How did your research into institutions responsible for the production and regulations of the media influence your production work?
We researched similar film genres to see who was the distributor, the gambling film '21' used Columbia Pictures to distribute their film whilst '13 Tzameti' was distributed by Palm Pictures, a much smaller company who focus on innovative film. Our film is different in an unusual protagonist and motivation to most films of this genre, however our clip shows many similarities to such gangster films like lock stock and two smoking barrows. Our film is quite artistic with lighting effects, stop-time shots and breach of the fourth wall so is not conventional therefore a smaller innovative distributor or independent company would be appropriate.
How did your research into genre contribute yo your production work?
As we are producing a poker film it doesn't directly fall into one genre but mimics the conventions of various other genres such as gangster, gambling and drama. We were able to find snippets in movies such as 'Casino Royale', 'Rounders', '13 Tzameti' and '21' where we could research the genre and recreate this in our own film.
From our research we discovered that the shots they use in the high tension gambling moments were often a sequence extreme close-ups of the eyes, evident in the Russian roulette scene in '13 Tzameti'. By understanding the conventions in the films of a similar genre we were able to deliberately break them and subvert them for effect, such as the breach of the fourth wall - something we took inspiration from the Guy Ritchie films.
We found that gangster films often have a powerful villain who uses suited henchman to impose his will, and we used this in our film, we also created the typical smokey atmosphere. However our film also falls into the genre of a drama, and in true 'Lost' style we hope to introduce flashbacks mid-poker game. Therefore by researching the genre we were able to follow the conventions shown as well as deliberately subvert them for effect, however further research into poker games on 'Sky' and 'Channel 4' to understand the logistics and meta language of poker as well as the characterisms of the characters when bluffing or raising etc.
From our research we discovered that the shots they use in the high tension gambling moments were often a sequence extreme close-ups of the eyes, evident in the Russian roulette scene in '13 Tzameti'. By understanding the conventions in the films of a similar genre we were able to deliberately break them and subvert them for effect, such as the breach of the fourth wall - something we took inspiration from the Guy Ritchie films.
We found that gangster films often have a powerful villain who uses suited henchman to impose his will, and we used this in our film, we also created the typical smokey atmosphere. However our film also falls into the genre of a drama, and in true 'Lost' style we hope to introduce flashbacks mid-poker game. Therefore by researching the genre we were able to follow the conventions shown as well as deliberately subvert them for effect, however further research into poker games on 'Sky' and 'Channel 4' to understand the logistics and meta language of poker as well as the characterisms of the characters when bluffing or raising etc.
3. How did research into the audience help to the development of your film?
During the development and production of our film, we continuously encouraged feedback from our focus group, in order to receive positive aspects of our ideas as well as constructive criticism, this help us efficiently as we were able to get a no-bias response from individuals which gave us a sound indication and direction on where we could improve.
we encouraged support from external factors on almost all occasions during the production. Firstly, when we came up with the current concept of our film, we asked a variety of different personalities on what their feelings were on the idea gave us solid material to work with. The potential audience originally rejected our first idea for a film, which was a football music video after being inspired by the previous World Cup tournament in South Africa. They believed that the concept would be 'hard to recreate' and 'potentially boring and would most probably be produced badly', this then aided us in agreeing with them and changing our idea and concept, to something for original and interesting.
Dan, this is a decent first attempt at answering these questions but there is a definite 'wooliness' to your answers. You need to be really specific about the structure of the process from research to influence to your own production decisions. I recommend you look at Heidi's blog for an excellent set of answers with clear structures.
ReplyDeleteI also don't agree about your movie not fitting a genre. I would have said it sat comfortably within the crime/gangster thriller genre. You might have an unusual protagonist and motivation but the similarities to Lock, Stock are too close to be ignored.