Nasim Said: What were the first steps into making your film?

Our first task was to find out which film genre to choose from. To do this we carried out research on a diverse number of films with a variety of
genres such as:

Black Hawk Action

Inbetweeners 2 Comedy
The Purge Horror
The Town Crime
The Hunger Games Sci-fi

So as you can see, to come up with the idea of our teaser trailer which we produced, we not only looked at Action, but we also analysed a
variety of other genres too.
We researched these films by watching trailers of them on YouTube and we took specific notes to later analyse:
Background information of the film, what we liked about the films, annotating the conventions & connotations and even looked at the
differences for comparison using our media terminology and writing skills.
Rotten Tomatoes, IMDb and other review sites were also very useful to find out more about the films themselves such as the genre, plot,
comments, a star rating, actors, directors, release dates, production + distribution companies etc.
*I wont tell you the rest because its just gross*

Nasim Said: How did you work out which genre you will use for your
teaser trailer?
We also found a section in IMDb called the People who liked this film also liked Would recommend you other films of genres which people
tend to enjoy in groups. So if we looked at a Crime Action film like Kill Bill, we would find films of genres such as Sin City which is also a Thriller.
We decided to try fit in some conventions of that genre making it enjoyable while expanding the traditional audiences of the genre, while also
keeping the Crime Action lovers even more satisfied as theyve also watch Thriller and some of its conventions. This is why weve decided to
include repetitive music which sounds forceful which connotes the frustration while also building anticipation and suspense for the same genre.
This helped us find success in a variety of genres, we questioned their production difficulty, the amount of budget required and whether or not
well be able to produce them. For example, we found that a film trailer of a Sci-Fi genre was relatively expensive to produce compared to crime
as a lot of budget and skill is required to produce the CGI. For instance, when trying to make the setting different than Earth and when we
would try putting together the mise-en-scene and conventions of a Sci-Fi genre.
We found that Crime would be an excellent genre as the conventions it relies on mostly is the use of diverse camera shots, sound and mise-enscene, also the narrative which meant it would require more cinematography skills rather than budget which as Media students we picked up
on over the analysis of films in lesson, TV drama analysis and exam practice. This was useful as we didnt have a lot of money to invest into our
teaser trailer.
After looking at Horror, we thought we could do this genre although we didnt necessarily enjoy this genre and havent watched a lot of Horror
films as much as weve watched Action and Crime.

Nasim Said: Oh okay, so did you use the internet in order to get
opinions from other people instead of just researching everything
about the genre and putting it together?
We used sites such as Facebook and Survey Monkey to make a questionnaire in order to find out our audience, their age group and what
conventions, connotations, themes and effects they demand. This greatly impacted our final teaser trailer as a lot of what we had researched
about our final genre misses out some things which the audience really wanted. For example, after our research we found that teaser trailers
are generally 45 seconds. But after our survey we found that the audience wanted 1 minute and 30 seconds as they wanted a little bit more
revealed or they required more time to be sucked into the films environment.

Weve used social networking such as Facebook in order to share our questionnaire with the people we knew. This allowed us to have access to
a larger and diverse sample to receive feedback from, therefore making our results more reliable.
After conducting the survey, we used our results in order to include all the elements in our trailer demanded by the audeince. With this we had
also learned about what components would be required for all future action films in order to satisfy our audience. For this reason our trailer
was constructed to fit the genre; we had included all or the majority of the conventions from the Action film genre and crime through the use
of Mise-en-scene, sound, camera effects and compositions and editing.
Through post production with our own theme song or sound track, something like what James Bond or the A team has.
This is because the type of music you use in a production, says a lot about the film. And the audience can relate to the genre easily.
We had also challenged our Crime sub-genre as we had even met a few elements from the Thriller genre because our research suggested that
the audience which enjoyed Action/Crime films, also enjoyed Thriller.
We did this by creating suspense throughout the trailer, and kept the dialogue at a minimum to induce further thrill through the music.

Nasim Said: So what kind of equipment did you use in your

production and how were they used?
Weve used a variety of equipment, essential ones such as a HD camera. Weve used a Nikon D3100 which can record at an outstanding 1080p
which is optimum for YouTube, where we would publish our trailer.
We adjust settings such as the aperture for filming under darker environments and ISO for decreasing the shutter speed in order to increase the
exposure and light entering the lens. This helped us get a shot with Cliff in London, walking very fast and you could see shaky blurred lights
being distorted which helped us represent vigorous motions, helping us connote an Action film genre.
We had also used focus and composition camera skills in order to construct shots which helped us meet our Crime conventions. For example,
we had the camera slowly zooming towards the protagonist while simultaneously focusing on him. We had also zoomed out with the camera
lens and dollied backwards in order to give a confusing and illusive shot. This shot represents vulnerability where and follows the stereotype of
how intelligent people who do crime investigations or the smart ones are generally less physically skilled compared to the heavy-duty fighting
police, which Cliff is not. Also, with Cliff having his vulnerable look and the protagonist being somebody who can be seen as vulnerable and
weaker towards the antagonist and the audience, we are also challenging an element of Action, as they are typically expected of heavy, muscletoned body builders like in the Expendables series.
Another piece of equipment we used was a tripod. This allowed us to place the camera in one location and position the audiences perspective.
We also used this to get a smoother glide on when we used shots where the camera angle must move, such as the tracking or panning. When
we tried doing these without the tripod, the camera was too shaky, which brought us to our next technique.
We decided that we would use free-hand camera for a lot of the scenes as it would introduce a variety of codes from a diverse selection of
genres. For example, in one scene where the cover was pulled off of a kidnapped and bloodied up organisation leader, we had a low angle shot
with a natural shake in order to give it that Documentary look which would make the audience feel as if theyre there to pick up on specific
behaviours, which is an element of Crime genre. While there was also a shot where a smoke grenade was thrown and we still used a shaky
camera as it would show motion and action being taken place, also putting the audience off of their comfort zone, which is a heavy constituent
within the Action genre.
Also, we used two cameras in some of the faster scenes, such as the fight scene. This was very fast paced and in order to maintain the
continuity, we filmed the whole scene in one take, but with different angles at the same time which we would later put into final cut pro,
synchronise the two clips and cut out parts with the blade tool and kept them in order to be used in the final film.
We also used the 9 boxed grids on the camera in order to take better shots by using the rule of thirds, which helps us see where the audience
would naturally focus on in the shot. So in an attempt to use this for our advantage, we put a lot of the essential and most effective elements in
the setting and mise-on-scene in those specific corners in order to help the audience look at the parts we would want them to look at
specifically. Though we did break the rule of thirds deliberately when Cliff was in the middle of the grids walking towards the thug who attacked
him in the office scene, making it more awkward and uncomfortable for the audience as thats a method to intimidate them and express Cliffs
dominance.

Nasim Said: Besides all the technical filming equipment, was

there anything else you used?
Weve used a lot of tools in the mise-en-scene such as props, make up and costume. There was a variety of this use although we decided to use
a lot of the props such as the cane, the gun and handcuffs, to bring alive the conventions an Action/Crime genre film would have. As you can
see, we can easily divide these props into the categories of which genre these conventions are from. [Picture of how these are split on a T table]
Action
Cane
Gun

Crime
Hand cuffs
umbrella
Coffee/ Coffee mugs

This assists us with the aim to elaborate on both genres individually and specifically which provided us with the source to come up with the
perfect mixture of the two in our trailer.
Although we werent very skilled with make-up, we studied a few scenes of badly beaten up/injured characters from Hollywood films and
attempted our best to imitate them and learn from them as how a beaten up face should be done with make up. Lets not forget that these
companies can spend thousands on make-up while we went to pound land and bought a Halloween kit as we were technically on no budget
whatsoever, putting us as at a disadvantage. This also taught us how a production between school colleagues manufacturing a independent
film can contrast from a high end Hollywood production by a billion dollar company such as Warner Brothers or Universal.

Nasim Said: So what was used to make the film after youd
done the production side of it? Please speak and elaborate on
the post-production.
Of course! So after the filming was done and we had all the footage, we edit all the clips is order to add more effect to them, such as CGI.
Matthew Cox had used Adobe After Effects in order to make the special effects within specific shots. A few of these shots were

The one with the coffee mugs reflection of Cliff

The gun shots of when Cliff is taking cover behind a wall
The smoke

We believe the CGI which was produced helped enhance the user experience as it would add realism to the shot and helps make the audience
believe there are gunshots there. While certain effects such as the coffee mug was done as we couldnt possibly get the same reflection, even if
we tried, we would have the camera being an obstruction between the reflection and Cliffs head.
Once all the clips we needed were edited with other effects, we decided to import all the shots from the camera with an SD into a school Mac,
so that it would be more convenient to edit in lessons and the school also had the software Final Cut Pro, which Ive used in editing over the
years as a hobby and professionally. Once placed, we would drag the clips down from the library into the timeline and cut out all the shots
which we didnt like with the blade tool.
We then manipulated all the clips after placing them in their respective order by dragging and dropping, which of course was more complicated
than that as we had to edit some clips frame by frame by using < or > keys. We added a slight blue/turquoise tint called cool tones. This helped
get rid of a lot of warm colours which we didnt want as it wouldnt fit the Crime genre. We used effects which were already in Final Cut Pro like
flash transitions, dissolves and fade to black. We had put all the coffee shop scene in first and in order in the primary layer and put all the action
clips on top.
The last part of the Post production was the sound. We got rid of all the raw audio from all of our footage. We decided that we will make all the
sound again from scratch. So we recorded all the dialogue again using the mic on my laptop and compressing it on audacity. We had the
dialogues recorded in an almost soundless environment in order to avoid unnecessary ambience. My laptops fan is extremely loud too, so we
had to record in a very cold room too in order to prevent it from overheating very easily. Thank goodness that its coincidentally winter.
The music, or the soundtrack as some will call it looked like they were sounds taken from all over the film. We were extremely satisfied with the
music, especially as we produced it all by ourselves in order to get the sound and feel we wanted of an Action//Crime genre as you can have
very specific codes and connotations within sound too. This also allowed us to be able to specify the reasons as the why the music was

composed that way. We deliberately make it off-time as it builds anticipation and tension with the audience, bringing in a code of Action and
some of the Thriller elements. We also wanted to avoid having to contact an agency in order to ask for permission to use their song in our
trailer as it would lead to further complications. We didnt have to worry about the sound either, we used a Line 6 Tone Port UX2 interface
which meant it would pick up high quality sound with almost no interference and as we werent using the mic, there was no feedback,
ambience or chatter in the background. We used headphones when recording. Another reason as to why we made our own music was so that
we could make it in sync with the trailer itself, which is a heavy element within Action and Crime trailers.
We also used FL Studio 11 to put all the sounds on the track and in order to manipulate other sound effects which we had recorded in a
soundless environment while also using noice cancelation in order to avoid all possible background noise, feedback and hissing. These sounds
were manipulated by slowing them down, changing the pitch, decreasing the tempo and etcetera.. Like we did it for the Wooosh sound
effects. The punch sound effects were made by looking at and manipulating the waveforms and pitch of a bass drum.