Film Opening - 7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product?

My preliminary exercise was one of the first pieces of film i had ever produced, and as such, a lot of mistakes were made. I used these mistakes as a stepping stone to make sure i didn't fall into the same traps as before. One of our biggest problems in the preliminary exercise was the lack of structure to our storyboard: Everybody seemed to have a different idea of what we were doing. This time, my group and i worked as a team to make sure that everything that needed to be done got done, and that we wee all on the same page in terms of where we thought the film was going.
Our storyboarding and idea brainstorming was definitely an improvement, which paid off in both the production and post production process. With my preliminary task, this lack of an extensive pre production process had caused problems when trying to film and edit.
Another key point was the distribution of roles amongst our group. This time round we each focuses on a certain aspect, whilst maintaining support and providing ideas to the people in different roles. This made sure that everyone was kept busy with a job to do, and eliminated people arguing over how a role should be performed. 
      As an example:

• Preliminary exercise: The role of camera operator was shared between a few different people, with the person doing the actual filming changing each time.

• Opening scene: We had one person in the role of camera operator, meaning he maintained the feel of the film and kept it looking natural. This is not to say that the other members did not get a say in how the camera was operated, as ideas were discussed between us.

We also managed to include a wider variety of shot types, and more overall footage. This meant the film could be kept interesting by means of the post production editing. Other editing techniques such as music, a voice over and sound effect were also present. Editing is perhaps our most progressed skill since the preliminary exercise.
More advanced title sequences also played a role. Before the names of those involved were put in at the end as more of an afterthought than part of the film. Our opening scene allowed us to play with and develop the idea of more immersive titles, that can be used as a part of the film not just a formality
To conclude, i would say that every aspect of my media knowledge and experience has increased, as well as my confidence in using different, more imaginative techniques, editing and shot types.

Film Opening - 5. How did you attract/address your audience?

As mentioned in the previous post, the type of audience we are aiming to capture are those interested in historical and also war-based films. The type of audience we are trying to attract is small yet stable audience with an age range of 18-40 who would maybe be more male than female. This is the type of audience that would likely be interested in a movie with such a historic focus and also the focus on war will attract more adult views. The target audience may not know anything particular about this period in time but will be attracted to the movie due to an interest in history and also because they might have seen other movies like Saving Private Ryan and Black Hawk Down which also take place in a war environment. We set our movie in war time Russia to mix the history aesthetic with the fact it's a war movie to broaden our target audience and the themes explored in the movie are of a nature that will appeal to an adult audience.


The film would most likely be given a 15 by the British Film Board of Classification due to the adult nature of the film and this age rating doesn't really limit our audience particularly as our target audience is mainly an adult one. We'll market the film as a war movie to broaden it's appeal to adult audiences but also show it in small art house cinemas to further widen the audience it could attract. The movie's serious tone and nature appeal to adults and the historical aspects of it will also appeal to history lovers who are above the age of 15.

We could also show the film on terrestrial television on channels such as Channel 4 (also including the channel owned by Channel 4, Film4), known for it's indie friendly attitude and large share of television viewers, or a channel such as Yesterday which focuses on Historical documentaries, dramas and films and has an target audience that matches completely with the target audience of our movie allowing us to securely grab our audience and get them to see our film.

Film Opening - 4. Who would be the audience for your media product?

The general audience for this media product was aimed at those interested in history and war films. However Because of this, we believe that this a rather large target audience due to its war style genre and that the cast it’s fairly male dominated we think this opens it up to an audience of males from the age 15 upwards, no lower than this due to the fact the film's rating would likely be a 15.

We have analysed some of the box office statistics from some of the films we were inspired by in order to make comparisons about the popularity of the genre. Obviously, we would not be expecting to produce a film with such a large genre, due to it's arthouse genre our lack of verticle integration.
An example is “Black Hawk Down,” a war film, took $274,347 (USA) in its opening weekend. Due to it being based on history we believe that this opens the film up to mixed gender audience of those who are lovers of history also. Another example is “Saving Private Ryan” another war film but based on the invasion of Normandy took $30,576,104 in its opening weekend at the box office. We have tried to keep it as open as possible but we are aware that it is still a very acquired taste in film for many people so we will not be able to expect our audience to be an incredibly large and diverse one, we should instead focus on one secure and small target audience.