The Audience

Our Target Audience

Demographics:

We will aim our clip at people around the age of 15-30 years old. Many of the actors used in spy genres are around the age of 30 years olds- which will appeal to aspirers, who are uncertain about what the future may hold.Furthermore, this genre is usually watched by people above the age of 15, as it involves some sort of knowledge to understand what is going on. 
Ethnicity: 

Spy films are watched mainly by white British people, which appeals to our audience we have included white actors as the main characters. This will make the film relatable, and as a result, realistic. 
Class: 

Our audience are mainly middle class and upper class as our storyline is sophisticated which will require an intelligent audience to understand it. Stereotypically, the lower class aren't as intelligent and therefore may not understand it. 

Gender: 

The gender that will watch this film will be mostly Males, however some females will watch due to the dominance of male characters. 

Casting

Casting

In our opening sequence, we have a total of four characters. One Hostage, two body guards and a civilian, which all have an important role in our opening sequence. We have chosen to include few characters, therefore this will make the hostage feel alone and this help create an uncertain and unsettling atmosphere. Furthermore, little speech is used in our opening sequence to help create enigma of the hostage, to build suspense. This also helps the audience wonder why Joel Beckford is in this situation. Here are the three characters:

Jack Rundle - ( Hostage )

Jack will play the main character of our opening sequence, which is a confused and concerned hostage. He is a extremely confident character, therefore making it easy for him to be the centre of attention and make the role his own. We have also chosen for our main character to be male as the majority of our focus group chose they preferred a male main character in the spy genre, as they're mainly the dominant figure.

Josh Worrall - (Bodyguard)

Josh will play the other bodyguard in our opening sequence, and its his job, along with Me, to keep 'Joel Beckford' hostage. Josh has been chosen to play this role as i'm reasonably tall, therefore making Josh appear intimidating to the audience. We will also take a lot of low angle shots to play upon josh's height. Josh will also wear a suit to stick to the Spy conventions of being smartly dressed. 

Storyboard - Joel Beckford On The Run

Location

Photos For Our Location

As a group, we have made our final decision to film our opening sequence at the VUE cinema car park, Altrincham. We have decided to create our opening sequence in this location, as they're many exit routes, therefore keeping the audience on edge. And also because many other films within the genre, have opening sequences in this type of location, which is in a discrete location. Additionally, the car park is fairly dull but has enough lighting order to film, therefore this will make the scene dramatic. Also our location is discrete, meaning that there is very little interuption from the general public, which makes the scene realistic.

Credits - James bond - Skyfall

Here we see the credits of the James Bond film 'Skyfall' at the opening sequence of the film. For our production, we need to look at the style and transitions of the credits which are usually used in a variety of films within the genre. We need to choose a suitable format for our credits in order to match the style of our opening scene and reflect the theme of the spy genre.

From looking at this opening sequence, we can see how the credits are positioned in different places around the frame, this could suggest that the position of the producers names are determined of how important they are to the creation of the film. For example, when 'M' is shown as a credit, it is positioned in the centre of the frame, as she's one of the main characters in the film. On the other hand, when the Post Production Supervisor is being named, its positioned on the right-hand side of the frame, which suggests that the name is less important of the creation of the film.

Furthermore, we can see how the credits vary in size in this opening sequence, this could also suggest the importance of some people to the creation of the film. For example, the first credit was Daniel Craig and his name was a lot larger than many other credits within the sequence, this is due to the fact that 'James Bond' which is played by Daniel Craig, is the main character of the film.

Furthermore, as well as positioning we have to look at the font style, size and transitions. The spy genre tends to stay well away from traditional styles, and instead uses modern and futuristic fonts.
In this case, the producers have used a bold font for all credits, which help suggests that the credits are important and need to be acknowledged.

Preliminary Task

As a group we decided to practice a variety of shot types and camera angles by putting a short clip together. Also in our short clip we included enigma which can be used as a teaser for our film's opening sequence, therefore this will help engage our audience to watch our film. By doing this task, we were able to practice using the camera, doing variety of shot types and camera angles, this helped us feel more confident using the camera. Also we were able to learn from our mistakes to find out how to produce our opening sequence to the best of our ability. For example, one mistake that we found out as a group is that we should of filmed our task in landscape, but as you can see we filmed our practice portrait, therefore next time as a group we'll know that we need to film our film in landscape.

Research In A Existing Sequence - Spectre

Spectre Opening Scene

The director engages the audience in the opening scene of Spectre by using all the technical elements very well: camera angles, editing, sound. Spectre comes under the actor thriller genre. So the director uses the technical elements to suit the genre. Two genre theories are used in this film, Neale's and Altman's. Neale's genre theory's that the films within a genre are all very similar. However, they all have little differences in which attract the audience. Altman's genre theory is that a genre film can be depicted by its props, clothing, sound and setting.

At the start of the scene, the audience is given a normal paced, quite authentic (to the setting) music. This music is non-diegetic to the viewer meaning that it is sound that is not seen.We follow Bond using a tracking shot, but it wasn't the only shot used. The tracking shot shows us a display of what the setting is and whom the main characters are. Throughout this tracking shot, it pans down on to a random person, then when the person walks past James Bond, the shot stays on Bond. Then the tracking shot goes below him, then above him, and then finally to eye level. Also during the tracking shot, the shot type varied from long to medium close. The next bit of sound in which can be heard is the diegetic sound of the women whispering in Bond's ear. This leaves the crowd wondering what she said and if it was significant to the plot or not. These different angles show what Bond's body language is like and that the audience can recognise him.

 Moving on, when the women and Bond enter the room, the sound of music turns a little romantic as the women gets on the bed. However, the music suddenly goes silent as she looks up at Bond and asks "Where you going?" As the audience can't see Bond they are left wondering what does she mean. But when the camera turns onto Bond, the music paces up a bit and excitement starts to build up within the audience as they know something was going to happen.

James Bond finally reaches checkpoint and gets a gun out. The camera angles used switch from close to long. The close ups showed James Bond's facial expression and the long shot showed what he was looking at. This the eye line match of that shot. This gives the audience a sense of understanding in what is going on. This is used a lot in action films and this relates to many of them. Once bond has done all his shooting and the explosion goes off, the camera shot went out to an extreme long shot to show how much damage Bond had caused. Then the camera angles go back to being up and down. However, when Bond lands on the sofa the camera angles go back to eye line level and follows Bond as he follows his victim.

When we reach the helicopter scene, Bond and his victim are lead to fight and the camera angles keep altering between showing his victim on top of Bond, to Bond being on top of the victim. This gave a sense of confusion within the viewer as they didn't know who was stronger and who was going to win the intense fight. So it builds tension inside the viewer as well as excitement from the action. The final shot of the opening scene is an extreme close up of the ring Bond caught off the victim. It made the audience question what the symbol on the ring was.