I have decided to research the BBFC Age Rating System, what makes a film a 15? what makes a film an 18?
Due to my film being a thriller, to be appropriate and befitting I believe it would have to be rated either 15 or 18.
If I watched a 15 rated film, what would I expect to see? (extract from BBFC.co.uk)
strong violence
frequent strong language (e.g. 'f***').
portrayals of sexual activity
strong verbal references to sex
sexual nudity
brief scenes of sexual violence or verbal references to sexual violence
discriminatory language or behaviour
drug taking
If I watched an 18 rated film, what would I expect to see? (Extract from BBFC.co.uk)
very strong violence
frequent strong language (e.g. 'f***') and / or very strong language (e.g. ‘c***’)
strong portrayals of sexual activity
scenes of sexual violence
strong horror
strong blood and gore
real sex (in some circumstances)
discriminatory language and behaviour
I was unaware, but there is also an age classification called R18 which in common tongue is porn, even pornographic content has a content restriction, for example, in an R18 film, consensual sex is allowed but some certain extreme features are not allowed such as Urolagnia and uses of illegal drugs.
I predict that our thriller piece will only have an age rating of 15, if we include any violence into it then it will be implied, there will be limited dialogue, definitely not enough to include swearing. The film would be 15 but the opening could even be a 12, it will be dark and have a tone of crime but it won't include gore nor blood, only a scene where the murder of a woman is implied.
The cultivation theory divides audience into Light Viewers and Heavy Viewers
- Heavy Viewers are affected by the Mean World Syndrome, where they believe the world is nastier than they think.
These watch TV for 4 or more hours a day.
- Light Viewers watch the TV for less than 4 hours a day.
Chandler put forward the argument that "The more we live with TV, the more invisible it becomes"
believing that what we become tolerant of what we watch on TV, if we watch a lot of violence on TV then we will believe its socially acceptable to be more violent.
It was put forward that the more TV you watch; the more materialistic you get, indifferent about environmental issues, more racist and more violent
George Gerbner observed that in primetime, TV was 80% violence. So, heavy viewers was watching 80% violent TV, if his theory was correct, proving that the Heavy Viewers would get about 80% more violent due to their tolerance with violence in real life.
The Hypodermic Needle theory
When the entire concept of advertising and conveying a message was still fairly new, when TV was only a couple of decades old, Governments was interested with advertising and in effect, Propaganda was created to try and persuade people to do as they said, exactly.
The Hypodermic Needle theory suggests that the message relayed in advertisements will transmit itself into the mass consciousness of the mass audience, it implies that all audiences are passive or heterogenous. That what we watch on TV will affect us directly and brainwash us into doing what the media makers want, if they advertise a lot of violent TV then we will be violent.
The Uses and Gratification theory
This theory is different to the preceding two theories as both of them (Gerbner and Lazasrfeld)
The film industry began with The Lumière Brothers shooting their first film named Arrival of A Train At La Ciotat in 1896. These brothers are iconic to the film industry as their work features in the modern film named Hugo directed by Martin Scorsese.
The Lumière Brothers created a lot of films, for example Moscow: Tverskaia Street and The Pyramids. These then inspired other early cinematographers such as Georges Méliès (who also features in Hugo) with the film Le Voyage Dans La Lune, the revolution of films took the world by surprise, the notion of moving images simply of a train heading towards the camera eventually evolved in the creation of Blockbusters such as Avatar and Inception, the gradual change of silent movies, to colour, to CGI, to 3D is truly remarkable.
From Méliès to Hitchcock to Scorsese to Fincher to Tarantino to Mendes, from Rear Window and Psycho to Kill Bill and American Beauty, the creation of genres took place later on when the audience began to expect more.
A moving train used to be enough to wow an audience, now it takes a lot more, innovative and unique plot with great character development, themes to your preference and other factors that The Lumiere Brother's didn't have to take into effect, they could create what technology allowed them to, whatever their imagination could allow them to imagine and create.
In this textual analysis I will be analysing the film industry as a whole, however I will especially highlight the Contemporary Thriller Genre as that is my end goal, I will keep in mind my practical task, to create a short opening to a thriller film.
Before we begin creating our movie, we need to research the context of development, there are five phases when creating a movie, these are:
Development
Pre-production
Production
Post-production
Distribution
I will be discussing all 5 of these stages thoroughly in this blog post.
Development
In development there are a further 8 factors to consider.
Story - developing the script with the director and script editor. Converting the first draft into second drafts until they eventually reach a final
Appeal
Genre
Past Experience
Budget
Castability
Marketability
Payability
There is such a phrase that Filmmakers dread, Development Hell, where an idea gets tossed about that much, scripts get thrown away just as many times as one is written, time is wasted at business meetings after business meetings and the entire meaning of the film gets altered from one thing to the exact opposite within the space of 2 hours. Where no concept gets "caught" all ideas just float about, this movie then lands itself in Development Hell.
In development you need to hire the original team, Screenwriter, Directors and Assistant Directors, Cinematographer and all the crew; Location Scout, Costume Designers etc. It is where you decide whether the film will be financially viable, have an audience. It's the key part of filmmaking where people fail due to lack of preparation.
Preproduction
In preproduction, it is what it states, you prepare for production.
Filmmakers plan the locations, plan shooting, plan the budget, casting, shot list, costumes, overall organisation, travel and accommodation.
If Development has been done well then Preproduction should be a lot easier, Preproduction is a key, where Storyboarding and Scriptwriting has to be finalised ready for Production.
Production
Production is where the actual filming takes place, this is where the cast rehearse and the crew plan the scenes to create the ideal situation, principal photography is done. All of the plans from Preproduction and Development get converted into the Production process, all of the shots are created, all the scenes are filmed.
The shot would have been blocked by the director and all people need to do is keep to the plan and shoot the film.
Postproduction
In Postproduction, all of the footage shot in Production is edited, put together in an appropriate sequence, the sound is mixed, specialist people will be hired to use The Art of Foley to create more realistic sounds, the score is created, sound effects and music is finalised. A trailer should be created, a 90 second clip that will be interesting enough to give the viewers a small overview of the film. Depending on in which language it was shot in and where the film is being distributed, dialogue scripts should be created so when played in foreign countries, sub-titles will be used to aid in understanding dialogue. All the finishing touches should be made, visual effects created and it should be ready to be a feature film. Distribution
The success of a film is usually celebrated by the director, producer and screen writer, etc. However an even bigger part to the film making process is distributor and marketer. In my opinion the film Cloverfield was marketed extremely well. The film itself only achieved a 7.1 rating on IMDB but managed to gross over $80,000,000. It released a series of teaser trailers to spark a lot of hype.
Cloverfield used techniques of viral marketing such as: Teaser Trailers, Synergy (with Japanese drink named Slusho) and an extremely intriguing technique where they created their own websites spreading conspiracies similar to those reached in Cloverfield to attract more viewers and hype.
Distribution is important to advertise the film, to create revenue for the film, to get viewers and audience to increase the overall income.
Films will be played in cinemas all over the world, the more cinemas that play your film, the more people will watch your film, distribution allows people to watch the movie and in effect raise the total gross of the film.
Barthes' narrative codes consist of: Action Codes, Enigma Codes, Semiotic Codes, Cultural Codes and Code of Opposition.
During our preliminary task we was unaware of these narrative codes, however, we included all of them, possibly unintentionally due to our awareness of the genre and intention to create a believable thriller.
The narrative codes was implemented by Barthes, a French literary theorist. In essence it id the concept of the narrative being told implicitly by these 5 codes.
The Enigma Code (Hermeneutic Code)We interweaved this code in the diegetic dialogue implying a sub-plot. When I see 'It's not going to be as easy as you think'. The mystery of the plot is shown by lack of information spoken about. However we could have used visual enigmas to raise questions to and suspicion within the piece. We would have had a greater effect on the audience if we had used visual effects such as a letter or a mask to cover the identity of the man, saying this I believe our implicit plot was enough to create buzz. The Hermeneutic Code is refers to plot elements of a story that are not explained. They exist as enigmas and rely on the audiences interpretation for meaning.
The Action Code (Proairetic Code) This code refers to the plot development and is used to imply further narrative plot. This code creates a lot of suspense as it relies on anticipation of the audience, it shows the initial action, the audience suspects what will happen next but the mystery isn't uncovered until the director wants it to be. This code can be used as a shock tactic as an unconventional secondary action could be used to scare or to break tension. We used this code when our assassin opens the door, it is quite obvious that she will then walk through the door. It is currently implied what she is going to do due to the context, this is then backed up by the next shot of her in the next room.
The Semic Code (Semiotic Code) This code uses signs and symbols, the semantics of visual expressions to add context and ambience to the narrative. Saussure insists that language is “form and not a substance”. Him and Barthes' have similar belief with this code as he believes everything has a semantic field, everything. Every sign and symbol has a relationship of signifier and signified. For example the word "open". When the signifier "open" is seen outside of the shop window, it is obvious that the shop is open (the signified). We used this in our preliminary task as both characters wear darker coloured clothes, we used the spectrum of blacks and greens to show villain or antagonistic representations.
The Cultural Code (Referential Code) This code refers to everything in the narrative text that suggest external knowledge such as; time period and location. Within our preliminary project we unintentionally projected the cultural codes of Britain due to our accents, language and ethnicity. These 3 stereotypes allow the audience to assume we are English. We could go further to admit the weather was extremely british on the day of shooting, this could suggest location too. The Code of Oppositions (Binary Opposites) This code refers to exact opposites to most commonly juxtapose one another and have a more significant effect on the audience. The Yin and Yang is an extremely good example for the binary opposition of black and white, good and evil, passive and aggressive and femininity and masculinity. We used The Code of Oppositions with man and woman, I being the man, directly contrasted to Emma, the woman however we could have used more oppositions within our piece.
I was unaware, but there is also an age classification called R18 which in common tongue is porn, even pornographic content has a content restriction, for example, in an R18 film, consensual sex is allowed but some certain extreme features are not allowed such as Urolagnia and uses of illegal drugs.
