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Thank you for taking the time to look through our group's blog posts. We hope that you have enjoyed reading them and that you are as pleased with the work as we are!

Thank you,
Harry, Josh, Juliette and Molly

A Note To The Moderator

Dear Moderator,


Hello and welcome to our blog. Thank you for taking the time to look at our blog - to navigate, please use the labels on the right hand side of the page.


Under the 'Research And Planning' label, you will find evidence of all the research, planning and development work we did as a group during pre-production, production and post-production of our project.


We have also included individual contribution labels for each member of the group. All posts contributed by or to that candidate will be displayed when you click that label.


Each member of the group also has an individual evaluation label, as we have each completed our own evaluation.


Our finished film opening sequence is at the top of the blog, under the banner, and each candidate has their preliminary task sequence posted on their individual blogs, which is part of question 7.


Unfortunately, we were unable to fit all our posts onto one page, so please click 'older posts' if required to do so.


There is also a link to the class film blog which contains links to the other group blogs from our school, as well as our individual blogs.


Once again, thank you for taking the time to look around our blog, we hope you enjoy our work!


From,
Juliette Wlileman [0875], Harry Kettenis [0390], Joshua Brooks [0110], and Molly Sullivan (CANDIDATE NUMBER)

1. In What Ways Does Your Media Product Use, Develop Or Challenge Forms And Conventions Of Real Media Products?

We used conventions of genre, narrative structure, form and style from as shown below.

Genre

The genre of our film is sci-fi/action. In order to keep within the guidelines of the genre we had to ensure that our opening adhered to some specific conventions of the genre so the audience would immediately be able to tell the theme of the opening and film as a whole. These were:

• One thing that we decided on from an early stage was to begin the sequence with a chase scene to immediately throw the audience into the action of the film and grip them, making them want to continue watching. This is also done in a number of action films, one example being the Bond series as a whole, but namely Casino Royale, another action film which contains a chase scene in the opening sequence, specifically, an on-foot one, as shown below.

• One theme that conforms to the sci-fi genre is the inclusion of time travel in our opening sequence. This theme is one of many ideologies used in sci-fi films. In our film we see Leora jump from the future to the present day. One real life example of this is Looper, where, again, characters are jumping backwards in time.
• The soundtrack was also important to our opening. We needed a soundtrack that would add to the tension and pace of the opening, without distracting from the action and confrontation and becoming the focus of the sequence. For this we chose the soundtrack that you can hear below, which begins slow and quiet, building suspense. This then becomes a fast paced, heavy drum beat as the chase begins, adding to the action.

Narrative Structure

There are a number of theories that we took into account when deciding our narrative structure. We also challenged these theories.

• Todorov's theory
• Equilibrium - Disruption - Hero's journey - New equilibrium.
• We took this classic narrative pattern but also challenged its form, deciding to begin with the disruption (Leora running away from the Henchman) before the journey and new equilibrium.

• Propp's theory
• 8 character roles: Villain, hero, donor, helper, princess, father, dispatcher, false hero.
• Although we could not include all 8 of these stock characters, we included 2 clear roles in our opening. These were a villain (The Henchman) and a hero (Leora).

• Levi-Strauss' theory
• Binary opposites.
• Our film contained a number of opposites. One of which was good vs evil which we portrayed through the rivalry of Leora and the Henchman; we also had present and future with the characters beginning the scene in 2017 and Leora ending up in 2014; Finally, we had known and unknown as Leora begins in her own familiar time period before jumping back in time to an unknown period.

Form

The main function of an opening sequence is to act as an introduction of the film and everything it contains. Our opening follows this introductory format as shown below, alongside a real life example from Casino Royale:

Style

We had to decide on a specific style for our opening and keep to this style throughout, in order to make the film look as professional and true to the genre as possible. For this we took inspiration and ideas from a number of other films and incorporated them into the post-production of our own film.

Grading

For grading, we wanted to choose a colour typical of the sci-fi genre. We took inspiration from a number of sci-fi films and found a common colouring of cold, blue colours. One example of this is shown in Blade Runner, shown below, followed by an example of blue grading in our own sequence.

Titles

We used titles, similar to those of various action films that have already been released in the UK and worldwide. Our titles were one hugely important aspect of the opening sequence of our film. We immediately decided that we wanted our titles to be integrated into the action of the sequence and add to the action as opposed to appear intrusive. On further research we discovered and took inspiration from the titles of Zombieland, which were integrated into the scene and the characters interacted directly with the titles, as shown below.

Our 'Quantum' title at the end of the opening sequence was very different from this. Since it was the name of the film we decided that, in accordance with the conventions of the sci-fi genre, it would be a static title on a black background. We saw examples of this in Looper (shown to the right) and Attack the Block.





Overall, we used a number of different real life media products in the production of Quantum. We used conventions of genre and style of other films, in order to ensure that our own film adhered to the classification of its genre. We also developed the form of opening sequences from real films to make sure Quantum carried out the correct functions of an opening sequence. Finally, we challenged the theories relative to the narrative structure of a film, creating a more original storyline.

1) In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

In the production of my groups' media product, we made conscious decisions influenced by typical conventions for film openings, including genre, narrative structure and style.

GENRE
Our film is a mixture of genres, being both sci-fi and action. Here are a few ways in which our film opening adhered to the conventions of the sci-fi action genre.

• Like a lot of action films, our opening begins by jumping straight into the action, throwing the audience into the story without really telling them what is going on. We thought this would be a good way to begin our opening as it adds drama and immediately grips the viewer. An example of this would be the beginning of the James Bond film Casino Royale, in which the film starts with a chase scene between James Bond and another man.

• The music in our opening is tense and adds suspense and atmosphere to the scenes. We deliberately chose the music as it was fast paced and worked well with the speed of the action in the shots. This sort of music is also seen in Star Trek, a film with the same genre to ours. In Star Trek's action scenes, it also uses music to set the pace and create a sense of urgency. 

• For our opening, we chose to have a female protagonist. This challenges the typical conventions of the action genre. We mainly took inspiration from female protagonists such as Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger games and Lara Croft from Tomb Raider.

NARRATIVE STRUCTURE

For our opening, we took three of the main theories and used them as a template in the making of our film's narrative.

• Todorov's theory: equilibrium - disruption - hero's journey - new equilibrium. 
  Our opening challenged this theory and started with a disruption (Leora being chased by the Henchman)
  
  
• Propp's theory: the 8 character roles (villan, hero, donor, helper, princess, father, dispatcher, flase hero).
  Obviously it would be a challenge to include all 8 character roles in the opening of our film, however we were able to include at least two, the villain as the Henchman and the hero as Leora 

• Levi-Strauss' theory: binary opposites.
  In our film we have the contrast between good and evil (Leora and Synergy), past and present (2014 and 2071) and known and unknown (Leora's present and when she jumps back in time).

Our film's structure was based on films of the similar genre, and so contained aspects of openings we had researched prior to storyboarding. The following displays the similarities between the opening of Attack The Block, a sci-fi film, and our film opening.

~ CLICK TO ENLARGE ~

STYLE
We made many deliberate decisions on the style of our opening, taking our inspirations from various films of a similar style to what we envisioned our opening to look like.

Editing - With the editing of our opening containing things such as the chase scene and the soundtrack, we were directly influenced by our research for the following reasons.

• For the chase scene, we had a look at examples such as Point Break and Casino Royale to see what techniques we could use to make our opening look as good as possible. After analysing the clips we came up with a sort of formula which you can read on our post about chase scene research. As you can see the majority of what the bullet points are describing are aspects of our own opening. 

• With the soundtrack as well, examples such as Men In Black and Fast Five were hugely influential in our choice of music for our project. During the research we noticed that the music for the chase scenes we were watching was all fast paced and heavily orchestral. However, as our movie genre was sci-fi, we made the decision to have music that recognisably computer sounds to connote the theme of sci-fi. 

Grading - For the grading of our final clip, we were directly influenced by our research for the following reasons.

• Looking at films of a similar genre to ours we noticed a pattern with the overall colouring of shots, with most films such as The World's End and Attack The Block having a strongly blue colour choice. Our group decided that this would be a good colour to grade our film opening, as not only did it conform to the general style but also has strong connections to the idea of technology and the future. 

Titles - With the titles present in our opening, some decisions were influenced by films why others were ones that we made on our own initiative. 

• When choosing the titles for the credits, we decided without any research into other films that we wanted to include integrated titles. We were later influenced by the way in which the titles were integrated from the sequence of Zombieland, where characters directly affect the titles, making them appear to be 3D.

• The static title at the end of the opening of our film however was wholly influenced by films such as Skyfall, Looper and Attack The Block. We decided as a group that the titles were typical of the action/sci-fi genre and that we should use the style for our film name. 

Overall, I think that our group managed to find a fine balance between conforming to, developing and challenging forms and conventions of real media products. In conforming to the more traditional ways in which sci-fi action films begin, we were able to make it clear to the audience what the genre was. In challenging them, we managed to create a more original story.

2. How Does Your Media Product Represent Particular Social Groups?

In our film we represented females in a positive way, through the inclusion of a strong, independent heroine. This is done in order to appeal to our female, secondary audience.

We had a typical representation of strong and masculine males, through the henchman, however this character also represented men in a negative way. 

This information, as well as a background of the representation of women in sci-fi films is shown in the prezi below.

Gender Roles in Society

Our opening brings light to the importance of women in society, through the reflection of Leora in a positive way with her strength, athleticism and wit. Also, Adam's reliance on Leora, again, reflects women in a good way.

Power Struggle

Leora is initially captured by the Henchman since he is able to overpower her with his strength. This shows that women can not physically challenge men. However, the fact that she still manages to escape from him through the use of her intelligence shows that women can use other advantages.

2) How Does Your Media Product Represent Particular Social Groups?

For our film opening, our main focus of social groups were gender and regional identity. This was mainly down to the fact that we did not choose actors that best reflected our genre, where the age stereotype could have been used as well if we had done so. Also with the regional identity, it was a practical choice more than anything as we all live and go to school in London. Therefore, our film opening represents particular social groups in the following ways:

GENDER

These are gender stereotypes accepted by the media today.

You can see examples of these gender stereotypes for films of a similar genre to ours in characters such as Sam from Attack The Block and James Bond from the James Bond films.

Sam getting mugged in the opening of Attack The Block.
She is vulnerable and emotional. 

James Bond fighting a villain on top of a train, shown to be aggressive. 

MALE REPRESENTATION 

For the role of our henchman, we chose a male character over a female character due to the stereotype surrounding men as being aggressive, dominant and controlling. These are all negative representations of the male sex, and as we wanted our villain to be noticeably bad to the audience and so associated him with these traits.We tried to make the henchman as unrelatable as possible for the same reason, to make sure he was disliked by the audience. He is similar to the character Roy Batty in Blade runner, creepily passive at times when at others, overly aggressive.

Below the henchman can be seen grabbing, pushing and chasing after Leora, all of which are aggressive and typical of a villainous male stereotype. 

FEMALE REPRESENTATION 

The female representation in our opening is quite opposite to that of the stereotype. We deliberately cast a female in our opening to oppose and conform to certain aspects of the character we wanted. Stereotypically women are seen to be weak but we made Leora Strong-willed, independent and physically active to oppose this. However, we wanted to make sure that the relationship between the Henchman and Leora was one in which the Henchman was obviously more powerful and so played on the vulnerable and physically less able aspects of the female stereotype. Leora outsmarts the Henchman however in the final shot, by using her teleporting device to escape.

Leora is irrational and aggressive, opposing the stereotypes
 listed above

Leora is instinctive and uses her means to outsmart the henchman

Leora is an aspirational character for our audience. She is brave and smart, and manages to oppose the gender stereotype, defending herself independently.  This is what makes the audience admire her and want to be like her, especially seeing as

REGIONAL IDENTITY
Although regional identity is hard to distinguish in our opening due to the generic forest setting, we did try to introduce it to the audience where possible.

ACCENT/LANGUAGE
The accents of the characters in the clip are noticeably British and are typical accents of people who are considered 'from London'. They are also talking English. Here is the audio clip for the dialogue in our opening.

SETTING

We deliberately made the London skyline visible when Leora teleports at the end of the opening. This was to make it as clear as possible where Leora had teleported to to the audience.

3. What Kind Of Media Institution Might Distribute Your Media Product And Why?

In this Soundcloud clip I describe the institutions behind Quantum.

 OTHER FILMS DISTRIBUTED BY WARNER BROS

MARKETING ON PUBLIC TRANSPORT

MARKETING ON TALK SHOWS AND IN PUBLIC MAGAZINES

ONLINE MARKETING ON SOCIAL NETWORKS

Distribution


Our film we be available on a number of platforms. Its initial release will be in cinemas nationwide and globally. Across the UK it will be released, not only in 2D but also in 3D and IMAX screenings. This is typical of films of this genre and magnitude as the effects and action within the film are best viewed on larger screens and often the 3D aspect gives the audience a more immersive experience and draws them into the film.

The cinema release will be in August, since our core audience of teenagers and young adults will be off school for their summer holidays. This release is similar to that of Gravity, which was released on 19th August 2013.



Following the initial cinema release our film will be available on DVD and Blu-Ray as well as online on websites such as Netflix. Again, our target audience are up to date with the latest viewing technology so many of them will have the capability to access online streaming websites. This later release will maximise profits.

3) What Kind Of Media Institution Might Distribute Your Media Product And Why?

Here is a presentation containing the information involving the distribution of our film, Quantum. 

1) In What Ways Does Your Media Product Use, Develop Or Challenge Forms And Conventions Of Real Media Products?

As a group, we made informed decisions on our use of conventions within genre, narrative structure  form and style, which I will explain below.

Our film is about a woman called Leora who creates a time-travel device for a company called Synergy, but she realises that they intend to use it for immoral purposes. This prompts her to flee, which causes Synergy to send the Henchman after her. This is where the film starts.

Genre
Our film is predominantly a sci-fi film, with the sub-genre of adventure, due to having both time-travel and chase and fight scenes within the film.

Conventions of genres in our opening:

• it begins with running scene, which is a convention of action films, as chase scenes add excitement to the film. An example of a chase scene similar to ours is the forest chase from Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows, which is a fantasy and adventure film, which are similar genres to our film.
• our opening has time travel in it, which conforms to the sci-fi genre, as this is a common motif in sci-fi or fantasy films - our character Leora has created a time device, and uses at the end of the opening. An example of a film that also focuses on time travel in particular is Looper, and the film also opens with a character jumping back in time.
• the grading of our opening fits the convention of being more blue, like other sci-fi films, as the blue connotes technology and is commonly associated with sci-fi films. An example of a film with similar colouring to ours is Alien, which is graded to be more blue and more contrasting, which we tried to achieve in our opening.
                             
• our opening, however, does break the conventions of most action films by having a female protagonist (Leora). This is uncommon in action films, although our character is similar to other female leads from action films that also break this convention, like  Lara Croft from Tombraider.

Narrative Structure
In deciding our narrative structure, we used an number of relevant theories for reference:

• Todorov's theory: having an equilibrium - disruption - hero's journey - new equilibrium. However, we decided to change this slightly, and start with a disruption - Leora being chased by the Henchman/Synergy. 
       
  
• Propp's theory: the 8 character roles (villan, hero, donor, helper, princess, father, dispatcher, flase hero).
  In our film, we incorporated some of Propp's character roles; the villain(s) - Synergy and the Henchman, the hero - Leora, the princess - Adam
  
  

  

  Leora - hero Henchman - villan

     
• Levi-Strauss' theory: binary opposites.
  In our film we have the contrast between good and evil (Leora and Synergy), past and present (2014 and 2071), known and unknown (Leora's present and when she jumps back)

Form

We decided to conform to the usual form of film openings, as this ensured our audience would understand our film opening.

As shown below, we made sure to introduce institutions, such as the production companies, as well as introducing characters and settings, before introducing the disruption of the film. This made sure that the audience knew exactly what was happening.

A diagram to show how our opening is similar to films of the same genre; in this case, Looper.

Style

For our opening, we referenced multiple films to decide on what look we wanted to achieve for our film.

Grading

We decided to make our film more blue, cold and contrasting, as this is a convention of the sci-fi genre. We drew inspiration from other sci-fi films, such as Blade Runner, Star Trek and The World's End.

We decided that in order to show the difference between 2071 and 2014 (so the audience could distinguish between them) we graded each differently - the future is more blue and 2014 is much pinker and warmer, which also connotes Leora's apparent safety.



Titles
Our titles are in a simple, white font, which is similar to other sci-fi films that we referenced, such as Looper, or Attack The Block. 

We also drew inspiration from Zombieland, as we wanted to replicate the interactive nature of the titles:

Editing, Sound And Camera
We decided to have fast paced editing for the chase scenes, as this reflected the frantic atmosphere of the chase. This also mirrored the editing of films of a similar genre, such as Point Break, which was a main source of inspiration:

We also drew inspiration from this chase scene in terms of shot types; for example, when the camera follows behind the characters, or characters running towards the camera.

Our soundtrack is also inspired by chase scenes from films of a similar genre - it is fast paced to match the action, as well tension building during the confrontation between Leora and the Henchman. This causes the audience to feel as panicked as Leora.