This is my AS Media Studies blog, in which me and my classmate Sam worked to make a film opening. This blog follows our journey from early preliminary exercises in basic filming techniques (e.g. continuity editing), extensive research on general film opening conventions, to coming up with our own film idea, followed by genre research. A somewhat weekly podcast, and blog posts follow this journey in close detail, wit shoot plans, reshoots, cancelled shoots, editing updates etc.
Our Film idea We came up with a few initial ideas, before eventually pitching the succesful idea The Journey to our teacher. Our film opening is an indie social realist production, taking heavy influence from Paddy Considine's Journeyman. It follows a young tennis professional, and as he prepares for an upcoming competition, and his partner is leaving him, he becomes the victim of a car crash, and as a result suffers severe brain damage, and will have to completely rebuild himself and his life. As we created sample scenes, re-filming all of them at least once, our technical skills developed, and we had done more research on the genre, leading to a better understanding the conventions.
... highlights some of the best parts of this blog are the genre conventions, particularly the analysis of My Beautiful Laundrette and Withnail and I openings; the final cut of The Journey, and the creative uses of technology sections of the evaluation questions. The FCPX TechTips web series which I created also shows the development from simple FCPX tools, to more advances and complicated ones which we used, in the form of a walkthrough guide
This is the final cut of our film opening The Journey, a social realist indie production following an abusive professional tennis player who must rebuild himself and his life after he suffers brain damage in a car accident. Taking influence form social realists such as Paddy Considine's Journeyman and Tyrannosaur, and older films like My Beautiful Laundrette and Withnail and I. Our primary target audience is males aged 18-25, and females of the same age being our secondary target audience. We would hope for a BBFC rating of 15 to allow for a larger audience, but it is likely that it would be pushed to an 18 (like This is England, Sweet Sixteen and Tyrannosaur). Changes since the last rough cut: the audio has been levelled, and more ambient sound has been added The idents were also added
Sound:
different cars driving by sound effect
using the volume levels to keep it even
foley sound of panting
camera whir sound removed
dog barking sound added more successfully
dialogue at the end matches with the visuals, and the "good afternoon" was cut for verisimilitude
music in the car volume has been fixed
dialogue audio is quieter now
the phone ringing is also quieter and less jarring now
audio fade at end
Titles:
there was a wonky title at the start, that has now been fixed
the film title has been put after the car crash before the light flare - look better. Also made longer so looks less like an inter-title
Editing:
more match cuts in the first cross-cut scene, this adds more meaning to the scene, showing the connection between the 2 characters
trims were made so that it is closer to the 2 minute mark
reactions to the news he will not play tennis again are shown
To summarize each convention, we made vodcasts ... General Conventions 1: Idents, companies, production context ...
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short audio visual clips played before films
first thing to see at a film opening
one of the simplest area of film openings
showing their brand to the audience
usually 3 company idents to spread the risks
usual to be 1 - 5 secondslong per ident
idents for conglomerate or subsidiaries are longer than indie idents
a lot of production companies competing
Big Six are dominant both in distribution and production
... General Conventions 2: Titles research ...
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a method where film credit production companies
about 20 - 30 titles
there can be exception, in the Mexican or The Wicked Man there we only see under 10 titles
at high end tentpole movies everything is pushed to the back so the titles start after the movie
usually about 3 mins long
in title sequence you find a lot of signifiers
exposition what the genre of the movie is going about
different positioning
different size font for titles
... ... General Conentions 3: Sound, genre signification ...
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audio bridge between titles (eg Bride of Chucky, Baby Driver)
ambient and Foley sound for verisimilitude (The Mexican, The Quiet Place, Baby Drive, Chucky)
music can be diegetic or non-diegetic - often used to signify genre/target audience (eg Baby Driver and Chucky)
music is not usually continuous - fades in and out (eg Baby Driver)
sound can signify setting (eg Submarine)
Can be used to build tension/narrative enigma (eg The Mexican, Drive and Chucky)
Institution aspect - OSTs
... General Conventions 4: 1st shot
... ...
balance between exposition and narrative enigma (eg The Mexican, This is England)
Mis-en-scene for exposition (keep brief)
Setting/period (This is England, Submarine, Spectre)
ABC1C2DE?
incorporate elements of the narrative (eg Baby Driver)
framing (anchoring, rule of thirds, eg L4yer Cak3)
inter titles (break up panning shots, exposition, signify genre)
conventionally and challenging convention (Spectre)
... General Conventions 5: Central protagonist and narrative ... ...
Uses and gratifications theory - identification (Submarine)
Todorov 5 point narrative (Submarine)
Counter+stereotypes - realistic representation (eg Molly Pretty in Pink)
Binary opposition (eg Bridget Jones Diary)
Archetypes (Bond)
Narrative enigma + voiceover (Bond, The Mexican, Drive, Baby Driver)
Amount of time the camera spends on protagonist/first character introduced - cutting back to protagonist - reactions, rule of thirds(Drive)
iconography as part of narrative (Baby Driver)
establishing/panning shots + tracking (Bond)
Todorv's 5 point narrative (from DB media blog)
... ...
set dressing, props, lighting(high/low-key?) (Submarine, Need fro Speed, This is England)
Makeup (Baby Driver)
costumes and iconography (Baby Driver, This is England, Submarine)
accents and sound (This is England, Submarine)
exposition v narrative enigma, also subverting expectation/body language (Mean Girls, Baby Driver, Need for Speed)
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... General Conventions 7: Transition to main film ...
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represented from Todorov's Narrative theory
it suggests that it follows a 3 part equilibrium structure
this equilibrium is disrupted by something (binary opposition)
then reaches a solution when equilibrium is restored
... General Conventions 8: Other points ..
... Genre Conventions After doing all this research on general conventions, we came up with our film idea, and made a pitch. Our film was inspired by Paddy Considine's 2018 Journeyman, which I saw at a British and Irish Film Festival here in Luxembourg - an indie social realist film. Following this decision we did case studies on these indie social realist films:
... I saw/ I did A large part of social realist films is to portray darker themes of real life with accurate representation - this in itself challenges more conventional aspects of studio productions, which are created to make as much money as possible. However, we aimed to follow most of the conventions of the social realist genre. This presentation goes through the conventions we followed and changed from other social realist films:
How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media text? ... What I cover in this post:
Different ways films can engage with audiences
Uses and Gratifications theory (applied to 2 case studies, Tyrannosaur and Jurassic Park)
Stuart Hall's theory of readings
Intertextuality
how different films achieve distribution
Our target audience (and how we target them)
different types of distribution (conglomerates vs. indies)
digitisation, disruption and convergence
Web 2.0
How we would distribute our film
... Creative use of technologies: This is my creative input, the points covered are:
how different films achieve distribution
conglomerates vs. indies
different types of distribution (wide release, self-distribution, film festivals, digital, theatrical)
how budget/funding affects distribution (government agency finding/subsidy vs conglomerates, cultural value)
For creative use of technologies I recreated an episode of the game show "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?", where I appear on a celebrity edition as the director of an upcoming indie film The Journey.
Web 2.0 Web 2.0 describes how the internet has become driven by users, converging the line between producer and consumer. An example of this is user-generated content, like the fan-art that was made for the Cornetto Trilogy, or the poster for Hinterland which was also fan-made. This web 2.0 theoretically allow indies more of a chance at achieving successful distribution online, by setting up twitters, instagrams and being able to engage with audiences directly. We did this through our Instagram page, and the different software/online resources which we used throughout, shown in this vodcast (also used in the evaluation question 4): ... OUR TARGET AUDIENCE Gender/Age Primary target audience: males, 18-25 Secondary target audience: females, 18-25 Initially we wanted our film to be a 12+, but we did some research on the BBFC ...
... Because nearly every indie social realist film we looked at received an 18 or 15 rating, we would hope for a 15+, but it is likely that our production would also be pushed to an 18. To put this into some context, these are some of the rating Big Six/Subsidiaries received:
... As the main character is male, uses and gratification theory would suggests that a primarily male target audience would be interested in this film as they would either identify with the protagonist, or aspire to be like him. The other central character is his partner, Cathy, and she is a significant enough character to draw in a secondary female target audience. Ethnicity We have an ethnically diverse cast (Caucasian, Chinese, Indian), and as caucasian is the hegemonic demographic targeted, we wanted to both represent and target multiple ethnicities. This is something we found to be conventional of the social realist genre (My Beautiful Laundrette, Slumdog Millionaire), and helps to widen our target audience. Sexuality Initially we wanted to have non-heteronormative representation (taking influence form My Beautiful Laundrette), with the protagonist, Tanay, being with another man, but due to casting issues and a need to film we had to scrap this idea and include heteronormative representation.
... 2B How might it achieve distribution?
"Film distribution is the process of making a film available for viewing by an audience. This is normally the task of a professional film distributor, who would determine the marketing strategy for a film, the media by which a film is to be exhibited or made available for viewing, and who may set the release date."
(Wikipedia) Some of the different types of distribution:
Theatrical
Television
Personal home viewing (DVDs, Video on Demand, Download e.g. iTunes)
... The Big Six/Big Five: Although this is debated (Disney recently sealed the deal with 20th Century Fox now owning it, but Lionsgate is sometimes included) the Big Six are all present in the top 10 distributors of 2018 list. They are the largest conglomerates of the film industry in both production and distribution.
Buena Vista (Walt Disney)
Warner Bros.
Universal
Sony/Columbia
20th Century Fox
Paramount
top 10 distributors of 2018
Their films typically use the tentpole model (costing more then $100m), and the majority of their films are extremely commercially successful - you can see that collectively they own about 80% of the market in shares.
Wired episode with Ryan Reynolds
Marketing campaigns are often extremely expensive, and the star names which usually feature in their films are a large part of this (star billing): trailers are made for national and international audiences, cast and directors appear on chat shows, but cheaper more inventive methods are also used by conglomerates similar to indies. Youtube videos, with cast members are often a popular way of raising awareness of a star featuring in a upcoming film: for example Ryan Reynolds appeared in an episode of Wired a little before Deadpool 2 started being talked about .In the game celebrities see the web's most searched questions about them - these videos are cheap to make and don't take much time to produce/consume. ... Indies: Indie companies like Warp don't even make it near the top 10 lists when it comes to distribution, but there are ways they achieve distribution:
Arthouse cinemas
Direct to Itunes
Direct to stream
Straight to DVD
Self-distribution (e.g. through social media)
The main reason indie films often don't even get a wide release or even a theatrical release is due to budgets being too small. Even though the BFI offers out grants to many indie films for production and distribution, it is difficult to generate interest in small budget films when films like Black Panther, with extensive SFX and large action sequences, are also showing in the cinema.
Some other reasons though may be more to do with the actual content of the films: controversial topics that may include darker themes are not as commercially viable as films do not have political or controversial themes, making it difficult to generate interest in a film, drawing in only niche audiences.
This is England - an example
This is England takes the point of view of a young boy who joins the skinheads in the 80s. There is cussing throughout (C-word and F-bombs), and the climax involves a violent race-based assault. Although the message of this film is condemning this kind of violence, the brutality of it would be too difficult for a 4 quadrant audience to digest.
... Digitisation, Disruption and Convergence:
As technology is constantly advancing, production, distribution and exhibition are becoming increasingly cheaper and more accessible to more people - expensive reels no longer have to be bought to make films, and even our production has been made digitally.
This allows films with micro-budgets to have a greater chance at distribution - Le Donk and Scor-Zay-Zee is an example of this, with a micro budget it still managed to have a theatrical trailer and then a straight to DVD release. Professional equipment used was extremely limited. An example which took it even further is Hinterland, which had a budget of only £10k, filmed using a 15 year old camera and then released in indie cinemas with director Q+A sessions. The film was never released on DVD, but given a simultaneous release on iTunes. The film definitely achieved some successful distribution, as it made it onto a top indie films of the year list. As it is so easy now for anyone to make their own films relatively inexpensively and self-distribute them, the term convergence is used to reference this: the line between producer and consumer is blurring as cheaper technology becomes available. The importance of Netflix and Amazon Prime in this disruption cannot be overlooked, as they offer films directly to audiences, without theatrical releases, and are still massively successful. This threatens theatres, as if people are able to watch Oscar winning films such as Roma at home on Netflix, there will become increasingly less need/want for people to go to cinemas. Although this disrupts conglomerates, it can be beneficial for indies, who are able to market and sell their films completely online, like the example of Hinterland, which did have a mall theatre run, but the majority of its marketing was one online through twitter. ... How we would distribute our film:
Self-distribution would be a good method for the distribution of our film for some of the following reasons:
Do not have the budget for a theatrical release
No star billing
Digitisation has made it easier for creators to use innovative methods to cheaply promote their films
Darker themes as possibility for a high age rating significantly lower audience interest, making it more of a niche audience film
As we have a micro-budget for our production, it is unlikely that a large distribution company would be willing to help distribute our film. Due to the accessibility of social media however, getting in touch with a film festival has been shown to be possible, which would get the film viewed by critics and journalists who could generate discussion of the film in the press. We created twitter and instagram pages to promote our film, similar to Hinterland or the Cornetto trilogy, and the example of Coz Greenhop showed how successful a method this can be in generating interest in a film.
Making deals with arthouse cinemas to do director Q+A sessions which would be mutually beneficial, accompanied by a simultaneous Video on Demand/iTunes/digital release of the film has shown to be a successful method in promoting a film and achieving distribution (Wandering Rose, and Hinterland).
... (SAM'S WORK) ... ... This is Sam's online job interview covering the same topic ...
