Opening Two Minute Ideas

Audience Profiling - Scream 3.

From this comparable profile the age rate of people who watch this film is people aged between 15-24 which have a percentage of 57% and ages 4-6, 7-11 and 12-14 have the lowest percentage of people that watch the film. Both male and females like to watch this film as there equal percentages with the male with 52% and women with 48%.

Audience Profiling - The Ring.



From this comparable profile of the ring it suggests that the age range of 15-24 has a higher percentage of watching the ring than any other age. From the table it also infers that more females watch the ring with a percentage of 54% and the percentage of male is 46%. The percenatge of class range from 16-45% which is a difference. The highest percentage of viewers comes from the middle/upper class. This suggests to me that the main audience who watch this film range from 15-24 year olds who are female and are upper class.

Film Idea

Paranormal Activity 2 Review.

Paranormal Activity 2 Review.

 

 

Paranormal Activity 2 Analysis:

From this table you can see that the majority of viewers are aged between 15 and 24.

For our opening two minutes Jess and I are creating a film similar to paranormal activity 2 therfore this table helps us find out our target audience.

In this trailer for Paranormal Activity 2, tension is created right from the beginning in the music played, the chosen clips from the film that they chose to show. From this trailer you can gather that the film is about a family who are being haunted by a ghost/poltergeist. I haven't seen all three films therfore do not know the actual storyline, although after speaking to Jess she has told me that it is confusing and therfore the storyline isn't as straightforward as she had hoped. And even after watching the third she still doens't know exactly what is going on. She has told me that there are many clichés in this film (as expected) it is a horror.
For example, people being dragged by what appears nothing, but it is in fact the ghost, everything always happens at night, there are children involved, it is in a home (relevant to viewers who are probably watching at home). The fact that there are children involved creates an eery atmosphere as in many films children are secretly involved in the wrong doing, and in paranormal activity 3 the child becomes 'friends' with the demon/ghost. The thing that scares people the most about ghost films is that you cant obviously see when   something scary is going to happen. In this film, they have a dog as a pet but for the audience this dog is almost tellling them when something scary is about to happen. Dogs are known for the sixth sense which allows the audience to closely watch the dog's movements. If the dog were to start barking or howling the audience would be aware that something maybe happening soon. The music also creates the tension and keeps the audience nail biting whilst sitting on the edge of the seat. In the trailer we can see the familys lifestyle from one of their home cameras, we know this because of the date and time in the bottom right hand corner, this makes the audience enagage more and make it seem more real as they then start to believe that they are actually making a home video and that its not just the camera men, and the date and time have been included in editing afterwards The trailer engrosses me into wanting to know what happens and therfore am left wanting to watch the sequal of Paranormal Activity.

Preliminary Task Evaluation.

Preliminary Task Evaluation

 

Our preliminary task had to be evaluated by the class. they had to comment on techniques such as:

Camera Angels

Mise En scene

Shot Reverse Shot

Match On Action

Editing

180 Degree Rule

The comments we got back from the camera angles were good. They said that they liked how we had a steady camera which captured there attention. In the first scene we have my feet walking down a long corridor. They said that are intresting camera shots enaged them. In the second clip you can see me through the door. As I hesitate to enter the camera holds its steadyness which allows the audiece to empathaise with me because I don't want to enter.


Shanie through the door

The very first scene- Low angle

We also did two more extreme close ups other than just the shoes at the beginning, to try and emphasise how much going into this room was going to affect me. I breathed deeply through the window as if getting ready to do something which needed to be done, but with much willpower, also the way I slowly amd hesitantly open the door suggest I don't want to go in. We also decided that I should nervously rub my hands together to make the audience feel that I was anxious and uneasy about something.

Extreme close up of Shanie's
hand and the door handle

Extreme close up of Shanie's hands

Mise En Scene
The Mise En Scene was never mentioned during our feedback. But me and Jess belived that we had considered enough and done our best.  We didnt have the best setting but it worked as I had to confess to a murder and where i had to walk into a police station the school grounds didn't resemble a police station. However, we had found a room that was perfect for filming, with just a white board, table and phone inside. Our clothing could have been better for example the police officer (James) could have been wearing a suit to reflect his character. But being a small group of two without James he was pulled in to help us with the characters. As there wouldnt be enough people to cast and film.

Shot Reverse Shot
Our shot reverse shot did get ruined by the transition but we chose to use.But we did include a shot reverse shot in our preliminary task, which at first was a bit difficult as we were in a small room. Considering that Jess had to be restricted into a small corner whilst filming because of limited space I thought our shot reverse shot was ok. I agree with Jess and our peers that the transition ruined our shot reverse shot. However, we now know where abouts to include transitions to make some shots stand out correctly. Jess and I both believe this a learing curve for us.

Shot Reverse Shot from
behind James at Shanie.

Shot Reverse Shot from
behind Shanie at James.

Match on Action
The feedback that we got back for our match on action shots were very good,our peers said that they were effective and that they worked well, the only problem which our peers had noticed was that there was a pause between where we left off from the door. Jess nor I had  noticed this before but we accepted our mistake. If we had noticed at editing we would of cut the clip just before the pause, as this makes our task unprofessional. But we now know to go over our work ad check everything throughly.

Just before Shanie enters the room.

As Shanie is entering the room.

Editing
Jess and I edited most of the clips as they were either too long, too dark or we just thought we wanted to add an effect to try and enhance the emotion behind the scene. The clip with James getting up and leaving the room we had to lighten as we couldn't see his face, we also had to cut that scene as it was too long and so missed the actual feeling that we were trying to shown and so clipping it assisted us in creating a better atmosphere. The comments we got back for the transitions we added were negative comments at the class felt as if they weren't effective and they ruined the flow of the scenes, by adding in the transitions we also cut off a shot reverse shot clip which we were not best pleased with. But we will try to stop this from happening in future tasks. The scene which people found the best with the effect we added was in fact the last scene, after James walks out of the room and I puts her head in her hands, we added a 'Ghosting' effect which really did work.

180 Degree Rule
The feedback which we got about the 180 degree rule was that we didn't break it which is something we tried not to do.

My Evaluation on our Preliminary Task.
After listening to our peers' comments and feedback from our teacher I understand what went wrong in our task but also what we did very well. I agree with what our peers thought didnt work particularly well. And we will make sure that we do not make the same mistakes in future tasks. Some of the things that we didn't notice when filming, should have been attented to at editing, but Jess and I had not realised even at editing and therfore made silly mistakes. If we were to re-do are preliminary task I would not do things that we had done. For example the transitions and pause between two slides, and mise en scene.

Preliminary Task Write Up

 

 Preliminary Task Write up

 

 

Introduction

I did my prelimianry task with Jess. It took us two hours, when we realised that problems were occuring we started again and finished it within an hour. With our final piece finished to the standard that we are happy with we are looking forward for the class to view it.

Filming

When filming our preliminary task we had a lot to consider. With different shot types to include such medium shot, long shot, extreme close ups. We aslo had the 180 degree rule which we had to try not to break. We tried to make it look intresting trying different angles of the camera. We put the camera on the floor and focused on my shoes. This extreme close up was very effective as it allows the audince to just focus what we have decided to show them. Being in a group of just two was quite difficult as when one is filming it only leaves one person to be filmed, therfore we had to include one of our friends to help us out.

Editing

Once we had filmed our task we took it to editing and put in transitions that made the task flow better and easier to watch. Jess and I are happy with the outcome of our preliminary task. However, others didnt like someof the transitons. We will take this feedback into account for our opening two minute film clip.
 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        



The Holiday Opening Two Minutes Review.

The Holiday is a romantic comedy both produced and direted by Nancy Meyers. Main actors, Kate Winslet and Cameron Diaz as two women who live on the opposite sides of the world, who temporarily exchange homes during holiday season. Jack Black and Jude Law co -star with Eli Wallach, Shannyn Sssamon, Edward Burns and Rufus Sewell which all play supporting roles within the film. From the opening two minutes it is already suggested that it is a romantic film, therfore the genre is romance. The music is very mellow and quite classical, a convention of a romantic film. The music and characters link very well and especially so as the characters are being introduced on screen. Rufus Sewell is the first to be introduced, along with his fiancee. Next we are introduced to cameron diaz and her husband. We can tell that she isn't happy with him and that they have had problems before. Thirdly, we are introduced to Jude Law where he is in a club locking eye contact with a girl. Following that we are then introduced to his sister (Kate Winslet) who we see by herself wrapping a present in some sort of office. Where her introduction was different from the others it can be suggested that she doesnt have any sort of love life as she is completely on her own in this scene. Having this particualar character in a romantic comedy, is one of many cliches. Having so manny characters been intoduced so early on can only suggest one thing, that they are very significant to the film.

Mise En Scene (clothing, props, setting, location, and sound/dialogue) are all included in this first scene. For example starting with clothing. The costumes of the characters are shown to be casual for their specific parts in the film. Cameron Diaz is wearing expensive clothes and looks rather sophisticated in her clothes unlike the others. inferring she has enough money backed from a good and well payed job. Where as Kate Winslet is shown to not look as wealthy as Cameron Diaz even though she still looks middle class.
The setting of the opening two minutes of the film shows an idealistic gardern scene where a couple are kissing which again relates back to why it is a romantic film.


To summarise, the audience know that this is a romantic comedy from all that is suggested throughout, cliches, and conventions.

Preliminary task

Big Momma's House Opening Two Minute Review

Big Momma's House: Like Father Like Son is a comedy. At the beginning of the film, we see a car chase, we all assume that it cant be something too serious otherwise would ruin the comedy genre that this film has. So just like the audience would have assumed the car chase turned out to be a local resident (who happens to be a police officer) who wanted the mail man to give him his letters to see whether or not his son got into college. Comical? It had me chuckling. There are also jokes that are made from the mailman for example when
the resident (main character) pulls him over and he says 'please let there be someone taping this in the bushes' this wit used, is there to make the audience laugh. With jokes made early on, it is what we expect from a comedy and therefore the viewers will continue watching as they may think it is a good film, and will stick around to see more. The music in this scene is up beat and 'jolly' creating a friendly tone to the film.

This comedy doesnt struggle with the jokes, pretty much every other line is a punch line. But it isnt over done so that it becomes cringey. I think the opening scene shows that this film have found the balance between the humour and the seriousness that goes with it.

I haven' seen the film before but after watching the opening scene, I would definatley like to see the film, I think an element of this is because i can relate to this, being a teenager myself.

Inception Opening Two Minutes Review

Inception is an action film. Within the first fifty eight seconds we are introduced to a character holding a gun. This is a known convention of an action film, the audience expect to see the 'cat and mouse' chase, with massive explosions and fight scenes with guns. However, in this opening two minutes all we see after a man being washed up onto a beach, the same man then inside a building which looks as though surrounded by body guards. This is probably because the man already inside the building owns a lot of money and therefore has something that the man from the beach wants. Again, a typical convention of an action film having a rivalry between two main characters and other less important characters. We would later on in the film expect to see these two characters fight for something.

As there are no action such as fight scenes, right at the begining of the film, the audience can only sit back and wait as they assume it will not be too long until it all kicks off and fights will be appearing left right and centre. Because the first scene is unpredictbale, unlike horrors, it engages the audineces to carry on watching the film.  shortly after dialogue is shared from the man originally inside the building ,he says 'are you here to kill me?' the other man freezes and looks at his plate, this to the audience can only suggest one thing, that he was sent to do so. This implies that the man could have been on a mission to kill him, and therfore was sent by somebody else. We expect to see this happening, and therefore wouldnt be shocked by what we have just seen.

Action films also usually consist of fast, up beat music, to insinuate that something is going to happen, or is already happening. The music may however change when a 'goodie' or a 'baddie' appears. For example when there is an antagonist on screen the music may reflect the character and be quite  dark and slow music. To get the audience feeling as though the antagonist is about to be involved in an important scene. However when the heroic character appears the might have some light hearted soundtrack playing to suggest that he will once again, 'save the day'.

I have never seen inception before and i feel that the opening scene doesnt really attract me to want to se it, possibly if there was a fight scene earlier on then I would be engaged and want to see more. but unfortunatley it did not get my attention straight away, and feel as though im forcing myself to watch it.

The Ring Opening Two Minutes Review

The Ring is a mainstream horror. In the first scene we are shown a house surrounded by nothing, this is a typical convention of a horror. When surrounded by nothing you expect something to happen or at least go wrong, as there would be nobody to come and help. It is thunder and lightning outside, it is also the evening therefore pitch black and this allows the audience to feel suspence, as at night the darkness creates an eery atmosphere. In the first minute of the ring the camera shot is a two shot. Where two characters are in a bedroom, they are two young girls. As they appear so early on in the film we expect these 'annoying teenage girls' also known as 'the dumb blonde one' to die first, and within the first two minutes the dumb blonde one does. Her friend tells her about a tape and that if you watch it the phone will ring to tell you, you only have seven days to live. We immediatley know from that moment we assume that the dumb blonde has watched it. Then the phone rings, the music changes to a slow pace creating suspence and with the audience now hoping that she will die, as she answers the phone it is just her mother. Meanwhile, her friend has dissapeared and with things seeming more and more creepy, camera shots such as extreme close ups and medium shots are used to show her facial expressions. Calling out to her friend, she is now no where to be seen. The audience now definatley are expecting a death and are going to be in for a treat as after a short three minutes she is dead. We can only assume that these first scene deaths are put in to engross the audience into keep watching the movie. If the opening scene resembled normal life, then we would get bored and turn it off to watch something else, that is why most horror films included those insignificant teenage characters to die first.

Research and Planning

There is no evidence of research and planning.
Make sure you upload your preliminary task.

You MUST have at least 8-10 posts on here by next Tuesday, including:
- Analysis of at least 4 different genre openings (analyse how mise-en-scene, sound, plot convey genre to audience)
- Preliminary task diary
- Preliminary task evaluation
- own ideas mind map - what genre? plot? etc
- Analysis of at least 2 openings of films from your chosen genre