Post Apocaliptic Film

Popularity Of Post Apocalitpic films

How popular are Post Apocalyptic movies?

I believe that post apocalyptic movies are becoming increasingly popular, due to the genre expanding to a wider audience. This is because the films are being made more frequently therefore more people will watch them. Is there a HUGE difference in terms of takings between UK made movies and Hollywood made movies?

28 Days Later (2002) is a UK made movie:
rating- 7.6/10
budget- $8,000,000
gross- $45,063,889The Book of Eli (2010) is a Hollywood made movie:
rating- 6.9/10
budget- $80,000,000
gross- $94,822,707

As we can see from the data provided 28 days later made millions more dollars in profit than the book of Eli did. This is because the UK directing team had a lot more less budget than the Hollywood producers did but overall 28 days later came out to be the better film.

Post Apocaliptic Opening Scenes

The 4 post apocalyptic films opening scenes

28 days later: 28 days later takes place in a post apocalyptic Britain four weeks after a virus spreaded across the country This is a result of an activists wanting to release a chimpanzee which is undergoing experiments and not listening to a trained smart scientists who tries to explain the animal is infected with the virus that causes the outrage across the country. The main character Jim awakes from a coma, 28 days later, to an abandoned hospital. After trying to find civilization in London, he ends up in a church inhabited by zombie/humans and is saved when he meets Selena and Mark.

The film opens to a series of news reports and  footage of people causing chaos.every couple of seconds loud noises are exposed from the distance such as the stamping of the soldiers feet and the bangs from an explosion, this adds to the fear from the audience and makes the events more realistic.

evaluation 6 - Techonolgy

what have we learnt about technology when constructing our film? 

The Camera We Used -

Product details

Brand: Canon eos 100D

Type: DSLR

Resolution: 18 MP

Sensor size: Crop Sensor

Flash type: Built-in Flash, Detachable Flash

Weight: Weighs 407 g

Even though we had a small selection of cameras to choose from I do believe that the Canon is the most effective camera to use and deferently does show its worth
Its records in a high defention quality(18mp) and is very good to record our night shots, as you can still clearly see us.

The Tripod We Used -

Product Deatails

Material:	Aluminium / Plastic
Weight:	1.75 kg

Compatible Brand: 1/4" size universal thread, for Canon, for Nikon, for Pentax, for Olympus, for Panasonic, for Fuji, Universal

This tripod was the only one available to us to record our post apocalyptic, however it was very effective and could easily adapt to the terrain, it had many movable parts which made the tripod easily adjustable to get the best recordings.
The Memory Card We Used -

Product Details

Store up to 64GB with the microSDHC memory card. With a read speed of 30MB per second, this memory card also includes a microSD adaptor to convert to SD size for compatible devices. Because it was easily convertible it meant transferring our clips to the computer very easy which meant we could have more time editing.

Adobe Premier Pro Cs6

This was the soft ware used to bring all of our recordings together, its a very good app as it has many tools to adjust the clips some which are very minor but just shows the attention to detail you can do, I used the app to edit both my final and preliminary tasks which executed them lovely, however I am unable to access this app at home as its very expensive and is only accessible at school, however the app is by far the best.

YouTube

where to start, YouTube is by far the most influential when coming to publishing my film as its the only real place I'm able to broadcast it for free and to be seen by anyone, YouTube was our starting point for our whole film, we searched up the previous as media students work to put ours into context, and used it to get ideas. We also searched up our music that we are going o use in our film and also our non diegetic sound, YouTube completes our film.

Blogger

Blogger is also very important to us media students as this is where we document all of our information, this is where we can evaluate all of our steps to making our films and talk about the challengers we faced.

Computers

Without computers near to nothing is impossible to complete as it controls almost all aspects of media, all of our soft ware used is pivitol to if the computers work, they are our main souse of information and making our films and blogs. Computers bring all of our knowledge together.

Evaluation 5 - Attracting Audince

Attracting audience

When I first published my film on social media, for example Facebook, I wrote who took part in the film, this was so any friends of the characters in the film are most likely to watch the film and share with there friends, this meant our audience are all our target age and will give us strong feedback on our film.

When it comes to attracting our audience, each day we were working on our film we posted in social media to keep our fans updated on what's currently occurring, this kept our audience agar to view our film, we also dropped teases along the way this got our audience thinking of our film and talking about it to there friends also publishing our film, which overall attracted more followers to our film

all people involved in the film agreed social media is the best  place currently to attracting new audience members as its able to reach out to all different varieties of people anywhere in the world, also what makes it even better is its completely free which means theres no limit on how much information you wont your audience to see

Evaluation 7 - Upgrade from Prelimanary Task

How I upgraded from my Prelimanary task

first things first, making my preliminary task really helped me with my final film, it opened me up on how to use premier pro and gave me a little insight on the basic controls. this meant I was able to mess around with the control and see how they all work so when it comes to making my real film I am already familiar with the controls, also I'm already have an understanding of what effects look good and where.
from filming my preliminary task I was able to face the challengers that you are faced with such as bad weather and simple technical defaults. this meant when we was filming our post apocalyptic film we where prepared for the challengers and had more time to overcome them. This meant we have more time for filming.
from doing my preliminary task I was able to get  grip with how to use all the hard/soft war, such as the camera, in our post apocalyptic film we were able to adjust the settings on the camera to get the best videos possible and to a high standard, this was due to the previous experience with the camera when doing our prelimanary task, as then we wasn't sure how to adjust these settings so all shots where recorded with standard settings not getting the best out of the camera. Also from doing this short task we were able to get to grips with the use of the tripod and how to master its functions such as hiring the camera, and using the swivelling turn table to take moving shots, still.
Also from doing my preliminary task I was able to know what shots are possible to create, when planning my pre-lim task the shots that I was going to include wouldn't if been possible and made me re think what shot I realistically can do, so this meant in my final film I was already coming to terms with what shots are possible and look good.
Also from creating our preliminary task, it opened up a larger range of camera angles we knew of, for example we use a low angle shot at the end of our film to give the unknown character a sense of power and domination, before our preliminary task we was unaware of this camera angle and its effectiveness.

preliminary task: Preperation

Preparation


In our lessons we have been creating a storyboard for our preliminary task, we have decided to make a thriller themed short film. We were inspired by different films and TV shows such as Pretty Little Liars. We had to create different scenes showing different shots, this is a brief idea of what we are wanting to do.

Clothing The plan for our preliminary task is to make our video seem as natural as possible, however we did plan how we wanted our suspect to look. Suspects usually wear dark clothing and have their face hidden to keep their identity as a mystery, therefore we decided to organise for our filming to get the suspect to wear black jeans and a black coat, we wanted the suspect to also wear a mask of some sort to hide the suspects face. Whereas for the victims clothing we did not want to organise what we want him to wear purely because it would have looked too organised, if this situation was to happen in real life then they would be wearing anything comfortable, therefore we told the victim to wear something he liked to show off his personality in the film.
Location
 Our location we choosen was at our current school which is very convenient for us as we were able to film when we were in lessons which meant we didn't have to make time after school filming, this was very convenient for us as we also all work so time is limited, the location also did fit our genera of a thriller film, in the film our location looked to be in a public location and added to the realism of our film
Music
We decided we wanted to have a voice over in our film to give the audience a feel for our characters current state. We also planned on wanting music in our film, we wanted some slow but not too slow with good beats to match the actions and something that was slightly tense, we ended up hearing a song on an advert on YouTube in one of our lessons which we recognised and ended up Shazaming it to remember what it was. we just had to make sure it wasent copy right.

UK film Showing

Problems that a small UK based film company face in getting its film shown

• The digital revolution has flooded the marketplace

Cheaper digital production methods have helped create more product than buyers. To overcome this problem you would have to make sure that your film is a specific genre, this is because genres are the only ways that film buyers and marketing managers of distribution companies can quickly visualise the films image, trailer and marketing campaign, distributors buy genres, not drama.

• Online distribution is becoming commonplace

Valentine's day 2005, the co-founders of YouTube registered the name at www.whois.com. The company revolutionised film distribution and has changed that way people watch films and TV shows, the impact of illegal online distribution has also had the same impact on the film industry as it has the music industry. A way to overcome this problem is to develop a hybrid distribution strategy that encompasses traditional cinema/DVD/television releases with online distribution.

• You can't fund small companies like before

The Euro economic malaise has translated into public sector budget cuts, dampening the political appetite for using public money to fund films. To overcome this problem film making should be commercially viable without the need for public funding, film budgets need to stand the scrutiny of investors seeking cost-effective production, as well as a reasonable rate of return.

• Producers struggle to get development funding

Development funding is hard to get, yet without proper development movies will continue to suffer from weak storylines, and a way to overcome this is by not creating a film until a script is fully developed.

• Film producers do not necessarily need to be involved with social media

Social media is becoming more and more popular, it is here to stay strong, and it is becoming an essential part of a film's package. For example Paranormal Activity may have cost around $15,000 to make, but what Paramount bought was not the film but the social media strategy that the film maker Orin Pelli developed around the film. A way to overcome this problem is to embrace any film maker, writer, director or producer who has a strong and clearly defined social media strategy.

What are the arguments about who holds the most power in what films get made and seen?

• The BBFC have the authority over what gets shown in film, if scenes in a film are not appropriate for the classification they will have to be cut off, without their permission the film will not be able to be shown to an audience. 
• Another person that holds power is the audience, the film writers will be looking into what the target audience enjoys and what actors they like, so if the audience like a particular actor then they would be forced to use the star which makes that star also very powerful.
• Only 3 companies (StudioCanal, eOne and Entertainment) control half of all box office income made on UK independant incomes.

social groups

Representing social groups


For our opening scene we are making our actors act a little older than what they are, also because we are having young adults as our main characters we cannot properly give a stereotypical look of them to make our social classes very obvious apart from branding and some mise-en-scene props.The way that we will be representing social groups in our opening scene will be through our film in film shot. Throughout our opening scene you will not be able to tell too much that the main characters used to be fairly wealthy, some viewers may be able to tell due to some of the clothing and props may be giving hints, for example sun glasses could give it away if there are brand names on them and perhaps bags if they look quite modern, etc. Our film will be set in the modern day due to the brands on pieces being visible and it will be nice to give the audience an idea of when the tragedy happened in the film. The audience will also see the social groups being presented very well when they watch our film in film. The film in film will show what life was like before the apocalypse. We will be paying a lot of attention to our mise-en-scene throughout this to make sure that what we are filming is very obvious and shows how wealthy and young the main characters were and show the closeness of the family perhaps, as I have mentioned in the character profiles how they are described as wealthy and young people.

camera work

Gone But Not Forgotten – 2017

Celebrity Deaths 2017
JANUARY
01 – Stuart Hamilton, Canadian pianist/opera singing coach – Artistic Director Emeritus of Opera in Concert – age 87
02 – Richard Machowicz, Actor/Navy Seal – host of TV show Future Weapons – age 51
05 – Paul Goble, Children’s Books Writer – “The Girl Who Loved Wild Horses” – age 83
06 – Francine York, Actress – Sabrina Kincaid in “The Doll Squad” (1973) – age 80
07 – Sylvester Potts, Singer – Motown group The Contours, “Do You Love Me” (1962) – age 79
07 – Eddie Kamae, Singer/Composer – founder of The Sons of Hawaii, Ukulele Hall of Fame Inductee – age 89
08 – Peter Sarstedt, English Singer/Songwriter – “Where Do You Go To (My Lovely)?” – age 75
08 – Rod Mason, Jazz Musician – founded Hot Five Band and extensively toured in Europe – age 76
10 – Buddy Greco, Jazz Singer – “The Lady Is a Tramp” – age 90
11 – Tommy Allsup, Musician – toured with Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson see story – age 85
12 – Larry Steinbachek, Musician – original member of Bronski Beat (1983) – age 56
13 – Dick Gautier, Actor – Hymie the Robot in TV series “Get Smart” (1965-’70) – age 85
15 – Jimmy Snuka, Wrestler – WWF Hall of Fame in 1996 – age 73
15 – Richie Ingui, Musician/singer – original member of Soul Survivors (1965) – age 70
16 – Eugene Cernan, NASA astronaut – Gemini 9A (1966), Apollo 10 (1969), Apollo 17 (1972) last man on the moon – age 82
16 – Steve Wright, Musician/bass guitarist – The Greg Kihn Band
18 – Mike Kellie, Musician – played with Spooky Tooth and the Only Ones – age 69
19 – Miguel Ferrer, Actor – Bob Morton in “Robocop” and Owen Granger in NCIS:LA – age 61
20 – Joey Powers, Singer – “Midnight Mary” (1964) (his only hit) – age 82
21 – Maggie Roche, Singer/Songwriter – three sisters singing group The Roches – age 65
23 – Gorden Kaye, Actor – René Artois in TV show

Narrative Theorys

narrative theory's/code

Roland Barthes' theory was the first one we looked at, we learned about Enigma and Action codes through his theory. An enigma code is where many questions are asked, maybe not through characters but maybe by us as we are watching a confusing scene in a film, it enables viewers to predict what could happen next. Both codes are linked due to them following one after another, the enigma code will go first which then leads to the action code in which it is supposed to bring excitement as you are supposed to get your answer as it moves the narrative on.

Roland Barthes also described 5 codes which are in any narrative.

• The Hermeneutic code which refers to any element of the story that is not fully explained and becomes a mystery for the audience.

• The Proairetic code builds tension, referring to any other action or event that indicates something is going to happen making the audience guess what will happen next.

• The Semantic code refers to connotation within the story that gives additional meaning over the basic denotative meaning of the word. This suggesting that there is a deeper meaning for every action and word that a character says and does. Maybe it is just to get to know a character better or finding out the antagonists plan. 
•  The Symbolic code is very similar to the semantic code but acts at a wider level, organizing semantic meanings into a broader and deeper meaning. This is typically done in the usage of antithesis where new meanings arise out of opposing ideas. 
•  The Cultural code refers to anything that is founded on some kind of canonical works that cannot be challenged and is used to be a foundation for the truth, suggesting that there is some form of truth that is never questioned in a narrative and is taken as gospel. 

We then looked at Rick Altman's 3 Pleasures, the first one is the emotional pleasure  this pleasure is shown in many genres in which the director tries to generate a strong audience response. The next pleasure is the visceral pleasure this pleasure is to try to get a gut response from the viewer such as feeling sick on a rollercoaster scene or a way to make you nervous by showing a tense scene. The last pleasure is the intellectual pleasure in which the director will either make the whole film or a few scenes show a puzzle or a mystery, maybe even a plot twist at the end such as The Book of Eli (trying not to spoil the film here!).


Nicholas Abercrombie said "The boundaries between genres are shifting and becoming more permeable."

Sound

What are soundtracks and sound designs?
Sound tracks can be music or songs to fit in to the chosen film, they help to create an emotional effect onto the audience. Sound design is the process of specifying, acquiring, manipulating or generating audio elements. These are important to make the audience recognise the sounds anywhere, the music makes films iconic, for example Jaws and Psycho. I will analyse shortly the most iconic soundtracks.


What are diegetic, non diegetic and internal/external diegetic sounds?
Diegetic sound is any sound presented as originated from source within the film's world. Diegetic sound can be either on screen or off screen depending on whatever its source is within the frame or outside the frame. Non diegetic sound whose source is neither visible on the screen nor has been implied to be present in the action: narrator's commentary, sound effects which is added for the dramatic effect, for example music. Internal diegetic sound is sound within a characters mind so none of the other characters can hear it. External diegetic sound is sound within the media production that all characters can hear.

evaluation 3 - Publishing Films

Film Distribution; the process of making a movie available for viewing by an audience


-I Am Legend
I Am Legend is a very popular post apocalyptic film and broke the box office in 2007, where it became the 7th highest grossing film of 2007.  Warner Brothers played a huge part in the sales of I Am Legend, as it is already a large, established and trusted distruster of popular films such as, All Batman, Lego Movies...
However the cost of publishing films through a large distribution can cost from £10million upwards,
I Am Legend cost £77million in publishing cost.



However when publishing our films we are greatly restricted to and where we can publish due to limited funds. Our main target to publish our film is to post it on YouTube. There are many reasons why, one being its free, this means our other expenses where spent on costumes and props, another reason being YouTube is a huge social site with billions of customers, this way our film can be seen by many people. Also our peers are able to see our film and tell other which is a great way of reaching our target audience through work of mouth. However because we have no major publisher its hard for our film to been seen as, warner bros. and 20th century dominate the market, also if we have no major publisher when it is seen by our audience they may not watch as they would think  its a poor film due to the stereotype of other films created as jokes on YouTube. However we are limited to where we can publish, and You Tube still shows our film to billions of people if they choose to see it, and its completely free. You Tube is our best option
Other social media sites are also good such as Facebook, Instagram, which also will reach our target audience and could provide us with positive feed back, however we are restricted to who can view it because of privacy settings so our audience is restricted, so there could be our second option.

Evaluation 4

Audience

My audience I aim to please and attract are aged around 16-21, and mainly boys. The reason being our target gender is male, Is due to all our cast make also male, this will mean other males can relate to our problems we face in the film and also add there opinion on how to react, this will keep our viewers focused and wont to see each scenario outcome. The reason being our audience age group is 16-21 is due to the use of weapons in our film, this could discourage younger views to watch our film, so we increased the age and the use of weapons to keep views interested. I believe my film will attract male views due to our tense physical scenes,(fighting) in rankings, fighting is the 4th largest attraction to a film.


Before we decided on a target audience we carried out intensive research using You Gov, here we were able to find out about other films audience and there ages plus interests, for example ,I Am Legend's target audience-

To specifically target our chosen audience we made sure our characters were from around the similar age (16-17 years).This means the audience will have a better understanding of our actions and are able to relate in all situations, this will make the audience sympathise with the characters and feel apart of the film.


Our audience are a very big part in the success of out film, as they provide us with valuable information, we gave our audience a questionnaire consisting of 15 questions, some being multiple choice and some questions need a few words to be anwsered

How films are showed in cinemas

Films in cinemas
There are some cinemas that use 35mm projectors, these are only used for special events now. Modern cinemas which show any new releases are exclusively distributed in digital format.
Digital projectors have been used since 2005 in the UK, however much earlier in America and China, other countries are now moving in the same direction. Many cinemas use a system called DCP which is a USB pen that gets shipped around inside a case. It improves accountability on behalf of cinema-pirates, each pen has a certain number of licences on it. A DCP is simply a file that requires activation from a licence. The DCP is signed for by the cinema, and then the projectionist is given the licence activation code to allow the content to be played. Satellite technology is being explored in order to reduce the cost of distribution (which has already more than halved in the past 10 years). Under satellite systems, the film is downloaded from a secure server and the film is activated for use via satellite; projectors can even be controlled remotely through the satellite, which centralizes the entire process externally. This is a method that has been spearheaded in the UK by such projects as National Theatre Live and Opera Live. Whilst they do broadcast globally, they remain a minority interest for exhibitors (although a growing one, due to their success). The legacy of these projects will not, however, come from their content but by their method of distribution. Even now, many distributors are promoting their ease of use as leverage to persuade developers to pursue satellite distribution as it reduces the overheads dramatically.

Evaluation 2

Overall character evaluation
the film 'Wanderer' consists of all characters ,Male. Our main thought was men are the more dominant character out of the genders, so we implied this theory to our film, to portray women are not strong enough and don't have the will to survive a post apocalyptic attack, this backs up the idea of men being the stronger gender.
Our characters where all aged 16-18, this was done for many reasons. One being because we only had teenagers available for filming, in school hours. However because of this it helped back up our target audience ,(teenagers). this gave a stronger reason for our target audience and attracted more viewers.
All our cast members had weapons lethal or not, this was to show the rarity of weapons and how desperate all characters are for survival, this gives the audience mixed opinions on all characters and by viewing there weapon they can quickly decide on how vulnerable they are and also if they are there to kill or to protect.
Ethnicity
With in my short film, the main character (the protagonist) is white. This is a mainstream feature in many action and post apocalyptic films due to there common stereotypes of white people being smarter and more practical than other races. If we could of, in our film we would of featured a black male character towards the end as views wouldn't predict the out come as we would like to of shown them to bring positivity back to all races currently in the post apocalyptic scene, and show how all races are equal, this would of broken all ethnic stereotypes and reversed them.
Females
Within my short post apocalyptic film the 4 characters featured are all male teenagers, this was important when constructing my film because stereotypically makes are the stronger gender and are known to be more physical which is key to survival in post apocalyptic matters. Women were not strong enough to survive in our film as its around 10 years after the disaster occurred or intelligent enough.

Evaluation 1 - 2 post apocaliptic films

Mise En Scene
-LOCATION



Our location for my film, Wanderer, is set in Kirkby in Ashfield, Nottingham, and was filmed in the winter of 2016, and the start of 2017, We choose to film here due to the location is very close by and is easy to access, also the location is very run down and has graffiti on all walls which adds to there feeling of the area being derelict and over run. Also at the location there is an abandoned factory in the back drop with a unused train line which we begin to walk down in the film. All these features add to our choosen genere

(Bucther Works, Sheffield)

The Film, Threads, is also located in England, Sheffield. Which is close to Nottingham, and is a post apocalyptic film, based on the earth ending due to a nuclear war. this is very similar to ours as our characters are also fighting for survival and looking for life, the film, Threads had had a huge influence on where to locate our film.


In our film, we varied our props used, we did this to emphasize the differences between each characters, and let the audience decide on there personalities and there objectives in the post apocalyptic setting, this gave our audience the chance to give there opinion on our characters before they seen there true colours. We tries to show each characters objectives through there weapons for example,  our main character had a Beeman hand gun, this show the audience he was a more dominant character and the richer of our characters, where as our hunter character has a rounder's bat and wore a mouth muzzle, this gave the impression of terminator and he was out there to kill other survivalists. He also wore a black leather jacket with other black clothing, this imminently gave the character a dark personality and the audiences first impression is he was the bad guy in our opening, how ever we also had a navy seal which was used to show there still is a sense of safeness, and there are still people out there to restore the world.


we greatly varied our camera angles, to show the more superior character (low angle shot) this instantly gave the audience a hint to the more dominant character, we also used many tracking shots in our film when our characters where walking, this was used to speed up the walking process and keep the audience focused, this also gave a clear image of the characters walking style, and the audience could decide on there personality.


our lighting was very dependent on our ti me of film as we really wonted the light low but with the sun still visable (dusk).