Finalise Prop lists

The props we will use in our thriller are as follows:

-Guns (For all, H&K G-36, AK-47, M92F, TPH)

-Cigar (For mercs., Richard or Mike)

-Car (For Ted and James, Chrysler Voyager)

-Fake Blood (For Ted's execution)

-Army Uniforms (For mercs.)

We chose the guns that we thought fitted the characters, for example, the mercenaries have automatic machine guns that make a lot of noise and have a high caliber round. For James, we chose the TPH, because it is easily concealed and very subtle, making it clear that he is a double-crosser. Fpor the car, we chose a big black one that looks like one someone of importance would drive, but is still quite discreet. The cigar is an action movie classic, A-Team, The Expendables, we had to have the mercenaries with a big cigar, it would be wrong without it. The mercenaries have the uniforms to show that they are professionals, although uniform is no guarantee of professionalism. The blood is for James' execution of Ted, we are going to have blood fly everywhere when he gets a bullet in his skull.

music for our thriller

The type of music that we will incorporate into our thriller will be kind of 1970's style hard rock, as this kind of music has the aggression that a film like ours requires. Hard rock is often used in the action-thriller genre, in films such as Terminator 2, The Expendables and Shoot 'Em Up. Some examples of the kinds of bands whose music we would use if we had the rights would be bands like Thin Lizzy, Budgie, George Thoroughgood & The Destroyers and Guns N' Roses (who aren't 70's but that's beside the point). Rock N' Roll and violence are often stereotypically associated, due the the loud, awesome nature of rock. It also ties in with the typical active fans of Rock, most often teenagers and young men who indulge in antisocial behaviours such as listening to loud music, excessive drinking and smoking, drug use and, most relating to our thriller, getting into fights and destruction of property. The characters in our film would be described by the audience as 'Badass', and being total badasses, they would listen to classic hard rock. Of course, the actual soundtrackwill be by the Dakota Stars, as we have been given permission by the artist to use their songs.

Facebook page of our individual audience

http://www.facebook.com/carl.sorrows

 

Name: Carl Chaos Sorrows

Email: chaossorrows@hotmail.com

 

Here, we have created an individual profile page for Carl Chaos Sorrows, who is the perfect type of person who we think would like our film. His goth/heavy metal like personality really connects with our film, 'Commando' being an action Thriller involving lots of fighting, action, deaths and gore.

facebook page for our production

Here, we have created a Facebook page to promote our Production Company, High Concept Productions. This will gain popularity which could then potentially mean a larger audience.

https://www.facebook.com/HighConceptProductions

Storyboard

These are the storyboard for our thriller. we could not fine the way to rotate so the images might be a little bit hard to see.

Ideas from Drive

            As we anlaysed the opening sequence of "Drive" before. One of the main reason of why we have to do is that we can later use it as an influence for our thriller. After we look into the opening sequence, we then found that the target audience is mainly teenager who likes violence, guns and bloods. Which similar to our target audience. The opening sequence also aimed at mid 20's again same target audience as ours. in the opening sequence the main character is mainly shown in the car, driving. This again similar to our thriller because in our thriller we have the driving scene which we can take up ideas by looking at this opening sequence.

casting influence

Our new and improved cast now includes  Mike Azutaurov, Richard Slesers, James Hartman and Ted Jackson. Mike and Richard are our mercenaries, Ted is the crime boss/person of importance and James is Ted's right hand man/betrayer. We chose James Hartman because he could pass as a Jason Statham type action hero, which will probably be the main selling point of the film for the female audience. He is also quite believable for the role as he is a relatively well built 30/40 year old man who looks as if he could hold his own in a fight.

Production logo change

Out of the 3 original ideas we have chosen this one because we think it is the most striking and powerful and really highlights the genre of film we have made - an action thriller, the first to depicts violence and action. The colour scheme we have gone for was chosen because we thought the red colour would real emphasise even further the action and violence involved in the film. When the audience see the colour red they will instantly relate it to blood and will instantly know the film genre. In order to convert the original drawings into a graphicly designed uimage we have used Photoshop CS6 and by doing so we have been able to edit colour schemes and remove the orignial 'paper' background to make the fist more imposing.

production logo

  Here we have thought of ideas of our production logo which we will use to so called 'produce' our film. the reasons for the logo was that we wanted it to fit in with the action/thriller genre which is the reason why we included the fist in all the ideas above. 'High Concept' we think is a production company which focuses on low budget action thrillers. However, will then lead to an American distributor to distribute our film. We really like this idea as it really expresses the genre of the film through the 'Fist' which implies action and violence, which our thriller, 'Commando' obtain.

ideas for our thriller's poster

         We have been discussing how we would make our poster, and how it would attract members of our target audience to watch the film. It must express the genre and type of film that we have made, so that we attract people to see it. By using Photoshop, we have been toying around with different ideas over colour schemes, and what colours to use for the writing. We are going to use red for the writing, by using it, it will hopefully imply a film of violence and danger, and so it will attract the correct audience for the film. We will also take photos of our actors, and put together a good poster. one of the likes of Expendables, and Taken

changes on shooting schedule

                             After we've done the first shooting schedule and ready to shoot. The problem has occurred on the shooting day, the weather was too bad for us to shoot. we then sat down and had a look on our schedule and we decided do make some changes on the schedule.

 

9.00 – 10.00: Arrive at destination, set up cameras and costumes and prepare make up.

10.00 – 10.30: Rehears with actors what they will do and story line, apply makeup to actors and set up shooting area, i.e. where, when and who will be on set at times and were actors will go.

10.30 – 11.00: Firstly aim to film all close ups of mercenaries, weapons, shooting and fighting.

11.00 – 12.00: Secondly we will aim to focus on tracking, panning and tilting on the mercenaries and fighting sequences to add different emotional effects in further editing.

12.00 – 1.00: Focusing on the car, filming in it to get more realistic views on specific action shots, for example the driver getting shot.

1.00 – 2.00: Wide shots + Long shots of all aspects of thriller. Travelling further away from main ‘battle ground’ with the cameras to film certain shots.

2.00 – 3.00: Then we will focus on the firing of the guns on how they will look when we edit. Using POV shots and close ups to make this seem more realistic.

3.00 – 4.30: Extra shots and takes to fill in the gaps.

4.30 – 5.00: Start packing up ready to go back to school to download our footage to FCP.

location of our thriller

   Our film is going to be filmed on a remote lane on a hill-side. We chose a setting like this because it seems like the ideal location for an assassination/ambush occurs. We saw inspiration for this idea from looking at remote roads in Russia and other Eastern European countries such as shown above. Also, you see ideas like ours in films, and so this is why we picked a setting like this.

ideal target audience

Here is Chaos Sorrow, he is our ideal target audience. Chaos loves heavy metal bands and music, such as Megadeath and Metallica. Chaos wears dark clothes and loves really violent and aggressive action films and thrillers, which is exactly what our film is about. Also, Chaos likes to have lots of friends round who he plays guitar with, and they then watch films on the Xbox 360, and from their they can see our film on Xbox LIVE as we are going to market it in such a way through Magnolia and therefore not specifically try and aim for the cinema.

research for our thriller

                After we looked into detail of our thriller, we found the similarity in term of the plot to the news that recently occurred in France. According to the article the cyclist has been gunned down alongside the british family. At first the police and the investigators thought that the cyclist was just a victim of the drive by shooting while the british family is the intended target. The investigation went further more, two months after the incident the investigators then suspicious that the cyclist might be the intended target because he was found with five bullets wound and was actually the one who died first.
                This is relevant to our thriller because in our thriller we have an idea that we want the assassination of the victim to look as if it was an accident, that he is not the intended target. This will make the mercenaries look more professional and realistic.


Link to the news article: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/9653238/Alps-murders-Family-of-French-cyclist-Sylvain-Mollier-speak-out-for-first-time.html

secondary audience

               As we mention in the previous post  that our main target audience are emos, metalheads and scene kids. However we also aim at the young-teen audience age 15 to 25 as our secondary audience. Apart from these groups, we also aim at mid 30's that will watch this film at night drinking beers and nachos, perhaps coming back from the pub late at night these kind of people. The reasons why we aimed at them as secondary target audiences are that our thriller is in the action/thriller genre, which similar to The Expendables, The Bourne trilogy and the Inglourious Basterds.

             From these films we can see that they are very similar to our thriller because they involve bloods, violence and guns which will catch the teenagers attention because according to the poll the majority of teenagers like to watch movies which involve violence blood and guns.

production logos influences

        In order for us to come up with an idea for our production logo, which will be shown at the start of the opening sequence, we have been thinking of some different ones that exist, such as shown above, New Line Cinema, which is a great logo for the type of film we are producing. The darkness surrounding the logo creates a really nice eerie, tense, and dark feeling to it, from this logo one might expect to see a thriller type film, and in our case this would be true.

         In this one, this is the logo of Legendary Pictures, they are usually known to make action genre films, similar to ours. Because of this, we would try and use elements of this logo, such as again with the New Line Cinema logo, the darkness around the logo really suits the genre of our film.

         In order to create our logo we will use Final Cut Pro, and we will complete it during the editing stge of our thriller.

casting decision

after we decided who we want in our thriller, we then sent them e-mails to let them know that we want them and whether they will be available for our thriller or not.

Hey guys,

 

Just wondering if you guys are ok to perform in our thriller opening sequence for media. It will involve you guys acting as mercenaries and there will be plenty of action, for which we thought you guys would be perfect. We will be filming on the 22nd January, a week today, and we will start filming first thing in the morning, so you guys will be needed as soon as the day begins. If there is any problem please could you email me back, and email me back anyway just to say its alright and you can do it.

 

Thanks

 

Ben, Shane, George, Greg

target audience

                In order to make our thriller success in the market we need to identify our audience group. To do this we use the website www.uktribes.com to help us identify the target audience. We came to the conclusion that our main audience are emos, metalheads and scene kids. Because our thriller is quite similar to ‘The Expendables’ so there will be actions and a lot of tensions involved. This will caught the emos  and metalheads attention because they listen to metal and heavy rock which is aggressive and we will use heavy metal in our thriller as well.  We also use Russian mercenaries which fits into the stereotypes of Russian of being aggressive.

               

                The stereotypes of emos and metalheads are that they like to listen to heavy, dark , loud, hardcore  metal and rock music. They also like violence and death. Which again fits to our thriller because there will be a lot of killing, bloods and death involved.

                according to the research the type of movies and TV shows that emos and metalheads watch are the normal movies that normal people watch such as Sons of anarchy, Breaking bad, The Walking Dead. however form the list of example we can see that they mostly watch the tv shows which involved drugs, dead, bloods and violence which again related to our thriller in term of violence.