Evaluation | Directors Commentary

This is our directors commentary for our opening 2 minute scene. We answer many questions about the finance, production and distribution for films in the same genre as ours. This should give the audience an idea as to the thought we put into our film and what films we took inspiration from.

Evaluation | Target Audience

The target audience for action films such as ours would be mainly male and typically teenagers. They would want to watch our film because of the genre conventions of weapons and violence that feature right from the beginning that appeal to people like that as it is easy to watch and put yourself in the action. Our target audience would probably shop mainly online as they are young and use a lot of technology, which would be a good reason to choose to promote our film through social networking and viral marketing if it was a full film. They would be interested in the latest fashion trends and brands as they are interested in looking good, which is another reason this audience member enjoys action films as they can put themselves in the place of the hero and imagine themselves looking good and doing amazing stunts and things like that. Our typical target audience member would probably listen to more male genres of music such as rap and fast-paced genres such as drum and bass or electronic music, which fits in with the action genre as the action on-screen is typically fast-paced and energetic. This is a mood we have tried to recreate in our opening scene with the chase sequences and soundtrack. Audience members like these would also probably be interested in TV shows such as 24, Breaking Bad and The Sopranos for the dark humour and violence that feature in all 3 of these examples. This is another reason they would watch our film or a film in the same genre as it would have to feature violence as a convention of that genre.

Evaluation | Character Comparison

Vincent Vega is a character from the cult classic Quentin Tarantino film Pulp Fiction. Vega is a hitman who works for a mobster, and he carries several similarities to our main character Agent Matthews. The most prominent similarity between the 2 characters would be their costumes. Vega is seen throughout Pulp Fiction wearing a black suit and tie, making his character seem sophisticated and professional which juxtaposes the idea of him killing for a living. This juxtaposition appeals to the action genres target audience as the concept of making murder seem so trivial is different and carries a bit of dark humour to it. This concept is reinforced by Vegas costume, as him looking so smart and professional makes it seem as if he sees killing people as just an everyday job rather than a crime. We used this as inspiration for Agent Matthews costume, as he is a spy who would also kill people for a living and we thought the suit would carry the same impression as Vegas gives off in Pulp Fiction. 

Another similarity would be the props the characters work with and their role in their films. In Pulp Fiction, Vega is tasked with recovering a briefcase that has an unknown desirable item inside, and he spends a large part of the film protecting this briefcase and carrying it around. In our opening scene, Agent Matthews also carries around a briefcase whose contents is unknown and must protect it. The briefcase as a prop goes well with the suit and tie costume as both characters could be mistaken for everyday businessmen yet have very serious demeanors and jobs.

However these characters are not similar in all their ways. Differences include how both characters intelligence is shown to the audience. Vega is shown to be quite dim, which is represented in the way he speaks, his random lines of conversations such as what French people call American food and his actions (such as accidentally shooting people in the face). Agent Matthews on the other hand is put across to the audience as a cold and intelligent man in the way he speaks using military phrases such as "ETA 10 minutes."

Shot Evaluation - Shot Variation

This shot further varies our shot list, being the only extreme close-up shot in the scene. Extreme close-up shots are conventional for action films, often used to create tension by not showing the audience the full picture. For example, focusing on a bead of sweat running down a characters face in a tense situation or just having the countdown timer on the side of the bomb taking up the whole of the screen rather than the team rushing to defuse it. We took these kinds of shots as inspiration for this shot, believing that using this convention would help create the tension we wanted to create at this stage in the scene. We wanted to raise tension as this is a pivotal moment in the scene, where the audience finally gets to find out what is in the briefcase that is so important. Our idea with this shot was to go extremely close to the padlock so that the numbers could be seen being changed into the correct code, but unfortunately the zoom on the camera meant quality was lowered significantly so we had to settle for this level of zoom instead, although we still think it is effective.

Lighting was an issue in this shot, one that we only noticed in editing when it was too late to change anything. The light reflecting off the padlock means the numbers cannot be made out and our villains hands also seem too white. We tried experimenting with different techniques to adjust the colour in post-production but couldn't find a way to do it that kept it looking realistic. In future we would keep a closer eye on the lighting of the shot during production so we don't run into this problem again.

Shot Evaluation - Story Introduced

I've chosen this shot to demonstrate our use of camerawork in filming our opening 2 minutes. The idea for this shot was one of the first we had in planning our opening scene, before most of the story elements were even in place. We positioned the camera to be exactly in the middle of the path, so that you can see the forest setting stretching on and on far into the distance in the background of the shot. This reinforces the idea of isolation from the audience and the notion of help being far away, meaning our main character is pretty much on his own. This increases the threat our villain imposes.

We also positioned our characters so that there is a clear divide in the screen, with our hero having the left third of the screen and our villain having the right third of the screen. The rule of thirds means our audience will see our hero as being the most important focus of the shot, which means his weakness and vulnerability will be highlighted to the audience. The muddy pathway that stretches from the bottom of the screen all the way to the top represents the divide between good and evil. We're also happy at the fact that this shot varies our shot list further, as it is a clear two-shot with both the characters of our opening scene being featured. We also made it so that both the crossbow and the briefcase (the 2 most important props) are shown in this shot to be on the villains side, making it seem like he holds all the cards and has all the power compared to our wounded protagonist on the other side of the screen.

Shot Evaluation - Antagonist

This shot is a low-angled mid-shot that gives our audience the best look at our antagonist so far. The low-angle was chosen to make our villain look as imposing and powerful as possible. We chose to put this shot at this stage in the scene as our main character has just been wounded and is lying on the ground, therefore our villain will be seen as more of a threat anyway after what our audience has just seen him do. The low-angle helps to reinforce the characters power. We have our villain walk towards the camera, taking up more and more of the screen until everything but him is blocked out. This leaves no doubt in the audiences mind as to who the most important character is at this stage of the scene as this shot focuses entirely on our villain.

This shot also gives a good shot of our villains costume. Preferably we would have liked our villain to have an all black outfit but a fitting jacket could not be found in time for filming. I think the one our villain does wear is a suitable replacement though, and carries the added benefit of having a hood which covers more of our villains face and makes his identity harder to make out for the audience. Originally we were going to give this character a pair of gloves to wear as well as if he was concerned with fingerprints. However, we changed our mind as we wanted the character to seem like more of a loose cannon which fits in well with his choice of weapon. The crossbow is also highlighted here which gives the audience the chance to associate this character with violence and blood even further, as he has only been shown with that crossbow to the audience so far.

Shot Evaluation - The Pace Slows

I chose to evaluate this shot as we hope it puts the audiences focus on the props. It is an over-the-shoulder shot that shows our antagonists point-of view whilst also showing the audience his actions, which is important in this shot as we wanted the crossbow being aimed and fired at our protagonist to be shown fully. We lined up this shot and directed our actors so that the crossbow could be seen fully and also our main character being shot. This will appeal to our target audience as they don't want rough edits and cuts made so that they can't see the violence in the film, they want to see everything and this shot achieves that by fitting everything in. At this stage in the scene, the audience should know of the importance of the briefcase, and the way our protagonist runs onscreen and the way he falls means that the briefcase is visible. Hopefully, the audience will always be keeping one eye on the briefcase and where the briefcase goes as they know that the briefcase is what our villain is after.

This shot was quite difficult to achieve, as it was quite muddy on the ground where we were filming which meant our actor could not get the fall wrong as if we re-filmed the shot his costume and the prop would have already been muddy before he fell to the ground, ruining the realism of the scene. For this reason we made sure we ran through every part of this shot carefully so every small detail such as positioning of the actors, positioning of the props, camera angles and the actions our characters make were exactly how we envisioned. Luckily, we got the take we needed first time so we didn't have to re-film it. This shot also allowed us plenty of room on the left third of the screen to put in another title, which was useful.

Evaluation Targets

Well done so far - although you need to evidence the group tasks like director's commentary and your annotated final piece. Revisit your recent posts and see if there are any more opportunities to use specialist terminology to explore mise-en-scene, editing and camera composition and comment on the way you intended to appeal to your target audience even more - a good start to this section of your coursework project. Well done!

Shot Evaluation - The Chase Shot

This shot is a mid-shot of our hero and villain in a chase scene. Our hero runs in from the left of the screen and exits on the right, with our villain following shortly after. I chose this shot to demonstrate our editing and special effects in our scene. This is by the way we got it to look as if our villain wiped our title off the screen as he runs past it, making the titles seem as if they are part of the scene and less of an add-on.

It also looks more professional and changes things up a bit by breaking away from our format of having our titles simply fade in and fade out again. This change in titles makes it more obvious that the pace of the scene has changed as well. Before the action began, the titles would just slowly fade in and out. After the arrow is fired and the villain begins to chase after our hero, the titles flash up on screen straight away and leave the screen in this fashion. I feel that this would appeal to our target audience of male teenagers as they would want an increase in pace quite early in the film to grab their attention, so this influenced our decision to change the titles. When the pace of the scene slows down again we return to the format of having our titles fade in and out.

This shot also gives the audience a substantial look at our villain. The main factors of our villain that our audience are likely to notice first would be the crossbow he is wielding, the balaclava covering his face and the hood he has up, meaning only his eyes are visible. The crossbow as a prop choice should appeal to our target audience as well, as it is associated with blood and gore which male teenagers would be interested in. The crossbow is obvious in showing the characters threat and demeanor, whereas the combination of the hood and balaclava show he is concerned with hiding his identity and makes the character a mystery that the audience will want answers to.

Shot Evaluation - The Action Begins

At the beginning of this shot, the audiences main questions have changed. The main characters face has been revealed, and now the question is who made that noise that caused the character to say "he's here," and hang up the phone. This shot is a long shot, and we decided to subvert audience expectations by making the action happen in the part of the screen they'd be most unsuspecting of (the least important third of the screen) with the arrow being fired into the tree. This shot also suggests to the audience that this is an action film as this is the beginning of a chase scene and involves weapons which is conventional of an action film.

The trees in the background look good in this shot as they look dark and twisted and visually interesting as opposed to straight and perfectly spaced out trees that would make the scene look brighter as opposed to the gloomy atmosphere the suspense in this shot works to create. We were disappointed not to be able to experiment with the focus in this shot, as the camera we used didn't have this function. If we had have had this to experiment with, we could have achieved our original idea for the shot, which was to have the tree out of focus and then brought into focus as the arrow hits it. We think this would have looked better but the shot still works without it.

This shot also serves as an introduction for our villain. The first thing our audience associates with this yet-unknown person is violence and threat. The main character clearly knows and fears this man through what the audience hears him say on the phone ("He's here, I'll call you back"). His choice of weapon of a crossbow shows our villain is a loose-cannon and he's not afraid of blood, making him seem more crazy and therefore more of a threat.

Shot Evaluation - The Bridge Shot

This shot is one of my favourites from our opening scene. It is a long-shot that also acts as an establishing shot, as it is this bridge that signifies the beginning of the forest. This is the best look at our main character the audience has got so far in the scene, with previous shots having shown him from below the waist, behind his back or had his face covered by the branches of a tree. However, the distance our actor is from the camera and the angle of the shot means his face is still not fully visible, saving the full reveal for later in the scene whilst building suspense. The audience does get a better look at the characters costume though, with the full suit being shown as well as the briefcase remaining in shot. The manner in which the character holds the briefcase and walks whilst on the phone should give him a cold air of professionalism, and the suit helps to reinforce this idea. It also further pushes the idea that this character may be a spy or some sort of government agent, which is never confirmed until later in the scene when he is referred to by the antagonist as 'Agent Matthews.'

The location of this shot is what makes it one of my favourites. The leafless trees in the background behind our character are symbolic and can draw comparisons with our main character. The trees could be described as cold and dead which are descriptions that could also be applied to our protagonists impression on the audience. The bridge the character walks across is very old and dirty, reinforcing the concept that the character is now far away from the human contact you see at the beginning of the scene. The bridge shot is just more interesting to watch than the character just walking down a pathway. The bridge also offered us a large space to put another credit in, that I think looks good in this shot as it is integrated into the scene.

Shot Evaluation - The Briefcase Shot

This was an important shot in our opening 2 minutes as it served to let the audience know that the briefcase prop was an important one, setting up the story of our film. We achieved this effect by making it a close-up shot of the prop, with the briefcase taking up most of the screen. Ideally we would have liked to have followed the briefcase as the character walked along as opposed to a stationary shot so that it was more obvious that the prop should be the audiences focus, but this proved difficult to achieve whilst also making the shot look professional rather than shaky. In the future, we'd hope to have some better equipment that would allow us to achieve tracking shots such as the one we had in mind.

This shot should also help create more enigmas, mainly by the audience being able to see the padlock attached to the briefcase. This makes it obvious that this is not a normal briefcase simply full of office related work but instead a briefcase that holds something important, something its owner is taking extra care of protecting. Therefore one of the questions this shot should raise is 'what is in the briefcase?' The mystery of our main character should also be on the audiences mind at this point, as he is clearly the focus of the scene and the prop he is holding means he has a shady background that the audience would start to question. They should wonder why the focus character of the scene is being introduced to them in this way, with his face not being shown as if his identity is important. This teases them into watching the rest of the film to find more about the characters background and answers to more of their questions.

This shot is also important in linking the 2 locations for the scene. Without this shot, there would be a sharp, noticeable jump from train station to forest with no shots to explain how the character got from A to B. This can be confusing for the audience as they are left to fill in the blanks themselves. What this shot does is have the forest setting in the background, so the audience know where the 2nd location is in respect to the train station. We originally filmed this shot in a spot without the metal fence, but realised that without it it seemed like the character was already in the forest because of all the trees and bushes around him. Because of this we re-filmed the shot in this spot so that the metal fence can show the character is still near civilisation as opposed to deep in the forest.

Evaluation - Audience Response

 

This is our audience response for our opening scene. We were happy that people picked up on certain choices we made such as not immediately showing our main character to show him as important and the focus of the scene. Other positives from audience feedback included the soundtrack used for the scene being fitting with the action on-screen and managing to leave enough information unknown at the end of the scene to create enigmas that would make the audience want to watch the rest of the film. Other praise centered on the titles we used for the scene which "made it feel like an opening 2 minutes," the wide variation of shots "especially the opening shot and the shot of the train," and the props such as the briefcase fitting well with the conventions of this genre.

 

Main criticisms were focused on the change in lighting towards the end of the scene, which was caused by time-restraints during production which unfortunately meant we had to continue filming even when the sun started to set. This made it harder to see what was going on, particularly characters expressions. Although we saw this as an unnavoidable mistake considering the circumstances during production, we would still endeavor to ensure this wouldn't happen for future productions by making sure we start filming at a time of year with plenty of sunlight, in a location without as much shade and at a time when there was plenty of time left in the day before the sunset. Another criticism was the soundtrack being too loud at the beginning of the scene, making dialogue hard to make out. We would change this in future by editing the sound of both the dialogue and music in post-production to make sure neither overpowers the other throughout the scene.

Shot Evaluation - Opening Shot

Our opening shot subverts normal opening shots for films of this genre, in that this opening shot shows the audience a full picture that reveals the type of setting the scene is based in. It is not uncommon for action films to start films with an out-of-focus shot or extreme close-up that keeps the audience wanting to see the whole picture for a while. Examples of this include the opening shots from The Bourne Identity and Jack Reacher, whose opening shots do not provide the audience with any information whatsoever and instead show things with seemingly little significance. Time restraints meant we couldn't use this method in our own scene. Our opening shot shows the scene is set in a mostly rural environment as opposed to a large city landscape. We felt it would be interesting to set the opening of an action film in this sort of setting as the audience does not expect it, with a conventional large set-piece set in London or in an exotic international location being the expected opening from our audience. We helped the audience to locate the setting as a mostly rural environment by lining up our shot to include as many trees and bushes as we could, with the colour green signifying the natural element to this location that would be noticeably absent from the grey concrete of the city.

This shot also helps to introduce our main character. We wanted to build audience anticipation by having the characters arrival be the focus of the beginning of the scene and letting the audience know the character is important. The audience know that the trains arrival is significant as we have purposely shown them the barriers closing in the opening shot, the train approaching the platform, and then the character stepping off the train. This works much better at letting the audience know which character is the focus of the scene than if we had have opened with an opening shot of the character just stepping off the train, which would have carried the risk of the character being mistaken as any random person by blending in with the extras in the shot. The horror film Saw that I analysed as part of my research provided inspiration for this technique, in the way that it builds audience anticipation for the reveal of its villain throughout the film, showing him piece by piece, although for our film we have applied the technique to our hero instead.

The only difficulties in achieving this shot were how we had to set up the camera on uneven ground which made it difficult to make the shot level, and how we had to wait for a long time to get the shot of the barriers closing as there was no way of knowing when they would start closing. We also were concerned that the camera could not pick up the sound of the barriers alarms going off, bu luckily in post-production we could increase the volume so the audience could hear it. We were also lucky in that the woman walking in shot on the far right of the screen was an unplanned but welcome addition to the shot, as we felt it added some substance to the scene. She is only ever shown on the least important third of the screen and she has trouble walking with a cane which makes her seem vulnerable and should make the audience feel sorry for her as she has to wait for the train to go past. A persons vulnerability is a theme that carries on to the end of the scene where our main character is wounded by the arrow.

The title font we used in our scene was Agency FB. The sharp neon blue was chosen to make the titles stand out against the background and make it easier to read. We also made certain words in each credit larger and others smaller to highlight the names and companies involved in making the film to the audience. In this shot, we placed the title right in the middle of the shot, firstly to make it more noticeable and secondly because it looked best in this position as it had the plain concrete as a background.

Shot Evaluation - Title Shot

This is a shot of our films main title: Decoded. We chose this title as it links with the espionage and spy thriller elements that are part of our opening scene. The word 'decoded' has connotations of secret codes and information that we feel are plot devices that would appeal to our target audience of male teenagers. The word 'decoded' also raises an enigma, as it should make our audience ask questions such as "What has been decoded? Why is it so important? Who tried to hide whatever was decoded?"

We chose a sharp neon blue as our titles colour as we felt this colour linked to the data, technology and secret hard drives that are part of our film. This is similar to how The Matrix used a sharp green to link in with its computer code in a now iconic main title style. We also opted for a simple and plain font to juxtapose the action from the film, taking inspiration from The Bourne Legacy's title that I found in my title research. The title also takes up the whole of the screen and is against a plain black background, so the audience know it is the title of the film as so much focus has been put on it.