Evaluation Task 7 - Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the finished product?

Evaluation Task 6 - What have you learned about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Evaluation Task 5 - How did you attract/address your audience?

Evaluation Task 4 - Who would be the audience for your media product?

Our target audience is 16+ males because women don't tend to watch as many thrillers as guys. Especially when it's to do with heists and killing innocent people. This comic strip shows different types of males such as the pig who is a lazy middle aged man; a penguin who is a polite older gentleman; a pigeon who is a clever older man; a lazy teenager; a teenage gangster and a teenage rich kid. This is to show that any men above 16 no matter what they are like as a person, will enjoy our film.

These are interview I gathered from random people to see what types of film they like and if they would go an watch my thriller:

Evaluation Task 3 - What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Our overall idea is of a group of criminal "amateurs" who carry out a heist. They get stitched up and more "professional" people take the briefcase off them. They then have to find a way to get the briefcase back which would prove to be difficult due to the high position that these Mafia-esque men have. It's even harder when the police are interfering.

When coming up with the idea of a high intensity heist with blood and action, I was picturing a Hollywood/New York setting and loads of police on the hunt for the thieves. 

In our opening title sequence, we see a single man with his driver steal the briefcase that the "amateurs" have just stolen. His sort of character is similar to the Mafia where he can't be touched as he is so high up. This is why the aggressive female character (Zell) gets stopped by her male accompany (adam) before shooting the "professional" man (James). Adam knows that if Zell shoots James, all of the Mafia will come after them.

The rest of the film would therefore show moments inside the Mafia's base which would be a very big  expensive house and very heavily guarded. There would also be a lot of high speed chases with fight scenes including weapons and explosions. This sort of film would normally need a huge budget, but as our piece is more stylised, we would want a smaller company that features independent Hollywood films. 

Obviously we would need a company with a good budget to be able to pull off the effects, as well as using money for the marketing and distribution of the film. A films success is mostly reliant on its marketing campaigns as thats how the world becomes aware of your film. Without a successful campaign, you are unlikely to make money and have a successful film.

A group of thieves assemble to pull of the perfect diamond heist. It turns into a bloody ambush when one of the men turns out to be a police informer. As the group begins to question each other's guilt, the heightening tensions threaten to explode the situation before the police step in.

Miramax is an American entertainment company known for distributing independent and foreign films headquartered in Santa Monica, California. Miramax have a average budget from between $5 and $30 million which would cover the amount effects that we want. They also have a strong connection with Quentin Tarantino who I feel would be the perfect director for our film. However, although Miramax have produced a film similar to ours and they have produced a few action/thriller films like Pulp Fiction, they might not be suitable to distribute as they haven't done many films similar to ours.

http://www.miramax.com 

Warner Brothers is one of, if not the biggest distribution company in the world a long with Paramount, MGM, 21st Century Fox, Universal, Columbia and Walt Disney.

Warner Bros. have distributed many films and of all genres, however their most popular seem to be action or thrillers.

Two films that are very similar to ours are Heat and The Town.

Master criminal Neil McCauley (Robert De Niro) is trying to control the rogue actions of one of his men, while also planning one last big heist before retiring. Meanwhile, Lieutenant Hanna (Al Pacino) attempts to track down McCauley as he deals with the chaos in his own life, including the infidelity of his wife (Diane Venora) and the mental health of his stepdaughter (Natalie Portman). McCauley and Hanna discover a mutual respect, even as they try to thwart each other's plans.

Doug MacRay (Ben Affleck) leads a band of ruthless bank robbers and has no real attachments except for James (Jeremy Renner), who -- despite his dangerous temper -- is like a brother. Everything changes for Doug when James briefly takes a hostage, bank employee Claire Keesey. Learning that she lives in the gang's neighborhood, Doug seeks her out to discover what she knows, and he falls in love. As the romance deepens, he wants out of his criminal life, but that could threaten Claire.

Warner Bros. have a huge budget and would be able to create incredible special effects. On top of that they too can also get any director they want at a click of a finger. Possible directors would be Quentin Tarantino or Christopher Nolan. Their marketing and distribution campaigns are always hugely successful because they have the money to do whatever they want and they have a huge fan base globally. I think that Warner Bros. would be the most suited to our film.

Lionsgate is a Canadian-American film production/distribution studio and a division of Lions Gate Entertainment. It is the largest and most successful mini-major film studio in North America. It focuses on foreign and independent films and has distributed various commercially successful film series including The Twilight Saga, The Hunger Games, The Divergent Series, Saw and The Expendables.

I feel that Lionsgate is similar to Miramax except they have more money. All of their commercially successful series have been action/thriller films and they are well established in Hollywood. They also have a base in the UK if I wanted to shoot there. I would rather Lionsgate that Warner Bros. because of the track record it has with independent films which I feel our film is.

Universal Studios is an American film studio and is one of Hollywood's "Big Six" film studios. They have had mass success with film series such as Jurassic Park, Fast and Furious and Despicable Me. They are also the only studio to have released three billion-dollar films in one year with Furious 7, Jurassic World and Minions.

I love this studio because it distributes a variety of films and they have a lot of money, however I don't think that they would be suitable for our film because they don't tend to distribute thrillers films that involve heists.

Evaluation Task 2 - How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Due to our piece involving more than one character, there are a variety of social groups that are presented.

Zell is subverting to the stereotype of a criminal mainly because she is a woman working in a dominant male profession. She is also very young which is unusual because criminals tend to have experience. She knows of her inferiority and so uses aggression and power to fight her way up the ranks. This is illustrated by the intelligent Mise-en-Scene in our product. In terms of her costume, it was the same as the rest of the group because we were portraying that they are a team. Although this was the reason for Zell to wear this costume, a boiler suit and trainers with her hair in a platt made her more manly, further showing that she is aware of her subversion from the stereotype of a criminal and so she tries to fit in. 

I would also add that because of this she would then be considered to be conforming to a "tom-boy" stereotype. The idea of proving her status again comes across when she attempts to shoot James, however she is stopped by the leader and put back in her place.

Through camera angles and positioning, we see that she attempting dominance over the leader and trying to challenge him. 

Throughout their argument she is always standing over him, blaming him and taking down to him. We showed this by shooting her from a low angle so that she towered over the others. Close-ups were used in order to show her aggression however we didn't want to use an extreme close-up because we would have lost the effect of her standing over Adam.

It was important for us while editing to have a fast-paced scene in order to create chaos and show the hectic atmosphere that comes about when carrying out a robbery however in terms of camera time, we gave Zell the most because she is subverting to the female stereotype and seems to be in charge of the group.

During the argument we see that Zell is more powerful as she is brave enough to shout at the group leader and she doesn't see to back down when he responds. Therefore that gave us the incentive to allow her more camera time.

Adam is conforming to a stereotypical criminal because of his age and his regional identity. He has a northern accent, specifically from Liverpool and the stereotype linked with Scousers is that they steal a lot. It's also common for them to be quite aggressive in tense situation which is exactly what we intended to show during this sequence. 

His age is also conforming to the stereotype of a criminal because he looks around mid-thirties which shows that he is not only strong but has experience.

His position in the van is at the back and so that he seems to be keeping an eye on the whole group, however as Zell is challenging him, the camera shows her towering over him which takes some of the power from Adam. 

Even though he retaliates back the low angle makes him less powerful.

As he is the leader, an audience would expect him to be in control but he is far from that and this can be depicted from the fact that Zell has more camera time than him. We still get a sense of his leadership when he helps Dave who is bleeding out as we used a high angle shot to show that Adam had a way higher status than Dave. 

Moreover this highlights that Zell is actually very subversive as she is the only character that gets a complementing camera angle.

Despite the fact the Zell is constantly attacking Adam, Adam is holding his ground which helps to show how he is trying to hold on to his rank within the group.

Mike is subverting from the stereotype of a male criminal because of how quiet he is. Although he is making sure Dave doesn't die he is still very quiet up until towards the end when he tries to calm down Zell and Adam. He is however conforming to the stereotype of being the "nice" member of the group. Adam and Zell are too busy arguing to notice the severity of Dave's injury and Mike is the only one really to attend to his medical needs. 

Mike is sat down towards the front of the van with Dave and because of the high angles used during the close-ups of Adam and Zell he appears very small and weak which again supports that he is subverting from normal criminals. His speech is very limited which shows signs of lacking confidence however he does settle down the group for Daves benefit.

Dave is conforming to the stereotype of being the clever member of the group. We hear at the start that he is downloading something which shows that he is intelligent. We see he also gets shot and although that doesn't show much about his stereotype, it is conforming to the concept that its always the weakest that die first. His ethnicity is Asian and so this also conforms to his clever stereotype as Asians are considered as the cleverest race in the world. He also seems to have medical knowledge when directing Mike to put pressure on the wound.

We used his pain and suffering as quick fire-shots during the argument to fill in any empty gaps as t would hold the intensity of the situation.

James is conforming to the stereotype of a "mafia" criminal because of the way he dealt with the situation. He lets the "amateurs" do the dirty work and then strolls over to pick up the briefcase and leave. His relaxed and clam nature conforms him tot hat stereotype.

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

Evaluation task 1 from Haydon Downing

Final Product - Allegiance

(Turn off subtitles)

Getting our voiceovers

In the beginning of our title sequence we had the idea to do voice overs, in order for the audience to understand the narrative. We started off by writing a script and then proceeded to get the actual voice overs from our cast. 

Below is a video that briefly summarizes the process:  

Editing Day #4

As a group we felt that we were slightly behind the other groups in terms of how close we were to a finished product. This was mainly down to the fact that right from the start we din't focus on one specific scene. Another factor to this is that our firsts scene is very high tempo and requires a lot of snap-shots. 

Although Dasha and I had been watching Ashen and Alen in order to learn more about editing, we felt that we would be more useful if we completed a task at the same time. We knew that at the beginning of our sequence we wanted voice-overs playing on a black screen, illustrating the story unfolding before they jump in the van. At first we wanted to wait until we finished editing and then record our actors because it would mean that we could just add it on fairly quickly, however as the editing process was taking longer than expected, Dasha and I took it upon ourselves to start writing the script for our actors. Here is what we came up with so far:

Research for Titles and Credits

http://www.artofthetitle.com/title/snatch/


Snatch (2000)
                                                                                                                                                              

In this opening title sequence for snatch, the credits and titles are shown in a very creative way. The way that they used freeze frames to introduce the characters was very interesting and eye-catching which is originally why we planned to do a similar opening. 

We didn't want to make it too stylistic so to make it more modern, we decided to still use freeze-frames but to have narration describe the characters instead. It is very similar to ours because they show the first few credits on a completely black screen. We intend to show all of our titles on a black screen and to have a voice over of the robbery itself. 

We can see from these pictures that the production and distributing company Columbia  Pictures will always be the first credit to be given as they are responsible for the film. The next credit is for SKA Films who invested money into this film i.e. a co-producing company.                              
 One way of getting people to come and watch your film is to include big names as selling points and to make sure that they appear early on in the credits so that people watching trailers will immediately be inclined to go and see the film when it comes out. 
Even before the actors have been credited, the names of Matthew Vaughn and Guy Ritchie will draw attention and interest towards the film.
                                      



The only other difference that we have is that we will have longer gaps between each credit. This film holds the credits for about 5 seconds and then fades out with the next title coming straight after. For our opening title we intend to show a credit for about 4 seconds and then have a gap of about 6-8 seconds depending on the length of the dialogue in that moment. The effect of this should hopefully be that the audience are dragged out of the sequence while at a point of tension which grabs their attention and makes sure that they are never bored.








Heat (1995)
The heat show its credits in a very basic way by fading from credit to credit. The style of the font used is similar to what we were thinking of using as well as the time frame between each credit. It is very relaxing for the audience to watch and it doesn't distract them from the sequence.

Big name attracts audience and is the most important credit so that goes first.

Any associating company will come straight after the first credit because they invested money into the film.

Production companies can also attract an audience such as when a single name like Matthew Vaughn is used, however names such as Forward Pass aren't generally known to an audience.

These are the stars of the film and will attract a huge audience. The reason they are left until last is because no matter how big the actors are, they wouldn't have been in the film without the companies paying for the film to be made.

         The title of the film is always left until last because the audience should be all sat      down by then which means that everyone will be able to remember the name of the film.

Editing Day #3

After wasting a lot of time yesterday switching between scenes, we decide to focus on at leat getting one scene complete. As we were stuck on which scene would be best to do, we came up with another idea. 
We realised that we had missed out 3/4 of our footage when cutting the scenes, so we went back through all of the footage to find exciting moments that we could cut into our scene at random points to make the scene hectic. As the scene was improvised, the lines weren't the same and so the order of the shots didn't matter too much as there was no line structure. We did however structure the shots we picked out in order of what happened first. 
Some of these shots included either really powerful lines or a moment of silence when Mike says "He's not gonna make it". 
On top of that, we pulled together shots of Dave bleeding to death and different looks that were exchanged between Zell and Adam. Obviously some of the footage wasn't great because the lines were improvised and the scene felt fake, however by taking out the good lines, we would now have the opportunity to piece together a really interesting scene.
We had all of these shots in a separate folder called "rough cuts" so that when we next come back to the editing suite, we can place the "rough cuts" into what we already edited and hope that it comes together nicely.

Here is evidence of our editing: