purposes. At the same time we thought that we would want to add some comedy into our action based film because we want to entertain people, we didn’t want our film to be one of those action based films that are just about explosions and gunfires. We wanted our film to have a complete package to entertain are action-fan audiences to a different new level. At the same time we hope that this has made our film child friendly because we did not include and any violence in our film. Like the film Rush hour, our project is an action-based film but has a tint of comedy give that extra boost for word of mouth.

But with this extra tint of entertainment we also made sure that we would not get carried away with this whole idea, so at the same time we also thought of what an action film should be originally like. With the opening scene of our film is a chase scene, we wanted our audience to be part of the action straight away and to be thrilled from the very first minute to the very last. With this, we hope to attract a lot of action-fan audiences and we aim to surprise them in a good way by adding a bit of comedy into it.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

The Audience for our media product is mainly male’s aged 15-24; the media product could appeal to people who like to watch action thriller genre films. Most of the Best action thriller movies have an age restriction of 15. A Large majority of the target audience will be men as it is men who like the action thriller movie more than women, also teenagers aged around 13 years old because the scenes are suitable for people this age and above. The media product contains a Protagonist and two antagonists who are chasing the protagonist as he has done something but the audience is not meant to know what it is. Films that are closely linked to our media product could be District 13 (2004), Jumper (2008) and Rush Hour (1999) three of these films include scenes where people are being chased and one of the films have a bit of comedy into it to make it interesting and entertaining.

We mainly focused into sticking to our primary target audience, which are men aged 15-24, we thought that most action films have similar target audiences. Although our film has a bit of comedy into it like the film Rush Hour, which challenges the main age group we are trying to attract. Like the film, our project has no drastic violent scenes into it, we wanted to make it as clean as possible but at the same time made sure that we did not get carried away and kept our film of what an action-based movie should be like. This means that it doesn’t really challenge our main age group target and would not make it complicated for us, although our film has comedy into it, at the same time we wanted our main audience to be thrilled and entertain by sticking to the main plan.

Our target audience

Like the film Rush Hour, they have a comedy into the film but at the same time they made sure that they kept to their main genre and they made sure that the audience does not forget that it is an action-based film. This means that they entertained their main age group audience but at the same time it bring a whole new audience because of the sub genre; comedy.

We wanted our film to have an equality of action to keep our audience thrilled and a bit comedy for a little entertainment for our audience. This helped us to define who are main audience is, and what interests does it attract. One of our main focuses was to attract audiences who are big fans of action-based movies and at the same time we also wanted to attract audiences who love a good comedy. This all adds up to the audience who loves to be entertained in new ways and to be thrilled at the same time. We both genres combined we hoped that it will attract a mass of audience but at the same time we made sure that we mainly attract our main age group.

What kind of media institution would distribute your media product and why?

The main production/distribution companies are normally worldwide corporations and usually do large budget films with a lot of A-list stars, so being realistic they won’t distribute our film. The type of film Distribution Company we are looking for is a company who produces and distributes low budget British films.

A Film Production company like Working Title would be a great path for our film as they produce British films and they are distributed by Universal, because they are backed by Universal they have a lot more money to invest into films they produce. Although there is a smaller company called Working Title 2 which does produce low budget British films which include Billy Elliot, Shaun of the dead and The Calcium Kid. We think that this production company will be best for our media product as it specializes in low budget British films. Films from both production companies would be then distributed by Universal.

Film Four is a British Film production company which is owned by channel 4. The company has been Responsible for backing a lot of Films made in the United Kingdom. The Chase scene in our Media product could be quite similar to The Chase scene in Trainspotting,as Film four did produce Trainspotting,they possibly could Produce our media production. Trainspotting was a quite low budget film as it was estimated to be around $3,500,000.This is Quite a low budget compared to most Hollywood blockbusters Which have a Budget of over $100,000,000.

Entertainment Film Distributors are a film Distribution company which distributes films throughout the United Kingdom. We Think That this would be the perfect Distribution company for our media product as it has Distributed around 150 films in the UK which is quite a lot for a company that only distributes in the UK. Also our genre is Action,this genre is more known to Large budget Hollywood Films. Although we are making this genre through a low budget and being produced in Britain. What we are trying to do is very difficult and has been tried many times but has only succeeded in only a few.

A Film like Hot Fuzz(2007) is a British Film With a genre of Action/Comedy which is the genre we are trying to do.Hot Fuzz is a great example as it was a great hit Worldwide this could be shown by the amount of money it made comnpared to the budget. The estimated budget of the film was £8,000,000 and : £20,792,585 (UK),

$23,618,786 (USA).

In Conclusion we think that a Film distribution company Like Universal would distribute our film only because the Film would be produced by working title 2.

Movie Opening

Opening of movie called "Red"

Director:
Kane Allen

Actors:
Kane Allen
Karl
Umar Latif

Camera Work/Sound/Cinematography:
Yassin Shahid

Presented by Milkman productions
In association with Black Ghost Products

Hope you like the movie!

How does your media product present Particular social groups?

Our work was always very different from any other piece, this was because of many reason. Some because it included a urban sport called Parkour

but also because a lot of groups had voice over’s and flashbacks but social this was a challenge because when the idea was suggested the group was very cautious because we had been warned not to do chase scenes because their are very common and are commonly not very good so this was very hard to attempt; because this was a different state of mind because you can’t try something so ‘outlandish’ without any sense of imagination. Personally I feel that creative people are a particular social group because they think differently and stray away from the social norms to create unique objects, pieces, things and perspectives. Others social groups are the all male

group this is also common in action based films. But with out noticing we were acting on a stereotype of ‘macho’ men being the centre of attention, however a counter-stereotype was the multi-ethnicity in our group

this shown a different look on thing and the change possibly would make it more appealing.

Weather Issues

We wanted to film during the weekends to finish everything earlier but because of the unfortunate weather conditions we were unable to as this would have caused major lighting changes during the film and also rain. The wind would have distorted the audio too

Storyboard Sketches

Shot 1
In our first shot, we wanted to have a low shot on the ground. A couple of seconds later, we see our main characters foot in the shot. This creates a tensed atmosphere, we wanted our audience to be part of the action as this shot helps to create that thrilling experience.


Shot 2
In this shot, We had the camera on the brick pavement to catch our characters jump over a wall. Our aim is to keep up with the action and we achieved this by putting our camera as close as possible to the action, to keep our audience entertained.


Shot 3
We wanted to have a range of different shots. In this shot we wanted to have a view of our two characters. We also wanted to show our setting in this shot and we also wanted to have a good view of our two characters.


Shot 4
This shot is very similiar to our 3rd shot, but the difference is that this shot is closer. As we aim to keep in touch with the action. As we dont want our audience to get bored and be kept thrilled and entertained.


Shot 5
We also wanted to have an aerial shot for our audience to see a bigger picture of our characters running and the setting they are in. Our aim in this shot is to show our location of our film and we achived this by putting our camera on one of the towers.


Shot 6
In this shot we wanted to get a picture of our main character. We wanted our audience to get a big picture of our main character, so they can get a chance to see clear view of our main character. Because our scenes are fast paced, we wanted to get a clear image of our character.


Shot 7
Similiary with shot 6, we also wanted to get a clear shot of our other character. As our opening is fast paced, we wanted to slow it down a bit and show our audience the second character in our opening scenes.


Shot 8
After we showed our audience clear images of our two character, we go back to the fast paced action. In this shot we wanted to show the obstacles that our characters have to go through, to give tell our audience that our chase scene is thrilling and exiting.


Shot 9
in this shot we see our main character struggle a bit as he attempts to climb a hill. We wanted to create a sense of realism in our project to show that our main character also struggles through the obstacles aswell as achieving to overcome them.


Shot 10
In this shot we wanted to show the audience the next obstacle that our characters will face. In this shot we both aim to show our two characters and the setting. With this long shot we achieve this by giving the audience a clear picture of the shot.


Shot 11
In this we wanted to put the camera at the bottom of the of the wall, for our audience to see the drop. Our aim for this is to make the audience think that is our main character going to jump the wall or not. This makes our audience entertained and thrilled.


Shot 12
Similarly to the previous shot, Our aim for this is to make the audience have questions on their minds and make them want to watch more. This helps us to keep them entertained and electrified.


Shot 13
Like the audience, we wanted to have our other confused. We also wanted to get a shot clear shot of him to make the audience think that he is wondering what would happen next, leaving questions to his mind.


Shot 14
After with all of the questions, we get an answer we would have expected. We head back into the action by our main character taking off his coat and tieing it into his waist and he climbs onto the wall.


Shot 15
We wanted to get a shot of the wall at the bottom. This is for our audience to see how high and tall the wall is. With this shot we aim to blow away the audience's minds and accelerated and not to make them bored.


Shot 16
We also have a shot of our other character looking shocked and confused of how did our main character managed to jump off the big wall. With this shot we also wanted our audience to have a bit of a laugh with our other character looking confused.


Shot 17
In this shot we see our main character land on the grass. This time, the camera is at the top of the wall, for our audience to see how far down he jumped for entertainment purposes. At thisd point our audience get to see how daring our main character is.


Shot 18
Similarly with this shot, we wanted to have a little bit of comedy with having a close up on our main character's face looking back at the camera with a grin. At this point our audience is getting to know our character a little better as he is a bit cheecky.


Shot 19
In this shot we see our other charcter running down the stairs to catch up with our main character. We used a long shot to see the character and the background for the audience to see where he is and where hes going.


Shot 20
We use a low shot to get a shot of our character's shoes as he lands from jumping off the stairs. This creates a sense of thrill and helps the audience feel they are part of the action and kept inspired.


Shot 21
Now we see a third mysterious character with the audience having no clue of who this character is, he seems to be in the chase aswell. This helps our audience kept thrilled and want to watch and find out more.


Shot 22
Now we see a point-of view shot of the new character's point of view. He wonders where our main character has dissaperead too, while the other points out and shows him where he has gone off to.


Shot 23
Now we see our main character and where he's going. We used a long shot on this one for our audience to see where he's off too next. This helps our audience get an idea of where our next shots and scenes would be.


Shot 24
Now we see our two other characters running down the street catching up to our main character. This shot was a bit shaky as we want our audience to be apart of the action and at the same time it can knock their socks off.


Shot 25
Now are camera heads back to our main character, as he runs into a dead end. This helps to create suspense and questions to the audience's minds as they wonder where would he go next and why.


Shot 26
Our character looks for an alternative way to escape as he tries to escape into the corner but as he tries, our other character steps in the way. In this shot we get a shot of his shoes to create tense and to be kept action-packed.


Shot 27
Now he finds a way to escape but first he takes off his tie and unbuttons his top button. This helps our audience to underdstand and know our character more. We also used a long shot to see where hes gonna go next.


Shot 28
Our camera is at the bottom to catch him jumping off the wall. This shot looks like his about to land in the camera which helps us to keep our aim to keep the audience thrilled and entertained. We also get a shot of our two other character looking at him as he jumps off.


Shot 29
In this shot we get to see our main character escaping by jumping onto a building with our two other character's point of view. This tells the audience that they are just shocked that our main character are capable of those things.


Shot 30
But as the audience looses hope, our two other characters gets right back into the action by one of them jumpiung off the wall and start to catch with him again and with the other character to find a more easy and an alternative way.


Shot 31
In this shot we see our other character trying to climb this building where our main character has climbed onto. This keeps our audience thrilled and think that would he catch up to our main character.


Shot 32
As the other character finds an alternative way, we get a shot of him running down a stairs to find a more easy way of catching up with our main character. This also has a bit of comedy and helps our audience to know that our other character is not up for it.


Shot 33
In contrast our other character is fit and desperate to catch up with the main character as he reaches the top of the building with our main character standing there and waiting for his arrival.


Shot 34
We start to slow down again as our two character meet up at the top. This helps our audience to know that there is a little rivalry between the two characters and this also helps to answer a few little questions in the audience's minds.


Shot 35
In this shot we see our other character run down the streets as he looks for a shortcut to get to the other side and catch up with our two other characters.


Shot 36
We start to get back into our fast-paced action scene where we see both of our characters who are on the building start to run again and jump off the building to get to the bottom. This starts to build suspense again.


Shot 37
Now we see them both jump off the building as it gets back into the chase. This keeps our audience thrilled and want to watch more.


Shot 38
We see our main character attempts to escape by jumping off the roof and try to find an alternative way to get down to the streets.


Shot 39
We get to see a point of view shot of our other character from the roof as he stands there watching our main character escapes. This helps our audience to see the things our main character needed to face as he jumps off the roof and run into the streets.


Shot 40
Now we get a long shot of the character who was on the roof. We wanted to have a long shot because we wanted our audience to see where the setting is and to give them an idea of how high the building was.


Shot 41
We get a shot of the main character's shoes to create a thrilling experience for our audience as he runs down towards the camera, this helps our audience to be kept thrilled.


Shot 42
In our final shot we see our main character run down into the streets and blurs into the background and disappears. This puts questions into our audience's minds and makes them want to watch more of our film.