Final Film

My own Institutional Logo For our Production Company

I now need to create some initial designs for our company's logo to include for our film opening. I have done some research on mainstream and independent company logos so I have an idea of what properties our logo needs.

These are the ideas I came up with. I accidently put 'studios' instead of 'productions' but it would still have the same sort of look. I tried to involve the zip in some way to match the theme of our institutions name. I tried to consider the animation we would have as well which for example any part of the logo that includes a zip could have an animation of it being zipped up. We want to use capital letters as most mainstream institutions do this. I don't want to have much colour for the actual logo as I would rather the actual animation contain the more appealing aspects for it. I think that the bottom left logo idea would look good as an animation as we could have one similar to Universals animation where you follow the letters as they zip up and then you finally zoom out to see the whole logo.

Research On Institutional Logos

For this task I am going to research into the types of logos institutions use in order to help me understand what sort of aspects I need to include for my designs and to help me think of some ideas. I also need to compare independent logos to mainstream logos so I know specifically what properties a mainstream logo has compared to independent. I expect mainstream logos to be more appealing to audiences as they would spend more on it in terms of time and money compared to independent institutions. Mainstream companies such as the big six are also better known so they must have an iconic logo that represents them. As we are a mainstream company we will need to make sure our logo meets these standards.

These are logos from mainstream institutions in which consist of the big six. I have noticed that they are all animated - they all contain some type of movement which is either the frame moving or objects in the frame are moving. They also all contain detailed, colourful backgrounds making the logo look more appealing to audiences. They are all unique and match the theme of the logo for example Universal Studios contains the globe, and Paramount contains a mountain. This makes the company stand out more to the audience and makes them more recognisable. For our institutions, as we are mainstream we will want to use some of these ideas for our logo for example for movement in the logo, Zip-Up Productions could have a logo with a zip animation, and Cuff studios could have an animation with cuffs. I have also noticed that a lot of the mainstream logos contain distinctive music in their animations so if you herd this tune you could easily tell where its from and it will remind you of the company.

 

 

When looking at these independent company logos I have noticed a huge difference between them and mainstream logos. Some of these contain good content that make them appealing for example the film4 logo is quite intriguing but the actual logos are a lot more basic and don't contain a lot of detail. They all involve the name of their company then a design to go with the logo. Some do contain animation but not they are not as unique and recognisable as the mainstream companies. I did expect this because mainstream companies generally have a big budget and can afford to spend more on their logos so therefore they would be more appealing to an audience.

 

By doing this research I have learnt that in order to create an intriguing logo for our company we need to add a lot of animation in it with quite dramatic music as well as making it look appealing and easily recognisable. This research has helped me understand the properties of what a mainstream logo has compared to an independent companies logo and what sort of features I need to include for mine. Now we need to design the logo and create it for our film opening.

Our Production Company

For this task I am going to talk about what sort of production company we are going to be and why we have chosen it. The name of our production company is 'Cuff Studios' which we chose because cuff is quite a unique word for clothing and we had to base our name off of clothing. We have chosen to be a mainstream insitiution because we would like to take the challenge of creating a mainstream film opening. A mainstream institution is a company that works on a big scale and they generally top in the film industry. Also we have a lot of ideas towards the story and look of our sequence which will draw in a broad audience instead of a niche audience as that is our target audience. We would like to experience what its like to make a film opening in the same way as what the big six make as they are very successful companies and I believe we will learn a lot of new skills from doing so. Therefore we want our company to be like these mainstream companies; Universal, Disney, Warner Bros, etc, as we have a similar goal to the outcome of their films, except not as extreme because we don't have a big budget like they do. Now that we have chosen what sort of company we are going to be, we need to research into institutional logos and decide what ours is going to be.

 

Films That Have Influenced me

For this task, I am going to be talking about the films that have influenced me for my film opening. I am going to look at what ideas they have given me and summarise how I could use these ideas for my sequence.

Deadpool

Deadpool is a mainstream action film that has hugely influenced my ideas towards choosing the genre of my film. I like how it is an action film, but also has a twist of comedy to it because I feel that it makes the film opening more fun to watch as well as intriguing. Its given me ideas on themes as to what lighting to use as it looks quite natural and dull but it suits the genre well. I have gathered ideas about slowly revealing the scene as in Deadpool it begins with lots of close ups and by the end of the film opening, you get to see what the whole picture is. I think this is an interesting of introducing the film and gets the audience intrigued by slowly introducing the scene. It has also given me ideas on location, as to film in city-like location as that is often a popular sort of location for action films. The pace is very slow and calm making the situation seem less serious, bringing out that aspect of comedy.

Hangover

This is a comedy film, and there is a particular scene in the Hangover film that has influenced me with some ideas which is when Stu, Alan and Phil give Mr Chow the money. An idea that I gained from it is the types of costumes to use and character ideas. I like what Mr Chows guards wear as the look smart but casual making them look high in power. I also like how Mr Chow genuinely looks weak because he is smaller than his guards, but still looks high in power because of how he acts, what he wears compared to the others and the position he is in. This scene is exaggerated and not taken seriously which is what makes it funnier to watch, and is the sort of idea I have in mind for my film opening. One other aspect I like is that they are the only characters in the scene, so the attention is directly drawn at them and there is no one in the background.

Redemption - student film opening

This student film opening has influenced me a lot towards narrative as my main idea if based off of this. The first thing I like about it, is that they begin with an establishing shot of London and zoom out to the back of the characters head, so its not directly showing the character straight away. This shot immediately suggests that this is an action film to the audience making it clear on what the genre is. I do like a lot of the shots they use during the sequence for example the shot where the cars are driving in to the car park which it makes the shot more interesting than it actually is. I also like their use of pace when during the fighting scene, the pace is much faster because of the action taking place. However instead of killing the guards, I think he should have just ran and had been chased, but I could involve that in my piece as well. This film opening also gave me the idea of having a brief case, but instead of the guy stealing it, he could deliver it to the person but then what's in it isn't what he expected it to be.

Conclusion

By doing this task I have mentioned some points about the ideas I have gathered from other sources and discussed how I could use them in my film opening. This has helped me overview my ideas and begin to develop a storyline from it.

Extra Research on Genre and Audience

For this task, I am going to do my own independent research on genre and audience to get some primary information. I have decided to do a questionnaire about what genres people like, and what they expect to see in a film of that genre. I am hoping this will help give me an idea of what genre to choose as I will see what people like about them and therefore I will see what I could possibly include in my film opening.

 

Questionnaire

I created the questionnaire online using survey monkey. I wanted to find out what sort of content people like to see from certain genres so I have an idea of what they would expect to see in my film opening. I made 5 questions which were; what is your favourite film genre, what do you believe an action film has to have in order for you to like it, the same question but with comedy and thriller, and what do you believe any film has to have to be successful. I chose to look at comedy, action and thriller as these are my top three choices of genre for my film opening. I asked a maximum of 18 people to complete my survey in which most of them are aged around 15-17 and a few are older. Also most of them were female. The questions were multiple choice and the participants were allowed to tick more than one box when answering.

Results

Question 1

For this question, the most popular answer was comedy which I believe is because this genre has made the most films and a lot of people generally enjoy comedy films as comedy can be interpreted into almost any film no matter what genre it actually is. The least popular answers were musical, war, western and documentary. I expected this outcome as there aren't as many films based off of these genres and they aim for more niche audiences because of how they aren't very popular. In my opinion there are a few films that I like that are of them genres e.g. western films I like are Rango, A million ways to die in the west and Back to the future 3. However there isn't enough for me to say I like that genre because there are many western films I don't particularly like. I was surprised that adventure only got two votes as in my secondary research, I found out that it had made the top total box office out of them all. This has helped me decide to use comedy in some way for my film opening because its a genre that most people enjoy.

Question 2

For this question, the most popular answer was 'a realistic situation' which is interesting to find out because many action films like superhero movies don't contain realistic situations. This may be that the participants prefer to watch a film with a realistic situation because they could imagine it actually happening in real life. For example people would prefer to watch something like the film 'San Andreas' or 'Non-stop' because its a realistic action film and similar events have actually happened. I think people like this concept because it allows us to learn about the world and learn what its like to be in these sort of situations. The least popular option was 'cars' with no votes at all which is understandable as you don't need cars in an action film to make it good, but it depends what sort of film your making because for example 'fast and furious 7' is all about cars. What's interesting though is that 7 people said that they would expect to see some sort of chase in an action film which would probably involve cars. Finding this information out has helped me a lot by giving me an idea of what aspects of action films people expect to see or would like to see so I now have an idea of what I could include in my film opening.

 

Question 3

The most popular option for this question was 'characters with a sense of humour' in which all except 2 people chose. I expected this to be a popular choice because it is necessary that a comedy film will contain a character with a sense of humour otherwise it won't be much of a comedy. The least popular answers were people hurting themselves, an exaggerated storyline, and children.  I collected these ideas from films for example Deadpool, he is always injuring himself and its a comedy film. One of my ideas was to have a child as the villain in my film opening, but for the option of children' that only had one vote. However I didn't specify clearly what I meant so people may have thought children in adult humour (e.g. Bad Grandpa) or something like me idea. This has helped because I now know what options aren't very necessary to look at so I am less likely to use them in my film opening if I do comedy.

 

Question 4

 For this question, the option for 'tension' was by far the highest answer as everyone but three people chose this. I expected this because thriller is all about thrilling the audience - causing a reaction to what they are watching by surprising them, causing emotion, or scaring them. To jump scare an audience, the best way to do this is to build up tension which every thriller film that I know of does. If i were to do this genre I will definitely involve tension in some way as I think this is a good way to draw in an audience and this is what most people would expect to see in a thriller. Everyone chose each of the options and there are quite a few that have only 1 choice which are 'investigations', 'a natural disaster', a hero or villain, and 'view the story from a characters perspective'. This has helped me for my research as I now know that these are not so relevant to include in my film opening so it isn't important to include them. I also now know that I must definitely include tension if I go along with this genre. 

 

Question 5

I asked this question to get a general idea of what people expect of successful films which actually the results surprised me. The most popular option was 'A list actors' (class) with 8 votes which surprised me as I didn't think people would be less interested in a film just because of the actors in it. I have watched may films who I hadn't known the actors and in order to learn or find out who the actors are, you are introduced to them in the first film you watch of them, so this left me a bit confused. However I do see how people can be drawn to a film just because of the actors in it, and it can make a huge impact on how big the film becomes and how many people want to watch it. Obviously, we won't be having well-known actors in our film opening, however it was interesting to find out for my research as it's useful to know what others expect. May of the options on this question weren't chosen by anyone so I know that many of these aren't necessary to include for my film opening. It was good to find out that 2 people chose the option of 'well known locations' so now I know that I should consider maybe filming in London as that was one of my ideas and it is a location that is well known by the whole world.

 

Conclusion

By doing this questionnaire, I have found out so much of what ideas and what aspects people prefer so I know what people expect to see from my film opening and what people want to see. Also these are reliable results as they come from a primary source. This has helped me a lot with narrowing down what ideas are best and have also helped me to analyse each genre and to decide what genre to choose. Also this has helped me find out about what sort of audiences like my ideas so I know what route to go down depending on who I am targeting my film at. To improve my results I could have asked more people who were different ages and more males as I mostly asked females, so I would have a bigger range of different people answering my questions. However I collected good reliable results which I have a lot from.

A Timeline of Titles From a Film in my Chosen Genre

For this task I am going to create a timeline of titles specifically from the genre I have chosen for my film opening which is action. I have chosen to look at the Godzilla film opening (2014) because I haven't looked at a film like this before. This will allow me to see what titles are used in a different style of film so then I can see more of a variety of what I could have for my film opening.

0.04 - 0.17: Warner Bros. animation
0.19 - 0.33: Legendary animation
0.40 - 0.43: Warner bros pictures and legendary pictures presents
0.44 - 0.47: A legendary pictures production
0.50 - 0.52: A Gareth Edwards film
0.53 - 0.54: Aaron Taylor-Johnson
0.54 - 0.56: Ken Watanabe
0.57 - 0.59: Elizabeth Olsen
0.59 - 1.02: Juliette Binoche
1.04 - 1.06: Sally Hawkins
1.07 - 1.09: with David Strathairn
1.09 - 1.11: and Bryan Cranston
1.11 - 1.13: Richard T. Jones   CJ Adams
1.15 - 1.16: Victor Rasuk
1.16 - 1.18: casting by Sarah Halley Finn, C.S.A
1.19 - 1.22: costumes designed by Sharen Davis
1.22 - 1.24: Visual effects supervisor Jim Rygiel
1.24 - 1.26: Visual effects producer Allen Maris
1.26 - 1.29: Sound design by Erik Aadahl and Ethan Van Der Ryn
1.29 - 1.31: Music supervisor Dave Jordan
1.31 - 1.33: Music composed and conducted by Alexandre Desplat
1.33 - 1.36: Film editor Bob Ducsay
1.36 - 1.38: Production designer Owen Paterson
1.38 - 1.41: Director of photography Seamus McGarvey, ASC, BSC
1.41 - 1.44: Executive producers Patricia Whitcher   Alex Garcia
1.44 - 1.48: Executive producers Yoshimitsu Banno   Kenji Okuhire
1.48 - 1.50: Produced by Thomas Tull
1.50 - 1.54: Produced by Jon Jashni p.g.a, Mary Parent p.g.a, Brian Rogers
1.54 - 1.57: Based on the character 'Godzilla' owned and created by TOHO Co., LTD
1.57 - 2.00: story by David Callaham
2.02 - 2.05: Screenplay by Max Borenstein
2.05 - 2.09: Directed by Gareth Edwards
2.33 - 2.42: Godzilla

Doing this task has given me an idea of more types of titles I could include in a film opening and how many titles could be shown, as out of all the film openings I have looked at previously, this opening has a lot more titles (except Fast & Furious 7) so this would be around the maximum amount I would use. Also by doing this task I have noticed that every film opening I have looked at has had capital letters and as I have mainly looked at action, I believe that having capital letters is a feature of this genre so I will be sure that I include capital letters in my own film opening. Overall this task has helped me by giving me another overview of a film opening that is quite different to the ones I have looked at before which has given me some ideas of what how long I shows the titles for, what animations look good and what the titles could say. I didn't state all of the text involved in this film opening but as you watch it, you can see that the names and titles are written within sentences to do with the film which are then covered up with a animation of tape. I quite like this idea as it is unique and I haven't seen it before and I feel that it makes you more drawn to the titles as it makes the sentence bigger and I felt like I wanted to pause the opening just so I could read what they said. This is an idea I could consider using in my film opening.

Godzilla (2014) film opening: