The majority of films released are comedy and drama, especially in UK where we produce more drama films than average. These statistics show that the film industry are very focused on what the current audience likes, which is backed up by last weekend’s box office figures in the UK where ‘Get Him to the Greek’, a comedy, topped the box office sales with a weekend gross of £1,569,556. The closest competitor this weekend was ‘The Killers’, which only had a weekend gross of £389,509.
The film industry has a clear idea at their target age range, as a steady 40% of films released are aged 15, with the amount of 12A’s growing nearly 10% last year. Films rated 18 are automatically losing viewers because of the large audience of teens that cannot go; this has been recognised by the film industry as the amount of 18’s being released dropped to 10% last year.
Despite aged 15 films having the highest release date, aged 12 films make a significant greater amount of money. 18 rated films have been consistently bottom because of the large audience it cuts out, as the average age seems to be about 15 – however 15 rated films have started to lose profit over the years.
As you can see British films do not have very high budgets, which is why most films are made in USA, because they provide you with a higher budget, and this graph suggests that higher budgets create more successful films.
This graph proves what I said earlier about the younger generation being the most popular cinema-goers, however unexpectedly, the category of 45+ seems to have been increasing over the years until the point where it is now nearly as high as the 15-24 category.
This graph doesn’t show anything unexpected as it is clear that the 15-24 category has a much higher rate illegal downloading; this is probably because most of the films released are aimed at this age group and they are the largest computer using age group.
Monday, 19 July 2010
Monday, 28 June 2010
The Truman Show
The Truman Show has many genre and narrative issues, but one of the most outstanding issues is how hard it is to define The Truman Show through a genre. I would say that the film is a Comedy/Drama; however it is hard to fit it into one strong genre because it defies all conventions of the set genres, and almost creates its own genre – this makes he film interesting because it can then include many themes and stereotypes – this is something that The Truman Show does very well, using stereotypes such as the High School ‘Jock’ and the powerful, intelligent villain.
The narrative for The Truman Show is non-linear, as the film continuously flashes back but not too often that the film becomes confusing – this narrative goes against the theory of Vladimir Propp, who said that all stories work in a certain linear sequence; however the film does agree with Propp’s character theory:
· The Villain – Christof, who goes as far as trying to kill Truman to stop him from escaping
· The Donor/Helper/Princess – Sylvia, who gives Truman the information that everyone is acting. She is also considered the ‘Princess’ character because she is in love with Truman n he is trying to find her yet he is being stopped by the villain
· Hero – Truman, the main character that in the end prevails and finds the ‘princess’, this is part of Propp’s narrative theory.
I feel that every film applies to Roland Barthes’ theory that we establish understanding through signs, but examples of this that I can think of are the way that there are sometimes a darkened area around the edge of the camera, this is a sign that we read as someone is watching him.
Claude Levi-Strauss had a theory that we understand the world through binary opposites and there are many in The Truman Show. Some examples of these are Good Vs Evil, with Christof against Truman; Reality Vs Fantasy, with the real world against the fake one Truman lives in and Fear Vs Courage, as Truman is scared of the water at the start and as Christof states he is scared to leave but eventually gains courage and sails the boat to freedom.
Overall I feel that The Truman Show is a powerful film agreeing with several theorists, however it is sill unconventional and difficult to place in a genre.
Tuesday, 19 January 2010
Technology
Coming into this project I was confident in using Windows movie Maker, but was introduced into a new piece of video-editing software called Pinnacle Studios. Pinnacle Studios was similar to Movie Maker which helped, however I felt that there was many features that made it better than Movie Maker, although it was very unreliable and would often crash. 
We spent a lot of time with cameras after having to re-film several times, and learn that they were also quite unreliable as the tapes they gave us often lost work; however I feel that we did well with the cameras and learned many new techniques. From doing media studies at GCSE I already knew many techniques but didn’t know how difficult they were to pull off effectively and fluently, so I feel that the lesson that I learnt the most about technology was how difficult and unreliable they can be.
Upon finishing our film we had to record a director’s commentary with an ‘Edirol’, but soon realised how hard it was to record ourselves and sound fluent as if we weren’t reading from a script which in the end we had to. I feel that although the director’s commentary was the hardest part, the ‘Edirols’ were the most reliable piece of technology we used in the course.
Overall I feel that we learnt how to use a wide range of technology in this project, and learnt the key skills to use them effectively as we can all now use Pinnacle Studios to edit videos together with confidence.
We spent a lot of time with cameras after having to re-film several times, and learn that they were also quite unreliable as the tapes they gave us often lost work; however I feel that we did well with the cameras and learned many new techniques. From doing media studies at GCSE I already knew many techniques but didn’t know how difficult they were to pull off effectively and fluently, so I feel that the lesson that I learnt the most about technology was how difficult and unreliable they can be.
Upon finishing our film we had to record a director’s commentary with an ‘Edirol’, but soon realised how hard it was to record ourselves and sound fluent as if we weren’t reading from a script which in the end we had to. I feel that although the director’s commentary was the hardest part, the ‘Edirols’ were the most reliable piece of technology we used in the course.
Overall I feel that we learnt how to use a wide range of technology in this project, and learnt the key skills to use them effectively as we can all now use Pinnacle Studios to edit videos together with confidence.
Audience Feedback
My group and I decided that we needed to gain some audience feedback, so we put our video on show to our class. The video was showed on a large projector onto a whiteboard which made the video look darker than it actually is, this meant that the audience did not feel the full effect of the video and the main feedback that we got was that it was too dark. 
We gained our feedback through a questionnaire given out to everyone and most answered that the problem was that it was too dark but that they did not see any technical or continuity errors which is good. After receiving the feed back that we did I think that if we were to re-film our opening we would definitely have to film in a lighter environment. Many also agreed that the music had a great effect on the film giving it much more depth and a much scarier atmosphere. Another question asked them to spot what camera techniques we had used and the audience established that we had a good range with zooms, quick cuts, over-the-shoulder shots and a well used match on action shot.
Although not everyone understood what mise-en-scene was, those who did were able to spot the mise-en-scene that we had used with the two teenage girls dressed in fashionable clothes and typical stereotypical items such as mirrors and fairy-lights.
Using Music And Targeting Our Audience
Using Copyright Free Music
A main convention in thriller films is the eerie music that flows well with the action in the film. We decided that we had to find a piece of music that created a scary atmosphere while making the film jumpy with loud, sudden bangs. We found the perfect piece of music on a copyright free website called audio.lgfl.co.uk, the sharp and edgy music worked very well with the film opening as it fit almost perfectly without us even editing it – having music fit so tightly to the film it meant that we had to edit the music anytime we made any changes.
A main convention in thriller films is the eerie music that flows well with the action in the film. We decided that we had to find a piece of music that created a scary atmosphere while making the film jumpy with loud, sudden bangs. We found the perfect piece of music on a copyright free website called audio.lgfl.co.uk, the sharp and edgy music worked very well with the film opening as it fit almost perfectly without us even editing it – having music fit so tightly to the film it meant that we had to edit the music anytime we made any changes.
Target Audience
Something important for any film is what certification it receives as it can help imply its target audience. We went onto screenonline.org.uk to find out what certification our film opening qualified for. We were hoping for it to be a 15 as our target audience was 16-17 years olds as we felt they were the age that could most relate to the film as the characters are the same age. Luckily for us the film qualified for a 15 certificate which we felt worked out perfectly.
Titles And Fonts
Throughout out film opening we used titles – when showing the our names in between shots with very plain font on a black background – this simple yet effective style is a convention used by thriller films regularly, however for the title of the film we had to use a more sinister style to make it stand out from the names. We downloaded a few fonts from www.dafont.com and eventually decided on a stony style font which represented the cold, harsh nature of the hooded man in our opening.
We also used the Paramount title at the start of the opening to show what institution we were using to distribute our film; we decided to use Paramount as our institution as it is a large institution that can screen our film world wide, and with the large budget that it has, it can help us produce a good film. At first we weren’t sure whether we could use the Paramount logo at the start as we thought that we might be accused of copyright, but eventually our teacher gave us permission to feature it.
Overall I feel that the fonts and titles that we used were very effective and worked well in the film; I think we did very well to use the conventions effectively.
Filming Hotel Road
Thriller Conventions
When filming our film opening we had to consider what conventions ere used in thriller films, so we did some research by watching several film openings.
In our film opening we used many thriller conventions, one of the main and most effective being the music that we added which caused a great deal of suspense as the eerie sounds helped create the mood that something was wrong. Another major convention that we used was the darkness that featured throughout the whole opening; however there was a problem with the darkness as we in fact made the opening too dark and you could not see some of the main bits of action, such as the figure who wore all black was very hard to see, and since he could not be seen very clearly, you do not feel the full effect of the film.
We tried to create a tense feeling throughout the opening by contrasting slow zooms onto harsh objects, which we got from the opening of Final Destination, and quick sharp cuts. This tense feeling leaves the audience on edge and makes the character seem more threatening when he appears subtly throughout the film – although we did not use the traditional jumpy appearances I still feel that it scares the audience.
The opening credits of our film opening were originally jagged but after watching several film openings we decided that the conventional font is to have plain, white font on a black background.
Problems When Filming
When filming this opening we experienced many problems the main problem was finding time to film the opening as we set it at a member of our group’s home; however she was very busy as it was the Christmas period and she was working a lot so it wasn’t very convenient. We also had many editing problems as we had only just learnt how to use Pinnacle Studios, so we had to re-film several times, which proved to be very time consuming, which was an issue after we started to get a bit behind.
When filming our film opening we had to consider what conventions ere used in thriller films, so we did some research by watching several film openings.
In our film opening we used many thriller conventions, one of the main and most effective being the music that we added which caused a great deal of suspense as the eerie sounds helped create the mood that something was wrong. Another major convention that we used was the darkness that featured throughout the whole opening; however there was a problem with the darkness as we in fact made the opening too dark and you could not see some of the main bits of action, such as the figure who wore all black was very hard to see, and since he could not be seen very clearly, you do not feel the full effect of the film.
We tried to create a tense feeling throughout the opening by contrasting slow zooms onto harsh objects, which we got from the opening of Final Destination, and quick sharp cuts. This tense feeling leaves the audience on edge and makes the character seem more threatening when he appears subtly throughout the film – although we did not use the traditional jumpy appearances I still feel that it scares the audience.
The opening credits of our film opening were originally jagged but after watching several film openings we decided that the conventional font is to have plain, white font on a black background.
Problems When Filming
When filming this opening we experienced many problems the main problem was finding time to film the opening as we set it at a member of our group’s home; however she was very busy as it was the Christmas period and she was working a lot so it wasn’t very convenient. We also had many editing problems as we had only just learnt how to use Pinnacle Studios, so we had to re-film several times, which proved to be very time consuming, which was an issue after we started to get a bit behind.
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