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.