Textual Analysis - Alien Raiders

For my production I have decided to do an Action genre production. I thought that instead of looking just analysing very popular action films that I would also look at action films made on a low budget so that I can apply it better to my production in more realistic way as it's unlikely that I'll be able to have mass explosions. Alien Raiders had a budget of less then one million dollars.

Alien Raiders
For the first few minutes of the opening it's just the credits and the production companies involved in the making of the film. However, you can still recognise it with the action genre.

A typical feature of the action genre is weapons such as, guns, knifes and explosions and throughout the whole of the opening credits there's fast paced shots of bullet impacting and guns, during the credits, as some text appears the shot will become a freeze frame which adds importance to the text on screen and it draws the audience's attention to it. In this screenshot you can see some guns being loaded plus the loading of the guns could represent the beginning of a fight scene or the action which is also a typical event in the action genre. There is also a soundtrack over the top of the opening credits that's quite ironic, within the soundtrack it says "what's going on?" which echoed my thoughts as I was watching it as though that was the aim they were going for.

In the first scene you can see 3 narrative strands. One being time, you can see this by how dark it outside the shop windows, indicating it's late in the day/night, another is the characters, we can see three characters in this shot and lastly, location, in this shot the location is very clearly a typical American shop/store which isn't actually a typical location for an action scene, they usually take place outdoors, sometimes in abandoned places etc. However, by doing this it adds tension as the audience are now waiting for some kind of disruption. 

Todorov's "The Trinity" is shown in this opening:
The Set Up - A normal, calming atmosphere of the shop, everyone going about their own business.
The Disruption - As a worker turns the corner they discover a customer dead on the floor with blood all around them and from their Chaos breaks out with guns being fired left, right and centre.
The Resolution - The police showing up should be a resolution but is only a resolution for half of the hostages who are let go, for the others it doesn't help at all.

As the disruption occurs the soundtrack changes to a more intense build up also, the shop worker turns, each time a bad guy appears there is a burst sound effect. Following this shot is a high angled shot, the women with the gun is standing while the shop worker is kneeling and this makes the women look powerful and Superior to 
 the male shop worker, this goes against the stereotypes of women being weak as she is represented as strong and in control whereas, the male shop worker is the one who is weak, reverse stereotypes. We are able to identify the bad guys through mise-en scene for example, all of the bad guys are wearing full black which is a typical thing for a burglar to wear or someone sneaking around but also they're hiding half of their face with cloths because they don't want to be able to be identified. By this it also mean the audience can easily tell between the victim and the 
 bad guys.
Here we have a first person view of one of the bad guys who's behaviour would definitely be very strange, grabbing someones head and seeing these vibrations and brightness around the person in front of them. As the vibration and brightness happens there is a sound of an electric pulse in the background and it's a sound only this character can hear, digetic as it's not a sound made by the world around them. 

This film's target audience is PG15 because the film has mild swearing but it also has a lot of blood and violent scenes. This age range is also typical of a action genre. This film can be targeted at both genders, as the film doesn't just focus guns and aliens but also some romance and family, there's also both female and male characters to attract both genders. By having attractive looking males/females in this films it applys Molrey's male/female gaze which means that men look at women as a sex object (male gaze) or women look at men as a sex object (female gaze)