Film Title

Made by me using genially

Production Company Logo

Logo was designed by me using photoshop

I offered to take up the job of designing our company logo since I like creating graphics in my free time. I decided to follow the normal action movies conventions which have a black background, a white image, and a black and white text type. 

I used the image of a film reel having kept in mind that this logo would be used for other movies as well. The JCENA font has splashes of white on it which conveys our company's release of films relating to the genre of action, and I felt like it would be appropriate to use.

Here are my sources of inspiration: 

As shown, the logo I created is somewhat similar to the ones I researched and found online. This is so that out film logo follows the normal movie conventions. However, although it would've been interesting to have an animated logo, none of us were able to do so so we used what we had. We decided that when we do use it in our film to just use the fade transition to make it look more appealing.

Moodboard

Made by me using photocollage

First Storyboard

Production Team

• Eman: Drew the storyboard/filmed it
• Nour: Drew the storyboard/filmed it
• Ramsha: Editor
• Sasha: Editor

Overall Planning

Plans were made by Eman

Costume Moodboard

Made by Nour on piccollage

The collage above shows the various ideas of costumes we plan to use for all the characters: the mother, the main protagonist and her younger self, the referee, and the coach.

Since the colour red is symbolic in our movie, we plan to use it in the costumes and props as much as we can.

Each characters' costume will be symbolic in its own way, we still haven't confirmed what exactly we will do or if we have to buy anything, but for now this is our basic plan.

Film Name Planning

                                     Plan was made by Eman, ideas were given by all of us

All of us got together during class to plan what our film would be called. We each came up with different ideas for what we could use. Each title idea that we came up with had a deeper and symbolic meaning to it.

We couldn't really use long titles like 'Battle To Redemption' or 'Mind Over Matter' because it would be really hard to edit them in a way that would work with the ending types we came up with.

The one worded titles also couldn't be used because they didn't give the impact or effect we wanted them to give. 'Broken' sounded too cheesy and although 'Exnihilo' was good, most people wouldn't understand the Latin reference made.

So at the end we decided to use 'Black Heaven' as our film title. It was the one I came up with and we all agreed that it had the most impact out of the all the others.

The juxtaposing of the words help the audience understand the type of meaning behind the movie. As explained in the picture, we believe 'Black Heaven' is the best way to reflect our movie. It doesn't sound too awkward, and is actually helps leave an impression.

Audience Profile

Made by me using Canva

Questionnaire Results and Analysis

Here are the results and their evaluation for the questionnaire we held concerning our film opening. I was pleased to know that most of the details of our plot-line that we had planned were favoured by majority votes in many cases, it made me even more excited to film our opening! By analysing the responses from this questionnaire, my teammates and I were able to fill out many plot holes that we had and were able to come to a final conclusion with our story-line.

 Analysis was written by me on Powerpoint

Questionnaire

This is the questionnaire that my team and I used to make our survey for the audience research. The analysis can be found here.

Questionnaire was made by all of us on google docs

Audience Research

Production Team

Eman: Director, editor, interviewer, camerawoman
Nour: Camerawoman, editor, microphone handler
Ramsha: Editor, camerawoman, microphone handler
Sasha: Editor, camerawoman, microphone handler

Above is our focus group video. There were a total of six people; three boys and three girls who gave us their feedback. We made three people react to the opening of the movie 'Creed', while the other three reacted to 'Mission Impossible Rogue Nation'. The two film openings are quite different from one another. 'Creed' is a more serious film, whereas 'Mission Impossible' is more light heartedA bunch of different questions were prepared and asked to ensure that we would be able to get as much detail as possible to help us with our final product.

Generally, many of the students seemed to agree with what we had already known; that it was quite usual for males to have the lead role in the action genre, and that there was a need for more female leads to rise. However, surprisingly enough there were some people that mentioned that they preferred it the stereotypical way of females being played as 'the princess', saying that they preferred this order than the one we were thinking of following.

Even though we got such a response, the general vote went to having more stronger female leads which is why my team and I felt that it would be refreshing to break those stereotypes, and decided to stick with having a strong female protagonist. Although there has been a rise recently in terms of strong female leads, many people still agreed that it would be interesting to see one in our film opening.

A lot of things that we had planned beforehand were liked by the majority of our peers. Things such as the pace, the music, the font, were advised for us to use matching the concept of our film opening, which we were already planning to do so beforehand.

A question we decided to add last minute was the one on what type of ending they would have preferred for our film opening. This is because we were still confused as to how we wanted to end it. Out of all the options we gave to our peers, the two that got an equal amount of votes were 'lingering thought' and 'cliffhanger'.

This didn't really help us come to a conclusion as one cannot be done if the other is being used. Also because we had two completely different ways we could end the film opening if one or the other was chosen. At the end we decided to see how our filming would go and then we'll decide on how to end it based on our shots. Nonetheless, it is still quite interesting that both techniques had an equal amount of votes because they both leave different types of effects on the audience.

Due to this focus group we were able to understand more of what the audience would like to see. I was quite delighted to know that most of the things that we had planned were favoured by majority (such as font type and pacing). We did, however make a few changes to our soundtrack plans as many people claimed that soundtrack was something that didn't really effect them as they were too absorbed in watching what was going on.

Gender Representation Analysis

Presentation was made by me using emaze

Editing Analysis

The movie I have decided to analyse for its editing is ‘Million Dollar Baby’ as both of our film openings have the same concept-boxing. Since our film will contain both flashbacks and present time moments, the medium pacing of this film along with its smooth editing is something I hope that my team and I will be able to achieve in our film opening. By applying the type of pacing used in this film for our present time clips, I believe that its slower pace will be a nice contrast to the quick shots we plan to use for our flashbacks.

                                                    Analysis was written by me on Powerpoint

Narrative Analysis

Todorov’s narrative theory basically states that most plot-lines follow a similar path. There are five steps in this pattern:-

1. Equilibrium: This is the first part of the story, usually in which the characters are introduced, everything seems ‘normal’ at this point.
2. A disruption: A change occurs which disturbs the ‘normality’ previously mentioned.
3. Realisation: Main character(s) become aware of the change caused by the disruption. Todorov believes that this is the longest part in movies as the plot constantly intensifies.
4.  Restored Order: The main character(s) attempt to look for solutions to repair the damage and restore the problem so that they could bring back the normalcy.
5. New Equilibrium: The final part of the plot, the ending, in which the main character(s) resolve the problem and succeed in achieving the wanted normalcy.   

The film opening I decided to analyse for its narrative is 'Thor'. This is because the opening narrative- which is a flashback concerning Thor's father, Odin- contains all the elements of Todorov's theory mentioned above. Analysing this film opening was quite interesting as it didn't follow the usual flow of plots. The opening itself had its own equilibrium, disruption, and solution, different from the rest of the movie, but it helped in setting the scene and main plot. The idea my team and I came up with may not follow the usual flow either as we have decided to add in a lot of flashbacks to tell the main protagonists story. Although it may be difficult, we might be able to pull it off through the use of proper editing and techniques. I believe that challenging the stereotypical flow is a good choice to make as it sometimes creates interesting and unique ideas to present.

Analysis was written by me on Powerpoint

Soundtrack Analysis

The opening soundtrack I decided to analyse was from the movie 'Noah' released in 2014. The musical score of 'Noah' was composed by Clint Mansell and is performed by Kronos Quartet. I analysed this opening soundtrack because the opening sequence was quite unique in its imagery and very pleasing to look at. The build up of music in this opening is very interesting and creates a very tense and suspenseful atmosphere for the audience. I hope that my team and I will be able to achieve a similar form of music effect in our film opening.

Analysis was written by me on Powerpoint

Film Credits Analysis

Made by me using Photoshop

In action movies the use of small, unnoticeable print for credits is common. This is because the movies of this genre usually have fast paced openings that reveal important plot points for the movie. So in order to not distract the audience, the credits usually have neutral colours with simple, thin fonts that are not as eye catching as bold, big, colourful fonts which are usually used in movies with the genre of comedy. An example of a movie that follows the typical action movie credit style is Lone Survivor.

Lone Survivor uses a simple black background with a plain white capitalised font for the credits. An interesting aspect of Lone Survivor's credits is that the names of important people have a bigger font size than the rest of the text, however it is still not big enough to grab the audience's attention.

I think this is the most effective font for this movie as the words are not distracting at all and are able to fade into the background. It is helpful as the fast pace of the movie along with the constant use of quick cuts help tell a big story which is essential to the main plot-line. Using such font helps keeps the audiences attention towards what is happening in the movie.

If brighter, bolder, and more colourful text was used, the audience would only be bothered by it and would be unable to pay attention to the story at hand. Text that are more colourful work with more lighthearted genre's-definitely not something we would be using as our film is set to tell a very serious story.

Recently a new trend has risen for movie credits to have their own opening sequences with made graphics. An example of such movies with the genre of action is Spy. Even though it is an interesting concept, due to the length of the film, and the complexity of the task of creating an animated sequence, the idea was not thought of  by any of us to do.

In our film opening my team and I are planning to create an effect similar to that of Lone Survivor's credits as we do not want to take our audience’s attention away from the action that will be taking place on the screen. We will try to use font styles that are related to the action in our film but we will make sure it won't be too distracting for the audience. We will also stick with the neutral colour scheme most story-based film opening's have in order to keep our product nice and simple.

Entry

The first idea for our film opening that our group that come up with was a film that related to war. Here is the plan that we came up with for our initial idea.

After much discussion of how we would be able to proceed, we figured that we will not be able to film it because the idea itself is too complex for us to do so. Moreover, getting the costumes and the would've been too costly, and getting people to act in our film would've been too much of a hassle as not many people are willing to act or be committed to do so.

We still wanted to keep the genre of our film action because we all had already started our independent research on it and weren't willing to change the thing we had already come up with. Furthermore, a few of the ideas we initially had (the flashbacks, a strong female main protagonist) were favoured by all of us so we really wanted to keep those ideas in our new film opening. 

Moving from war, we all started talking about sports and movie related to the sports genre. We had different ideas: basketball, football, swimming...but we couldn't really use those because we couldn't think of a way to incorporate our previous ideas into it.

Then, we came across boxing. Million Dollar Baby to be exact.

The concept of the film was really interesting, and since we wanted a simplistic film opening from the start, we decided to go with it.

Future plans and ideas are still unsure. But the main one we came up with that could include our previous ideas was this: A family that discovers their father/husband died in war (since we still wanted to have a topic of war in it) which turns their mother manic due to the loss. To fight the monster at the home, our main protagonist will lean towards learning how to box (due to it being her and her father's favourite sport).

We hope that with this idea we will be able to create a more interesting concept that will intrigue our audience. 

Film Genre Conventions

Made by me using wordclouds

Here are the different types of conventions presented in the action genre. Since my team and I had decided to use a simple film opening many of the conventions such as stunts, crime, fighting, etc could not be used. However, we did decide to have a backstory in the film opening itself which required the use of quick cuts creating a fast pace. This is because of the presence of flashbacks present in our film.

As the task is only that of a film opening, we didn't really need to tell too much of the story plot anyway. Although we can't have too much action, we still plan to make the story as interesting as possible.

Hopefully, through the use of these conventions, we are able to create an interesting plot for the audience to enjoy as even though our film follows some conventions, it challenges many too, for example, our main protagonist is a female figure in war-not a male- which is something very rare in films. We hope that this challenge in gender stereotypes help our film opening seem more exciting.

Creed Opening Analysis

  

                                              Analysis was written by me on Microsoft Word

Fury Film Title Analysis

Analysis was written by me on Microsoft Word

Lone Survivor Film Opening Analysis

First Plan

 Plan made by Eman and I

Here is the genre brainstorm my team and I came up with while we were planning for our main film. Although there were a range from which we could choose from we decided to do an action based film. This is due to the different range of shots we would be able to use while we are filming. Our aim is to use as many different types of camera shots and angles as we can to tell a simplistic story.

Although we haven't gotten much into detail, we also planned further what type of film opening we wanted to do:

Plan made by Nour

We decided to have a female main protagonist to challenge stereotypes. We further challenged these stereotypes by having her as a women from the army. The general idea is that this happens in the distant future. The woman is shown to be walking in the desert bleeding and hurt. While she is on the verge of passing out she has many flashbacks of her life before the war started, in these flashbacks we see her time with her family.

That is all that we have planned up until now, without any further story to relate it to. In order to not complicate ourselves too much we decided to keep everything short and minimum, but also enough to keep it interesting for the audience.

Introduction

Evaluation

In terms of good things in this video, my team and I used many filming techniques such as match on action, over the shoulder shot, and cross cutting, just to name a few. Moreover, the costumes we used in this film are usually worn by the stereotypes we followed. For example, the actress who played the student stealing the exam reports is shown to wear a leather jacket whilst the teacher wears a suit jacket. These stereotypes would help the audience understand that the actress in the leather jacket could be seen as a delinquent, whereas the actress in the suit jacket is an authoritative figure, in this case, a teacher.

I believe my team and I edited the video quite nicely, and made the short film quite smooth. However, there are some places that lack that smoothness, for example from 0:51-0:53 the 'Match On Action' shot was not very fluid, and could have been improved so it didn't seem too odd to watch. Another thing that seems strange is the shot reverse shot. Not only was the camera crossing the axis, thus breaking the 180 degree rule, it was also quite awkward to watch as the camera quickly cut from one person to the other. To avoid this in the main task we will try to give longer dialogue's to the characters or try not to cut too much from one person to the other.  Furthermore, another mistake that was overlooked was the lighting between shots as shown in the pictures below.

Finally, a few other things we could've improved on are that we should have put more thought into our narration, and we should have used a proper audio track and should've gotten rid of the extra background noise that was present.