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
"Audiences are both a product of social context … and a
response to a particular media provision"-Denis McQuail
... 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 gratifications 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. Socioeconomic Status The majority of social realist films are produced by indie companies, and therefore do not have the budget to afford mass mainstream marketing campaigns, leading to exhibition in mainly arthouse and indie cinemas (independent deals), and sometimes film festivals. The average film-goer does not really attend these, as most people go to mainstream cinemas. The main people who attend arthouse cinemas are looking for out of the ordinary films and experiences, or are academically inclined critics, or are in the industry themselves, making the films challenging content more accessible to them as they can employ advanced media language. Even though uses and gratification theory suggests that the social classes being represented in films make up the audiences, this is not always the case for social realist films, as they usually receive major critical praise from high-standing critics, as they include more sophisticated themes/ideologies/representations than many mainstream films. This suggests that ABC1 audiences would find appeal in them, though C1C2DE audiences could still find appeal through identification. (source of information) Counter-Hegemony Gramsci was a 1930's Italian Marxist who argues that the ways in which the elite bourgeoisie dominates wealth and power is not only through legislative and physical force, but through culture, by distributing hegemonic ideologies and representations, leading to wider cultural acceptance of what is being propagated. However, as this is inherently unstable, it can be challenged by counter-hegemonic texts, such as ours strives to be. As we have included counter-typical representations of ethnicity (and wanted to include non-heteronormative representation) our film opening could be argued to be counter-hegemonic. As it is produced with a micro-budget by an indie company, it is not a product of the elite (The Big Six). As covered in other posts this does affect our ability to effectively distribute our film to a wide audience, so our product would likely appeal to a niche target audience, and is, essentially, a binary opposite of the films produced by conglomerates and many of their subsidiaries. Moodboard
