The Hit Opening Sequence

                This is mine and Michael's finished opening sequence to the film The Hit, hope you enjoy it.

Preliminary task

This is our preliminary task titled 'Sprite club' a short spoof of the cult classic Fight Club. We wanted something slightly different to everyone else's prelim task and James, one of the actors in this short came up with the idea of sprite club. The task helped us develop our camera work, figure out which angles worked and which did not as well as teaching us about the difficulties that we can be faced with when shooting on set, finding willing actors and organising shooting times where all the actors are available. This task also helped us to work on our continuity and taught us how difficult it can be to make sure that camera angles are consistent. We had a problem with a few shots we had taken being from a completely different eye line to the actor we had cast which obviously caused issues and went back to reshoot the footage from over his shoulder to help keep continuity which was a greatly beneficial lesson for my actual two minute opening as many of our shots are from the character's perspective.

evaluation question number 1

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

Evaluation question 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Within our media product there is very few social groups represented, with one being males and the other being young men. The representation of both of these social groups is ambiguous because there is no dialogue or interaction with others present in our opening. The representation of males is generally as well dressed, secretive and classy. The character is dressed in a dark suit and is shown listening to classic music which could show males a being cultured and slick. However our actor was rather lethargic in his movements and his stance, which was a choice made by us to show how males can be lumbering and awkward as well as smooth and composed. Also due to the nature of our opening's mise-en scene, the character is shown as being very secretive because he is in an underground boiler room and as the audience discovers wears a white hockey mask. This creates a dangerous air around the character and a sense of secrecy which makes the audience wary of him, which is often something society experiences around young men, particularly of the ages 17-25, although usually they are dressed in much simpler clothing, such as trackies or hoodies, we wanted to create that sense of wariness about someone who is dressed in a very respectable manner to challenge people's ideas about what they should be wary of. So the character is dressed as someone society would deem approachable and respectable but in fact be dangerous, this would hopefully shake the audiences' stereotypes of young men in suits and in turn make them more anxious which adds to the tension and suspense created by the opening. Another way we did this was by using the choice of music, most of society associate heavy metal or rap music with being dangerous but to see someone who gives off such an intimidating air of danger listening to classical music creates a confusion and uncertainty in the audience that will make the whole viewing more on edge even if they're unaware of it. This helps to represent the young man as an ordinary/upper class gentleman who is dangerous, which begs the question to the audience 'what do other well dressed young gentlemen do with their time' because this representation shows males who present themselves well as being dangerous and secretive.

Evaluation question 3

What kind of media institution might distribute your product?

One of the key things media distributors look at when deciding whether to distribute a media product is the profit that they can gain from it. Since our product is a low budget production that was made to entertain and not for profit that eliminates any conglomerates as means for distribution as they would not see it as a worthwhile investment due to very limited amount of net gain they would receive and the seriousness of the film means they could produce toys relating to films such as Disney will often do with films they produce which means they would generate very little ancillary revenue which would not appeal to them. Due to the elimination of all major conglomerates as options, we would have to either distribute through internet services such as Netflix, which have distributed other small production films such as submarine, or turn to small cinema screens. But because this film is mainly aimed at a male audience of 15-35 we would most likely turn to internet streaming sights such as Netflix because that way, it is accessible at all times and because our audience lead such busy lives but have near constant access to streaming sights they can watch our media product when they please and fit it around their busy lives. Also with the ever increasing audience that Netflix draws in, the film would receive a huge audience who may not all watch it the first time, but due to consistent use of the streaming service may decide to watch it the fifth or fourth time they go on it and then discuss it with their friends who may in turn watch it and as well tell their friends and so on and the film develops momentum through word of mouth. After being shown on internet streaming services like Netflix, companies such as Film4 may decide they want to play the film on their English TV channel which would provide nationwide exposure, this is dependent on how well the film does, but with previous experience showing films such as 'This is England' they would be accustomed to showing films from smaller, independent production companies which would make it viable for us to have our product distributed by them.

Another way for our film to be distributed is through hardware such as DVDs or Blu-ray, with the ever increasing capabilities of technology it is more likely that this would gain us only a small audience but with the small cost of DVDs in modern society, it is very cost effective for a small budget production and if stores such as HMV agree to stock it, it would still get decent exposure and due to the low price of DVDs, it could be sold cheaply so people would be more inclined to buy it.

These are the media institutions most likely to distribute our product.

evaluation question 4

Who would be the audience be for your media product?

The audience for our media product is male teenagers to middle aged men and film enthusiasts with an interest in smaller production films as well as any one who enjoys the action/thriller genre. So people who enjoyed such films as ‘Taken’ would enjoy our film and is who we are aiming our produced piece at. We think due to the high amounts of tension and suspense in the film it would appeal more to the action thriller audience because while parts of it may slip into the horror genre with large amounts of suspense and bloody scenes, the plan for the film that we envisioned revolved around generic conventions of the action genre such as car chases, fight scenes and shoot-outs. This film would obviously not be suitable for people under the age of 15 but is something we believe teenagers of that age would enjoy in the same way they enjoyed films such as ‘Fast and furious’. While we do appreciate that other audiences may take an interest, and fully recognise that females enjoy action films as well as males, the trend is that more males watch action films than females as we discovered by reading summaries of dissertations of university students who looked at the viewing habits of males vs females, and as such we aim our product as them. By making it available using distribution techniques such as streaming sights we make it available to busy modern day men who may not have time to go to the cinema to watch a film for two hours.

evaluation quesion 5

When making our film opening we decided that it would be mainly targeted at older teenage boys to middle aged men. We wanted to make our film opening as appealing to our chosen target audience as possible and so to do this we researched the genre preferences to do with age and gender.

We found that there tend to be, "women's films" and there are "men's films," and that; women’s films are not simply the stereotyped “romance” films.  They concern films where the story is told from the woman’s point of view, the woman is the clear protagonist or heroine, or the story centres around women and women’s issues.  Whereas “Men’s films”, which was more relevant to our film opening, tend to focus more on action, sex, violence/crime and competition.

With this knowledge we started to compare our original idea to other films made that were also targeted at a similar audience, for example films such as; Batman, the James Bond sagas, lethal weapon, and Taken. After the comparisons we found distinct similarities between all the films, which were; a dominant male protagonist, often a woman in distress that needs help, an arch nemesis or criminal that challenges the main protagonist, Violence, a sense of mystery and lastly an element of danger.

With all the information we had collected on our target audience, we made all the  decisions about the film around these findings, for example we casted our lead actor as a male, directly in the age group of our target audience, to immediately establish a similarity between the audience and the main protagonist, as well as this we also selected  the setting for our opening to be an old, dangerous, and abandoned boiler room, to appeal to the mystery and danger element of a film that our male audience would be interested in. 

Evaluation question 6

Evaluation question 7

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in progression from it to the full product?

Actor profile

Age: 17

Role: Lead actor, playing the role of John Bennett

What makes him suitable for the role;

Has no previous experience acting however he suits the physical appearance needed near perfectly and there is no spoken lines in our two minute opening and his face will barely be shown so very little to no experience will be required. We originally had someone who was within the age range that we were aiming for because we wanted to make it more believable, however due to some complications we had to use someone within the sixth form that we could access easily, and then later down the track this actor also unfortunately couldn't be in the film anymore so we have selected another student in our sixth form who has the correct build for the role.

 

Location research

With our original idea for the hotel as our location falling through we had to change what we wanted to do with our location. We took this opportunity to adapt our idea rather than just choosing another hotel, we decided to use an old boiler room under Wymondham High. This room had previously been used for a CSI type program run by the school which meant it had been made up to look as if a crime had been committed there with blood splatters on the walls, a sleeping bag on the floor, pizza boxes and glasses scattered around and this all added to the feel of it being lived in. The room made for a very suspicious mise-en scene because our character was so well dressed and yet was living in this horrible environment which makes the audience question why he is there and creates a sense of unease. These questions raised by the location make the audience want to watch the rest of the film to find out the answer; which is why we chose to use this location.Another reason we chose to use this location was because of the lighting. The lighting was bright and harsh but the room could be made pitch black which was essential for one of our shots and the contrast between the harsh, invasive light when the lights are turned on and the emptiness and sense of confusion when the lights are turned off help add to the unease that the location provides in general.