Rhys Griffiths
AS Film Studies
Summer Induction Tasks
Task one:
“The Fault In Our
Stars” was a successful film and became a box office success which
means it made a profit by the film. It costed a total of 12 million
dollars to make the film and the film made an amazing profit as it
made 170 million dollars in return, part of this came from Thursday
sneaks and the opening day of this extremely successful film. I
believe the success not only came from the brilliant writers but also
its audience, this is due to the fact that not only if nobody watched
it it would make no profit but also due to the fact that the emotions
of the audience led them to maybe watch it more than once, inspire a
friend to watch it, or even inspire their families which can vary in
size, what this essay is trying to say is that the marketing of this
film is incredible, the audience was magnificent. Jake Schreier must
have been overwhelmed when he finally realised the success of his
film and I understand that John Green would be delighted with the
profit and the brilliance of the film. The Guardian states that the
film had 5 million mentions this made a difference in the success as
it became more popular and more people would pay to view the film in
a cinema creating a larger income. One of the reasons for its success
would arguably be that people feel empathy and sorrow for the actors
as they may be able to relate to them or even just sympathise for
them. Marketingland suggest that SharedRank provides strategic
analytics and advanced audience targeting through algorithm, this
simply means that a computer is following instructions to calculate a
particular order. Furthermore, the advertisement for the film makes a
massive input into the success as they have to choose the correct
actors to make the perfect scenario, they decided to choose Ansel
Elgort as the main characters, this was evidently a good choice of
actors as reflected by the success. Also the posters that they set
out would make the film look intriguing and customers who recognise
the actors in the film will consciously want to watch the film as
they will understand they are a good actor and they would expect good
scenes and they would expect to enjoy the film, the producers,
co-producers of the film would take that into account and would make
sure the film is spotless and in a state of perfection. Moreover, the
screen writers would make sure they don't finish the film too early
however they would not wish to drag the film on as it would lose
interest and viewers would lose concentration, therefore losing
ratings and losing money, decreasing the profit made off the film.
Task two:
My favourite film this
summer would be Lucy, this is due to the fact how I can relate to the
character, not because I have access to more than 10% of my brain but
because I can relate to humanity and population and have hypothetical
scenarios where I do have access to more than 10% of my brain. Also
the advertisements influenced me to watch the film as it could be
possible that in millions of years in the future if our earth
survives that long that we may have more access as . If you look from
an outer perspective of evolution, we are becoming smarter and
smarter so I liked the film because it made me think of what life
would be like if we could access more than 10%, obviously it would
all be hypothetical, however it made me realise as a race what we
could potentially be capable of. Moreover, the writer Luc Besson
wrote the film brilliantly, the film began to make sense to me, as if
I knew exactly what the scientists were talking about. The key
aspects of the film I enjoyed was the science behind Lucy and why she
could do things that nobody else couldn't, the action scenes, such as
when the officers were defending Lucy and the scientists while
holding off an angry organisation that wants Lucy dead. In addition
to enjoy the action scenes I also enjoyed how she represented almost
like a superhero, this made it interesting as there are not many
female “superheroes” that are popular and common. This brought a
new idea to the table of how people of a supernatural power can be
represented in a film. I believe that the way they represented Lucy
was clever because they shown Lucy as a civilian to show the rapid
development of her intelligence, this reiterated the effect of the
drug on the body of a human, which seemed to have no sudden effect,
it seemed to see as how the drug acted as the adrenaline in the body
and when the time came, the individual began to develop supernatural
abilities, I believed that Lucy was well produced as it costed 40
million to make, however the film made a gross total income of just
shy of 44 million, this meant that it was still a profit however
compared to the profit of The fault in our stars, Lucy is seen as not
that successful. However due to the fact that I have not seen 'The
Fault In Our Stars' I am unable to make a comparison based on the
film, however when researching I discovered that 'The Fault In Our
Stars' was a more successful film.
Enrolment task:
Many films associated
with the theme “horror” have similar structure or camera effects
etc all designed to give similar effects on the reader, one of the
different effects is low key lighting low key lighting makes me feel
tense, more on edge, so when the jump scare occurs I am more likely
to jump and be frightened. Also low key lighting can draw your
attention to things that come more into focus while they appear to
travel closer to you, by a camera movement method zoom, this can have
different effects on the audience, if an audience member is not a fan
off horror movies and is trying to brave up by watching films and
become more vulnerable to jump scares and horrendous scenes within
the film. “The Grudge” refers to this as a girl stands in a field
and he camera moves closer to her. Also sound is a key aspect of a
horror movie as without sound, the film would not be scary or
horrifying, if for example, “The Cabin In The Woods” had no
sound, then the film would not scare people, it would lose its
purpose and lose lots of money making a film that lost its precise
purpose,to scare. Another key aspect of horror movies is non diegetic
sound, without non diegetic sound, a film would struggle to make the
loud noises like the added in audio, non diegetic sound is what makes
a jump scare, the music would be all tense and then it would suddenly
increase the volume of the sound and somebody or something would jump
out and scare the audience, hence the term 'jump scare'. Moreover,
the camera movement, sometimes, the camera would track the victim if
they are trying to run away, this is is so you can feel the pressure
of the character while he/she is running. This is similar in the
film, “Evil Dead” when the girl is running from the haunted
house. Also in the film, “The Conjuring”, there are a few long
shots to set the scene of where they are and this gives the audience
a feel of where the people are located and how they are feeling at
that present time. Also when the jump scares come along, they go
close up of the bodies such as in the film “Chain letter” where
he kills him from the glass roof, this is to give a disturbing image
of the body, also in the film “chain letter” one of the scenes is
a boy in a gymnasium on the treadmill, this scene was filmed mainly
in a long shot to show the audience the atmosphere of how he was
alone and nobody here to help.
