Note to the Moderator

Dear Moderator,


Thank you for taking time to look at our group portfolio and evaluations. 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 the 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 also completed their own evaluation. You can access our responses to the evaluation questions under the individually named Evaluation labels.

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, thanks for your time and we hope you enjoy reading and watching the content on our blog!

From,
Shobnam Islam (Candidate number: 1330)
Anjana Stephens (Candidate number 1750)
Mila Hrisimova (Candidate number: 1300)

1) In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

From experience of watching films and our media lessons, it is very important for the opening sequence of a film to firstly, convey the genre and give insight into a film's narrative, secondly introduce engaging characters, and thirdly appeal to the audience it is intended for, be it a wide or niche one.

26 - Action/Adventure -> Sub-genre: Girls with Guns

Genre

The Bride - Kill Bill

Conventions:

- Female action heroines e.g.

Charlie's Angels

- Gun- play/ fighting

The creation of the fight sequence was long and required choreographing multiple fight scenes between Delta and Guard, as well as Sierra and Guard until we finally decided on the simple choke hold by Sierra. This was to emphasise her character role as "The Muscle" but was not too gruesome or violent for those member  of audience who appreciated more implied violence than actual fights and blood.

"Incorporation of martial arts, gun play and stunts"

                                                 

Fight scene between Delta and Guard

Final fight sequence - Sierra choke hold

- Reform story - Trying to save people/ changing their ways.

Jason Bourne - The Bourne Franchise

Jason Bourne is a clear example of a character and a narrative about some changing themselves for the better, in other words a reform story. Jason puts his assassin past behind him to figure out a new life, uncovering the deeply buried secrets of the "evil" government along the way. Thus we can see that a previously "bad" character transforms for the better.

Breaking conventions

We also broke the convention of the action genre being heavy with special effects. "26" is a more dialogue-based and narrative film, intended to provoke thought in the audience rather than just be aesthetically pleasing. The storyline itself does not require CGI for example. This would also fit with the small budget as it is an independent British co-production, therefore has a smaller budget than a large scale Hollywood blockbuster, so the budget would not have to be spent on sfx.

The characters were also not typical of an action film, as explored further in Question 2.

Character inspirations:

As a group of 3 girls, our film genre was fairly obvious. We'd seen the likes to Charlie's Angels and all had obsessions for Charmed, so naturally we turned to Action/Adventure, more specifically Girls with Guns. 

Using our knowledge of female action heroines, we compiled a group of possible inspirations for Delta, Sierra and Echo. For their personality traits, we adapted ideas from other strong characters throughout film anf TV, not necessarily just in the action genre. This was to create characters that were not limited only to action, but also appealing for other aspects of their personalities.

Our character inspirations wear mainly practical clothing, easy to move around and fight in. Black and leather were popular with almost all the action heroines. We also noticed that each had a strong personality, with certain streaks or traits that stood out for example Hermione Granger's intellect, or Dylan Saunders' fighting skills.

Themes:

Once we had come up with characters we were happy with, the next important aspect was the theme or our sequence. 

-Friendship/loyalty (between the girls)
-Good vs. Evil - binary opposites
-Morality 



Music:

Usually with action films, there is a recognisable soundtrack, which immediately gives a sense into its genre and the pace of the movie. A good example is Mission Impossible:

- The music portrays the Spy genre, as well as creating a pacey feel.

For 26, Maneater was ideal as it started off slow, then picked up pace, with drumming for dramatic effect. This was what we needed to transition from the slow beginning to the fast choke scene, and interaction between the girls. Moreover the title was appropriate for the female empowerment element of 26.

Narrative

After coming up with characters and a basic plot to the movie, the opening sequebnce needed to give insight into the narrative of the rest of the movie. It was important to consider 2 main thing:

Todorov's Narrative Theory

Disruption in 26 - Beginning of disruption - Delta comes up the lift injured - different to the guard's usual routine, where nothing ever happen. End of disruption - Sierra taking down guard.

Equilibrium to Disruption

Barthe's Codes

Using the opening of Resident Evil: Afterlife, we can see examples of each code and how they work from the clip (Italics), then compare to our own use of them (Bold).

Enigma code:
- Why is everyone ignoring the girl?

- Slow drawn out shots of the guard, intersected with Delta up list

Action code:
- The 'pounce' - what will happen after she kills him?

- The tackle - Who is this new character? Are thy good or bad?

Semiotic code:
- Crowded area - we know it's a busy city setting.

- CCTV footage, guard looking at it - sense of high security area.

Cultural code:
-Recognise the urban surroundings.

- Instantly recognise a guard/ understand his role as a night guard. Everyone knows what CCTV looks like. 

Symbolic code:
- Rain seems ominous 

- Guard coming down stairs - confined spaces getting smaller and smaller - symbolic of his imminent demise.

Style

Having come up with a narrative, the look and feel of 26 still had to be decided. Addressing some serious themes, 26 had to have a rough, and action feel to it.

Look:

 - Dull colours, black and pale cream - to set a secretive, spy sort of mood, too many colours would look to happy.
- Harsh lighting, so strong shadows - gives a sense of unease.

Sound:

-Dialogue - story told through conversation between the girls, without giving too much away - we learn that they have to save "Victor" - Teases the audience.
- Soundtrack remains underneath all the action - gives motion and pace, as well as cohesion.

Titles:

Mission Impossible 2 opening sequence title

Skyfall opening sequence title

- A convention of film openings generally - During research we found that some titles recurred in every film opening we watched e.g. Director, Producer etc. Therefore, we would have to incorporate these into our own.

So considering all these factors, we finally came up with the opening for 26. We wanted to portray a serious film, but not without its comic moments, for example the girls joking with each other. The strong female characters adhere to the genre, as well as the fight scene, while also establishing them as the protagonists. 

Question 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop, or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our film is called "26", it is an Action film and it features the three members of our group; me, Anjana and Shobnam as the secret agents Delta, Sierra and Echo respectively.

In order to acquaint ourselves fully with the action genre, so that we were ready to create our opening sequence, we did extensive research into the four main concept areas of film production; genre, narrative, form and style.

Genre

Brainstorm of inspirational characters, themes and film techniques which we applied to our opening

Through our research, we found that character was very important in not just action films, but in the media in general. The inevitable character development and internal, external and interpersonal conflicts that make every film worth watching were something that we definitely had to include in our film, in order to keep the audience on their toes and hooked throughout our opening. We took inspiration from the following characters;

Catwoman from "Dark Knight Rises" - a very
big character influence for us

Alex from "Charlie's Angels" - from the
film that inspired our own opening

Evelyn from "Salt" - her quest for revenge
was a huge influence for us

Convention	Application (Used, Updated or Challenged)
Character
Protagonist is typically male, white and heterosexual (e.g. James Bond, Harry Potter, Sherlock Holmes)	CHALLENGED · 3 female protagonists; · 2 of whom are Asian, due to serious under-representation of female Asian action heroes. Also, due to the fact that 2 of the girls in our group were Asian, it made sense to play to the strengths of our group. · 1 Caucasian female so as not to stray too much from normality and shock our audience. · However, later on in the film we planned to add a male sidekick, in order for the film to not be completely female-dominated.
Victims are typically female and ethnic minorities (e.g. Rain Ocampo - Resident Evil)	CHALLENGED · Our primary victim, the Guard, is not a stereotypical victim; he is male, strong and white, and looks older than the girls. · We used this character as a victim, in order to establish our heroines as being first and foremost, dominant and assertive.
Female characters are typically sexualised (e.g. Lara Croft, Alice Abernathy - Resident Evil)	UPDATED · It could be argued that the character of Delta is sexualised due to her casual changing in the sequence, however the fact that the camera cuts away before anything is seen, shows that the film is not going to objectify or sexualise women, something which we wanted to have quite a feminist approach on. · Despite the fact that Delta is not sexualised, she is still feminine and shown to be desirable

Narrative

Using Todorov's narrative theory, I devised this flowchart of events in our opening

Our narrative was pretty typical of that of an action film; it included an equilibrium that was disrupted by one of our main action heroines, Delta. Similarly, in "Charlie's Angels", Natalie (played by Cameron Diaz) walks into the workplace of the men and distracts them. We also found out that action film openings usually have more than one disruption; as you can see, our one has 3 (4 if you count "Guard stirs"). We decided to conform to these narrative conventions, as we didn't want our opening to look irregular and unprofessional.

Form & Style

Our Production Company Ident - we wanted it to look elegant and calligraphic, to show our production company as being professional

The font we have been using throughout the entire project - Courier.
We feel that this font fits our film quite well, as it is quite a
military font and portrays the action genre well.

Our film title graphic is quite a binary-type font, showing the
mechanical aspect of the world we have created

Question 2: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

The two main areas of representation that we wanted to focus on were gender and race, as we found that there was a huge lack of female action heroines (up until very recently, with the groundbreaking "Alien" franchise) and also a substantial deficiency of positive representations of South Asian characters in Hollywood. Therefore we decided to challenge and update the representations as much as possible through our film. We also decided to focus mostly on British Asian characters, due to the recent success of British Asian films "Slumdog Millionaire", "Bend It Like Beckham", "East is East" and it's subsequent sequel, "West is West". All of these films were critically acclaimed, as they gave global audiences an insight into 'never before explored territory'.

Gender

Despite the fact that we decided to make all of our protagonists female, we chose not to represent them as being very butch and masculine, as we didn't want to detract from their femininity. Below is an analysed photo that we took for our animatic, showing how we exploited the fact that our characters were female.

Ethnicity

After doing a quick Google search of "Asian characters in film", I came across some fascinating information.

Slide on Representation of Ethnicity from our pitch presentation

Ethnicity Analysis of photo taken from our animatic

Question 3: What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

We initially shortlisted two distribution companies for our film; Columbia Pictures and Screen Gems. In the end however, we decided to go with Screen Gems, as it had previously distributed films of the action genre featuring female protagonists and also British produced films.

Screen Gems

Distributed films such as;

• The Resident Evil franchise

• The Underworld franchise - Has a positive, strong female lead who is determined and hard-working
• Attack the Block - Screen Gems distributed it in America as it is a British film, like ours, therefore it is more likely that they would be able to distribute our film successfully
• The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones (coming soon) - An action film, adapted from a popular book franchise, most of the characters are young, like ours and they are battling the forces of evil
• Obsessed - the film starred an ethnic minority protagonist, played by Idris Elba. Despite the fact that the race explored in our film is Asian, we still think that it is a step in the right direction.

Production Company

Our production company is called "Cornucopia Films". We chose the word "Cornucopia", because it means "an abundance of", connoting that the company produces a wide variety of films with different genres and themes.

The Cornucopia Films Ident

We also decided to add some interesting background facts about "Cornucopia Films":

• Founded in 1994
• Headquarters in Soho, London
• Formed a partnership with Screen Gems in 2008 to distribute British films in the US.
• In association with "Almost Human" since 2009, creating make-up and visual special effects.

Exhibition Platforms

• Cinemas, such as Vue, Cineworld and Odeon in order to target a mainstream audience.
• We expect that our audience will view the film on websites such as Hulu, LoveFilm, Netflix that require a subscription OR illegal streaming sites such as 1channel, thepiratebay and solarmovie. We understand that due to the fact our Core Audience is 16-24 year olds, illegal downloads will be an inevitable exhibition platform. This will generate a lot of interest and we will reach our audience this way, but unfortunately we will lose profit. 

Release Strategy

The UK and US are not the only countries where we plan to distribute our film, however they are the two main places where we expected the film to be successful.

Question 4: Who would be the audience for your media product?

We decided that our core target audience should be 16-24 year old females, as we fit into that age & gender group and we therefore feel that we can get into their mindset and appeal more to that specific demographic.

(Please view full screen for maximum immersive experience)

Sophie is a typical member of our Target Audience, because she fits our initial Core Audience Member Profile (below) and I found out that the biggest cinema going demographic is the 16-24 year old group.

Taken from a presentation from the 17th Europa Cinemas Network Conference on 23/12/2012 by Saskia Walzel

Question 5: How did you attract/address your audience?

Audience appeal is arguably one of the most crucial parts to get right when making a film. I found out that the concept of our film appealed to the audience, as well as the characters and humour. The majority of the audience members I talked to also liked the overall mise-en-scene, such as the props (guns) and costumes (leather jackets, leggings etc).

Please click HERE to view larger version of diagram

Audience Feedback - did we appeal to them?

Jenny Questionnaire - Core Audience

Age: 17

Favourite Film Genre: Action/Adventure

Last Film You Saw: Oz The Great And Powerful

What is the title of the film?: 26

What genre is it?: Action/Spy

What are the main themes?: I'm not sure, maybe good vs evil

What are the characters' names?: Delta, and I'm not sure about the other ones sorry!

What happens in the sequence?: A security guard gets beaten up by spies and then they break in to some kind of facility?

What works well in this sequence?: I like the costumes and the props, the gun is pretty cool.

What doesn't work as well?: There's this bit where the lighting goes all weird

Rate out of 10: A solid 8

Andria Questionnaire - Core Audience

Age: 16

Favourite Film Genre: Romance

Last Film You Saw: Warm Bodies

What is the title of the film?: I didn't see, sorry!

What genre is it?: Thriller/Action?

What are the main themes?: Teamwork and violence

What are the characters' names?: Delta and Sierra

What happens in the sequence?: Delta lures the guard out and then Sierra does the dirty work and beats him up and WHAT'S BEHIND THE DOOR?

What works well in this sequence?: The dialogue seems natural and realistic

What doesn't work as well?: The guard's coughing looked strange

Rate out of 10: 7

David Questionnaire - Secondary Audience

Age: 16

Favourite Film Genre: Horror

Last Film You Saw: Mama

What is the title of the film?: 26

What genre is it?: Action/Adventure

What are the main themes?: Good vs Evil, Survival?

What are the characters' names?: Sierra, Delta and err... didn't get the other one 

What happens in the sequence?: You beat up a guard for some reason, not really sure why, then you open a door and something bad happens

What works well in this sequence?: The music builds up tension

What doesn't work as well?: Lighting isn't consistent

Rate out of 10: 8.5

From this feedback I have learnt that the audience found the lighting and some of the acting unnatural, and the themes may have been a bit difficult to understand, however most members of the target audience grasped the storyline fairly quickly and liked the overall mise-en-scene.

Question 6: What have you learnt about the technologies from the process of constructing this product?

After doing this project, I realised that I was much more comfortable working with software as opposed to hardware. I think that using computers is much easier, as there are no time constraints to what you can do, and there is also a lot more creative freedom to experiment with colour and effects.

Our animatic was very useful during the production process, as it enabled us to review the timings and pacing in our final sequence. It was also useful, as we were able to see where our titles and graphics would go and whether they fit with the mise-en-scene and cuts. The animatic also helped us to redraft out shot list and script, and we were also able to practice working with the Canon HV30 camera and tripod, which proved useful later on in our project.

The social networking site Facebook played a large role in our project. I made a group called "MAS" which stands for Mila, Anjana and Shobnam, where we could post ideas or documents that we had made.

We also had a facebook inbox where we could also discuss ideas, but in "real-time" so that it was a much more instant way of messaging.

2) How does your media product represent particular social groups?

During the research phase, we found that most of the female action heroines where Caucasian.There was a significant lack of Asian, particularly south Asian female actions heroines in Hollywood.

Action Heroines

We also noticed that they tend to be sexualised. Tight fitting jackets,low cut skintight vests, and shorts that are more like underwear are popular within the Girls with Guns genre.

British Films

On the other hand, the British film market is known for some realistic representation of Asian females heroines, though not necessarily in the GwG genre. In the last decade or two, it is notable that attitudes in Britain towards Asian culture have shifted, as have the taste of mainstream audiences for Asian-themed films. 

"Bend It Like Beckham" became one of the most popular British films ever and has an Asian female protagonist. It challenge the colonially-obsessed images of Asians depicted in mainstream British cinema and televisions in the 1980s and earlier. Moreover, Asian women as especially depicted in stereotypical "housewife" roles, and this movie defied this as well.

The BFI says: 

"Today, 'Asian;, once unfashionable, has become fashionable and almost ;sexy' in the Western media culture. The British film industry has gradually begun to wake up to the 'brown pound'. Director Gurinder Chada has noted the change in attitudes between the release of her first film, Bhaji on the Beach (1994), and her third, Bend It Like Beckham (2002): "People are much more aware of difference, what was once foreign is now familiar""

How we broke/challenged stereotypes

Anjana (Sierra)

Shobnam (Echo)

2 of our characters are from south Asian backgrounds. We decided to cast ourselves as breakage of the stereotype, while also keeping Mila, a white female to keep within the genre conventions slightly. This was to ensure the audience were not overwhelmed by the breaking of stereotypes.

Why?

With the Cultural diversity of British society, it is important for us to consider the ways in which we represent our 2 Asian female protagonists. Not only do they defy the stereotype that was ingrained for so long in modern day Britain, they also adhere to the progress and acceptance of the Asian culture. Additionally, these films are known to engage and appeal to British-Asians, such as myself (I so enjoy watching my fellow Asians living their lives in films and have often experiences British-Asian cinema with the family as well; as well as the British audience.

The "look"

Costume:

Sierra: Black leather jacket - Practical, conventional but not revealing - avoided sexualisation.

Traits: Violent, likes weapons and fighting.

Echo: Black trench coat + gloves - similar - portrays a sense of secrecy - mysterious character - Echo is the one the audience aren't certain about.

Traits: Contrast to Sierra, who fights for pleasure - wants to stick to task, determined to get things done.

Delta: Black body suit + leggings - fully covered but keeping some sort of femininity to the character - suits her personality as "the decoy" - her enjoyment of dressing up.

Traits: Enjoys acting, scheming.




Character relationships:

-Delta, Sierra and Echo are working together by choice -out of loyalty and friendship. 
-Acknowledge and understand each other's strengths.

The main difficulties: portraying the friendship in the script without losing any storytelling/ narrative.

Supporting male role:

The empowering female role over the male victim character of the guard sets the tone for the rest of the movie i.e Girl power. The audience is taken into their stories and lives to see the film from their perspective, therefore to "like" or "take sides" with Delta, Sierra and Echo.

However, the film is not about female supremacy, thus we had plan for a strong male character, who was sympathetic to the 3 Agents' aims, but was also a powerful male in his own right.

In summary, not only did we want to portray powerful Asian female action heroines, but also to display the loyalty the girls have for each other, as well as the collaboration with a strong male character (but less powerful than the girls) thus breaking any barriers that might otherwise arise from diverse ethnic backgrounds, and/or genders.