Focus Group | Production Name

Me and my group member Ronan sat down with some of our peers who were the age of our Target Audience and we asked them about the ideas for our Production name sort of like a Focus Group 2.0.

Some Last Pre-Production Research

Before we took out to film I decided i would look at some tutorials and online advice to see if i could improve anything or to make sure we didn't do certains things while filming. Instantly i came across a video titled "Top 15 Mistakes Beginner FilmMakers Make" i instantly click on it to make sure we don't make any of these mistakes.
Here's are the Top 15:

1. Weak story
2. Undercooked scripts
3. Bad sound
4. Poor casting choices
5. Poor shot composition
6. White walls (lame, dull)
7. Poor lighting
8. Unnecessary insert shots (added random close-ups of random things during a scene.)
9. Lingering
10. Too many pregnant pauses (silences that could slow the scene down and lose the audiences attention.)
11. No blocking (movement)
12. Too much chit chat
13. Action for the sake of action
14. Clichés
15. Generic music

After watching this i will definitly keep in mind some of the things said.

Editing Software Tutorials

As i've previously said we are using Final Cut Pro X to edit our production, I have used this software mant times before so i know the basics however, i'm not 100% sure on how to get that professional, finished film look in an editing software. Such as, the letter box frame, soundtrack and colour correction. So I looked up on youtube for a tutoral and found this one:

Within the first 5 minutes the video shows me how to put the letterbox effect on my clips which is definitly helpful as that's just what i wanted but also gives me even more then what i was hoping to find as it is the whole package on what i need to do, to make my production look professional.

Focus Group

Today we asked some of our classmates questions about elements of our production and the genre itself.

The Final Survey

Our Final Survey: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/6GYWZ6D

The first question we asked was "Do you think it's better for the Antagonist's identity to be:
Completely Hidden
Shown Slightly
Completely On Show
Other
The option that was the most popular was 'shown slightly.' This hasn't surprised me as this is what we intend to do within our production and looking at some other action films you can see that they do the same.
These responses have definitely encouraged us the stick to what we have planned to do for our production .

In this next question we asked "Do you think it will be more effective to hear the gunshot rather then see the death?" We asked this question as we ourselves were unsure but we know that we wanted a death in our production to add tension. The most popular response was 'maybe' and some comments that went with that response are: "Deaths can be hard to fake, so it would be easier to just use a gunshot but it is also important that the audience can infer that the character has die." and "In a film everyone likes to see the aftermath of the fight scene... However if you are going for suspense and mystery, then hearing it will work just as well" The second most voted was "yes." Through the responses and the most voted options we decided that we would only the death scene so that you can only hear the gunshot and not that actual death as this would help the opening it self but more realistic because it can be hard to to portray on a low budget but also, by hearing the gunshot it causes a lot more mystery and suspense.  

We asked them what they thought of the costume we were thinking of using for our Antagonist. Some repsonses we got were: " Yes- stereotypical for a villain to be dressed in black so works well", " No, although the costume has a black dark element to it, it does not fit the normal codes and conventions of an antagonists costume! There costume should be easily identified and not relatable to the audience", " No. It looks like somthing an everyday teenager would wear... But then again i don't really know the plot so maybe thats what you're going for? Its a good colour choice" and " Yes because it is dark colours which connotes that they will be the antagonist, it also means they can be hidden in dark lighting which adds effect." There was a mixture of yes and no responses. Looking at the responses me and my group decided that we would keep the colour of black being the main colour in the costumes but instead having it as hoodie and jeans we have a more formal coat/jacket to make thr Antagonist seem more professional and in some ways intimidating.

Action Adventure in the Box office

I used http://www.imdb.com/ to get some information of Action Adventure films in box office. It was no surprise when seeing the Top 5. Looking at their budgets i found that they all had massively large budgets and comparing them to the others it was common that the larger the budget the film had the bigger Gross it had in the end. This is mainly because those films have high tech special effects in their films which just all round makes the film better and want people to go and spend the money to watch it even more and can afford to have the most popular actors in their films, bringing in all their fans.

Social Media #2 [Twitter Poll]

Due to our recent development of our production in wanting to give the antagonist the power of telekinesis I decided to conduct a twitter poll to see what our audience thought about that idea.
Looking at the other polls and surveys we'd done, where most people would vote yes to the 'protagonist' having powers. We instead asked what they thought about the antagonist having powers. The results came back as 50/50 I was slightly surprised. We have decided to keep the idea in our production but may have a back up plan if the footage doesn't come out looking good. I think that the results came our 50/50 as people were tore between giving the antagonist the advantage on the protagonist of having powers but at the same time they wanted almost a supernatural feel to it.

Lighting Research On A Chase Scene - Inception

The scene starts off with two of the main protagonist having a conversation about what seems to be the antagonist. They are inside and the lighting is very dark, there is small amounts coming from open windows which also indicates that it's daytime outside.  

As the protagonist jumps out a windows from a giant height, which is also a typical convention of an action film, dare devil stunts. As the protagonist jumps out, they jump out into the daylight making the lighting in the scene brighter. Which if the audience didn't already notice indicates that's they are now outside but also, can connote that the chase is about to begin as they typically take place outside in open spaces.

 

 As the protagonist goes into a crowd the lighting around them darkens and it almost emphasises how crowded it is. You can see a bright light further on in the shot, giving it the 'light at the end of the tunnel' look. As he finds his way through the crowd the shot instantly gets brighter and he gets faster, connoting the crowds are gone and everything is bright for now.

 

I noticed that s the protagonist went down a narrow corridor surrounded by tall buildings there were a lot of shadows. As you can see behind them, you have a shadow of one building on another. The left side of the frame is a lot darker compared to the right, connoting that either the buildings to his right are either very big or the light is coming from the left of him.

I chose a chase scene to analyse for lighting because we wanted to do one in our production and it would be outside and i thought that this would be the perfect fit to see what goes into making one look good.

Social Media

As well as doing surveys I did some polls on twitter to see what people on social media thought, here are my results.

I was surprised at these results because when we did our survey and we asked a similar question to our survey, asking what people thought were important/good in an action film and in our SurveyMonkey humour got the most votes whereas, on my twitter poll it didn't even get one vote. This time it was "intense soundtrack" that people voted as what they think is important/good in an action film. The difference between the doing a Twitter poll and a survey is that they could only pick one option on Twitter whereas, they could pick three on our survey.

As we had already got a rough idea for our production I thought I would ask about what they thought about a fight scene, the majority of people voted that a fight scene should be fast paced and secondly, only 1-2 minutes long. I wasn't surprised by these results as I myself think the same think but it is also found to be typical of an action scene to be fast and not very long, if it was too long the audience would get bored.

 

Another question I asked was whether they would prefer the protagonist to have some sort of powers or not. The majority voted that they would prefer the protagonist to have powers. I was slightly surprised by these results as when I first put out the poll it was the option "no powers" that had the most votes as I thought people would be able to relate more to a normal, power free protagonist and it would be more realistic then having a superhero like protagonist. This has made me think about adding powers in however, I feel that maybe in the opening scene it would be more effective for the antagonist to have some sort of power such as telekinesis as it's not as hard to add that in. It would also give the audience some insight as to the film will be about and it would keep them wondering and wanting to watch on. I might create another poll to see how my target audience feel about this.

 

The last question I did was asking whether they thought the protagonist or the antagonist should wear a mask. I asked this question because while I was doing some research on the protagonists and antagonists I saw that there is a variety who them both who wear masks therefore, I was unsure that if we did involve a mask in the costumes who we would put it on which is why I asked that question in my social media research/poll. When I looked at the results most people had voted that the antagonist should wear the mask. I wasn't really surprised by this as I feel not knowing the true identity of the antagonist adds to their trickster behaviour. This has effected our planning for our production as we are now going to mask the antagonists face but instead of with a mask with the shot itself. We'll let the audience see part of their face but not enough for them to know who they are.

Survey Responses

We constructed a survey through https://www.surveymonkey.com/ .
We did this to see what certain aspects people enjoy in an action film but also to see if there is a difference in what age enjoys what.

In the survey we asked questions such as "what aspects of a action film do you enjoy most?" We also asked them for their favourite action films and then why, some answers for this question were, "Car chases Shooting Realism Graphics Relatable puts you in the role of the character", "Action-packed, engaging story line & stunts", "They make you think could this all be possible?" "They're intense, funny and in some ways relatable! But also well edited!" We had 30 responses in total and the rest pretty much as the same thing, with the except that some said it was because of certain actors that were in it.

Looking at the screenshots to the left. We asked if people would prefer the protagonist to be female, male, if they didn't mind or other, everyone who selected other said that they didn't mind anyways. The majority of responses said that they didn't mind if the protagonist was a female or male but the second majority was male showing that a big handful enjoy the stereotypical strong male hero in action films. This hasn't effect our production much as we don't mind either however, it has swayed us towards having a female protagonist to try and get people to see females as the protagonist more and not just the stereotypical damsels in distress.

As you can see by the second screenshot, we also asked what they think is the TOP 3 most important things needed/good in the opening to an action film? As we can see by the results, humorous dialogue, a fight scene and intense soundtrack were the three that were voted the most. I was surprised to see that humorous dialogue got the most votes, I thought it would get some but not the most, this has definitely made me think about added a small amount of humorous dialogue into our opening. Looking at individual responses I found that the people who had put that Avengers- Age Of Ultron was one of their favourite action films also voted humorous dialogue and from doing some research on Avengers i know that that is a very good example of an action film with perfectly used humorous dialogue. The other two most voted, a fight scene and the intense soundtrack wasn't a surpise as they are both conventions of an action film.

Textual Analysis - Maze Runner

Opening Scene

The Maze Runner film is a 2014 American  science fiction action thriller film directed by Wes Ball. The film is the first instalment in the Maze Runner franchise. The story is based around a sixteen year old boy named Thomas who in the opening scene awakens in a rusty elevator with no memory of who he is, only to learn he's been sent to the middle of a maze, along with a large number of other boys, who have been trying to find their way out of the ever-changing maze. This story goes through the adventures of Thomas and how he try's to escape the labyrinth. This film was released on September the 19th 2014 and has a running time of 113 minutes. This film earned over 348.3 million pounds in the box office and is distributed by 20th Century Fox. This film is based on the book series from James Dashner.

The film starts of showing the distributer of the film- 20th Century Fox. From this logo the audience can identify this film as being from Fox, the audience can then relate this to pervious films Fox has distributed and compare the films together. The sound track from this scene also gives a sense of familiarity to the audience.

After the opening credits the audience are then greeted with a pitch black screen. This black screen connotes mystery because the audience doesn't know what is happening in the scene. Another part from this scene is that there are various diegetic mechanical noises is the scene, these mechanical noises bring tension to the audience because they cannot identify the sound to a picture which then could make them confused and wary to what is going to happen next.

The audience are then shown this shot of the main protagonist in some sort of rusty lift. In this scene there is also not much light coming from anywhere except for some artificial light so it connotes that this scene could be set underground. In this scene it shows the main protagonist first waking up in this metal cage completely unaware where he is and he is shown to be throwing up. The only sounds to be heard are that of the confused protagonist waking up and the sounds of the lift gradually going up. From this the audience can see that the protagonist is in a sticky situation because he doesn't know where he is and he cannot get out. In this clip it also shows Thomas to be quite dirty, this connotes that he couldn't have washed himself for awhile because he has been trapped in this cage, also his face appears to be quite damp along with his clothes which connotes that it is very hot and cramped in that environment. Another thing about this scene is that it shows a mid shot of the character which shows his position within this shot, it shows how he just woke up and focuses on what state he is in.

This then cuts to a high angle shot of the character which shows his surroundings within the lift. The audience can then clearly see lots of supplies in the background. These supplies could connote that the lift is taking these supplies to a destination where the main protagonist will then survive off them. This scene also shows the protagonist hunched over looking below his, this could suggest that he is confused about where he is and wants to know what is below him. It could also suggest that he wants to know where he came from because of his amnesia he cannot remember the previous events so he is trying to get an answer by looking down. After this Thomas then stands up and finds that the lift is going faster and faster, I know this because the mechanical sounds become more harsh and the lift is shaking more showing that the lift is going faster. As Thomas gets up he also notices more noises within his setting. The diegetic sound is coming from a pig that is trapped in a crate, Thomas then springs back to the other side of he cage after seeing this pig. He probably over reacts because he has amnesia and all he knows is that he is trapped with a foreign species that he is not familiar with.

Thomas then begins to scramble to the top of the crate to see of a way out. While this is happening it shows a close up of his face while he is screaming 'Help'. This shows his distress and confusion over this situation and his need for help. This could define Thomas as the princess character because the princess is in distress and in need which Thomas is replicating. While he is shouting for help it then cuts to the top of the lift which has been closed off, this causes Thomas to panic because he believes that he is going to crash into the wall. Thomas then falls down onto the floor which is then accompanied by a red light that goes over the shot. This connotes danger and that something bad it going to happen to this protagonist, this gets the audience to think about the consequences, This red light then progressively changes to green which shows that the issue could have been resolved. The scene then again goes completely black which also creates even more tension because the audience doesn't know what is going to happen to this character, the only sounds to be heard is Thomas's frantic breathing which shows his distress.

The metal doors are then immediately opened to show blinding light. This connotes that the lift has know gone up from underground and is know facing the bright sun. Now you can fully see the protagonist. He is shown to have his clothes drenched in sweat, this connoted that the anxiety of confusion has effected him and has caused him to panic within this container. Thomas also try's to cover his face from the blinding eyes because he cannot see through the light. As he lowers his hands many shadows appear within the shot, this then cuts to a group of people surrounding the container where Thomas is in. The people are also shown to wear similar clothes to Thomas which could connote that they come from the same place. The main person within this group then volunteers to open the cage and get Thomas out. He refers to Thomas as a 'Greeny' which could suggest his ranking within the group, it could suggest the lowest rank because he is new. Thomas is then thrown onto the grass where the group of people look down upon him while he is stuck in the foetal position confused and distressed. Finally Thomas tries to get up and run away from the group but ultimately fails when he falls onto the grass.

By my group member Honesty Bradshaw

The Antagonist

The antagonist is the villain of the film and it's the same for all genres. They have their own vision for what they world should look like or some kind of revenge plan. They're known to manipulative, evil, mischievous, tricky, they seem to be detached from their emotions, if they have any at all, heartless and so much more. Similar to a protagonist when you look into a antagonist's past you usually find that something happened that has instead produced the motive for their evil ways.
Take Sandman for example, he lost his daughter due to a tragic event and he is now hell bent on getting revenge on the people responsible and will harm anyone who gets in his way.
As we can see by the picture above the antagonist typically wears dark clothing with colours such as purple, black, navy, dark green, grey etc. This could connote that they themselves have a dark soul and dark intensions. Looking at the Joker, we can see he wears heavy make-up in the form of a big, disturbing grin, this is his mask, it hides his true face and gives him a new identity. As we can see by the others they aren't wearing any masks which is common as you find they are always hidden away from socialisation, almost like an outcast meaning they don't really have to hide their face anyways. Just like protagonists, antagonists don't always need powers. Take the Joker for example, he doesn't have any powers just smart intuition and some psychological issues. However, it is most common that is the protagonist has powers so will the antagonist but if we turn it around, just because the antagonist has powers it doesn't always mean the protagonist will , which just adds to their bravery and makes them look even more heroic. For example, Snow White and the Evil Queen. The Evil Queen herself has minimum powers however, she has a magical mirror by her side and with their powers together she plans to defeat Snow White, now Snow White has zero power yet still manages to defeat her curse and beat her.

Textual Analysis - Students Opening Sequence

This is a textual analysis of another AS students Opening Sequence for an action film.

To the left is the students ident, it has some very clear font and it's eye catching and simple it also has a strong soundtrack over the top that fades out however, the ident itself doesn't move. The transition between the ident and the first scene flows which is very good. The first shot is a long shot of someone walking very slowly away connoting a very calm atmosphere and that nothing is going to happen. There is no sound almost unbearably silent. There is minimum light, the only light coming from a street lamp. Personally, I think the shot should of had some more light as I struggled to stay focused on where the person in the shot was as they blended into everything else in the frame. The camera was handheld as it was slightly shaky which seemed to fit into the dark and mysterious atmosphere as though the person was being followed.

Yet again the transition between scenes flowed keeping the atmosphere calm, the character also walks into the frame which i find is a very good in keeping the scene flowing. There is still no soundtrack but there is some digetic sound when the character unlocks their car and you hear the click of the locks which is followed by some narration saying "he was the only one." This starts to introduce the character to the audience, they now know he is a male and he's all alone but it also adds even more mystery as it adds more questions the audience wants answers to. As the scene goes on and he gets into the car the narration picks up and swearing is involved which would connote that their target audience could be 12PG or higher as it's only mild swearing. The lighting is the same again, it's clear that they have films during nighttime to add effects but it is a strain on the eyes to focus on the main character in the frame and they aren't well lighted.


In this shot the narration fades out as a soundtrack fades in, the soundtrack itself is calming, constructed by string instruments and drums. The shot itself is a tracking shot as it follows the car as it drives away, as it does you can hear the digetic sound of the car engine and it getting quieter and the car gets further away. The shot then pans upwards towards the sky where font is then edited in saying "Fifty Fifty" which is the title of their production. Looking at their description of their production I noticed that they had a copyright strike due to using that soundtrack which meant that they didn't use royalty free music which is there to avoid copyright or certain rights to your film can be owned by someone else which is something you don't want. Instead of using the track they did they could of made their own through a software like garage band or found a non-copyrighted version through royalty free music, the youtube library, freesound etc.

The left screenshot is an establishing shot which is the duration of 10 seconds and it gives an over view of the surroundings giving the audience a feel of the location. The location itself is an ordinary setting with cars passing by which links back to the beginning of when the narration says "he was the only one." it's clear that it was not meant literally as we can see that there are other people driving around which then keeps the audience gripped to see what was actually meant by it. The screenshot to the shot is an over-shoulder shot of them driving. Also, by the positioning of the car mirror, camera and the character you can see a part of the characters face in the car mirror without the camera being visible which shows that the student(s) have paid close attention to detail. 


This is the same shot except slightly closer up. The shot continuous for 16 seconds of credits, which include the production distributor that the student(s) created and who it was directed by, the credits are slow paced in fading in and out of the shot which keeps that calm atmosphere which can be typical of an action film as if to lead the audience into some false idea of calmness before the action and chaos
s breaks out. The soundtrack is the same and you can also hear the diegtic sounds of the car and passing cars.

The shot to the left is a first person view which makes the audience see what the character sees but also makes the audience feel like they're apart of whats going on. You can the digetic sounds of the seatbelt, the opening of the car door and the calm breathing of the character. The next shot is a long shot of the character locking the car followed by the digetic sound of the clicking and footsteps. During this shot a name fades in, in the same font as the credits connoting that it is part of the credits however, i found that it was confusing as to whether that was the characters name or if they also directed it. I found it interesting that as a lyric in the soundtrack said "you just, walk away" the character is walking out of the frame, not sure if they was planned but i found that it was very good and interesting.

In the shot to the left we have a long shot of two people standing very far apart and you can tell through body language that they aren't there to hang out but more of a business type meeting. Through this shot we can see a clear view of the clothes they're wearing and it's ordinary everyday clothes, hoodies, jeans no special suits or anything out of the ordinary. I think that the location that they have used for the exchanging of the bag should of been a place that would of been seen as more private. I think that the location used in the previous shots of him getitng out of the car would of been good as there was no one around and it was much darker which would of added to the secreacy of this exchange.

This production was does by an AS student called Grace White.

Textual Analysis by Maddy Flaherty

The Protagonist

The protagonist is the hero of the film, they're seen to be brave, kind and a person to look up to, to be an idol for young children. The men especially have muscles that are emphasised by their tight suits which also connote that they're strong. When you look into the past of these heroes you usually find that something terrible happened that has led them to want to do good and fight for justice, for what is right but they always face obstacles along the way. 

Take Spiderman for example, his parents were killed when he was a child and he had to live with Uncle and Aunt. Later on when he became a teenager his Uncle Ben was murdered and from that point he wanted to stop crime so that no one else had to go through what he did.

Not all heroes have to have powers. For example, Black Widow (bottom left) and Batman don't have any powers just skill and especially for Batman, money. It's clear that they are skilled in fighting and strategy which is just as important. 

From the picture above we can see that they're all wearing tight clothing and some are wearing capes, which is seen as a typical thing for a superheroes especially, to wear. Some wear masks to die their identity which is normally seen as something the antagonist would do however, the different between the masks is that the protagonists mainly wearing them because they don't want people o know they're true identity so thy can live a normal live, like a disguise behind the disguise. Whereas, a protagonist wears one that is either seen as chilling and scary that completely hides their identity, not so they can go and live a normal life, it's so they won't be caught when they go out onto the streets.

However, not every protagonist has to be some powerful, trained superhero. They can be a normal average person who just wants to do good. For example, Greg from Kick ass who starts off as an average teenager who gets beaten up and when he recovers he doesn't have any powers or skills but an idea that he can stand up to. So he uses superheroes from films and comics to make his own costume which becomes the centre of the film. He then goes on to do just what he said, he defeated the antagonist without power but with help from other people just like him.

Sound Research

I watched this clip from the scaffolding fight scene in the James Bond film Quantum of Solace (2008.)
While watching I focused on the soundtrack and noticed a few things.
The soundtrack itself only starts when the antagonist appears and the fight scene breaks out, the soundtrack doesn't fade in or build tension is just starts playing. As Jame's gun falls from his hand and he is left unarmed the soundtrack becomes a set of violins playing a repeated high pitched tune which adds to the intensity that goes with Jame's set-beck which is a typical event in an action film. At this point i also noticed that the soundtrack itself was constructed of a choir of wind and string instruments such as trumpets, clarinets, violins, cellos etc.
As the protagonist (James Bond) and the antagonist begin to battle it out again the rest of the choir join back in building the soundtrack to connote a climax to an upcoming event.
As another typical convention occurs, a near death experience as James is spiralling down towards the concrete the choir softens and the closer he gets to the floor the less intense and quieter the soundtrack gets until it stays at one volume when he suddenly stops, his head only inches away from the floor. The soundtrack then builds up again from that point, by doing this it almost leads the audience into false hope by making them think the protagonist is now safe but then it betweens to build up again connoting something is coming.

Our Survey #1

https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/FHGJR5J

Theoretical Research

Auteur Theory:

The auteur theory holds that a film reflects the director's personal creative vision, as they were the primary auteur (the french word for author.) In law, a film is treated as a work of art and the auteur being the creator of the film, is the original copyright holder. Under European Union law, the film director is consider the auteur/author or one of them auteurs of the film. An auteur is a film maker whose style is very distinctive which becomes the auteurs signature and it also keeps the creative control over their work.

Genre Theory:

The genre theory draws the audiences attention towards what is different between the films the auteur does rather then the similarities such as their signature. It looks at the types and kind of things in a certain genre and the characteristics and features expected in that types of genre, by the audience.

Audience Theories: 

There are three theories - 

The effects model (Hypodermic Needle Model): It's a rather outdated model of audience consumption. The audience is seen as a single mass that passively receives the messages from the text in the media. It implies that the media "injects", like a needle, messages into an unquestioning audience. However, this is seen to be an oversimplified model. Examples of this is propaganda and the internet.

Uses and Gratifications Model: It emphasises what consumes of media products do with them, the power is considered to lie with the individual consumer of the media who is seen to use certain tests to gratify certain needs and interests.Theorists Blumler and Katz postulated that there were five main reasons why audiences consumed media texts:

• To be informed or educated.
• In order to identify with characters and situations.
• To be entertained.
• To enable themselves to socially interact with others (watching, listening or reading together or through discussion of what they’d consumed.)
• To escape from their daily troubles or worries.

The Influence Model: Emphasises the subtler, less direct capacity of the media to influence perceptions. It recognises that people respond to other influences, such as opinion leaders, who may mediate the message of the media. Thus, media effect can be seen as one of reinforcement – closer to ‘influence’ than ‘brainwashing’. Research by Stuart hall found that rather than the autonomous individualised audience members of the uses and gratifications approach, that audience members shared certain frameworks of interpretation and that they work at decoding media texts within these frameworks.

Audience Profiling

Our decision: 

We have decided that our target audience is 12-16, as the production itself wouldn't contain swearing or majorly violent scenes, we could make it 12PG as there might be some mild violence within it. We also felt that because in the productions we did during GCSE we mainly looked at a target audience of 14 and we thought it would better to see what a younger target audience want to see compared to a target audience of teenagers.

A typical member of our target audience:

A typical member of our target audience would be pre-teen / teenager. 
Let's take Abigail for example, she's 12 years old, in her first year of high school and she spends most of her free time on the Internet. Abigail is the demographics of most 12-14 year old which is the audience we want to aim for in our production. Her psychographic factors include, reading mystery, adventure books and comic strips. She enjoys being around her friends and watching a good film, she doesn't enjoy just one type of genre but many types, she says her favourite films is minions  and transformers, she says she enjoys them because they both have loveable characters, she finds them both enjoyable and she enjoys the storyline. Abigail likes make-up which would been seen a stereotypical for a girl but she also enjoys video games such as Minecraft which would usually been seen as a male things. 

Technical Research #2

EDITING TECHNIQUES:

• Cutting onto action: where a shot cuts to another view of  the action, this could relate to uses and gratifications as the viewer gets a better view and feel of what is happening and what they are seeing as they get to see it from many different angles and shots.
• Cutting on Cross-frame movement (the reveal shot): the camera zooms in on something and then pans to reveal the rest of scene, this could build tension, as we could have a close up of someone running from something and then it zooms/pans out to reveal the chase/what they are running from.
• Transitioning to empty frame and letting object/character come into it: gives the shot some extra tension and mystery.
• Cutting on an empathetic part of the dialogue: I feel like this would work very well in my genre as a set-back is a typical convention of an action film which could involve some empathetic dialogue, this would make the scene emotional and full of tension.

Technical Research

FILMING TECHNIQUES:

• Shaky Cam: The shaky cam made popular by the Bourne films. This is used to create tension by bringing the audience into the action by use of erratic movements. This has transformed into one of the biggest pet peeves in action cinema today. It really depends on how it is used and to what effect it is used during the movie.

• Slow Motion: A film technique as old as the genre itself. It is used to either showcase a really cool action set piece or stunt or increase the drama of a particular scene.

• Zoom: Used mostly for dramatic effect with the director having the camera zoom in to an object or an actor’s face during a tense scene.

• Tracking Shots: Camera shots that follow/track our actor(s) throughout the action scene. They can be either edited together or done in one take. Think the hallway scene in Oldboy or the shootout scene in Heat. A brilliant example of this is the opening sequence of The Avengers - Age Of Ultron.

• Quick Cuts/Fast Paced Shots: Most often connected with the styles of Michael Bay and Tony Scott, this style is a really popular form of filming to increase that feeling of high stakes that is necessary in action films in order to become effective.

• Lens Flares: A most recent film technique used to enhance the realism of the scene by enhancing the light reflections in a scene to put you in the action. It can be really annoying when it is overused (Battleship), but it can still be a cool effect in moderation

• Crane Shots: The bird’s eye view shots that are usually seen in fantasy films. Take the wide shots of the location in the Lord of the Rings trilogy.