spy kids 4 opening sequence analysis

spy kids- 4 all the time in the world  

The opening sequence of spy kids does use the conventions that i expected to see within the clip. For example some of the code and conventions that the clip uses is 1) a car chase scene right at the beginning of the protagonist going after the antagonist.2) we also see props that are used like ropes, for the protagonist to get to the villain at a faster pace and also gadgets for the protagonist to contact her husband. This shows us that the film is based in a more advanced world. The reason why the opening sequence has been used for the particular film is because the film is called ‘SPY KIDS 4- ALL THE TIME IN WORLD’ and by starting of the film with the close up of a black watch it gives us an instinct of what the film is going to be about. The ideas which i like the most are how they start of the sequence with the antagonist entering the scene with the stolen item which belongs to the oss. I like this idea because it gets straight into the film and we know exactly who is who without being told the names or having to go deep into the movie we can already tell that he is the villain. Another idea that I like within the opening sequence is that they used a medium shot of the spy targeting her prey right from the start of the movie. I like this idea as it shows from the start that there is a mission that needs to be completed and you are able to tell the genre of the film. The opening sequence represents people in different ways for example the protagonist is dressed in all black and is wearing High heeled shoes. This shows that she’s at work and also shows that she’s from an upper and important class. Also right at the start we have a close up of her facial expressions to show that she is a serious person and that she seems quite focused. Whereas the antagonist is dressed in a all black suit which shows that he looks like a professional person who has an interest in business but the first shot we see of him is a wide shot of him walking out of a cafe which gives us the impression that he is just an average everyday man with his briefcase and we wouldn’t  suspect anything of him. The audience for this opening sequence would be kids/teens who are into gadgets and technology. I know these because of teens of today’s society are into things that have to do with technology. The opening sequence keeps the audience interest by wanting us to know what is going to happen next after the antagonist has been caught straight from the start and also the spy is pregnant so we want to see what happens after she has her baby and if anything has changed. The title behind the films appears right at the beginning before anything starts. This is to show who produced the film ‘troublemaker studios’ which gives us an idea on what type of genre the film is and is going to be about.

peter pan analysis.

Peter pan

This opening sequence doesn’t use the conventions that i expected to see in this genre of film. For example the opening sequence doesn’t give away the story and starts off with an establishing shot of the city then panning to the window of the bedroom. It starts of calm as it shows with kids in a bedroom telling stories showing us that they will most likely be the main characters of the stories. I think they have used this opening sequence not give away the story and to make the audience think what is going to happen next. So by using a happy family it doesn’t tell us straight away what he film is going to be about. The key ideas which interest me the most are the fact that they there is  wide shot of the kids in the bedroom at night acting out a story which makes us wonder if and think if the story they are telling is actually going to happen with the movie. The opening sequence represents the family in different ways for example right at the start we see a close up of the young girl which shows that they she may be the main character within the film as she is the first person we see. Her costume is of her in her night gown. This shows us that she’s getting ready for bed and is a young child who comes from a working/upper class. We see the two young boys who are also first seen in the bedroom sitting on the floor which shows us that the young girl Wendy has more power over the two. We see that the children are from an upper class family as we notice the bedroom is big and wide and the props of toys around it.  The mum is wearing a black evening dress and has a close up of her hands playing the piano which shows us that she is talented and comes from a well raised place. And also shows us that she is important person from the way she is dressed. The father is dressed in a suit. This shows us that he is an upper class. And the prop that he is wearing his glasses shows us that he is an intelligent man. The company behind this film is universal pictures. The audience for this opening sequence would be kids from the age 4-11. I know this because of how the film is started off by telling a children’s story by a young girl. And also how it is located in a colour bright Childs bedroom. The opening sequence keeps the audience entertained by not giving away the story straight away but by Wendy telling us the story and us thinking that something within the story is actually going to happen within the real life world later on within the movie. 

question 5-

Question5: how did you attract/address your audience? The way i attracted my audience is by using the dark and mysterious colours such as black, dark reds and also dull colours to make it more appealing to my target audience. I also decided to use the bandits and a damsel in distress so that my audience would be more entertained by the storyline as it is a typical storyline for my genre which is action thriller. I also made sure that in my film i made sure there was many fighting sequences so that it would engage the audience to watch it even more as they are into that type of stuff. Therefore they would want to know what is going to happen next and who would win the battle between the bandits and the protagonist. Other things that i also done was that i made sure there was violence in my film so that it would be more entertaining for my audience i also made sure that i used a lot of complex technology such as a gun so that it would be more interesting for the film. I also made sure that i used a damsel in distress therefore it would attract young teen boys who are interested in females i also made sure that i used a young male so that many males could relate to the young boy and also may want to live a life his therefore making the film more interesting for the audience. In a action thriller film the codes and conventions consist of many things for example it consist of mysterious and a race against time so it would make it more entertaining for my audience as it would give them the thriller affect of what would be going on in the film. Also they would put themselves in the actor’s shoes so it would give them the affect that they are really in the film. Also the costume that i used relates also because usually people of this genre dress in black or are informal which most of the people are more likely to be. Also another thing is that i used the scene of a school so therefore they could relate as most of the people who are into this genre are still in education therefore can relate to what is going on within the film world.

soundtrack website used

Prelium task.

PRELIUM TASK .

final task video.

CHASING REALITY.

question 6

Marion Bossongoy

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

The equipment that we used was cannon XHA1 and the software which I used was adobe.

One of the filming techniques that I used was continuity. What I learnt from this was that I was able to make my film flow without any jumps. For example within the opening sequence i made sure that shamus woke up when he heard his name being shouted during the escape scene. The framing of the shots i made sure that I used a variety. What i learnt from this is that the framing is important as it makes the film more interesting as your seeing the film from many different points of you. For example within our film i used different types of shots for example i used bird eye view of shamus and grace running for safety and also the tracking shots were used. We also filmed 180 degree rule which is not to cross the invisible line while filming and we also made sure that our characters where in the centre. Also i learnt about action reaction shots. I now understand that the actions need to match the reaction of what’s going on in the film for the film to seem more realistic. For example within my film the teacher got shot and he had to fall so that it showed his reaction getting killed. Also during our editing process we made sure that we used match on action which was of shamus walking through the door and him walking from the door so that it wouldn’t look jumpy. I learnt a lot from using total shots & safety shots. For example we had used a safety shot of the teacher getting shot . the good thing about this is that it shows him and the whole background as if we made a mistake we were able to use it.

The editing that i had used was the splice tool. The reason why i had used this was to get rid of unwanted bits within the scenes as there was no point of having it within the film. We mixed two tracks together in order for them to come out as one track. The reason why i had used this was because as we had a noisy background we wanted a track to overtake the sounds. Also we wanted the sound from the screen to go with the image on the screen so that the audience wouldn’t get confused as to what is going on. Also we did an assembly edit which was to basically put everything in order so that we knew the bits we wanted to cut what i have learnt from all this is that the editing stage is a major part of the whole film as it will determine how your film would end up looking like in the eyes of the audience confused of the story line. What we decided to do to solve this problems is that we decided to make a photo story so that it came more clearly to us and that people would understand more clearly what was going on with real life actors in the locations we was planning to use. The key points that we learned during this is that we need to make sure that people understand what we are trying to do and that also we do our storyboard more clearly so that people understand. The shooting schedule that we had is we all arrived at 7:30 am-5pm. The problems that occurred with our shooting day was that members of the cast arrived late therefore we had a slight deylay starting and also another issue we had was that there was an issue meaning we had to leave the school premises. The key things we learnt from this is that we need to be on time and start right away and leave no time as it well affect the quality of your film and what you actually have to do.

During the production of my film the props we had decided to use was folders and classroom chairs. The problems that occurred were that during the shooting process we noticed that we kept changing the pages of the folders therefore the continuity was messed up. The way we fixed this was that we had decided to reshoot the scenes over again and made sure we remembered what page we was going to use therefore continuity was not lost. The keys things learnt from this that next time we would use something more simple. also during the production we decided to use member from our team as the cast . the problems that occurred was that we didn’t have enough members do actually do what we wanted to do therefore our pre-production film was very limited in the ideas we had. The key things learnt from this was that next time we should only limit what we can do with the amount of cast you havr so next time things would run more smoothly. Also during my production of my pre-ilium the amounts of reshoots we done at first was very limited as we didn’t have many to choose from. What we did to solve this issue was that we decided to expand our reshoots from different scenes therefore we would have a varity of shots to chose from instead of keeping our shots very limited. Keys points learnt from this were that we noticed that without a variety of different shots your film will not look very good and would be boring to the audience. The timing that we had used for our film was from our last lesson till 5pm after school. Issues we had was that school activies so people were walking about distracting our shooting session. The solutions that we found was that we decided to use tell teachers that there was a shooting going on therefore they could be quieter and not allow the kids outside in the corrider. Key lessons learnt from this are that next time we should warn teachers before teaching.

During the main task we decided to get more members for our task so that it could fit in what we wanted to do for our film. The problems which encountered with this were that cast members came late and some of the cast didn’t know what they were doing. The way we solved this was that we started to shoot other scenes instead of the scene we wanted to start with and also we had to do a quick rehearsal so that everyone knew what they was doing . the key lessons learnt from this are that net time we would know to do rehearsals for the cast so that on the day of the production there would be no complications. Also during the main task the equipment that we had used was 2 toys, and a scarf as a blindfold. The problems that happened was that during the shooting process one of the toy guns broke so therefore we had to shoot the scenes again with a broken gun that looks excatley the same and it would make us look more prepared. in our main task we noticed that our variety of shots get better as from the feedback from our pre-production task we noticed that we didn’t use as many shots as we could have. Key lessons learnt from this were that you should always listen to the feedback you are given as it does help you within your tasks.

During the post-production and feedback while editing during the pre-production process we noticed that there was contunity mistakes therefore during the feedback we had an understanding of what we could have done better which was to be more careful while editing and took more time instead of rushing and making it look unfinished. Also during our pre-production we didn’t use any music therefore all we in could hear was background noise . what we could have done was block out the background noise. Key lessons learnt was that next time to block it out. Feedback we got from teachers was that we needed to be more careful with the camera movements that we done as some of our shots were shaky. Things we could have done better was to be more aware of the camera and to make sure that it was always still at all points filming. 

question 3

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why ?

A distributor is someone that wants to produce your film and share your film with an audience. The way films are distributed is by someone has an idea for a film, after wards this person would produce there films with a director, location, characters etc.  Then a studio or independent investor then decides to buy the rights to your film. The film is completed and sent to the studio and then after the studio decides to make an agreement with a distribution company.

There a various independent film companies that would distribute our film for example film 4 productions which is owned by channel 4. It is a British film company. It was established in 1982 to produce diverse and challenging films. The audience for film 4 is a wide majority as it has many films from the age of 4 –late 60’s. This is good for them to produce my film because they fall around the target audience for my film.

Another independent distributor would be left films. Left films are a UK distributor who releases action and horror films that sometimes go on DVD.  And also sometimes there films get to cinemas. The reason why I chose this company is because they seem to be very popular within our genre and they seem to fit our themes that we choose for our film. Also the film company is very modern like our own film and are films that our target audience would also enjoy watching.

Amber online is another film distributor that I would pick because her film is based in London and also it’s not really a big film company as my media product is only a small film. I choose amber online because the film company seems to produce all films from different genres and posts these films on YouTube & vimeo. I think this is good for my film because I think it makes my film more worldwide and it can be viewable for anyone and also it doesn’t cost anything.

question-7

Question7- looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

During the pre- production we initially decided to locate our film in a class room and hallway. The problems that occurred with this decision is that there was many school students that was walking past and also teachers therefore it took longer for us to shoot our film during the time we had. Also during the shooting there was a lot of background noise from other class rooms of students talking therefore it disrupted our shooting. What we decided to do was to ask a teacher who owned the classroom to ask students to walk a different direction from our shooting place therefore we wouldn’t need to stop for them to get through. For the background noise we couldn’t do anything about it as they were lessons going on. The key lessons learnt is that we should be more aware of our surrounding’s. Also during the pre-production we initially decided to draw our story board in a very UN descriptive way. The problems occurred with this is that our group didn’t really understand what was going on therefore we couldn’t do our film well. What we had done to solve this was we decided to put a new story board through pictures so that we had an idea of what to do and it was easier to react it out. Key lessons learnt was next time we knew that we had to a better story board that was detailed so we knew what we had to do. During our pre-production task initially what we had decided to do was that we decided to shoot during our school hours that we had a media lesson at first. Problems occurred was that as it was during the school day there were many disruptions of students walking past and we didn’t have enough to time to do everything that we wanted. What we decided to do was that we decided to shoot after school when we knew that there would be less people and less disruptions therefore we could finish quicker and also get on with what we was doing.  Key lessons learnt was that now we know how to manage our time better when rehearsing and that we understand that shooting during school hours in a busy environment makes your film take longer to complete.

During the main task we initially decided to locate our film in classrooms. The problem which occurred during this was that there was a class in there during the time so therefore we were unaware of what we could have done. What we decided to do to overcome our problem was that we decided to wait till the classroom was free during break and lunch hours and decide to come back and film as quickly as possible and use our time wisely. What I have learnt from this is that now before filming I should plan and directly go and book the room therefore we don’t get confused of what to do next. Also we decided to film in a hallway during school hours so therefore there was students who needed to get past. The way we solved this was that we decided put a member of our casts in front of the door to tell students that there was filming going on and that they had to wait to pass through. Also during the main task we decided that we firstly draw out our storyboard for our film. The problems that occurred was that after we got our feedback we noticed that people said that our story board wasn’t clear and they really didn’t understand what was going on and they was confused of the story line. What we decided to do to solve this problem is that we decided to make a photo story board so that it came more clearly to us and that people would understand more clearly what was going on with real life actors in the locations we was planning to use. The key points that we learned during this is that we need to make sure that people understand what we are trying to do and that also we do our storyboard more clearly so that people understand. The shooting schedule that we had is we all arrived at 7:30 am- 5pm. The problems that occurred with our shooting day was that members of the cast arrived late therefore we had a sly delay at the beginning and also another issue is that we had to leave the school premises so therefore we was unable to finish our film on the day we was given. The key things we learnt from this is that we need to be on time and start right away and leave no time as it well affect the quality of your film and what you actually have to do.

During the production of my film the props. That we had decided to use was folders and classroom chairs. The problems that occurred were that during the shooting process we noticed that we kept changing the pages of the folders therefore the continuity was messed up. The way we fixed this was that we had decided to re shoot the scenes over again and made sure we remembered what page we was going to use therefore continuity was not lost. The key things learnt from this that next time we would use something more simple. Also during the production we decided to use member from our team as the cast. The problems that occurred was that we didn’t have enough members do actually do what we wanted to do therefore our pre-production film was very limited in the ideas we had. The key things learnt from this was that next time we should only limit what we can do with the amount of cast you have so next time things would run more smoothly. Also during my production of my prelim the amounts of reshoots we done at first was very limited as we didn’t have many to choose from. What we did to solve this problem was that we decided to expand our reshoots from different scenes therefore we would have a variety of shots to choose from instead of keeping our shots very limited. Key points learnt from this were that we noticed that without a variety of different shots your film will not look very good and would be boring to the audience. The timing that we had used for our film was from our last lesson till 5pm after school. Issues which occurred during this were that there was after school activities so people were walking about during the shooting so we had disruptions. The solutions that we found was that we decided to use tell teachers that there was shooting going on therefore they could be quieter and not allow the kids outside in the corridor.  Key lessons learnt from this are that next time we should warn the teachers before shooting.

During the main task we decided to get more members for our task so that it could fit what we wanted to do for our film. The problems which encountered with this were that cast members came late and some of the cast didn’t know what they were doing. The way we solved this was that we started to shoot other scenes instead of the scene we wanted to start with and also we had to do a quick rehearsal so that everyone knew what they was doing. The key lessons learnt from this are that next time we would know to do rehearsals for the cast so that on the day of the production there would be no complications.  Also during the main task the equipment that we had used was 2 toy guns, and a scarf as a blindfold. The problems that happened was that during the shooting process one of the toy guns broke so therefore we had to shoot the scenes again with a broken gun. Key lessons learnt from this is that next time we should have a backup gun that looks exactly the same and it would make us look more prepared. In our main task we noticed that our variety of shots got better as from the feedback from our pre-production task we noticed that we didn’t use as many shots as we could have. Key lessons learnt from this were that you should always listen to the feedback you are given as it does help you within your tasks.

During the post-production and feedback while editing during the pre-production process we noticed that there was continuity mistakes therefore fore during the feedback we had an understanding of what we could have done better which was to be more careful while editing and took more time instead of rushing and making it look unfinished. Also during our pre-production we didn’t use any music therefore we could hear all the background noise in the background that was not needed to be there therefore it didn’t make sense to the audience as during the feedback process many people picked up the background noise. What we could have done to make it different was to maybe add a soundtrack so therefore we could block out the background noise. Key lessons learnt was that next time we would be more aware of the noise in the background so that it doesn’t affect our film. Feedback that we got from our teachers was that we needed to be more careful with the camera movements that we done as some our shots were shaky. Things we could of done better was to be more aware of the camera and to make sure that it was always still at all points filming.

During the main task we took our feedback more seriously for example we made sure that we made our film have continuity as during the main task it didn’t occur. Also we managed to get a variety of shots so that we were able to make it more interesting. Also during the main task we still had a problem of background noise so during the post-production process we decided to use a soundtrack over our whole opening sequence until the classroom scene so that the audience wouldn’t be aware. Key lessons learnt from this are that we understand how music can fit in with your opening sequence and we had more of a variety to choose from then our premium task. Also in the main task we managed our time well for coming back in our free time to complete are editing and to make it look better as we could as from our prelium task we didn’t take it as serious but as we knew this was a bigger task we decided to take it more seriously.

question 4

Who would be the audience for your media product?  A profile for my target audience would be young males from the age of 12-25 who are into reading, gadgets and newly designed things. This would include all ethnicities. The reason why I chose this target audience is because they share a connection within the action film world. For example in an action movie there is always some type of antagonist who has always got the latest gadgets with them to always try and destroy the protagonist. Also another example would be reading as in within the action film world the Antagonist is always reading up new plots to try and destroy something. The expectation that my target audience would be expecting would be something big and highly thought out because my target audience are easily influenced by the things they see. I think they would think my film would be good. They would also expect my film to have a lot of violence. in my opinion i believe that the way the audience would come and be attracted to watch my film is by after finding out what it’s about as my audience like things to do with mysteries and violence I think they would be interested also as they are normal teenage boys and the film is about a normal teenage boy they would maybe want to know more and about his life and compare it to their life. Through the research I did I found out that the people that would be interested within my film are people who are interested in comic books and by looking at secondary research online I saw polls of which the main target audience of my film were based around the age 12-25 who were mostly males , females are also included but mostly males won the majority. Also the personalities of my target audience are people who are in real life really quiet and not really out going. They are mostly people who think of going into a high matinece careers. Other films that my target audience would watch would be films like spy kids, transformers, dark knight and also driblet Taylor& twilight. As they have similar story sequences to our film. In the last 6 months I believe that my target audience may have seen twilight breaking part 2, transformers, spider man 3D. As they are the newest and good action films that our out currently.

question2.

How does your opening sequence represent particular social groups?

The key characters in my film are Shamus, The teacher and the damsel in distress. These are the main characters because the whole story is about a normal teenage boy who goes to school who comes from a broken background and attends a normal high school where his long dream has always been to be a spy.Firstly the Main character of my sequence is shamus he is an Asian based boy with black curly hair who is from a broken background his 19 years old and is a typical teenager. Secondly the character that plays the teacher is from an mixed ethcity who is a tall, smartly dressed and also someone who is organised. The character shamus is the Main character of our film with in the whole film he is always in every shot that was produced in the opening sequence of our film to show that he is the main person and that the film has something to with him. The sound used on him was a dub step music this was to show that he was on a dangerous mission from the upbeat fast tempo you could tell that he was a person who moves fast and a person who was on something suspicious. In the editing process we could see that every cut that we did shamus would always be the first person we see so that we was able to see his facial expression throughout every bandit that he had to fight. Shamus was always the main target throughout the whole opening sequence this was so the audience knew who the main target audience was and who the story would be based around. Shamus in most scenes has a gun around him so that you was able to know that danger was about to happen. This is compared to one of the opening sequences that i posted on my blog which was spy kids 4 race against time, we also see that the female at the beginning is every shot that was shown and also there was many medium close up shots of her like shamus to show there facial expressions so the audience know what they are feeling which makes it more real. Another main character was the teacher. He played the part of being a bandit and also been the teacher in the real world. The camera focused on him the most when shamus had killed him we did a close up of his face which shows us that he was going to be important in the upcoming scenes. The music was still dub step was playing in the background throughout the whole clip. During the scene where the teacher was involved he was in the centre of frame to show his importance within the scene. Compared to the bandit in spy kids 4. The bandit is also at the start of the beginning sequence and is also dressed in all black as the one in my own film. This is to make them look suspicious and unique looking. Issues that occurred with my cast is that the clothing they had wasn't the best they could have used. Also the characters props could have looked more real as the equipment used looked fake. The way we chose our actors was very simple we asked members from our school if they wanted to be in our film if we thought they fit the description of what we was looking for. The way we made our film believable was by making sure that the characters were dressed to fit the character that they was playing also we made sure that the props we used looked real as possible so that the audience who watched the clip would think it take it seriously.

question 1-

Question 1- in what way does your media produt use decelop or challenge forms of codes and conventions of real media products?

My film is about a young boy whos parents have been missing since the age of 12 and from then he has long dreamed to become a secret agent/spy. The genre of my film is action thriller. We chose this particular genre because we thought it was more challenging then others. The genre action thriller consists of the following things: antagonist,protagonist ,scientists, inhospital environment , damsel in distress.

My film consists of the main aspects of my genre. For example within my film used a damsel in distress who played right at the begninng who was held hostage by a bandit and also we tryed to make it seem as if we had used an inhospital environment so that it could fit in with our genre. The extent to what we stuck to our film was we did use most of the codes and conventions but we also added our own twist to it. for example in the film spy kids a women was the spy but instead we decided to use a young teenage male so that he would stand out from the crowd . another code and convention that we used and actually stuck to was that we showed him saving a damsel in distress for example compared to the film james bond we see him a male saving a damsel in distress it shows that it is typical within the action world. We also challenged our genre by making the setting it in a school this challenged it because compared to films like spy kids , shark boy and lava girl, men in black they are all placed in a inhospital environment and compared with mine which is placed in a school. Something else we also challenged was our sound track. The music we used was a dubstep upbeat fast pace type of sound where usually at an opening sequence of most action films e.g. shark boy and lava girl it starts of slow and then gradually gets faster as the action is about to start.

Themes used within my film are 1) a fighting sequence between the protagonist and bandit in a inhospital environment. The way we used this within my film is that we made the main character shamus kill the bandits to try and rescue the damsel in distress.

Our film follows the codes and conventions of our genre through mise-en-scene. For example the makeup of the characters are bland and simple as typically in an action thriller usually the characters don’t really care about what they look like or what they are wearing, for example the characters shamus & the bandits they are wearing dark black clothing to make them look suspicious and mysterious. Also compared to spykids 4 , we also notice that both the hero and antagonist are both wearing dark black clothing. Also props were used that followed the codes and conventions of our genre . e.g. the guns and the rope. Compared to the films men in black and rush hour and also james bond, there is always a use of guns used. Our film also challenges the location of our film as it is set in a school which is seen as a “safe environment” compared to the film MIB which is based in a inhospital environment. The sound of our films follows the convention of our genre. As we use high beat up tempo pace to show the thriller and action. It compares to the james bond films as the music always starts fast therefore we already know that action is about to start . the narrative of our film goes aganist our conventions because it is based around a school boy who dreams about being a spy. Where as compared to james bond and rush hour the spys are already grown males where as mine is a small male still in his teen years.

The forms of our opening sequence goes with conventions because it starts in with action straight away into a fighting scene.  Compared to the film spy kids they start fighting straight away trying to save the damsel in distress. But also it may go aganist the codes and conventions because from our audience feedback it seems to look like a fighting scene mixed within a trailer. Our characters follow the codes and conventions as we have an atagonist, protagonist and damsel in distress . this is typical within an action and adventure movie. For example in the rush hour , spykids etc. It is all mentioned in the above are used, but it does also go aganist it because we made it into teens instead of using adults.