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.
We have thought of some possible ideas that we could do for our production opening sequence however, they're in simple drafts at the moment and will become more detailed when the surveys are collected in and we begin our storyboards.
Our Idea: We begin with a chase seen that is a typical convention of an action film, this then leads o a fight scene, at the end of the fight scene the antagonist kills the person who was running, the victim. Walking away from the body you see that they're on the phone and they say something like "target eliminated." Leaving it on a cliff hanger and cutting to title sequence. We decided that there wouldn't be much dialogue as that can take away from the action of the scene.
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.
I created a survey last night and sent it out on social media and this lesson I sent it to my classmates and so far it has 18 responses and I'm hoping to collect all the responses tomorrow during the double lesson. Also, during the double lesson I'm hoping to do some work on protagonists and antagonists and their costumes, body language, colour scale etc. I've done through some of my previous posts and added some things or amended them to make them better. I have aslo started looking into sound for our production as our deadline is closing in.
I decided to email Sam Mendes, who was one of my influential figures, to see if he would be able to reply with some advice on any certain planning structures I should use and how I can make our opening to an action film successful.
No technical difficulties today, yay! We're on track and planning to create an audience questionnaire to be distributed and filled in over the weekend so we can look at the results on Monday, everything is on track.
