Shooting Schedule

Shot List

 

BBFC rating

Script: Escape

TA member profile

Name: David Harriman

Age: 18

Career: Student

Favourite action/thriller film: The film David said that he loves and that matches with or genre, it´s Transporter.

Favourite drink: He said that his favourite is Coke, but he also likes to drink Heineken in parties and special occasions.

Interests: David said that he loves football and music and that these things are very important in his life.

Favourite actor/s: He really likes Tom Cruise. He said that he likes his films and the way he acts as well.

Favourite music: He answered this question saying that his favourite music is hip hop music and sometimes rock music. His hip hop favourite artist is Lil Wayne, and in rock he said that he likes bands as The Cars or U2.

Favourite books: David loves mystery and crime old books such as: 'Guilty as sin' by Tami Hoag or 'Last car to Elysian Fields' by James Lee Burke.

Pitching Our Film Opening

This video shows the group pitching our action/thriller ideas to the rest of the class.



In this pitch we talked about two ideas.

The first where the boss is in her room. The two assassins walk into the room and sit down without speaking a word. The boss gives them a photo of the target to be killed. The assassins ask for a price and the boss gives them an price. Finally the assassins nod again, get up and leave.

The second being the victim is packing up her bags and trying to leave her home. There is a shot of both the assassins walking towards the house. A protector to the victim tells the victim that it is time to leave the house. The first assassin tells the second one to stay behind to check for the victim and he does. The Assassin walks into the house and fights the protector while the victim runs out the back door. The victim walks down the street and passes the second assassin while he is distracted.

One of the issues raised was that the film seemed a bit stereotypical, because of the simple plot of someone running away that most action thriller films use. To fix this, a slight change to the story can be made to add some complexity to it.

Another issue that was raised was that we might simply show just someone packing up and running without context. If we were to use the second idea, then to fix this we must add a small scene to the beginning of our opening where it shows why the assassins are chasing the victim.

The second idea was voted to be the better idea out of the two. I think that this feed back shows that we should use that idea because of the better reception that it got.

In conclusion, the changes we must make are this, if we were choosing to do the first film opening, then we must add some complexity to the plot, such as adding more characters, and for the second film opening we must add some context to the beginning of the film.

Ideas for the movie opening.

Idea Number One:

 

First of all the boss is in her room. The two assassins walk into the room and sit down without speaking a word. The boss gives them a photo of the target to be killed. The assassins ask for a price and the boss gives them an price. Finally the assassins nod again, get up and leave.

 

Idea Number Two:

 

The victim is packing up her bags and trying to leave her home. There is a shot of both the assassins walking towards the house. A protector to the victim tells the victim that it is time to leave the house. The first assassin tells the second one to stay behind to check for the victim and he does. The Assassin walks into the house and fights the protector while the victim runs out the back door. The victim walks down the street and passes the second assassin while he is distracted.

Target Audience Interviews

We conducted three interviews, towards the action’s genre and thriller’s genre Target Audience’s.  Our primary Target Audience are males under 35 (for Action’s genre) and our secondary Target Audience are females under 35 (for the Thriller genre).

Those interviews show us that in an action film it is important there is the appearance of explosions, car crashes, fighting, bad people dying, a key story line and sometimes a love story between the main character and his/her assistant

The first person we interviewed was Mr Higgins, a young teacher under 35. He told us that in an action film the more important things are the explosions, the main character and how he/she looks like. He said that the gender of the main characters is not important, but he thinks that always is better to see a male, knowing that is easier for him to identify himself with the main character. He opened up telling us that he always wanted to be an action film character such as James Bond and Bruce Willis that show us that every time you watch an action film you want to identify yourself with the main character. This information helped our ideas for think about a film opening where the viewer can identify himself or herself with the main character.

The second person we interviewed was Mr Benzie, the Media Studies’ teacher, a male under 35. The key ideas of the interview were the same as Mr Higgins. I think the ideas which are transmitted for every action film are the same. But when we asked Mr Benzie what he wanted to be in an action film who have never saw before he answered a teacher. It does sound ridiculous, but people want to see normal people in strange situations, because you don’t see a crash car every day but you see a teacher more often. That shows us that the people want to see more characters which are easier for identify themselves with.

The third interview was to Jess and Gemma, our secondary Target Audience, demographics, females under 35. This interview was so helpful because we have two opinions in the same interview. We have Jess, who support action films, and Gemma who is against them. During the entire interview, we saw the reasons why one of them hates action films; however these are the same reasons which make the other girl like this type of films. This information shows us that, either you like or you don’t like action films. If you want to like an action film, you have to like car crashes, naked women, and fighting… This interview also shows us that the genre of the main character sometimes is important, because a muscular girl is not always beautiful. That help us know when we will make the main character, we have to think about how his/her looks likes, pay attention for if he/she is, natural, good looking, and a bit sexy.

Thanks to this video we have learn that in an action film the main character have to be someone who you can identify with. For example girls want to see women more ‘conventional’ no like Tomb Raider, so muscular, more like a friend, a tiny and sporty girl without being too muscular. We also learned that in action films that some of the conventions you expect to see are car crashes, fighting, and a good story line.

Box Office Stats

In this post I will be showing the statistics for the films made in the Action/Thriller (Hitman) genre.

Here is the list of the top grossing films in the Hitman genre. First we can see that the top grossing film is The Bourne Ultimatum which people did like a lot, seeing that it did gross $227,471070. We can see that Hitman films are enjoyed consistently by seeing that most of the other films grossed a similar amount.

 

Recent films from the Hitman genre, however, have been grossing inconsistently, which shows that people would not go to see a film of the Hitman genre just because it is from the Hitman genre, so it might not be as popular as a simple action movie.

The film Hitman managed to gross $39,687,694 without having many famous actors. On the first week it earned $13,180,769. It was Produced by Vin Diesel who is a well known action star.

Kill Bill is a film made by Quentin Tarantino (the director behind Pulp Fiction). It grossed $70,099,045 which is good for the Hitman genre. It made $22,089,322 in its first week.

 

From this we can see that there can be an audience to the Hitman genre, if done correctly.

Generic Conventions In an Action/Thriller Film

Analysis of a film opening

Target audiences

In this post I am analysing target audience data by looking at the statistics from the UK film councils statistics, and using them to see who the specific target audience, that I should be appealing to, should be.

I've decided to analyse the audience data because knowing who would watch my movie in the first place will allow me to create a movie that more people would like if they did watch it.

After looking at the UK film councils statistics, I have found that action and thriller films are really enjoyed by the public. 53% of the public said that they like thriller/suspense and 50% of the public said they like action movies. Of the 53% of people who like thriller movies, 60% of those people were females aged 35 and up, 59% of the people who like thriller movies were not parents and 56% of the people who like thriller movies are of the C2 social class. As for action films, 62% of the people who liked action films were males aged 35 and up, 52% of the people who liked action movies were parents and 54% of the people who like action movies were of the C2 social class.


A graph to show the percentage of people who like certain genres



Statistics that show the films people enjoy watching



Statistics that show the films that people consider their favourites

My target audience are people who are aged 35 and above, and are of the C2 social class. I do not have to concern myself with appealing to people if they are parents or not because  parents like the action genre and non parents like the thriller genre.


Film opening genre.

For the film opening, we will be making an action movie, specifically to do with hit men. In the group there are four people. We have decided to do this because we like the idea of action movies that are to do with crime and more importantly assassination such as the mechanic or hitman.