Evaluation: Question 1

Se7en titles influenced us on the font we have used in the opening.

Conventions of a film, especially a thriller genre are there to

• hook the audience
• state the genre
• introduce key characters
• begin narrative
• establishing an enigma

Conventions also include:  music, titles, transitions, colours, pace and effect.

Pace is influenced by Se7en so it is not too energetic and upbeat but enough to hook the audience.

The film opening of Base-9 has followed the conventions of a thriller by 'stating the genre', 'beginning the narrative' and 'introducing the key characters'. In addition, the target audience feedback video below shows it has also managed to hook the audience' and 'keep them on the edge of their seats'.

The opening of Base-9 also establishes and enigma in the narrative both within the stylised shots and the narrative during the exchange of the suitcases.
The reason behind the exchange is unknown and the consequences that are to follow either, which will make the audience want to know the purpose of that and let the film solve the 'puzzle/mystery' as the film continues.

beginning the narrative

Introducing one of the main characters

introducing the genre with the 'red' stylised effects and font of the titles

Following the conventions in regards of the title sequence, which is as follows: 

PRODUCTION COMPANY IDENT

SECOND PRODUCTION/DISTRIBUTION COMPANY

TITLE

CAST MEMBERS

COSTUME DESIGN

MUSIC SUPERVISION

MUSIC BY

EDITOR

PRODUCTION DESIGNER

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER

PRODUCED BY

WRITTEN BY

DIRECTED BY

Our movie opening included 10 out of 14 titles, this is because it is a lower budget movie and involved less production.

the gif's had been made by a member of our group Ellie Ritche

Convention of a thriller genre would also be costume, we have used a similar costumes we thought of during the planning process. An example would be 'Collateral' which also uses the same type of costume in their opening.

Evaluation: Question 2

DEFINITION OF REPRESENTATION:

Portrayal and/or description of someone or something being in a particular way of certain nature.

specific location which is China Town. May have a lot to do with villains/heros being from China

The location of China Town specifically represents the characters in the rest of the movie who are of Chinese background.

This particular social group (Chinese) have not been represented in neither a negative nor positive light in the opening because we are only shown a famous landmark 'China Town' in London. This only tells the audience that the movie will involve Chinese characters and the location itself play a large part. However, it is only within the plot and for the audience to find out whether this particular social group is negative or positive.

Moreover, the black and red colour effect may be indicating that both Chinese and British are neither good, bad, or both due to the colour ed and black representing danger, anger and death.

Stereotype representation may be seen in the fact that the location of 'China Town' is being used and this may to do with the fact that some characters may be Chinese, whether it is the hero or the villain, or simply set in both London and China itself.

Big Ben (famous landmark)

Gender focus in regards of characters is mainly female since the two main characters introduced in the opening are female. This challenges the stereotypes of many thriller movies such as Skyfall, Mission Impossible:Ghost Protocol involve male main characters. Movie 'The Hunger Games' involves a strong female role which had appeared to become a successful film regardless of the lack male lead roles, and this is one similarity in terms of gender roles in our movie opening. 

Target audience in regards of Age are 16-25 because the characters in the opening are between those ages, moreover the rest of the movie would involve characters aged 16-25.

the character to some audiences may be represented in a negative light due to the colours red and black, while others may simply see this as an introduction to the movie and not a character representation

From our target audience feedback we have also gathered that males would be attracted to this movie due to the edge, sound and colours used which makes it different from other movies. The storyline is appealing to them regardless of the lack of male lead roles and enjoy the plot and mystery of the film.

Evaluation: Question 3

Evaluation: Question 4

target audience of Base-9 being teenagers to young adults (16-25) who are likely to go cinema to 'escape' 

Young teenagers, mainly female because the two main characters are females (as seen in the opening) but also males regardless of the lack of lead male role in the movie.

Thriller movies generally appeal to a target audience of 17-25 and over.

However, movies such as Psycho and Fatal Attraction would be 18+ because it is a psychological movie.

Because Base-9 is an action thriller with elements of mystery, it applies to 16-25 year olds.

print screen of someone who is our target audience


This person is  a 17 year old female, and the main character being a woman it appeals to her, along with her interest in thriller/spy/mystery movies.

Evaluation: Question 5

This is what we have collected from asking our target audience and the majority had said similar things, however some thought the target audience would be 18-25 while others thought of 16-20. Overall it covers our initial target audience of 16-25 successfully.

These aspects had the main appeal towards our target audience:

• Mise-en-scene had the appeal because of the locations used which is St. Pancras International/Kins Cross Station and China Town.

• Editing appealed because everyone we've asked for feedback had made a comment on the stylised editing and the colour red, describing it 'edgy' and 'sketchy' and most of all 'appealing'.

• Storyline because movies such as Skyfall, Collateral, Safe House, Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol and so forth, appeal to the younger and older teenagers along with the adult audience. 

I have underlined the key words which are relevant to our movie Base-9 and all have some links to the majority crime/action/thriller movies out there.

• Soundtrack: this sound was one of the many that we have put together to use with our opening. Collateral was the influence.

The end sound of the opening in the movie Collateral was fast paced and energetic, keeping the audience on the edge of their seats and this is what we aimed to achieve in our opening.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P00reQ0TyGM  (Collateral). The idea of a background sound of conversation and crowds was also influenced by this movie.

ROUGH CUT FEEDBACK:

After receiving this feedback on our rough cut edit, we have rearranged the order of the narrative and stylised sequences so it is not confusing and instead more appealing to the audience. This helped us improve the opening which in return appeared to be successful in attracting the attention of our target audience.

This is a short clip I've combined using iMovie with all the target audience feedback we've received.

Evaluation: Question 6

Blogger, Slideshare, Prezi, Camtasia, Moodboard mydeco,
Facebook, Final Cut Pro, Soundtrack Pro,
Adobe Photoshop

MPEG Streamclip, iMovie, Wordle

Technologies that have been used during the whole process, starting from the planning with Quark XPress 8 and Microsoft Power Point.  

All technologies have been useful in their own way. For example: iMovie was quick and easy to use for the 'Target Audience Feedback' clip (Question 5) and did not take long at all.

mydeco has helped me produce not only the two mood boards but the process of transferring the footage (shown below with the arrows) in this particular post.

Prezi has been helpful in showing the flow of ideas and the order I had in terms of the distribution company.

Wordle was a new and interesting way to demonstrate target audience feedback, which is colourful and catching to the eye and also quick to use.

By using all this technology I have also learnt not only new skills but that I can access the online technology not only from college but home to develop my work.

Blogger has been the most crucial in this process because we were able to post all of our work and ideas along with our progress and track everything we've achieved and underachieved. 

the first few processes soon after recording the footage Recording, transferring from memory card to
hardrive, from hard drive into Final Cut Pro, where all the editing began.

the file needed to be converted into 'mp4' for it to be able to show on 'Blogger

Evaluation: Question 7

Editing: Soundtrack

Editing: Rough Cut Movie

This is our rough cut without sound, as we put the sequences and titles together to see how well everything will fit.

Production company IDENT

In our pitch we mentioned that our desired production company would be "Paramount Pictures." due to their positive reputation and history in working with thriller films. So here's the IDENT.

Screenshots/MYSPACE

Social Networking/MYSPACE

Screenshots/FACEBOOK

Social Networking/FACEBOOK

 

We decided that as distribution is vital when creating a successful film we would create several social networking accounts to promote our opening, just as we did with our swede for Twilight. :P 

Screenshots/TWITTER

Social Networking/TWITTER

We decided that as distribution is vital when creating a successful film we would create several social networking accounts to promote our opening, just as we did with our swede for Twilight. :P 

Hicccups

During  this project we did come across a few sticky patches along the way that we did overcome through teamwork and compromise some which were admittedly due to lack of preparation but others that were out of our control. For example we had to change our story board twice due to the fact that due to traffic I couldn't make it to one of the storyboard creation tasks, we had a strict deadline because Victoria had a lesson after lunch and needed to be back at college before 1:15 with all the equipment so they had to proceed on without me adding a green stick man to represent myself in places where I would have been if there which proved to be comical during our pitch to Marissa unconventional in terms of a serious project. Then to make matters worse on the first day of filming as a group we forgot to bring a physical copy of the story board we had presented and thus had to take time in creating a new one based on our new shots. In the end our second storyboard proved to be better than the first however if we'd taking the proper precautions in terms of organization we could have saved a great deal of time that we could have invested into editing or perfecting the soundtrack of blogging.

Editing/ Finishing touches

After a significant amount of time attempting to perfect our ideas, going out to film and bringing footage back and so forth we began to realize that due to timing and the strict limit of how long our open can and should be we had to cut out half of our ideas for a stylized opening similar to SE7EN's. Therefore we were unable to make use of the props we originally wanted like the passports, news paper cut outs etc and focused all of our energies into perfecting our narrative with the bag swap idea. in the end we had to improvise using left over and thought to be "useless" shots to make up for the stylized shots we were now missing. Thanks to Ellie's brilliant editing skills and background in film studies she managed to use a number of effects (Red colored and deliberate shaken shots.) to make our shots look as weird and distorted to match the soundtrack I created using Soundtrack pro.

Research | Using Soundtrack

We tested out sounds in soundtrack pro in order to understand the use of background music and foley sounds.

I used the tracks to overlap sounds and see what works and how they interact with each other and the volumes of each in order to create my own track with the provided sounds. This was very useful when it came to doing our own soundtrack for the opening because we understood how the program works.

Editing | Effects

We used a red effect for our stylised shots throughout our narrative this was achieved by 

I think this is effective because it adds a mysterious and confusing effect to the intro, which is how we want the audience to feel so that they are interested and want to watch more of the film. It's used to draw them in and add a difference to the opening.