RESIT: Props for Our G321 Film Opening

RESIT: Our Film Opening Titles and Conventions

To challenge generic conventions, we decided during the editing of our 2nd rough cut to change the order of the title sequence. Instead of our film title appearing at the beginning of the opening, we've chosen to display the title at the end of the opening.

This idea was inspired by the film Step Brothers (2008), where the film title does not appear until the very end of the opening scene.

Step Brothers Opening Scene

Although film openings are not generally associated with this title format, the sequence works successfully in this example as the opening uses clear generic conventions and contains content that prevents the audience from interpreting the opening as a trailer, such as the storyline and introduction of characters.

For our film opening, we also plan to challenge this generic convention by using it in our piece. We believe that by using the same techniques, our film could also pull off this convention. We also believe it would benefit our piece as it would make it unique and original.

RESIT: The History of Comedy

RESIT: Target Audience Profile

For our G321 film project, we have decided to create an opening to a comedy film. Because comedy is a major genre and generally targets a mass audience, we have targeted a certain audience that fits this specification.

Our film is mainstream, so our goal is to target a wide range of audience members. We’ve chosen to target demographic groups C, D and E, which includes the unemployed, students, blue collar workers and un-skilled/semi-skilled workers. We’ve intentionally left out high social class groups, such as A and B, as we have taken into account that upper-classed citizens would not be able to engage with the characters or relate to the events of the film. From a stereotypical point of view, it is also likely that people within demographic groups A and B would not appreciate the language, sexual references or general rude sense of humour the film contains.

More specifically, our ideal target audience member would either be a male or female between the ages of 15 and 24. Although 3 out of the 4 protagonists are male, and explicitly targeting a male audience would mean that all of our audience members would be able to fully engage with the characters and events of the film, we have chosen to include females in our target audience as the style of humour is extensive and could just as easily reach out to female audience members as it could to males.

We chose the age range of 15-24, with 15 being the minimum age of a person that would be allowed to view our film, due to certification purposes. Although we have stated that our oldest ideal audience member would be 24, our film may appeal to people within their 30’s, 40’s or even 50’s. We chose the age of 24 as an estimation for when our target audience member may grow too mature for the style of comedy used in the film.

A film that inspired the inner workings of our film opening and targets a very similar audience to us is the film Superbad (2007). Like Superbad, our film is certified as ‘15’ and has a ‘high school geek’ theme. Superbad is also a mainstream comedy film which targets a mass audience and made a gross revenue of £109,006,682.

Superbad played an important role in the planning stage of our G321 film opening. When looking into comedy, we were unsure as a group whether targeting such a small audience when trying to produce a mainstream film would coincide with a film based in such a major genre. But when we started researching existing films with similar themes and characters, such as Superbad, Step Brothers (2008) and Napoleon Dynamite(2004), we found that the combination of a small audience and a mainstream film was actually successful for films within comedy. This knowledge enabled us to create a foundational base for who our target audience members should be, and allowed us to develop our ideas and become more specific in how to attract and approach them.

RESIT: Why We Chose the Comedy Genre

According to CNBC, an American broadcasting channel, 5 out of 'The 15 Most Profitable Movies of All Time' were comedy films, including Mrs Doubtfire, There’s Something About Mary, The Hangover, Home Alone and My Big Fat Greek Wedding. This information shows that comedy films are a popular, successful genre that targets a mass audience.

Why comedy is a great genre to choose:

• The history of comedy dates back to the 1800's, and has been a successful genre ever since
• It is difficult for comedy to appeal to a lot of people, but if it does, it can only make a turn for the better
• Most comedy films target mass audiences and are mainstream, resulting in a large profit and a high popularity rating
• Comedy is subjective, meaning one person may find something funny and another may not. But being a comedy, several types of humour can be written into the film to suit all preferences without confusing the audience on what genre the film is meant to be

Why we chose the comedy genre:

As a group, we all decided that we wanted to film the opening of a comedy. One of the main reasons we chose this genre is because it requires a lot of creativity and positive thinking, which each member in our group had a lot of. We wanted to create something clever and imaginative, while keeping a positive and uplifting atmosphere. We understood that making an opening to a comedy would be challenging, and were prepared to push ourselves to produce a product that successfully resembled such a popular and well-known genre.

We also wanted our ideas to be original and indifferent from our other classmates'. Several groups in our class decided to produce a film opening for a horror or drama, and we felt that if we could take our ideas in a completely opposite direction with a comedy opening, we would stand out from the crowd. We used this fresh approach to our advantage and threw all of our efforts into our coursework to prove that we could make a successful film opening by being original and choosing a genre outside of our comfort zone. It was this drive that propelled ourselves through the Preliminary task and into the G321 Film Opening task.

RESIT: G321 Evaluation Q1

RESIT: Certification and Justification

I feel that an appropriate certification for our film would be for people aged 15 or over. This prevents exposing young children to strong language, references to drugs and adult themes. It is important to take these things into consideration when certifying a film, as a low age certification (such as PG or 12A) could mislead a parent into thinking the film is suitable for their children when it may include explicit content.

The reason we chose not to certify our film as a 12A is due to the fact that our film may contain a lot of rude adult humour and sexual references that a 12 year old may not understand.

It wouldn't make sense to rate our film as an 18 either, as our film does not contain any graphic gore, sexual images or heavily explicit content. If we did decide to rate our film as anything other than a 15, we would not be reaching our target audience members and the people who do watch our film would find it difficult to relate to the characters and events of the film.