Evaluation Q5 How do you attract/address your audience?

We believed that our choice of location would appeal to our target audience of 15-24 year olds as  London Bridge is very urban and high-tempo and thus appeals to youths who want a familiar, modern, busy setting. They are therefore attracted to the film as it seems like it will be full of action as opposed to a more rural environment in which one might expect a slower-paced film. Furthermore, a great deal of cinemagoers are city-dwellers as there are many more cinemas in the city than in the countryside so said cinemagoers will be attracted to the city-based setting. The urban setting also reflects many other city-based thrillers such as Drive and Collateral so viewers may see the film hoping to have the same experience as with those films.


We chose our actor (Callum Ruddleston) because one could certainly say that he is attractive so would attract young girls and possibly older girls too to the film. We had also modelled our main role on Ryan Gosling's role in Drive and Callum looks quite like Ryan Gosling so this degree of familiarity may further draw audiences in.


The visual mood of the film opening and its cold colour palette suggests a steely, serious, gritty element to the film. The close ups of the main character makes the audience focus on the main character and sympathise with what he's going through and the decisions he has to make.


The synth-based soundtrack suggests that the setting of the film is modern and possibly dystopian. It is slow and brooding and slowly builds tension. The modernism of the synthy soundtrack should relate to our young target audience and connect with contemporary music trends.


Here is a focus interview I conducted to gain some feedback on how we attracted and addressed our audience:

Narrative + Genre

From the questionnaire, the clearest things established to us were the similar media products to ours – three titles repeatedly cropping up were Drive, Collateral and the Bourne films. It was also suggested from the questionnaire that most people seemed to understand the story behind our film and they saw it as either a suspense thriller or a crime thriller – which we also saw this film as.

The fact that the crime and suspense aspects of the story were the main aspects that reached through to our audience suggests that they saw it mainly as a genre film like, for example, Drive and Collateral. Both of these films are notable for not using exposition in their opening. The opening of Drive, for example, sees the main character beginning a getaway mission while in our film it sees our character beginning his assassination mission. In Collateral, the film begins with the main character as he is leaving LAX airport without an explanation – our film echoes this in the sense that when our main character moves from A to B it is not immediately explained why. Both these films also have strong stylistics and aesthetics – in the opening scenes of both, wide shots of the Los Angeles skyline are frequently used to establish the location as they focus on immersing the audience in the location rather than following generic plot conventions – and our product followed suit, introducing the film with a river view of London. In this way, we have blended escapism – as we follow a suspenseful and dramatic narrative – with realism, as we are immersing our audiences in what are most likely to be familiar locations to them. 

The general narrative of the opening scene is straightforward though one or two of our viewers felt that it moved quickly and they were pushed to keep up  - this feedback is not totally worrying to us, however, as it was our intention to put the audience in the middle of the story and not focus on story exposition. The possible consequence of this – that the audience have found the film simply confusing – has, we feel, been avoided, as the majority of feedback to our film was positive in the narrative aspect.

We drew upon the influence of actors such as Ryan Gosling when it came to casting and creating our main character, feeling that an actor like him would have widespread appeal to the age bracket that we were marketing this film at.

Our story mainly involves fairly young characters who would appeal to audiences within the 15-25 age bracket as we wanted our audience to be attracted to it through personal identification. Feeling that the personal identification theory would be a good way of appealing to our audiences, we also casted an actor to play the girl who is killed who is the same age as the people we are marketing this film to as we felt that we wanted the characters to be relatable to a teenage/young adult audience.  Part of our opening relied on a shock factor to draw in viewers, and so we felt that killing of a girl of a fairly young age would be an adequate way of doing so. This is the aspect of the story that we feel may have led to all the comparisons our film received – to Drive, Collateral and the Bourne films – as the violence/action in each of them is generally unexpected, surprising and shocking. In Drive, one of the main female characters is one of the first people to be killed in the film, while in Collateral the entire third act revolves around a woman in danger. In The Bourne Supremacy, the main female character of the first film in the series is killed in the opening scene. 

Problems with Filming

During the filming process we encountered various problems. The first and most substantial problem was finding that we were not able to shoot ob the DLR as we had intended. In order to overcome this, we found another location and worked out ways in which we could use it to the same effect.

We also encountered problems with sound. We were attempting to film some dialogue on London Bridge but it was extremely windy and many people were walking and talking around us. This level of ambient noise made it very difficult to get any clear dialogue. We decided to crop the shot a little and then get a directional microphone as close to the actors as possible, just out of frame. At first, we thought this had been effective but when we came to editing we realised the sound was still not good enough so we dubbed over it.

We had further complications with the location when we found that the location for the final scene of our piece had different lighting to when we'd recced it and a security guard was there telling us he didn't think we could film there. Thus we quickly made the decision to film somewhere more open and urban but which still provided an alleyway of sorts to give the scene its dark tone. We actually preferred the compromise that we made as we believe it fitted in better with the tone of the film.

Final Task

Ident

In making our ident we wanted to create something that looked professional but not too commercial, maintaining the film's art house, indie feel. We went into Final Cut Pro X's title menu and looked through the templates there to find an effect with some character. We found one called 'Fold' which features a small animation of a picture of your choice and some text unfolding and then folding back up. We believed that it's simple and effective and it allowed us to use a copyright-free picture of a bridge to fit in with our production company's name (Under the Bridge Productions). We then added a small music clip that I played on ukulele.

Our ident

Evaluation Q4

Who are your audience?

Above is a sample survey carried out by a seventeen-year-old male that is a privately educated student, in their penultimate year of secondary school. Having questioned a fairly broad age range of people, I think it is safe to deduce that our target audience will be someone similar to the person questioned above. We aimed to dress our character in clothes similar to those of people our age, and his behaviour and dialogue were also supposed to be relevant to our audience.
Based on our collected data, I think that it is safe to deduce that our target audience fits comfortably into the 15-25 year-old category. They are most likely a student or young adult, probably either currently in higher education or entering/leaving higher education. Of the people that we sampled, the most complimentary and excited by our piece were most definitely people of a similar age to us. Although the themes of our piece would most likely encourage the diversion use and gratification, the actors we used were relatable to teenagers, meaning that personal identity could also be a reason for viewing our piece.
Although several films of similar genres to ours can be classified as 12 or 12A's, if we were conforming to the guidelines of the bbfc, we believe that some of the themes that we chose to include in our piece could be too violent for viewers younger than 15. When asked, the majority of our audience associated our piece with films such as Drive, Collateral, and The Bourne Identity. These films are all classified as 18’s or 15’s, suggesting that our original predictions were correct.

“The century of film has passed” Outline the benefits to both audiences and institutions of the growth of digital technology in the film industry. What are the problems associated with this technology change?

Digital technology has brought about a huge change to how the entire film industry operates. Digital technology has allowed films to be made for less money, has made films much easier to make by many more people and has allowed marketing and distribution to come a lot easier. This has also come with the ability for consumers to much more easily transport, view and share their films which is excellent for the consumer but can lead to difficulties for the film studios such as with the ease at which one can pirate films.

Until the ‘50s, films could only be viewed in the cinema. This meant that the entire revenue of a film had to come from cinema admissions. In the 1950s televisions became popular and widespread, allowing film studios to sell their films to television channels to be broadcast after the film has stopped showing in cinemas. However, the popularity of television led to a problem, that being that people may stop going to the cinema if they could watch films and TV shows in their own home. Thus, many gimmicks were developed such as an early form of 3D in order to draw people back into cinemas.

These proved to be unsuccessful though and by the late 60s VHS was available and people could have copies of films to watch at home whenever they pleased. Like television, this allowed a new ‘release window’ to open for films. Large technology companies caught on to this and began developing large televisions and surround sound systems for the home so that one could replicate the cinema experience in their own living room. Technology also moved on from VHS to DVD in order to allow better quality pictures and wider aspect ratios. These DVDs also offered multiple extras which encouraged people to buy them even if they already owned the film on VHS.

In the late 90s the internet began to become increasingly widespread and popular and was used as a marketing tool by putting adverts up on websites and creating trailers and videos for the film and encouraging people to share them in emails etc. Eventually, internet speeds became fast enough that films could be downloaded relatively quickly. This meant that film studios could sell their films as a download, opening up yet another ‘release window’ in which to sell their film and make further profits. Of course, if the film companies are allowing people to buy digital copies of their films then these copies can be copied and shared with others, leaving the actual purchase unnecessary for anybody else. This is a problem film studios have attempted to tackle by creating anti-piracy measures such as security protected files and by suing websites such as http://thepiratebay.se which host multiple pirated film files for downloading.

One way in which film studios can stop people downloading files illegally is by offering their files through easy-to-use on demand services such as Love Film, Netflix and iTunes in high-definition and on servers that can allow the consumer to download the file as fast as possible. This at least provides an experience worth paying for as illegally downloaded files are often low-quality and slow to download. Unfortunately for the film studios, internet speeds are becoming faster and faster and these days it is not difficult obtain a broadband connection which allows one to upload or download an HD movie from a file sharing site so quickly that they can watch the movie instantly as it downloads.

More developments have also been made with physical copies of films with the advent of Blu-Ray which offers extremely high-quality 1080p full-HD video and 7.1 audio. Furthermore, as Blu-Rays are generally able to hold about 50GB of data which means even more extras can be put on BDs than on DVDs, further encouraging consumers to purchase BDs even if they own the film on other media. 3D Blu-Ray discs have also been created which allow consumers to watch films in 3D and HD on their 3D-enabled TV at home. This provides the benefit to the audience of being able to bring a technology previously only available in cinemas to their home. It also encourages more people to buy the film than download it as illegally shared 3D HD files are hard to come by on the internet and tend to be huge and difficult to download.  But while the film studios profit from the sales of 3D BDs, people become less inclined to visit the cinema, as they can have the same experience without leaving the house.

But digital technology also helps with this issue, as the continually progressing technology used in films allows films to be more cinematic (and thus more likely to draw people into cinemas), cheaper to make (which allows more money to be spent on marketing, making people so excited about the film that they want to see it as soon as it comes out in the cinema) and allows for more films to be made (providing more choice to the consumer and guaranteeing a visit to the cinema to be an enjoyable experience). One way in which this has been made possible is through the increasing use of DV cameras to make films. With DV cameras, one does not have to pay for celluloid, lighting is a lot more easily managed and the cameras are more manoeuvrable. An example of where inexpensive DV cameras have been used to shoot a film to great effect is David Lynch’s Inland Empire (2006). He shot the entire film on a moderately priced standard definition Sony camcorder which allowed him more freedom with his shots and less budget pressure, especially helpful as he was literally making up the script as he went along.

CGI technologies have also helped to increase consumption of film as CGI is now cheap and extremely advanced and can draw in bigger audiences who wish to experience something that they don’t get out of real life when they go to the cinema. This teamed with cinemas such as the IMAX in which the screen fills the whole of the audience’s eyeline and peripheral vision and the audience is completely surrounded by speakers combines to make experiences that not only make audiences want to consume more film but to visit the cinema also and really immerse themselves in films. Film studios are now also able to make more money through cinemas as, with digital prints of films rather than celluloid, they don’t have to pay large amounts of money to have the film printed multiple times and distributed to different cinemas, rather they can just copy the film and send it digitally.

In conclusion, digital technology advances have led to a great deal more ease when it comes to making, distributing and watching film. While this primarily provides benefits for the audience who now find it easier than ever to watch a huge variety of films whenever they want, it can also be exploited by film companies who can charge consumers for providing this ease of use when it comes to watching films. However, copyright theft loses the UK alone about £531 million each year and this number will only grow as it becomes easier and easier to download films illegally. The battle between this and increasing ease and lack of cost involved with making films will continue to rage. It is worth noting, however, that the biggest targets to film piracy are the popular blockbusters which are made by film studios to whom a few million pounds lost does not seem very substantial.

Evaluation Question 6

What have you learnt about technologies form the process of constructing this product?

Blogger.com – This was very useful for displaying our progress, planning, constructing and evaluation.

YouTube.com – We used this to research thriller openings, which helped inspire us. It was also used to display our preliminary task and our final piece.

Google.com – Arguably one of the most useful forms of technology, as it allowed us to search for and access images, music, and information about similar films for our research section.

Final Cut Pro X – This was used to construct our film, our recce and preliminary task, and also to edit them using things such as filters, titles, colour balancing, and sound balancing that were available with the software. For example, we used an expander to make sections of our dialogue clearer, and we used frame matching to equilibrilize the colour of certain shots. It also had a built-in automatic save feature, meaning that our work was less easily lost.

Apple Macintosh iMac desktop – I found this computer extremely easy to use, and the display was very clear, making editing easier, as we could see problem areas that required correcting.

Sony HD Camera – We used this to film our piece and our recce. We learnt how to use it whilst shooting our recce, and I found it easy to manipulate in order to achieve the necessary shots.

Tripods – We used this to steady the camera, and this in turn helped achieve key shots, such as the wide-angle opening shots of Tower Bridge and the surrounding areas.

Microphone – These were most definitely essential, as even though we had minimal dialogue, the lines that we did choose to include were very important for the audience to hear, therefore we used microphones.

Kaiser Video lights – We decided to include these, as some of our locations were badly lit and therefore required lights, but we also used them in naturally well-lit shots, as it created a better atmosphere, and helped reduce graininess.

Imdb – This was used a great deal to acquire information about directors, films, and production companies, it therefore contributed the most to the research and planning sections of our piece.

DaFont – We found the font that we chose to use in all our titles and the main title of our piece from this website, it was called ‘Bank Gothic’ and we felt it was distinguished from any of the fonts that could be found, both on Microsoft Word and Final Cut Pro X.

Free play music – We obtained the majority of our sound from this website, most importantly, our main music track, called ‘Ascension from the well’ by Peter John Ross. It was useful because it had a wide range of copyright free music.

I feel as though the thing that I have learnt the most about the technologies that we included is how to manipulate them in order to achieve the desired effect. In some cases, such as with Final Cut Pro X, I found it slightly harder to be fully confident with using it, but once I was competent enough, I felt as though it was a lot easier to create the final product that we had envisaged.

Evaluation Question 3

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

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

In comparing my preliminary task to my finished product, one can see that they are very different pieces. My preliminary task was a fairly unambitious attempt at a simple match-on-action and then short dialogue. It required very little planning or technical ability to complete. The final piece that we created, however, involved a great deal of planning and a lot more precision when it came to sound and lighting.


My prelim

Thus, one of the main things I have learnt from making my full product is how to plan such a project and the importance of planning to the project and its end result.The first thing we did was to research both what a thriller is and what other thrillers were like and how they were made. This involved watching the openings of multiple thrillers and also researching the production companies behind them. This gave us an idea of what kind of tone our thriller opening would have and how we would present it. We then began coming up with our film idea and constructing a plot before storyboarding it to see how we wanted to compose our shots and to gain a sense of how many shots we would need and how they would be edited and sequenced.


It was then time to go on a recce and it was then that we learnt the importance of proper reconnaissance as we quickly realised that our previously decided-upon location of the Canary Wharf DLR was simply not going to work. We were told that we couldn't shoot on there for security reasons by an official and all the carriages were filled with people despite it being late on a Sunday. Thus, we decided to take another recce the next week in which we would decide how to change our location whilst keeping our plot and visual style. On this recce, we decided to film around the London Bridge area as it allowed us to keep our urban style whilst not particularly affecting the story. As abandoning the train journey took away some of the opening's mood of progression and motion, we added in some walking through what we hoped were interesting, fairly dramatic locations.


Our recce




Having changed our location, we were now filming completely in the open air rather than enclosed in a train carriage for most of the opening. Thus it became a lot more important to operate the audio recording equipment proficiently as there is a great deal of atmospheric sound from other people and wind on London Bridge. Through this we learnt a lot about how to optimise sound with the equipment and I felt much more at ease with the equipment by the end of it.

Many people were walking up and down London Bridge and it was extremely windy

Of course, the technical side does not end there, as we then moved into the editing suite where I was, at first, baffled by the software and the plethora of functions and effects. However throughout the process of editing our film, I got more and more to grips with the software and actually found it to be incredibly intuitive. By the end of our editing, I felt I had a very comprehensive knowledge of how to edit a film and how to add effects, titles and perform various other tasks on Final Cut Pro X.

Layout of Final Cut Pro X

In conclusion, I feel I have learnt most about the importance of preparation when it comes to film making as thinks such as storyboarding and performing recces proved to be incredibly useful when you are taking on a relatively large project.

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

In creating our film opening, we aimed to make something that possessed the tropes of a British crime thriller to establish a familiarity with the audience, yet at the same time subvert the audiences preconceptions to keep them interested. Film openings of the same genre as our film generally include conventions such as slow-paced, character based sequences showing gritty settings and a lot of verisimilitude in the mise-en-scéne such as clothing. While we include these things in our opening such as the slow pacing and the focus on the main character, the way we have dressed our characters intrigues the audience; our main character is dressed in a smart casual manner whilst the man he meets with who gives him the instructions for the hit is dressed in a suit. This has the audience thinking about the organisation of the crime here and how it is not just low level and reckless. The main character meanwhile seems out of place and subordinate to the man he meets prompting the audience to wonder if he owes something to the man in the suit or is just simply employed by him. We modelled our main character on Ryan Gosling’s character in Drive. We wanted him to appear ruthless when he needs to be and yet being in possession of a sensitive side that the audience can relate to. We wanted an actor who was reasonably attractive as well so as to set up a precedent of the audience having a twisted admiration for such a violent and ruthless character. For the character whom the protagonist meets under the bridge, we wanted him to be similar to Tom Cruise’s character in Collateral and/or the character of Gustavo Fring in TV’s Breaking Bad; involved in a dirty, criminal business yet bringing an organisation and style to it that makes it appear all the more serious and twisted.

Ryan Gosling as the unnamed protagonist of Drive

Our protagonist

Giancarlo Esposito as Gustavo Fring in Breaking Bad

The man whom our protagonist meets, in the centre of the frame

As is a popular convention of thrillers, we opted to include a chase/following scene in our opening as this can build excitement and tension in the audience. We chose to keep the camerawork composed rather than a more shaky, handheld effect which can be popular in low-budget thrillers. Furthermore, rather than jumping straight into the sub-genre of “gritty suburban thriller” (examples of which include Shifty, Kidulthood and Bullet Boy), we wanted to make something more urban like that of which we had seen in films such as ‘Drive’ and ‘Collateral’. Both these films involve a form of transport which give the audience the idea of things moving forward and we originally intended to film our opening on London’s DLR service. However, we experienced difficulty with gaining permission to shoot on public transport and also with very crowded carriages at the times at which we were able to film. Thus, we were forced to compromise by filming around London Bridge.

A still from the film Shifty showing the more suburban setting

Our film's more urban setting

In terms of title graphics, we went for a modern, urban-looking typeface that we thought matched the tone of the opening. We used a blur transition with the titles to create a subtle dynamism. They are a plain white and not very big so as not to be too in-your-face to the audience, just as we did not want our film to be too turgid to the audience. We considered initially going for something similar to the titles for David Fincher's Panic Room by having a more architectural, urban, gothic-esque font. In Panic Room, the titles float around and seem embedded within the frame which was an effect we found would be time-consuming to create and wouldn't be appropriate for the tone of our film as it would be a little too flashy.

Panic Room Titles

Our titles

We also considered how our sound relates to conventions and forms. We wanted to maintain the convention of short, sharp dialogue between characters in high-pressure situations. However at the same time we wanted to build a relationship between the main character and the audience in which we see him as not just a ruthless criminal and someone more thoughtful and relatable. Therefore we used a lot of silence in shots of the protagonist in which he looks more pensive. Again, this is a technique used in Drive, a film with very little dialogue, and through this we hoped to challenge the audience's preconception of assassins being ruthless and somewhat inhuman and give our protagonist a soft centre despite his rough edges.

The protagonist of our film looking pensive

Changes Made To Our Film

Initially, we had intended to film our film on the DLR or a train service, however we found this to be too impractical due to the large amounts of people present on such vehicles and the surprisingly rigorous security in place. As a result, following our recce, we made the decision to change our location from any form of public transport to the area around London Bridge. We did a quick second recce around this area and found some good substitute locations, such as the bridge for the first meeting and then a stairway leading down to the river for the journey to the second meeting, which would take place under the bridge. For the scene in which the girl is dragged into an alley by the protagonist, we decided to use a car park. However, when we came to actually filming the opening, we were no longer happy with this location as it didn't quite work in terms of continuity and lighting. We quickly found a location that worked better with the journey up a staircase preceding it and provided better lighting yet still looked isolated enough to provide tension and threat.

Never Let Me Go Presentation

Part 4 - A History of British Film Since 1984

Q1. What have been the primary developments in the UK film industry in the last 25 years?

It seems that in the last 25 or so years, film in the UK has generally become more commercial. With the introduction of the first UK multiplex in 1985, film became a more immersive, more glamorous experience, and audience numbers quickly began to increase. With more money in the industry, more films could be funded and produced, including successful indie films like Withnail and I and costume dramas like A Room with a View. Costume dramas were particularly successful in the USA, causing more money to come into the UK film industry. Films such as Four Weddings and a Funeral in the mid '90s were very successful as they were quintessentially British yet also entertaining and accessible, and proved a big hit in the US. This was followed by Sense and Sensibility, another big hit for the same reasons, which also starred Hugh Grant. The late 90s saw the development of more gritty British cinema such as Trainspotting, a film about hard drug culture in Edinburgh. This was followed by similar films such as The Acid House. The most successful films in the UK continued to be gritty dramas with a humorous aspect with films such as The Full Monty and Billy Elliot doing well. Notable exceptions were films such as Notting Hill (very much like Four Weddings and a Funeral, and with the same director and lead male) as well as Sliding Doors. Both films made use of an American star as the female lead, assuring box office success not only in the UK but in the USA as well.

Q2.



Q3. What kinds of films do Momentum Pictures look to distribute and why?

Momentum Pictures is a UK distribution company which has distributed many critically acclaimed films. Generally, they distribute dramas that look at characters rather than big budget blockbusters that focus more on an adventure or an epic event. Examples of this are Lost in Translation, Sofia Coppola's character study set in Tokyo, the Oscar-winning The King's Speech which tells the story of a King taking elocution lessons and Michel Gondry's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind in which a couple remember their failed relationship. By doing this, Momentum Pictures can avoid spending large amounts of money on high budget blockbusters and instead spend less money on lower budget dramas that go on to be very successful due to the amount of thought and care put into them, which allows audiences to relate to them more.

Part 3 - The British Film Industry

Q1. What do these statistics suggest about the current state of the British Film Industry? Does it seem to be in good shape?

From reading these statistics, it seems that the British Film Industry is indeed in good shape and still growing and becoming more popular. My principle statistics for this assumption is the cinema admissions for 2010 and the box office revenue. The admissions reached 169.2 million in 2010, a very strong total that was only 2% down on 2009 (an excusable drop when considering the presence of the World Cup and the winter's big freeze). To illustrate further the popularity of UK cinema, the 2010 box office revenue still rose despite increases in ticket costs to come to a box office revenue of £988 million, a 5% increase on 2009. Furthermore, the UK is currently the third largest film market in the world, making substantial contributions to the UK's GDP. UK filmmaking is also doing very well, adding to the success of the British Film Industry; 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1' earning almost $1 billion at the worldwide box office and 'Kick-Ass' was the highest grossing independent title of 2010.

Q2. How does film production in the UK seem to be very different from the Hollywood model?

In Hollywood, films are produced by large studios who buy the script and then generally use tens of millions of dollars making the film, using high-paid directors and actors, and marketing it. In the UK it is different due to lack of available money. Before making a film, a production company may have to find multiple investors simply in order to fund the film. In addition, multiple production companies may make one film in order to assure enough money is put into the film to have it made. A lot of money for films will also come from the government through things such as lottery funding, whereas in Hollywood this does not happen.

Q3. What does this information tell us about the state of the UK film industry in 2010?

This information tells us that the UK film releases of 2010 are still very much dominated by the US' output. While there are still a lot of films with British connections, it is hard to truly define a film as British as funding often has to be gained from other countries such as the US. Quite a shocking statistic is that the US films released in the UK in 2010 made up 72% of the total box office earnings, showing how much of a presence US films have in our market and how UK films still have a long way to go to dominate the market, sharing only 24% of box office earnings in 2010.

Q4. Use imdb.com or another website to find out the UK distributors of the films placed 6-10. How many of them could be considered British films? What does this say about the scale of the UK film industry?

Shrek Forever After was distributed by Paramount UK.
Twilight Saga: Eclipse was distributed by E1 entertainment in the UK.
Sherlock Holmes was distributed by Warner Bros UK.
Alvin and the Chipmunks was distributed by Twentiefth Century Fox UK.
Sex and the City 2 was distributed by Warner Bros UK.

The only one of these films which could be considered to be a British film is Sherlock Holmes as it was directed by the English Guy Ritchie and set in England. However, it was produced by two American studios so cannot be defined as truly British.

This suggests that the scale of the UK film industry is still relatively small as purely British films are still not able to reach into the box office top 10, only British-American films.

Q5. Which one of these two films recently released in the UK do you think is a BBC co-production and why?

I would think that My Week with Marilyn is a BBC co-production as it looks quite stylish yet understated as well as having many British actors in the cast, which are things that BBC films are known for doing well. I am also aware that the film is set in England. The poster for The Boy in the Striped Pajamas makes it look like it could be a BBC co-production, however I think it looks a little too cinematic and highly produced for quite a simple concept which makes me think it may not be.

Q6. Why do you think the Coalition government decided to close down the UKFC?

I think that the government closed down the UKFC because it did not appear stable and sustainable with its money. It appears that it was irresponsible with money and in tough economic times the government has an obligation to be extremely sensible with the taxpayers' money and so I imagine they felt it prudent to shut down the UKFC.

Q7. Do you think the film industry needs a body like the UKFC/BFI? Why?

Yes, I do think that we need such a body because, as David Puttnam said, it's the "strategic glue that binds a disparate sprawl of auteurs, craftspeople, circus barker and market traders". There are so many roles involved with creating film and so much bureaucracy that it seems very important to have an organisational body to manage the situation.

Idents

For our film's production, we need to design an ident for our production company. First, I will look at a number of idents of existing production companies.

This is the ident for BBC Films, a UK production company that, while it has produced some big films in the past, often produces low budget films like ours. Their ident has fairly simple text which perhaps reflects the straightforwardness of their films and how they are less blockbuster-y and more down to earth. The ident animation is very nice and suggests to the audience that they will enter another world as they watch the film as there is a supernova-esque effect.

This is the ident for Dreamworks, which is a much bigger production company than BBC Films and produces many high-budget blockbusters. The ident is longer and uses a more complex animation. It really suggests to the viewer that they are about to watch a very professional, entertaining film. Like BBC Films, the idea of dreams and clouds suggests that the viewer will enter another world with the film.

This is the ident for Pathé which is a French production company that has produced many films of varying budget. It is a fairly simple animation of a mobile turning which displays the company logo. The text and shape of the mobile is slightly eccentric which reflects the eccentric nature of their films such as James and the Giant Peach, Bride and Prejudice and Mr. Nobody. The ident as a whole as well does not suggest one is about to see a saccharine, disposable blockbuster.

From this research, I have concluded that for our ident I would like to have something that reflects the nature of our film. Not something as "nice" as the Dreamworks ident but slightly harsher although still appearing stylish and urban as our film is. I think we should keep the animation fairly restrained as our production company would be focusing on low budget films based on content rather than effects; our animation should be slick and succinct.

Recces

On our first recce, we travelled to the agreed-upon location of Canary Wharf DLR station in order to do some preliminary filming on the DLR. However, as we stepped onto the train and began to unpack our tripod and camera, a TFL official stopped us and informed us that, without a permit, we were not allowed to do any filming. We switched train and stayed on a little while longer going for an empty carriage in which to get some filming done but it just got busier and busier, despite being in the afternoon of a Sunday.

Back in the classroom, we decided we would go out again the next week, and recce the still urban but hopefully more deserted route of London Bridge to Lewisham. However, this turned out to be as busy as the DLR, so we decided we had to change location completely. We decided that we would film somewhere in the city but not on public transport. After much deliberation we decided upon London Bridge and did a recce there which was fairly successful and seemed to be a good location which we could transfer our script to. Here is a video of the recce we took, showing how we transposed some of the shots from the train to fit the now street-based location. We have done a voiceover over the top, noting what we need to improve when we film it:

Graphics Research - Font

I am researching different fonts that we could use for our graphics. Here are my three favourites:

This font is called Telegrafico and I feel that it would be a good font to use for our titles as it is bold and not flippant, however there is still a modern edge to it which, coupled with its slight reticence, adds an air of mystery.















This font is called Seedy Motel and I believe it would be a good font to use as it because it is quite a gritty-looking font with its fading brickwork style. It fits in well with our genre of gritty, urban thriller.

Storyboard

DLR Reccy 1

Having taken the DLR route (through Canary Wharf) which is where we intend to film our sequence, I now have a better idea of what to expect. The DLR itself was not monumentally busy, meaning it should be easy enough to film on board the train. However, we may not be able to achieve our desired effect of having the train empty unless we go later at night, when the line is presumably emptier than it was in the afternoon, as there will be no difference in the light (now that the nights are earlier). The stations themselves are also not particularly busy, and there are some particularly cinematic locations surrounding the DLR such as Canary Wharf, which I have taken a few shots of with my camera to gain an understanding of what filming will be like.

Film Plot Overview

Our film follows the story of Frank, a young assassin who operates on the streets of south London. In the opening scene, he is shown working in his normal fashion: he receives the time and place from anonymous contacts, and makes his appearance before meeting another contact instructing him on who to target. However, due to the nature of this particular task - he is told only to target someone with a 'red hat' - and the fact that he had come unprepared, due to a tight schedule, for a busy platform due to a football game, he executes the wrong target. After the finger of blame is pointed to him by his employer, and the police begin to target him for murder, Frank takes to the streets in an attempt to avoid confronting those who are after him. However, staying in a run-down one bedroom apartment in Lewisham with blood on his hands, Frank must also confront his inner demons. While his life is spiralling out of control and he is slowly losing his grip on life, he comes across, by chance, Vincent, a friend from his past. Like Frank, Vincent is highly vulnerable: he produces heroin for a brutal drug dealer. The two attempt to reform themselves and make an honest living - Frank working in a car garage, and Vincent in a local primary school. However, Vincent's past comes back to him and his violent boss leaves him hospitalised after attempting to have him shot to death in the street for abandoning his business. Seeking vengeance, Frank confronts and brutally murders Vincent's boss and henchmen. However, those who had contracted Frank in the film's opening, and subsequently the police, find him out. Before the police arrive, the anonymous man who Frank had met on the DLR in the opening of the film finds him by the Thames Barrier. Frank is shot from behind, though is still able to confront and shoot his anonymous employer to death. The police arrive at the scene and a wounded Frank jumps into the river to avoid detection as the film ends, his fate being left ambiguous.

Deptford Bridge + DLR Photos

These pictures were taken of the cityscapes surrounding the DLR. It is easy to see how they would look impressively cinematic in our film, especially at night time when we would be able to capture the lighting and reflection of the buildings.

These are all pictures of the DLR station. It seems to have a good view over the streets in Deptford, which we may be able to use to add impressive aesthetics to our film.

Though the stairs of the station will not take up much of the film, these pictures demonstrate how it is an impressive, cinematic location and could make the film more visually thrilling, especially when it is darker and there are artificial lights.