The title of the film is “The Occurrence”. The idea to make the title simple yet confusing also stemmed from the movie , “The Blue Tower”deconstructed by Lucy. The title was also partly based on "The Incredibles" format . This title leaves the audience curious as to what the film would be about as it doesn’t give anything away. The title Occurrence would work better and have more versatility to what peoples perception of the film could be,rather than a movie with the name “Superman” or "superheroes". To a modern day audience, these titles set strong imagery of what the film might include,which in turn leaves little to the imagination resulting in a predictable film from the audience's point of view . Some people may dislike superhero story lines and cliche`s and will therefore not watch a film titled"superheroes"as they assume what it would be about. Audience's who read the title “The Occurrence” might be intrigued at what the storyline entails, so will be more likely to go and watch the film out of curiosity.
“The Occurrence” could appeal to audiences who enjoy horror movies. It is a common format for a Horror movie beginning with the word The such as;The Crazies, The Ring, The Happening etc.The title is a useful marketing tool to encourage horror fans to decide to watch the film, even though the genre doesn't fit our description.Although we deduced from our initial questionnaire that our target audience of 16-18yr olds prefer our chosen genre(action/drama),they also like to watch horror movies, so as the title of our film is open to interpretation on genre(could be horror from audience point of view), it could advantageously attract more of our target audience.
Setting/location
Similar to the film mean girls, scene 2 of our film was set in a school as our character was a school girl. We had extras dressed as teenage school children. To make the film more "real", we made the mise en scene basic and true to life in comparison to mean girls.Occasionally Mean girls in fake and unrealistic and is also based on American culture whereas our scene 2 is based around English teenage social culture
Scene 1 with the character Jayne's setting, was based on the surroundings and the style of the main character in The Blue Tower;boring and generic.These qualities make the audience empathetic towards Jayne as she is in a monotonous,boring environment, resulting in a more engaging scene for the audience. This is mirrored in The Blue Tower scene.
Costumes and props
The film opening was intended to be true to life in order for a realistic perspective.In contrast to the film 'The Incredibles', our eventual "Superheroes" costumes were made to appear ordinary, as each character was supposed to relate to stereotypical images of real life cliche persona's. Props were obviously not used in the Incredibles because the film was animated therefore fictional, whereas in our film we tried to use everyday props similar to The film Blue tower. Similarities made from the Incredibles film, were the outstanding differences in each characters personality. This was reflected in their costumes(Jayne plain,dull clothes, school girl typical popular teenage style and artistically loose clothing for our artist).Props we used in our filming process included, an office phone,two mobile phones, a computer, and art equipment e.g canvas paintbrush and palette. We chose these items as they would be used by real people who lead similar lifestyles to our characters.
Our decision to not have any unusual 'superhero like' props was in order to attract our target audience. The information that we gathered from our initial questionnaire was, the capability for the audience to relate to the characters on screen was preferred by our target audience.This can be achieved by being able to relate to the characters lives and compare them to their own.If we were to decide to use unusual,cinematic(sci-fi) props e.g wand, magic carpet etc, our target audience would find it difficult to relate to the characters.
Camera Work and Editing
Inspiration was taken from the editing and camera work of the film trailer of Twilight saga: eclipse for scene 2. The video below demonstrates some Time stretching particularly in this movie trailer at the start. We took this technique and developed it in our own genre effectively.Our scene 2 gives the impression that the school girl believes that her presence is very important in the environment she steps into.Twilight uses this time stretching technique for a similar effect(to bring attention to the characters actions) and insinuation that the audience is meant to pick up on .
Title font and style
We chose simple font for our title in capital letters. The main reason for this was for the audience to be drawn to the title and not to be distracted by fancy font and embroidery that are apart of some movie title shots e.g. Cinderella. We saw this as a technique to make the title clear and simple, as the message of the title is very ambiguous. The contrast of this works well in the fact that its not overloading the viewer with information and thoughts.The famous Titanic film I deconstructed has a similar technique in the opening sequence.The title states TITANIC The Unsinkable Ship. This obviously gives an indication to what the film is about, however we preferred to challenge this concept although it works well and with our title opt for the ambiguity factor. THE OCCURRENCE titles aim is to not give away information that might make the audience lose interest as if it were to be advertised etc. it wouldn't be as high profile as The Titanic.
Story and how the opening sets it up
The music chosen was to help amplify the tension and characters actions.When the tribal drum beat comes in towards the end of each scene it signifies excitement and wonder. This helps emphasise the earthquake type "occurrence". This also helps to emphasise the thrill factor of the film,in turn helping to attract the audience.This is slightly different to all of our chosen deconstructed films as they are all trying to convey a different purpose and effect for the audience. The similarities of our film and the other deconstructed film such as The Blue Tower is that they both use a mixture of diagetic and non-diagetic sound in the opening sequence.
Genre and how the opening suggests it
The opening of our film was intended to be quite confusing so as not to reveal the outcome of the 'occurrence' and/or plot. The genre was action/thriller so in order to achieve this through the opening we used several different techniques to do this. Each of our main actors used facial expressions and actions to show "the occurrence happen". These actions were also accompanied by the tribal drum music, together emphasising the thrill factor as each occurrence happens suddenly.After each occurrence happens the characters are then made to run fast to some sort of destination.A series of different shots filmed(such as tracking,low tilt and mid-shots) whilst each character is running sets the fast pace. Inspiration was taken from the “The Blue Tower”. We tried to extract shot techniques from the opening. These included slowly revealing shots of the characters body, face and surroundings(cut-in shots). The characters were not fully revealed until a few minutes into the opening. We mainly used this technique with our plain Jayne character and slightly with our artistic character as they had more introvert, calm personalities, whereas our school girl character's personality was extrovert, so we tried to reflect that in the shots we used(mid-shots and close ups). This was done mainly to try to make it easy for the audience to realise each characters personality easily, so there was elements of simplicity as the opening is generally quite complex. In terms of suggesting the genre, the shots, techniques and calm music used before the occurrences depict the 'calm before the storm' element typically used in thriller movies.
Special effects
We used just one special technique and that was in the school girl scene. This was time stretching, done by copying and pasting the same part of the girl opening the door 3 times. This was to indicate that all eyes (subordinate characters) were on the school girl. As stated previously, a similar technique was used in the clip from Twilight achieving the same effect we wanted to achieve. The lack of special effects also helped in making the opening less confusing in contrast to the storyline.
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