The mark character profiles

Characters Profile

The Mark - Characters

        Joe Lester

Real Name: Daniel Amato

Age: 35

Villain

      Geoff Gump

Real Name: Matt Rabbitt

Age: 17

Hero

First draft feedback

Our first draft had a few problems with it that would lower our grade which we were shown when we were given feedback. First of all we were told about our titles being different sizes. When watching this back in the group we realised that they were different sizes so we need to change that in our final version. Also people said they couldn't see Matt in the low angle shots when they are in the office so we need to re-shoot these scenes so there is some light in him. Also we saw that it was a bit boring and we needed to change the angles and different types of shots.

The mark script

Script

            

Amato

                               

Matt

We have reason to believe that a high profile incident will be taking place in London in the next 24 hours. Intel has yet to provide and solid information but they seem to believe that it has something to do with the operative codenames, The Mark.

*Matt flicks through files*

Little is known about them. However its believed that they have been involved in several incidents in the last 5 years.

*Point finger at Matt*

Your mission is to track down any other known associates, find out any information about the location of The Mark and then eliminate them.

Are we clear?

Track down known associates, find out the location of The Mark.

And then eliminate them?

*Matt point gun at Amato*

Quite.

Do you know who I am?

I know exactly who you are. Now tell me. Who is The Mark?

You’ll never find him. I’ll never…

*Amato shot*

Shame…

*Matt gets up and walks out*

Target audience, promotion, advertisment, marketing ploy andsales promotion

We have done plenty of research on how a small budget film should and how it an be marketed. This made us come up with theses strategies.


1. Social Media

This is a very simple and easy way for small budget films to get out there to a lot of people. This is because on social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook many people have access to seeing these. It is also very useful as it is free to use.


2. YouTube Videos

This costs a small fee to advertise films on YouTube but is a very effective way because you can decide what type of videos that theses adverts come on therefore it is easy to target your audience.


3. Blogs

A blog could be a suitable way as it is free and has the potential to be seen by a lot of people. This also allows a lot of creativity in what you post there form slideshows to videos. A downside of using blogs can be than even though there is a potential for many people to see it, it can be very hard at the start for it to get noticed by people.

Audience-Questions

How do you hear about film?
I Normally hear about film through TV advertising as it as effective way to pass off the goodness and plot behind a film in order to intrigue me to see it .

What makes me want to see a film?
I like to see a good plot as well as plenty of effects which create suspense which in turn will urge me to see the film in the cinema.

How will I know what to expect?
I normally ask a colleagues opinion of the film as well as Checking online reviews to gather a consensus towards the film.

Audience

The acronym used for Uses of Gratification is PIES
Personal Identification
Information
Entertainment
Social Interaction

similair titles camera shot research

Representation

The way in which people, events and ideas are presented to the audience.
The groups which the media represents different people
Class
Age
Gender
Ethnicity
Sexuality
(CAGES)
The Male Gaze- women are placed in media for the pleasure of men. Men usually make the media.

In this film opening there are many representations that are being shown. This can also show many stereotypes of an American family. This is trying to represent the average american school girl with her waking up in the morning and her then going to school. It is made in the film that this is the normal and average family and that this is usual and a natural family and how they act in the morning. The background of this is a family but there is no sign of the mother. It is unknown why the mother is not there from the opening of this film but perhaps it suggests that more children than ever are starting to live with either there mum or dad because of a divorce. This is because more and more parents are getting divorced than maybe 20 years ago.

Film pitch

A-level prelim examples

This sequence features very high quality imagery from the beginning as well as a high quality of filming. The use of mysterious music from the beginning creates a tense atmosphere as it gives the impression f a building intensity. The mise en scene creates a mysterious and strong impression of a capture and the use of fake blood gives of an impression of the protagonist in trouble. The steady camera work shows how one character may be more calm than the other in this opening

Film sound and music

Film Music

• Symphonic - A large orchestra
• Melody - A distinctive tune
• Atonal - No established key
• Rhythmic - Percussion sounds forming a beat
• Dissonant - Non-harmonic

Types of different sound

Synchronous Sound - Diagetic Sound
Is where you see something and you hear the thing that goes with what your looking at.

Asynchronous Sound - Diagetic Sound
This is where you hear something but you can't see where the sound is coming from.

Sound Bridge
This is a sound that links two scenes together.
Ambient Sound
Ambient sound is the background noises. If you use a combination of background noises you could create a soundscape.
Voice Over
Is where someone will narrate a scene. This would be used in Documentaries, it is not common to be used in Action or Thrillers.

Shot list

Shot List

1. Amato walking down corridor whilst camera follows behind.
2. Camera facing elevator then Amato steps in front to get in.
3. Camera follows Amato as he walks and through door.
4.Shot follows behind Amato again whilst he is walking down corridor.
5. Midshot of Amato whilst he starts to talk to Matt.
6. Then lowered shot of Matt whilst listening to Amato.
7. Then another Midshot of Amato whilst he starts to talk to Matt.
8. Next is a Midshot of Matt whilst listening to Amato and reading the brief.
9. Then another Midshot of Amato whilst he starts to talk to Matt.
10. Close-up of Matt's hands whilst loading the gun.
11. Then another Midshot of Amato whilst he starts to talk to Matt.
12. Close-up of Amato's eyes.
13. Then another Midshot of Amato whilst Matt is talking.
14. Then another low angle of Matt as he pulls out the gun.
15. Then another Midshot of Amato whilst he starts to talk to Matt.
16. Close-up of gun as he fires it, with an effect.
17. Then another Midshot of Amato after he has been shot.

Our task titles

Titles for our film opening

1. Prestige Films presents
2. In Association with Red Eagle Productions
3. Production Designer- Gordon Greenhut
4. Music by Connor Cogan
5. Andy Weeks
6. Daniel Amato
7. Produced by Charles Robert
8. Written by Charlie Weeks
9. THE MARK
10. Executive Producer Matt Rabbitt

Props

Props

This was one of the props that we used when filming the Mark. This is what Matt used to shoot Amato at the end of our scene.

This was the coat that Matt wore when talking to Amato during our scene to make him look like more of a spy and make it more realistic.

story board

production diary

Preliminary task

As a group of three ( myself, Tilly and Sarah) we were tasked with creating a short film within the horror genre lasting around about 2 minutes. As a group we needed to decide upon: Plot,Genre,Audience and the dissemination of tasks between us.

Together we decided upon the name being "the sunshine killer" as it would reflect most of the plot revolving around a psychopath named the sunshine killer who murders teen girls and leaves behind a mark that looks like the sunshine but drawn in blood. We began the process by story-boarding and then we moved onto writing a script for the initial shoot. We then had to move onto finding a suitable location to shoot at. With this we decided a park would be a suitable location and so we went to the nearest playground to scout it out. After all of this was done we headed to shoot the scene. After this in the editing stage we realized that the wind in the clips was drowning out the speech so we used 'Foley' in order to recreate the speech. After merging this scene with the previous one ( a news scene shot in the school to describe the relevance of the killings) as well as this we used some basic horror music in order to show the genre which was inserted within the editing stage. Below is the final cut of the short

Big and Small budget films

In our lessons we also learnt about the difference between big and small budget films within the industry. The first of these that we learnt about was the big budget films. We found that they tended to be blockbusters and produced by big company such as the big 6. There budget tends to range above a budget of $12,000,000. However a small budget film is more commonly produced by an independent film company and will cost much less than a big budget film due to lack of financial support.

evaluation of film industry task

Upon completing a film pitch between our peers we were given feedback as to how to improve.
These included showing all details of the plot as well as giving a more in-depth description of the narrative and enigmas within the film itself.

Pete Fraser Talk

On this day we were visited by Pete fraser from the bfi and he gave us an insight into how to achieve good media as well as respectable editing techniques to help with the prelim and final task.He also showed some clips of some huge films like 'Catch Me If You Can' and explained to us how they were able to come up with such a great opening scene and how their transitions affected their opening scene. 

Titles task

The opening scene i chose to analyse was that of the bond film 'Die another day'. By watching the film i found that the titles with the longest lasting sequence tended to be those of importance for example the production company, Lead actor and the films title, whilst other actors would get a slightly shorter sequence to promote the importance of the main characters/ company's. As well as this certain famous actors are given a section devoted to them generally due to the draft of they're contract making them the only people allowed to be displayed in a certain frame

00:05

00:06

00:06

00:05

00:05

00:04

00:04

00:03

Pete fraser talk

Today, we were asked to go to the assembly hall as Pete Fraser came into to talk to all of the Media Studies students about the course and to give us some tips about the course and how to get the most marks possible. Pete showed us some students past film openings and we the as a group would discuss why the film opening was given the grade it was awarded and what its strengths and weaknesses were. This was very useful as it is gave us a lot of tips how to make ours better and this also will give us a better chance of getting the marks that are available.

Narrative

A narrative is a retelling of a story and is often brought across to the audience through a voice over. It is not the story itself rather the telling of the story and so each of the events is a recollection. Narratives are used as they can give in depth details into the rise to and during a key scene within a film. Barthe devised that when a story is taken a part a whole collection of new meanings are generated and so the story gains depth. A narratives order as given by Torodov suggests there are 5 stages to the narrative: An equilibrium, A disruption of an equilibrium, Recognition of disruption, Restoration and back to the beginning equilibrium. often the disruption was caused by an antagonist who is often decided by the theory of binary opposites devised by Levi-Strauss.

Representation

Representation is used in the film industry in order to use well known stereotypes and archetypes in order to present a character,events or ideas to the audience. This is controlled by gatekeepers who decide what the audience is to be allowed to see and what they can not. For example a stereotype may be used to display a foreigner because some people may otherwise not be able to identify the characters decent.

Juno Production diary

Semiotics

Semiotics is the study and use of symbols and representation through symbolism. For example we looked at the symbol of the swastika and what nit might represent. At first most of the class saw a vision of the Nazi rule, however when given an explanation the class learned that the swastika was actually a symbol for eternal spiritual victory that ancient Indians would believe in. The mistake is the fault of representation in which people interpret the meaning in the fault of a lack of knowledge.

The Film Industry

Whilst researching the film institution we were tasked as a group of three to develop and propose a film pitch to a group of peers and then we took criticism and looked into techniques used within the film industry.We attempted to display how we would audition and choose our actors as well as how to market the made up film we had created of which ours was called "The Lurking".

Film Language Textual Analysis

http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=boyz+n+the+hood+dutch+subtitles&FORM=HDRSC3#view=detail&mid=BCA98CE309ED50662AF4BCA98CE309ED50662AF4

Above is the link to boyz n the hood of which we watched the first 6 minutes. In class we looked into the film language used to describe and explain what is happening on screen and why.
Mise En Scene:
Costume
Track suits
Lighting
Dull as if to show the roughness of the film throughout
Actors
Young to help the film have an impact on a variety of different audiences
Make up
very minimal and simplistic to create a realistic scenario
Props
very few but they include the blood and the sot up poster
Setting
In a supposed black cultured area in order to give a view of the scene and history behind the film

Juno film opening task

For the past week i have been paired with Tilly and we were set the task of recreating the film opening from the film Juno. We used it as good practice to use the program Adobe Premiere in order to practice our filming and editing methods in a film opening task. Below is our final cut of our short video of the remake and we used the original soundtrack over the top to allow the realism to be enables. We had to carefully story board the video and attempt to recreate each and every shot from the first 1:05 minutes of the opening sequence

Institution

Today during our lesson we learnt about the film institution and the "Big 6" in production. These are : 21st century fox, Paramount, Warner bros, Walt Disney, NBC and Columbia Tristar (Sony). We learnt about the different company's as a part of the film majors and also about the mini majors in the industry. Following this we designed a logo for our own film production company as shown below. We were shown that many successful productions were normally found to have very basic logos and so I made sure not to put too much depth towards the production logo to not lose the audience within the opening of any production

Film Poster

The film based off of the title poster, is an action film seemingly based around the central character. The use of props also show's the genre through the weapons and explosions. We can also see all of the proponent characters due to their contrast to the colors shown in the background

Genre Posters Task

In class we were shown a number of different film poster relating to genre.following on from this we went out and shot some of our own poster in order to address each of the four genres we were given which were: Documentary, thriller, horror and action.

Documentary:we made sure to make sure that the interview included a intwerview style image as it shows the documenting within the film

Horror: we decided to try and use a low light background alongside a light upon my face to highlight the darkness and evil within the film

Thriller: we chose that the thriller would involve a chase as it would cause the audience to ask questions such as why the protagonist is chased

Action: For the action poster we chose a charlies angel style poster in order to display the action genre

Genre Analysis

In order to analyse genre we learned an anagram called DISTINCT.This helps us analyse and evaluate the opening credits to films and their genre. DISTINCT stands for:
Describe
In detail
Setting
Themes
Icons
Narrative
Characters
Textual analysis




The film opening to Harry Brown is set in urban London in both a council estate and what appears to be a car park. the key themes seem to be gun crime and drug abuse. It features a number of important icons throughout the scene including: A Gun, A Motorbike and A form of Drugs. It doesn't give any particular details towards characters names but does open with a number of people one of which may be the 'protagonist'.



The opening scene to the film Clueless is set in a seemingly wealthy housing area shown through the icons on set, for example the cars for the high school girl and the large array of clothes available. The key theme of this film from the opening appears to be comedy as the script appears to have many jokes placed within. The entire scene is a narrative allowing the viewer more information upon the premise of the film whilst giving an in depth background to the main characters life. We also see the secondary characters being the protagonists father and best friend so we know most of the main characters from the start of the film



The theme from this opening appears to be a mix between horror and thriller due to the eeriness and supernatural aspects of the clip. The setting is the bedroom/bathroom of a women living on her own showing the helplessness of the character who may be the protagonist of this film as it is the only person we are properly introduced to. An important icon in this scene is the mirror as it gives the dark sign 'YOU KNOW' showing the impact that this scene has throughout the film and describing the dark nature of the film.

film opening research

Above is the opening credits scene of the 2006 film Casino Royale. This is the film opening I shall be analyzing today.
The beginning of this opening features the films protagonist walk on screen from the view from the barrel of a weapon at which the protagonist turns to kill the antagonist, which appears to be the audience the audience
I believe the setting is a mix of dreams and hallucinations centered around a pack of cards.
The themes seem to be killing, action and card games due to the symbols of all card suits and the roulette wheels seen throughout.
The scene features numerous props including roulette wheels, computers and firearms
The scene features animated verions of the main and other charecters and displays them brawling together throughout the sequence