MITCHELL

Introduction

In this project I am aiming to produce a successful media piece that is suitable for marketing. The first decision to be made in this project is whether to do film or print, we decided to do film as this is what we felt more comfortable with in our preliminary tasks. Firstly, we had to decide what genre we wanted our film to be, to do this we conducted a simple survey. From our results we will ask some questions in order to receive some information about what the most popular genre would be. We also made a chart to show our results.

Here is our survey questions, we asked 20 people from west hatch high school sixth-form.

Intentions
Now that we have a genre to work from, we intend to create an action/gangster film opening sequence aimed at people who enjoy action films aged 18+. We hope to make our action/gangster film appeal to a male and female audience, as this creates a wider market. We hope to use and explore a variety of camera angles and shots in our opening sequence to make it more interesting and professional, we will study the typical codes and conventions relating to action, and using these develop our own ideas, so that our opening sequence conforms to the action/gangster genre.





Initial Ideas for an action/gangster Film (from personal knowledge)

Before I analyse some films to advance my knowledge on the genre, I would just like to establish some ideas that I already have.

Characters: The stereotypical character casts in an action/ gangster movie generally include, a group of dominating men, an opposition, a boss, and a dealer.

Locations: I feel that appropriate locations would be places like estates, bars, pubs, poker clubs, squats, flats.

Props: Fake drugs, a briefcase, suits for the gangsters, hoodies for the dealers, money, whisky (a typical gangster accessory), a weapon, black ties, or top button undone on shirt.

Typical camera angles: Establishing shot of area, wide camera angles close up, medium etc.
To get some more initial ideas I decided to Google ‘Gangs’, ‘mafia’ here’s what I got guys:

MOODBOARD

Market research

So that I avoid a competitive market I have decided to look into the genre action (involving gangs and crime), as I feel that there is a limited availability of these types of films in production, however this is not to say that it is not taking a lot of limelight in other forms of media. As gang culture seems to be an upcoming issue in today’s society and it is constantly referred to in other forms of media like newspapers, I thought that it might be worth researching into. When I looked online into gang culture, I found a lot of information, which shows there is a particular interest into it. Here is some information I found from a newspaper…

LINKS

· http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6367273.stm
· http://www.sheffieldtelegraph.co.uk/headlines/Gang-culture-put-in-the.5115037.jp

Some quotes I found on the topic…

"Children were often attracted to gangs if they lacked a father figure, he added."

"POLICE will update councillors next week on the extent of gang membership and gun and knife crime in the city."
Continuing my research

To extend my research further and move forward towards some ideas I would like to analyse some comments on gang style films on YouTube. I will show my results below.

Some comments that were left by users.


DarklingPig (1 week ago) Show Hide
0 Reply
Goddamn AWESOME Movie

Frajock (2 months ago) Show Hide
+4 Reply
THE BEST F***** MOVIES EVER SEEN !!!


Quick brakedown
From the first film that I have seen I can already see that there is most definitely a market for this type of film, simply by the comments left and the number of views. I think that I will analyse this film further on in my project.



To research further into the popularity of the genre in the market and see if there is a trend in the popularity of these types of film I decided to check the reputation of a second film.






I found the results to be even better, 263,098 views indicates that there is definite market for this genre. What was quite impressive was the five star rating, given by 230 people!!

Even though I can see this film is quite popular already I just wanted to check the comments that had been left just for further reference and use. I have posted these below.

COMMENTS

Vlidius (1 week ago) Show Hide
0 Reply
Lolza!Just watched it 5 mins ago!

JEDikINgZ (1 month ago) Show Hide
0 Reply
farkn awesome movie

To finalise my market research into the available gangster type genre films I have done an additional, because as they usually say… ‘Once is a one off, twice is a coincidence and three times is a habit’.

Below is my final MARKET ANALYSIS

Astonishing, another gang related film… resulting in a 5 star rating with 376 ratings and 193,545 views. I am begging to feel that this is a safe sub genre of action to venture into as it seems to be very popular. A handful of comments…

M16Alie (6 days ago) Show Hide
0
Reply
i love this film unaaaahh!! major part ov bein a teenager this..lol

Sophstaaa (2 weeks ago) Show Hide
+1
Reply
Lovee Thisz Film! (:

fiucku (1 week ago) Show Hide
+3 Reply
I ve seen kidulthood like 20 times i know all the lines

Rakshyx (3 weeks ago) Show Hide
0 Reply
this film and adulthood is pretty amazing. it does highlight how knife and gun crime works in london and shit. noel clarke is just wicked as well.

I found the bottom comment (by Rakshyx) very interesting as I feel it might have some later relevance in the devilment of my project.


As this is my third market analyses I feel confident to say that I will be focusing my main research on the action/gangster genre. I would feel happy to make my final film relate to this genre.




Full textual Analyses


As the three films that I analysed in my market research seemed quite popular I decided to do a full critique of them using the migraine model.

Media language


This is the title which introduces the name of the film. When analysing this film using the migraine model this particular part fits in with the representation of the film. From what I can see the font seems to look urban like, this may coincide with the setting of the film, establishing Mis en scene.

Institution

As part of the migraine model, I have found that straight away that one of the institutions that Kidult hood is involved with is ‘Revolver entertainment’. Revolver entertainment acts as a distribution company that deals with “large scale and smaller films with equal care and attention”. On their website they also claim that they are a “fully integrated distribution machine, with in-house Theatrical and Home Entertainment Sales, and a large Publicity Team handling all our titles”. This seems like an appropriate institution that I could approach for the distribution of my film, I will conduct some further research into them later on in my project.

Genre

Genre is told by the codes and conventions that exist in a film. The technical codes and conventions featuring in this opening sequence are the camera angles and shots, which as you can see are quite naturally based, conjuring this as a ‘real life’ situation.

The symbolic codes and conventions in this opening sequence is the clothing. If you look at the hoodies, and the school environment, you can see that this school is government state, possibly based in the east London area. From the first few scenes it seems to establish this film as being a crime based genre.

Representation

This is one shot of a sequence that begins straight after the titles. The sequences of shots of groups of teenagers around a school playground shows some students to be wearing school uniform (conforming to the rules) and others which are simply dressed how they like (rebelling). From the first few seconds of the opening sequence it’s already hinting at which characters are going to be the most important.



Notice in this clip how the actor dressed in blue (standing out) is the only one with his hood up. The hoody is also showing iconography, as it is part of the urban gang culture theme.

Audience

It’s pretty obvious that the target audience in this film is teenagers with a rough age margin (between the ages of 16-24). It’s made for those teenagers that live a lifestyle influenced by direct crime or crime happening around them.

The hypodermic needle can be applied to this opening sequence as it’s controlling the audience of how they see teenagers (very stereotypical).

Ideologies and values

This opening sequence sets the values straight away with what is expected of the women that are in the film. The aim I think is to show the stereotypical teenager. The fact that it is in a public environment also shows the lack of care about sexual interactions.

Narrative

The opening sequence gives a few hints as to who the main characters are through the camera angles and shots. The characters I feel that they have introduced in a way are


The guy wearing the blue hoody
The teen kissing the girl
The chavy girls
The good girls (wearing the uniform)

overall the whole clip does seem to establish that reputation has some importance in power.

Media Language

From this still image you can see the tile of the film and a gun featuring the face of the main characters in the film. The fact that the gun is representing the characters means that this is part of the culture in the film. The typical representation of the characters in the clip shows that they are football hooligans. An aspect I have seen familiar to kidult hood is the fact that again there are groups/gangs.


Institution

This film has been produced by the director Julian Gilbey, who generally follows the genre action. He has made a few other films. All his films tend to have a basic narrative.The Institutions that are involved are Carnaby International and Flakjacket Films.


Genre

This film comes under the genre of action/gangs and crime. It conforms with genre due to it’s symbolic conventions consisting of violence, drugs and chases. The music is generally quite upbeat and the characters use a cockney dialogue and accent. The film has also used actors which are associated with other crime/action based films so they fit in well to make the genre work.

Representation

The genre can be quickly established by again the clothing. As you can see the characters are wearing casual clothes, and provoking each other with body actions and verbal language, which makes it very action based.

Audience

The clip has quite violent material and has an age rating of 18 +, I would look at the age range being between ages 18-40. The audience for this film would also likely to be football fans, as it is based on football team rivalry. The content is very biased and extreme as to what is expected from the darker side of football and therefore does relate to the hypodermic needle idea.

Ideologies and values

Well it’s clear that these men are showing their dedication to their football teams and that they are keen to fight. From the images it seems that they enjoy fighting other teams even if they get hurt giving this reckless behavioural theme to the film. What is expected violence is crime, so this does lead onto the foundations building the genre.

Narrative
The film is expected to be seen as very English, it also shows the theory of good vs. evil.

The final film i would like to analyse is 'lockstock and two smoking barels'', it's been desribed to me as a successful gangsta type action film with a very good plot, for this reason i would like to anaylyse it.

The opening sequence starts with the name of the distributor and then zooms in from a medium camera shot of an audience, to an over shoulder view of a cockney talking character with a cropped haircut.The camera then zooms onto The guy who is talking very confident. The camera flows with his movement and moves in the same direction in a pan motion. The company names involved then appears on the screen behind a blackground, this makes it clearer to see as the writting is white and the background is black, it also shakes slightly which gives the effect of an old film/cinema view. The camera then zooms back out to establish that there is a crowd around him who are interested in what he is saying. He is trying to advertise his product in a market style. He talks using cockney slang, and a rthymic vioce. The camera angles tend to cylcle in the first 30 seconds between a frontal view of his face from the audience point of view and shots over the shoulders of the audience facing towards him. These camera angles tend to create depth and show that there is a large/medium crowd and the space they are taking up. Another title appears at about 0:35 seconds to present the film. after the title he then states the price of the item he is selling, and the camera takes the role of acting as someones view in the audience it has a hand held effect. From the representation of the characters, the viewers of the film can see that the main character is likely to be the guy selling the products, the way he talks also establishes that he is likely to be a bit dodgey as well as the items he is selling. a c lsoe up shot of his face also shows how he is communicating with the crowd around him, making the viewers of the film also intreged by what he has to say, after this type of shot there is a title. after the title the sot then goes to a medium one which shows people coming into the personal space of the guy who was talking. there is also another shot which focuses onto a member of the audience suspiciously looking around. The camera then cycles back to the merchant, a title appears again, this time with very faint music in the background, which sounds quite jumpy, the music continually gets louder and the camera pans around the audience to the character who looked suspicious, who then warns of police. Instantly we can tell that a chase is going to begin which ets our adrenaline pumping. As the chase begins we can then establish that these to characters are going to be main features in the film and that they are involved in crime. the characters know the back roads and areas. they then run down stairs and there is a long shot of the guy hitting a wall in slow motion a narration then begins describing the characters. \this indicates the genre as being gangsta/ action.

I am now going to begin to establish an idea for our film, i have abasic idea which i would like to produce a migraine model.

Media language

The meaning behind our film project will be crime based in essex. It will also include some adult material such as sex drugs and violence. The main theme behind our idea will be 'taxin' which is the term used to describe the theft from drug dealers. The first scene will have to establish what we do therefor perhaps a quick deal.

As most gangs have thier boss we will need to show a boss. We intend to make this character stand out by giving him the moeny to deal with as this is the key aspect behind the film.

We include a variety of shots in our film that show

medium angles

short angles

long angles

birds eye view

close up

over shoulder

i would also like to make a camera cycle in the film where we will be able to see one scene from cycling angles which smoothly run in.

The typical properties involved in a gangsta film are

cars

money

guns

violence

boss

purpose... to get rich.

its now time to film ...