The document discusses the codes and conventions used in a student film opening. It describes 4 settings, props including computers, phones and a car, and costumes. One weapon, a pistol, was used. Female dominance was used to subvert expectations of an action genre. Feedback on the opening was positive as it created scenes people did not expect. Research was done on low budget British films and the 15 age rating was chosen due to violence.

2. The common codes and conventions we used for our movie opening were:
Settings- For our settings we used 4 different places, place 1was in a bed room where the heroine wakes up
to see her husband missing, place 2 is an office where the boss phones the two workers, place 3 is in the car
where the two workers receive the phone call and the last place is in the alley/roads where the workers
capture the victims.
Props and costumes - we used many props to make the opening look up to date, the props used were,
computers, phones, a car and a bed. The costume had to be right as we couldn’t have the jogger running in
jeans as it wouldn’t look like he was jogging it would look like he was running from someone, so everyone
had to wear the correct clothing to show they was dedicated to do the work.
Weapons- we didn’t need a lot of weapons as then we would of gone over the top so we used one weapon
which was a 9mm pistol in our opening to show that the two workers were gangster and were serious about
their work.
The opening sequence I used was the firm as it showed the camera positioning of an action movie and it also
showed what angles would need to be taken while the character is talking and on the move. This was really
useful as we used the angles in our opening.
http://mediablogs.keshacademy.com/raqibasblog/2013/01/08/film-opening-analysis/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cW1L9lXQT8c

3. We developed the sequence by planning it out before hand we planned the codes and
conventions before we created out movie and story board, we explained how we were was
going to subvert the stereotype and we also talked about our settings, props, costumes and
weapons. We knew everything we had to do before starting any of our work. So it was quite
easy to plan out the storyboard and movie board, but we never used all our story board as we
had to change a few bits due to health and safety risks, for example we couldn’t throw the
victim in the boot as it was broken and also due to safety issues.
But other than a few alterations we developed our sequence really good as our story and movie
boards more or less match our opening. But we had to extend our filming time and take up our
own time to record as our first recording we made loads of mistakes and we recorded it through
one angle and our teacher JM told us we would fail as we haven’t recorded all the angles we
had to so due to that we asked JM if we could have more time to re-record and try to achieve a
better grade so we spent 5 hours of our weekend to record and when we came back to school
we was told that we have done much better and that we would pass.

4. We used many techniques like birds eye view, close ups, over the shoulder and 180 degree rule
we did this so we would have a better chance of receiving a better grade and also we ran the
camera longer than usual because we would have a better idea of what to crop and edit to show
what was needed and what wasn’t, we also added soundtracks to make our opening more
interesting but majority of the opening is based on the characters talking, there is also a sound
effect of the victim getting hit with a but that wasn’t edited it was a real sound effect as the
victim actually got hit with the gun.
We had to subvert the stereotype as JM told us that it will help the group achieve more marks
so we subverted it by making the opening about female dominance, this was brought up by
myself and HB as it was the simplest and easiest thing to record as we had many female
companions that were willing to participate. At the end HB sister volunteered and one of our
deputy head helped out to make the group achieve better also as she was a foreign lady it
seemed more sophisticated and more interested as the was bossing around people this showed
that she was part of a mob or some sort. This is how we challenged the genre but we could of
improved it by making everything about females, by this I mean all the characters could have
been females but due to the short notice not everyone was available so we had to do with our
male characters.

5. Positive Stereotype
Majority of our stereotypes were positive by positive I mean all the our stereotypes were what
you usually think of one. For example a positive stereotype of a villain would be a bad person,
someone who disobeys the law, someone who gets involved with the wrong person and always
gets caught in the end and also a villain is usually male. For our opening we used positive
stereotypes on the two kidnappers and also on the victim. The positive stereotype for the victim
is minding his/her own business and then they get abducted, hit or something bad always
happens to them and it’s always unexpected.
Negative Stereotype
We also used a negative stereotype on two of our female characters, the leader of the
kidnappers is female this subverts from the villain stereotype and also the hero’s are mainly
male but in our opening our hero is a female and she isn’t recognised as a hero as she is taking a
rest in bed so no one know if she’s a hero or a victim yet.

6. We positioned the audience in a way to make them feel as if they was in the scene witnessing
the crime we done to so it would build up tension and suspense. We also done this some people
would get an experience of every day life as stuff like this tends to happens and giving people
the experience they would know what it feels like.
The technical skills to build our characters up were to start the scene off peaceful as a normal
day then we see the scene from the villains point of view and we try giving the audience as
much information as they can take from the 2 minutes we recorded it, as people are always
eager to find out about the story line and we also wanted them to know what was going on
instead of confusing them and not telling them anything about the work.
All characters have a role in the opening and they all get a bit to say as no one was left speech
less but the main focus was on the villain (Umair Nasar) and the victim (Haider Sultan) as they
talked majority throughout the dialogue and it showed that them two had a main role in that
section. The drivers job (Raqib Zulfiqar) was to help the victim (Umair Nasar) to make a clean
get-a-way and leave no signs or clues of kidnapping the victim so the police/ hero’s don’t find
anyway of finding/tracing them, but the victims didn’t know what was happening but his wife
knows about everything that’s going on as she is a in charge of the police force who took down
one of their crew member from robbing 1.3million from a bank job.

7. The research we done on institution was about a film four movie called the attack the block, I
think that film four would be best suitable for our movie opening as it is on a small budget and it
would be something the British community would like to watch. Also it has all British characters
with all different ethnicity's like all film four movies have a also running on a small budget as not
much characters are not needed, we created our opening on no budget, as we had all the props
we needed but we could have had some better props and made the opening more interesting,
we could of also has more people in our group to make it more interesting and we could have
had more females in our group as the opening was about female dominance.
The institution we chose for our opening was MGM (Metro Goldwyn Mayer), MGM is an
American media company which produces movies and television programs.
We as a group think that film four is best suited for the group as it is owned by channel four
television and they are responsible for making a huge numbers of movies in the United
Kingdom, they have made huge movie like, Trainspotting, East is East, Attack the Block etc.

8. For our media project we have gave the age rating for the media
project was decided a 15 as the opening contained violence, the age
rating was given a 15 as a violence movie about gangsters and
kidnappers would not be suitable for people below the age of 15 and if
we extended the opening it would have contained some strong
language.
Also people of the age of 15+ would enjoy the content of watching a
action/gangster movie, as this is what is more likely to be realised
nowadays as people have a high demand for action/gangster movies.
An action movie will be subverted with violence, kidnap, weapons etc.
Our movie doesn’t have much of a difference with the movie ‘Taken’
except the fact that $25 million to make the movie whereas we didn’t
have no budget to create the movie, but the storyline is more or less
the same as a member of the family get kidnapped and it up to the
agent to go save him/her.[
Reference:
Taken
http://www.boxoffi
cemojo.com/movie
s/?id=taken.htm

9. In order to attract the audience we had to subvert the action genre, an audience
member would expect male dominance from an action movie, but we changed
that by making a female in charge of a gang. This engages the audience more as
the is it not what they would expect from an action movie. Our opening is similar
to James Bond as James Bond responds to a women called ‘ma’am’ but James
Bond is a secret agent, whereas our opening the female boss is in charge of a
gang which is out to cause trouble.
Elaborating on the idea we had a gang ruled by a female, we made it more
realistic as we had a female with a foreign accent makes it like she is a mob leader
as all foreign movies like The Godfather and Scarface as the Godfather has a Italian
accent and Scarface has an Protégés accent, and the way they give orders shows
they are a dominant force.

10. Our group also studied the BBFC rules into more detail to make sure the movie is an age
rating of a 15 and these rules are:
•Strong Violence
•Frequent strong language (eg. Mother
F****r)
•Sexual Activity
•Verbal reference towards sex
•Sexual nudity
•Drug taking
•Discrimination
BBFC Website
http://www.bbfc.co.uk/wha
t-classification/15

11. The feedback evaluation that we got back for our opening was quite good as we
created scenes that n one really thought of and we recorded it from many angles, so
the audience could see what was happening from every angle. We can have room
for improvement next time by getting more females and props involved as it seemed
like there wasn’t many props about and we could of got more people in the
background to show it was a brutal area.
We wanted the audience to have a James Bond view for our opening but instead of
being on the good side we wanted to be the opposition, as we were the villains in
out opening, this is telling the audience the conflict had started due to the mob
leaders.

12. Improving the work overall we could have had more casting in our group, as it
seemed like the gangsters were from a brutal area but only the scene it self showed
it was a brutal area, if we had a group of people in the background in tracksuits,
smoking etc. this would of shown the area that these people are in it for the money
and also we could have had more transport and weapons.
But overall from my point of view we did well, there were some minor
improvements needed to be made like cameras shaking etc. But in reference to our
first attempt we did a lot better than we thought we would as the first attempt was
filmed from one angle throughout the whole open where as the second attempt was
filmed from various angles.