My Mood-Board

For my mood-board design I created a map background to portray the genre and main plot of the film, a crazy Action/Thriller where something has to be found, a destination? a person? It leaves questions.
The two roses on the side represent the characters emotions, how before all of this happened to him all was bright and he had the perfect life, a family, a lovely house etc (the coloured rose) and the black and white rose represents a wilted rose, that all that matters in his life has now gone and his happiness has died.
The main picture in the middle shows the main character (along with the other 5 pictures down below) the three shadows behind represent each family member of his (wife and two kids).
There are a collection of guns in the top right hand corner and one is pointing towards one of the shadows, representing the death of one of the family members.
The left right hand corner consists of the words "Happiness, Warmth, Family, Joy and Love" a description for the coloured rose. The words which are starred "Determination, Courage and Desperation" represent what the character is feeling now. 

Moodboard Ideas

This is a mindmap I created of everything I find relevant to the genre of an action/thriller to help me come up with ideas for my moodboard.

GOLDEN EYE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSvuHSqqGSw

Unfortunately I wasn't able to find a clip of the opening scene of either Taken or Taken 2. However this clip (another action/thriller) includes many of the camera angles we used in our preliminary task and what we wish to use for our final piece and for the same reasons.

This clip used a POV angle at the very beginning, allowing the audience to be placed where the character is to get a sense of the atmosphere, the same as when we used POV in the preliminary task when our main character entered the room.
This clip also included the technique of the 80 degree rule. We used this technique to show communication and a relationship between the two characters, in this case it is used to show the relationship between the character and the destination. 
At the very start of our preliminary task we used close ups of different parts of the main characters body and relevant "accessories" for example, feet, shoes, hat, eyes. This clip did the same before the character jumped. 
The clip also used a tilt, as did we. We used the tilt to create tension when our character is first introduced, slowly introducing him to the audience. The clip also uses the tilt to introduce a character, the wall.

Overall I think this is a great opening to a film, as it leaves the audience with a tonne of questions and creating tension at the same time. 

ABDUCTION

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwMz7K0kr-M

The link above shows the opening of the film "Abduction". This uses many conventions and ideas which we wish to include in our film opening. 

1. A vulnerable character - In this short scene of the film, the main character is shown as vulnerable being completely beaten up in a play fight with her father, which is very similar to the main character in "Loan Shark".
2. Character Transformation - This short scene of the film also includes a character transformation, showing  pushing a characters button can change their personality and capability of causing harm. In the end the main character proves to his father that he is not the under dog, similar to the Jason Stathams character in Loan Shark.
3. Family Involvement - A strong family relationship is portrayed in the opening scene. 
4. Music- Music in the opening scene of Abduction is used to create an atmosphere. 

Our Final 25 Word Pitch

"A man facing challenges to get his family back from Loan-Sharks, based around Taken and Abduction, a typical Jason Statham Film. Genre - Action/Thriller. Male Audience".

Pitch Ideas

First of all we had to decide on our audience, we were thinking of a specific age for the male genre but in the end decided to make it for just males in general. As our target audience is males we made sure it's clear that the genre of our film is an action/thriller.

International Funding -
We decided on using international funding, using both British and American. We wanted it to be a British film with British actors, however we wanted some American funding behind it.

Our Plot Idea -

• Male character in financial trouble.
• Gets involved with loan sharks.
• Doesn't pay off, so his wife and kids are taken.
• To get them back he goes through a series of challenges and tasks.
• When he gets them he finds his wife dead then kills the loan shark.
• Has to bring up his family alone.
• Ends on a cliffhanger (allowing a follow up film).

We then discussed our title for our film, we went through a range of ideas; Captive, Hostage, The Ransom, Loan Shark and The Fisherman. 
We then decided that "Loan Shark" would be our final name. Captive, Hostage and The Ransom gave away the main plot of the story and we wanted to leave the audience with un-answered questions therefore we had to choose between Loan Shark and The Fisherman. Personally I liked the name "The Fisherman" as it was simple and didn't get away the story, however the rest of my group liked "Loan Shark" as the name was more interesting and catchy, which then I agreed I also liked the name. 

Video - FINAL PRELIMINARY TASK

Evaluation - What areas will you need to improve when working on your main project?

• We wish to better a more suitable setting for our film
• To possibly have more time shooting and have a range of each shots so we have many to choose from if some don't work out as planned. 
• More suitable props for realism
• To try out different camera techniques (tripods etc).
• And to find more appropriate music. 

Evaluation - What ideas/skills will you take from this into your main project?

• We are keeping the idea itself, the genre, the plot and the character ideas. 
• We also want to keep the way in which we portrayed match on action, the 180 degree rule and the reverse shot.
• We also wish to keep the roles we had with in the group, me being in a director role, Sarah being behind the camera and Graham acting as the main character. 

Evaluation - How did your target audience react to your finished piece?

"It was very good, the choice of shots were well thought of, I liked the use of the sound effects, the colour fade transitions and the way in which you showed the 180 degree rule".

Another viewer also mentioned they liked the choice of music used, however they felt it could of been a little less dramatic and the volume needed to decrease. 

Evaluation - Who are your audience and why?

In our research we found out that action/thrillers are mainly targeted at males, aged roughly between 18-25, but it can differ. So we just decided to make it an action/thriller for anyone, not a very specific age range. 

Evaluation - How did your research into film openings and genres help you?

My research definitely helped me with genre specific conventions. The conventions we used were; un-answered questions, mysterious characters, the built up tension, the use of music and mise-en-scene (private secret room etc). Looking up age ranges for the genre also helped as it allowed us to get a rough idea of what is suitable for our target audience. 

Evaluation - What was the most difficult part of the project?

The actual filming was the hardest part for me. It was difficult to find a suitable setting to film as we were restricted to the school site therefore we were limited to only classrooms and fields. Another issue we had with the filming was that our first piece was lost as we had technical problems with the cameras and computers which resulted into shooting the whole thing again.

Evaluation - What did you find easy when working on your preliminary task?

We found that editing our film was rather easy, we also found that the pre-planning and storyboarding was simple as we all roughly had the same ideas so discussing and agreeing on ideas was easy.