Aesthetics: Mood & Tone Inspiration

Our drama is a sports documentary with a blend of 'urban' drama, and do it needs to incorporate an energetic pace with a certain darker mood. Themes include struggle, relationships, sportsmanship, redemption and triumph over tragedy. 

A lot of the colour palette will adhere to a grey/blue-tinged grain similar to Fish Tank and Into the Abyss (bottom right and bottom left respectively), a typical representation of urban landscapes in order to establish the audiences' expectations and understanding of the geographical context . However we will aim to subvert these visual stereotypes by including more green landscapes such as parks, flowers as trees, in scenes with the tennis court and in the park. After all, almost 40% of London is covered by green space, particularly the numerous commons and parks in South London, so it would be wrong not to include those aesthetics. Furthermore, youth culture is extremely dynamic and creative and this should be represented at least through colourful and stylish clothing; this varied the palette and make the film more visually exciting and avoid drab stereotypes. Inspiration for this can be taken from This is England, where fashion plays a large party of cultural identity and representation of the time; in this case with the characters expressing themselves as members of 80s counter culture (center bottom). Other aesthetic influences include China Heavyweight (Center), because although these people may come from small town agricultural/industrial China, they still present their individualism through their bright clothing and adoption of Western brands. This perhaps may be seen as a visual metaphor as they desire to break free of their rural, insular background and achieve their dreams on an international platform. 

SL. 

Rough Narrative (Trailer)

The first ‘act’ of the trailer will begin by laying out the premise. It will introduce the key characters and the area in focus through the use of pieces of footage and of sound bytes of interviews from the film. The primary theme of the film will not be revealed at this point (street tennis), it will seem as though the film is more concerned with the social issues and problems with youth in the area.

The second ‘act’ will introduce tennis as a pivotal part of the film, shots of gang members playing and watching tennis, interviews with gang member discussing street tennis and how it is significant or relevant to their group. The advert will show the violence inherent within the game of street tennis also through the use of shots and sound bytes.

The third ‘act’ will show a series of distressing images in a montage displaying how ‘difficult’ these gang members lives are (most importantly the two main characters) and how they are getting too deep into the seedy underworld of street tennis. This sequence will end with a shot of the primary main character falling to the ground in the distance (having been shot). This whole sequence will have an emotive piece of music over it and maybe a sound byte of a gang member discussing the hardships that they have been through and how street tennis affects their lives.

CS. 

Rough Narrative (Whole Film)

The film would begin by introducing the area focussed on (fictional area of London) and its social history. It would then go on to discuss poverty in the area and problems involving crime that have arisen in the area due to this. During this time shots of the area and interviews with its inhabitants would be used to illustrate this introduction.

Attention would be turned towards the estates of the area and the various gangs that are known to ‘represent’ each one. Interviews with various gang members would be used with shots of violence and crime, creating an intimidating image of the gangs and their members. Various ‘key players’ would be introduced including the two primary gang leaders (‘main characters’), one of which seeming reserved and shrew while the other bawdy and violent. Slowly the audience will get to know these two characters and their communities more, and learn about their involvement in the phenomenon of ‘street tennis’.

Street tennis is a presented as a seedy underworld of wagers and unstable matches that are used to settle gang disputes and are effectively organised.

The documentary will learn from gang members of how the tradition evolved in their lifetimes and how its values are upheld strictly.

Once everything has been established the two main characters are shown developing separately as ‘street tennis’ players whilst never meeting in the film. The first of the two is seen to be maturing and learning whilst the other shown to be turning into a crazed beast of the street tennis court who wishes to challenge the first gang leader.

The game is organised by the powers at be overseeing street tennis and the date is set. The exposition of the film consists of a build up of tension as both characters prepare for this match. The film ends with the match taking place and the police arriving, shutting down the match, arresting the second gang leader and tragically killing the first.

We (as the documenters) would not have planned to latch on to such a heartbreaking tale purposefully but were more looking into the world of street tennis itself.

CS. 

Character Costume

CS.

Focus Groups & Target Audiences 1

In light of the results of our survey, I interviewed members of our target audience in order to get a better idea in terms of qualitative data what it is about a film that gets people watching. Three boys were interviewed and one girl, all seventeen.
Fitting our assumptions, two of the boys were into the action and thriller genre, and they were attracted to it because of the promise of excitement and adrenalin, although it was mentioned that violence should not be overtly gratuitous and should be done right. The girl agreed that action films are watched for the purpose of entertainment and do not need to develop on any other elements of plot, yet interestingly this was reason that our male interviewee did not like action films. He expressed that he enjoyed drama, romance and comedy because they included an "emotional connection" between the characters that was involving, and particularly that character development is a rewarding process. This view is at odds with the other male interviewees, one of whom stating that human interest stories were not really of interest of him because he only watched films for entertainment and escapism, not as a mirror to real life.
Thus, documentaries were not high on the watchlist of the the action-and-thriller boys, but all the participants agreed that a big factor in making a documentary interesting is presenting a subject that is unfamiliar to the viewer, so learning about a completely new topic is a rewarding experience. Popular criteria for a watchable documentary is that they be somehow relevant, maybe containing 'current affairs', or 'trashy' in the style of Channel 4, with human interest being a strong factor as long as it is entertaining. One of the boys mentioned that he only watched geographical/wildlife elements, but yet it was still the aforementioned element of discovering the unknown, and not "stuff form day to day life" that appealed to him.
In terms of the 'gritty' urban thriller genre, there was a general agreement that its portrayal is often heavy-handed and cliched, and so stereotypes must be avoided in order for a film to gain credibility, and perhaps incorporation a plot twist to keep the genre exciting. As our female interviewee said, once you have seen one generic urban thriller "you have seen them all".
Viral media such as Youtube was the most effective form of getting mass publicity for a film, but the most valuable of exposure was recommendation from a friend. Thus it is important for our film to strike a chord with a certain demographic for it to get good reviews, but attempting to reach as many markets as possible because 'human interest' stories have a fairly universal appeal. Furthermore, the trailer should showcase accurately the vague premise of the film without giving too much away so that the viewer has a notion of what to expect from the genre.

SL.

Trailer Theory Prezi

http://prezi.com/nnkzx56lxpmw/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy 

 SL.

Market Research Survey Analysis

Our surveys results show a widely younger response (primarily that of the age 17 to 20). Although this shows this age group as slightly more ‘conscious’, it does not necessarily mean that our primary audience is of that age group.

 The results show a balanced response from men and women as were to be expected.

Of these people, a wide range of mediums with which to receive the films they watched was roughly balanced between the categories of TV, on demand (Netflix, Lovefilm), illegal streaming and DVD, although admittedly people seemed to be more inclined to watch films illegally on the internet.

Those answering the survey said that they were most likely to learn about films through word of mouth, the Internet and YouTube. We are becoming more and more aware of the use of Internet as a vital advertising tool.

 A large portion of our survey group showed a preference of comedies and drama, with very few actually choosing documentaries. This information helped us narrow down our audience to a fairly niche one that is not primarily composed of the group that answered our survey (young, technologically minded people).

 To further this, our survey group nominated actors as the primary reason for wanting to see a film, whereas actors are not actually used in documentaries.

Most of our survey group viewed films in Picture House cinemas, which is a positive thing as documentaries are commonly screened in this chain of cinemas, as would be the case with our film.

The niche audience our film would attract would be of people interested in cinema, and so would follow film magazines, although the human interest our film delivers would help to attract a more general audience.

 The survey shows that although around half of our are ‘interested in film’, very few of them follow film magazines (20 people skipped the aforementioned question). Of our whole survey group over half of the subjects said that they were interested in film festivals, showing a degree of interest in film which is backed up by the amount of our survey group that purported to watch a film at least one film a week (19 out of 29).

CS.