BBFC Age ratings

 After viewing a BBFC document, we were mde aware that our film was a PG, since there was no bad language used. There was little gore (only a little blood from the mouth), but we were aiming for a rating of 12A if we were to carry on. We would meet this standard, by using a lot of bruising, cuts and blood, along with many more weapons, and include little bad language. Our protagonists would endure a lot of pain, and injury as well as the antagonist. We found this out by Karlton 

Shooting schedule

We have decided to film on the 2nd January where we are all free, and are able to make it to Cosby. We have also decided that we will meet up at around 12  and will finish around 8 so we can have a a good time deciding on what shots look best, what actions work best, and what fight moves work best. We have decided that it was best for us to be the ones in the film as we all know how exactly we want the actions and fight scene to look.

More tutorials

I looked online for help using the Imovie, i thought this would be good to search for me as it would be my first time using this editing software. I thought it would be best for me to have an idea of what we were using and how to use the software effectively, rather than wasting a lesson where we could be editing we spend trying to figure out we have to do.

Social Network Survey Results

After putting the link to the survey on Facebook I have had a few results. The results that I got where:
That people like fast pace editing as it gives them a sense of excitement and joy.
That people like to see the use of weapons, as it gives an even more rush of excitement and adrenaline as they want to see who survives and likes the idea of seeing people rush from bullets and whatever is flying in their direction.
People would like to see more girl leads, as most action films have male leads. Although action films do get a lot of publicity and does enchant to a lot of people, they feel that they are very masculine base as almost all films have male leads.


I feel that after this we need to make sure that we have a  main women would be the protagonist. We will still have a male involved as that will help with the male audience, and possibly help with the connections within the film.
We will also make sure that there is some fast pace editing, especially within the fight scene. We want the fight scene to look realistic but it will also bring some excitement for the audience that is watching.

Preliminary Task

We did this in a two hour lesson in and around school. We went to the music tech block and used one of them rooms. We used the 180 degree rule (which is where the camera only shoots 180 degrees of the setting you are in, and the characters stay either on the right or left side of the screen where they don't change sides.),

match on action (this a editing technique where there is a shot that cuts to another to portray the action of the shot in the first shot.),  and shot reverse shot (this is another editing technique that is used in conversations or when people look at people, they either use point of view shot, or over the shoulder shot.) . Doing this has helped us with techniques on the way use the camera. We also have more of a chance of using more camera shots as we did close ups on Karlton and my hand and face.  Faith was the one in control of the camera as me and Karlton are in the camera shots. We felt that Karlton should walk as we all felt that he had a better walk than I did.

Costume Ideas

There are ideas that i have for costume.
The hero would wear lighter clothes and look smart. They would be there day to day clothes, they would also have neutral make-up. Unlike the villain that would wear dark clothing which would usually be mostly black, and be less smart that the hero. There hair would usually be slick back and up in a pony tail if a women, and short spikey hair if a man. Women would usually wear darker make-up, for example smokey eyes.
I thought this as most people in action films are like this. We can usually tell the difference  from who is the antagonist, and the protagonists.

Opening textual analysis - Skyfall

I have decided to do another analysis. I have choose to do it on Skyfall in the James Bond saga as they are well known action films.
At the beginning of this film the screen is fully blurred, but we see a silhouette. This the well known James Bond, as we can tell by the stance.

The more he walks forward the clearer he gets meaning when he reaches the camera it is a shallow depth shot. During the walk forward we hear the non-diegetic constant buzzing most likely from wind instruments which usually conotates a sign of danger.
There is then an over the shoulder shot over the door which is slightly open and with lights on which usually makes the audience feel panicked as this usually shows that there is some sort of danger about to happen.

 When he gets to the room the non-diegetic music speeds up to  give us as the audience a sense of dread and fright. In the room there are a lot of filler lights to try and make the scene look more dingy.
Bond in most of the shots taken is in the centre. This shows that he is the main character and that he is very important to the story.
There is then a chase scene, which is very typical in a high end action film scene. There is  non diegetic string music in this gets louder and gets higher during the course of the chase scene. This shows the intensity of the scene. There are drum beats that start playing when shooting starts out between the antagonists and the protagonists, this shows the anticipation. During the shooting there are diegetic screams, this gives people a sense of fear, as well as blurred people running away.

The antagonists are wearing darker coloured suits; such as brown, black and less smart than the protagonist. The protagonists are wearing lighter colours such as grey and white and look very smart. 

The antagonists have big machine guns which is usual for them in action films. While the protagonists usually have the smaller hand held glocks. 

There is one strand in this opening which is getting the antagonists, and it is 3rd person. The audience of this film will be teenagers and those who are a fan of the Bond films as there are many out there. This means that there could be the social solidarity of the uses and gratification theory would be used more, as peoples family and friends are telling people how good the films are. 

Focus group

We asked a few people on what they thought the conventions on what action films should have, and what they thought would be interesting to include in our production. These are the results and the specific questions we asked them.

Discussion

In this audio chat, we discuss many ideas that we have had, and the ideas that we believe might work and however, might not in contrary. In this voice recording we talk about some of the ideas we have in for our production. We mostly discuss the fight scene, and the beginning of the production of what happens. We decided that there will be 3 main characters, and that their relationship will be siblings.

Audience Profiling

Our typical audience is going to be those between the ages of 14-25, as there will be some blood, and there may be some things that younger people won't want to see. The film production will involve attractive women so the main gender audience will be male. This will help get the audience of both genders. There will be a bruising and a fight scene, so the younger generation may get scared. I feel that the audience will enjoy our idea of films as it is a genre that teenagers and older like to watch. We know this by most action films are 15s.
The different films in this type of genre are usually aimed at those above 14.

Fight scene practise

Today we went outside and tried to practice some fight scene moves. We took it in turns to practice fight scene. We all made sure we practiced one thing with each other. We also discussed more on what would happen when we actually film the fight scene. We have found some moves that we will use and others that we won't. 

social networking

We have decided that we will do another questionnaire that we will put on our social media sites, and hopefully we will get a large range of people answering the questions.
We are working together to make the questions that would be on the questionnaire.
I have put the questionnaire on my Facebook account, to help get a range of people answering questions.

Questionnaire results.

 3 said; What do you first think of when you see the words - 'Action Film.'  The results show that people would associate 'Action' with -
Violence, fighting, climax and blood.


This helped me to realise what elements people expect to see in an Action Film. Although we don't really want our production to be too cliché, and similar to other films. We still want there to be aspects of the film that the genre theory will help identify this genre.After the results we see some of the things we should include in the production.

4 said; How do Action films make you feel? The results showed me that -
75% felt Excited
18% felt Tense
7% felt Nervous


These results show that the most feelings of our audience would be excited. Although we don't know what makes the audience feel excited. We could have improved this questionnaire by asking what in the action films makes the people feel excited. Then we would know exactly what to focus in the two minute production.

5 said; How important do you think these items are for an Action genre? (1 being the LEAST important.)
Results:
61 points for an AXE
52 points for a KNIFE
46 points for a SWORD
43 points for a GUN
38 points for EXPLOSIONS


Having the axe as the top of the list shows that this is one of the main weapons that people think are rather important. We as a group have decided that we may use this, or the use of knives which was the second from top important weapon. We will use this to show the type of genre we decided to do as our production.



 9 said; What do you think is important for an Action film?
Results:
 26.67% of people said that Jump-scares were important.
 53.33% said explosions
 20.00% said violence
33.33% said blood
86.67% said a unique story line



With the results being high for the unique story line shows that we have to focus on this part of the script when we write it. This also means that the ideas have to be original. We can be influenced by people,films, directors etc... We will not be able to use explosions which is another thing people think of to associate with action films. but we will be able to use blood which is also important for people to see during action films.


 11 said; IDEA: one evening, three people sit at a dinner table together enjoying a meal as they socialise. The room stands silent. You can only hear the sound their cutlery scraping across their plates. Two of the characters look at each other and look back at the third character on the other side of the table. A fight lashes out. Please give some of your opinions, and tell us how we can improve this idea :)
Results:
One person stated -

'One character could go to the toilet, or go to move away, turning their back, and then the fight starts, as he hears them move towards him, he turns around and comes face to face with the knife. FIGHTTT.'

I feel that this could be a good idea if filmed and edited properly, but they shouldn't be face to face with the knife. As it could be dangerous and if we were to do a close up of the persons face, their expressions may turn out wrong and not look the way tit was meant to. I really like the idea of someone walking away with their back to the other people in the scene.

Another stated -

'Maybe have a small argument before hand then the silence cuts and the fight follows so that the audience have some insight as to why the fight is happening but not too much insight, they can't know everything. but sound alike an amazing idea :)'

I like the idea of the audience knowing a bit about why the characters in the film are having a fight scene, nut not knowing all, as the rest of the film/production if were to be longer than 2 minutes would be finding out exactly what happened. . Although that story will need to be unique. I feel that the silence shouldn't be too long as it could cause too much tension if were to put that there.

All together I found that we should use some sort of weapon in the production. We should also focus the main characters in the first 30 seconds - 1 minute of the clip. I also found that people enjoy watching action films, so we should find out what the audience finds exciting about these types of films. The results of the questionnaire show that the use of blood, this makes our idea of using blood even more dominant for the production.

Theatrical Research:

Karlton armstrong  and faith starie  We worked together through this research as there was a lot to do.  I  did the audience theories, and the representation theories, and me and faith worked together on the Narrative theories as we both used Knight and day as an example.

Questionnaire

We helped Faith came up with questions to put on our questionnaire that was emailed to people around the school. This is our questionnaire.

Conventions

I have found that some sort of weapon is used in action films. We as group have thought that we will use a weapon, although it will not be deadly, and we will not hurt each other with it. We have decided that a knife may be the best bet to use as the weapon in our film, especially as we are not able to get a hold of other weapons, and we will not be able to use other dangerous weapons.

                                                                                                                                                 

During action film openings there are usually a small fight scene, for example the opening of skyfall, and fast and furious 7.These have led us to want us to put a small fight scene in this two minute opening. During the scene the fight may be small but it is very dramatic, which shows the convention of the genre, it also helps identify the genre of the film. .

We also found that the princess is never really in the first few minutes of the film, the antagonist and protagonist are always the main characters in the opening clips, so we as a group have decided to follow this convention.

Splitting the work between us.

Today we have decided that we are going to split the work between us, so that we can get the work done sooner and get to the filming of the clip.

Talking about ideas

We had even more ideas today. We talked about keeping the fight scene in the dinning room but not start the two minute clip with that. We would start with the guest of the house walking down the street towards them, he opens the door to the house to find the two house owners fighting, and almost getting hit by something flying towards him.  We have decided that we will all think of ideas round the setting of the dinning room. We have also decided that we will most likely use Faith's dining room as we feel that her house is the biggest out of all of ours, and that it also more of a open plan which means that there is more room for us to follow the convention of action by having a good fight scene.

Sub-genre of action

There a lot of conventions for action films, but they do have sub-genres. One of their sub-genre's is Action Adventure - this sub genre can take place in another world, or shot as though it is set in the future. The hero is usually human and the villain is usually a different creature or someone from the future or past trying to stop what is going on. Some examples of these sub-genres are Men in Black, Avatar.
Another sub genre of action films are fantasy action;
These are mostly super hero films, they are classed as action as there is a hero who tries to good but there may be a fight scene. The conventions of this film genre is that both hero and villain are some sort of creature or thing that is non-human as well as being human. For example Spiderman - Spiderman was the hero but there where many villains that had other identities (the big lizard). As well as the is usually hero costume would be brighter and lighter than the villains whose would usually be black.
Action-thriller is another sub genre of action. This types films are usually darker than the normal action films. There will probably be a lot more use of blood and more dangerous weapons.