Question one final version 2

In what ways does your film opening use, develop or challenge forms of real

media products?

Nasima Begum

CASTINGFrom our research we found that the superhero in action films tend to always be a male. This is because men are stereotyped to be strong, brave and a source of support for the vulnerable women. This is why they are always the one to save the damsel in distress. Research also showed that the superhero is always of a white background such as Tony McGuire, Edward Norton and Christian Bale. When we came to casting we first thought of people who would suit the role best and have the potential to act.

White male superhero's

Our Superhero

CASTINGDeciding who to cast as the superhero was the most difficult task. As we could not have a white actor, we thought that we should subvert the stereotype and instead cast a superhero who is of an Asian ethnicity. This is something very different and luckily a lot of Asian people were willing to take part. However we thought of people who would suit the role best not only in the way they act but also appearance wise. We also found that people tend to enjoy something more when they have an actor who is of similar background to theirs. Despite not following the conventions this turned out to be something positive as we were able to subvert the stereotypes of only having a white superhero and instead casted someone Asian - Sadiqur Rahman.

From our research we found that theorist Strauss talked about ‘Binary opposites’ in films. We found that this is very commonly used for example in Harry Potter, Harry is portrayed as the hero and Voldemort as the villain. This idea was something we wanted to implement in our opening sequence leading us to decide that we will have a hero and villain.

CASTINGConsidering that we can only produce a two minute opening we found that it would be very difficult to have a lot of action at the beginning. As a result of this we decided we would have binary opposites such as a hero and villain so that it would be easier to portray our genre. This is why we specifically focused on who to cast as our hero. To save time we decided that we would not have to show who the villain is as this is only just the beginning of a film. This saved time as we did not have to go through the process of choosing who to cast instead someone from our group took on this role.

LOCATIONOur location develops forms of film openings because from our research we found that Action films are based in the city. We were inspired by Batman’s film opening as it shows two children playing in the garden. We wanted to take this idea but make it a little different so we decided our flashback location with the children will be in Regents Park. Before deciding on Regents Park we had a look at other parks however we found that they get really busy and local parks were not clean, and it was just a field. Regents Park had a lot of middle class people with their family, it was clean and the flowers and bushes were shaped nicely. This would be very appropriate for us as we want to show the children’s wealthy background.

From our research we were very clear of the codes and convention that would be found in a Action genre film. We thought of many different ways in which we could present our narrative without giving too much away. Unfortunately, the first few drafts were too vague and did not establish any kind of narrative whatsoever. After some audience feedback from our class we chose the third narrative. Our narrative develops film openings as Action film openings only show insight to the past. This is shown by the flashback which links to our superhero’s present situation. Flashbacks are often used to recount events that happened before the story's primary sequence of events to fill in crucial backstory. Without this backstory our audience would not have known how our superhero becomes a hero. This idea of showing the audience how our character posses superpowers was inspired by Spiderman who possess powers from a bite from a radioactive spider on a school field trip causing a variety of changes in the body of Peter Parker and gives him superpowers.

NARRATIVE

The external analepsis is supposed to link to the present. However our group really struggled to show this as our flashback scene ends with the little boys arms shaking as he touches the arrow which gives him the superpower and then the transition to the present is a shot of Sadiqur’s arm. This is confusing as usually you see flashbacks and then the transition to the present is of something completely different. Usually Action films contain enigmas throughout the film however because we only produced a two minute opening sequence we put in far to many enigmas which resulted in too many unanswered questions causing confusion. If I filmed again, I would make sure there is less enigmas.

NARRATIVE

• Why he is in hospital?• What is the link between the

picture and the flashback?• What is the link between the

arrow in the past and what was the impact?

• Scar

Examples of enigmas from our opening

sequence

SOUNDSound was something very challenging for us. We worked with our music teacher using the programme Logic Pro. We left the music as the last thing we will work on as it is easier to add sound when the opening sequence has been edited. We researched on Action sounds we want to use and manipulate it.

We had to dub in the sound of our characters speaking as there was external noises that made the dialogue unclear. We found this very challenging as it is difficult to make the speech match the speech on the recording.

Our final soundtrack we used

TITLESOur film opening followed a number of conventions shown by some of the film we analysed. The film titles that we were inspired by were HULK. We tried to make our titles similar to this as much as possible working with a motion pro to help us achieve this. However we found this to be very difficult as the titles in HULK come out of the screen, zooming in fast. We attempted this many times, using the titles from Hulk as a guide.

We also followed the convention of all films not just of our genre to show main character name first shown in our credits. We also found that in Hulk the main characters name appears first. This led to us deciding that we will only have our main character name SADIQUR RAHMAN as part of our titles.

TITLES

In addition we included our film distribution company similar to other films following and conventions of titles. Initially our Production name title developed from marvel title which is another Action/superhero production. However it did not look as good as the Marvel title so I used After Effects to create our titles keeping the style similar to Marvel’s production title.

TITLES