R+P Post 10 Reflections so far/ looking ahead

I am happy with our work so far. We have managed to plan things very effectively due to our efficient organisation of time. We have all been contributing to the development of ideas for our opening and we have all managed to get many different sources relating to the opening for our research which we have used well to decide what to do, which will be very useful when we start filming and editing our project.

The biggest issue we came across was the date of our shoot. Due to our location being in school (in the school's studio) we had to organise a date which the school would be open until late. This made things quite difficult to organise as we had to find actors who were flexible enough with their time to be at our shoot after school.

In future, we will make a timeline and an animatic of our opening sequence and eventually a rough cut, which will help us find any problems with our shots and also help us determine the length of our sequence. Hopefully everything will go well and we will be able to produce a good opening sequence.

R+P Post 9: Our script

Here is the script for our opening sequence:

The Script:

Jen: You gonna call the bet or what?

Blake: Look, I need you to do something for me

Jen: Oh really? Is that so, well please, tell me how I can help

Blake: You worked on the […] case, you know where the file is and how to get it.

Jen: So you want me to break into the records room of our old station? I can consider myself lucky if I manage to get through the doors of that place nowadays.

Blake: Which is why you should consider the offer more seriously. I doubt these fools are offering you much of a challenge. [glares from others]

Jen: [pause] So what do you want with those people. I don’t know too much about them but they’re not the kind of people you’d want to mess with.

Blake: They have [partner’s name], which is why I need to find where they are and what they’re capable of.

Jen: And you plan to do all of this alone? You haven’t changed, you always were the type to do things his own way.

Blake: Look, Jen. I need that file. If you’re going to stay here and waste your time with these lowlife thugs then I couldn’t care less, but I will do everything in my power to find these people.


When writing the script, we wanted to portray both Blake and Jen as equals, showing that neither of them had an advantage over the other and portraying Jen as a strong, independent woman. Both characters had an equal number of lines and spoke at a moderately fast pace , showing that they were comfortable conversing with each other. We took some inspiration from a scene from 'Casino Royale', which had both Bond and Vesper talking to each other in a similar fashion, though our scene is more serious given the topic they were discussing.

R+P Post 8: Our opening sequence idea

The first shot in the opening sequence will be of Blake fiddling with a ring, as this shot takes place at a separate time to the rest of the opening, it will contrast with the rest of the shots visually. It will then cut to the next shot of our opening, which takes place in a poker game, taking place in some sort of shady environment where underground crime could take place. During this poker game, Blake will be trying to get information out of Jen, attempting to get her to aid him; although she is reluctant to help as she has been kicked out of the police force (perhaps due to her gambling addiction). Whilst trying to convince Jen to join him, he insults the others sitting at the table and they take offense to this and pull out their guns to shoot Blake. Jen, having sensed that they were going to do this also pulls out her gun and shoots both of them before they are able to shoot Blake. The sequence ends as Jen walks away from the poker table, whilst Blake looks shocked.

The titling will start on a black background and then will continue over the shots of footage when actor credits show up, similar to the opening of 'Drive'. There will be titles for institutions, such as the production companies, and distribution company and also titles for people involved in the production such as the director and actors.


We will mainly be keeping the continuity through things such as the props on the table, since there won't be much movement of the characters.

R+P Post 7 Our film's title and plot outline

Originally the plot of our story was more centred around the element of the poker game, and we thought that we would make the film more focused around the theme of casino gambling and some kind of corruption going on there. However we soon realised that this story would be very hard to connote and that it would have a limited appeal. We changed the story to involve a kidnapping revolving around an unpaid debt. Due to our original idea we originally were thinking of poker related titles for our film; but once we changed the plot we settled on 'Pay Off' in relation to the debt the main character owes being paid off, through his actions.


The plot of our film is that Blake, the protagonist who is an ex-policeman,  has had his partner, Rachel, kidnapped by a criminal gang. The film is about his struggle to find out where Rachel is and getting her back. In order to get to her, he enlists the help of an ex-colleague from when he used to work with the police. The opening shows him trying to get this colleague, Jennifer (Jen), to help him find out where Rachel is. With Jen's help, Blake is able to access information at the police department, leading him to the gang's hideout. When he arrives, he finds Rachel dead and so at the end of the film he avenges her by gunning down the gang.

In relation to Todarov's theory of narrative, the plot begins after the event which disrupts the equilibrium, Rachel's kidnapping. This is because the scene takes place at a different time to the rest of the film, however we may unintentionally confuse the audience by doing this.

R+P Post 6: Our chosen genre and how we plan to connote this

The genre we have chosen is Action and the sub genre we have decided to use is thriller, also some neo-noir elements will be present. We decided on these as the film's genres due to their very wide appeal, and films such as the James Bond series and recent Sherlock Holmes series helped give us ideas for blending both action and thriller genres together.

We decided to make it very clear to the audience which genre the film is, so that they can easily identify if they like the film or not. To connote the action genre of our film we decided that the opening would have an action sequence at the end, using conventions of action films to signify our genre.

We plan to include fast editing and the build up of tension which will culminate with the shooting of two other characters in the scene. The standoff between the protagonists and the criminals provides a very clear connotation of the action genre, by using binary opposites; however this may be hard to do as the protagonist may come off as an anti hero, as he is willing to do bad things in order to save his partner. The suspense that is accumulated during the conversation prior to the shooting will connote the thriller aspect of the film.

As the opening featured a poker game, we decided to use similar features from the films '21' and 'Rounders' to show tension in order to connote the thriller sub genre during the game. The darkness surrounding the poker game itself and the low key lighting used to make shadows across the actors' faces are intended to further show the mystery surrounding the plot, giving a more artistic, abstract and dream-like look (similar to Sin City's comic book
-like aesthetic) to it while also connoting that the film is neo-noir.

R+P Post 5: How we plan to attract/address our target audience

We thought that it was very important that our film opening had to be very interesting in order for it to attract the audience's attention. To do this, we planned the opening to be full of suspense from the beginning, with some mystery surrounding it as well. The suspense would then climax with an action sequence with a shootout. This would appeal to both ends ends of our target audience, age-wise; the younger audience would like the more action orientated parts of the opening, whilst older viewers would appreciate the depth of the plot. The shooting would especially appeal to our primary audience of action film fans, as it is the high point of the action in the opening sequence, while the suspense would appeal to fans of thriller films. A film which also had an action scene in it's opening was 'The Usual Suspects', which built up tension through it's use of not showing any characters during the title sequence and then ending with shots of dead bodies and somebody being shot.

A screencap of The Usual Suspects

The film would have a stylised, glossy look to it, stereotypical of British films, this in addition to the action in the opening would clearly connote which type of film it is to the audience. Furthermore the low key lighting will probably attract fans of neo-noir and mystery.

R+P Post 4: Representation of Social Groups

Bryan Mills from Taken

Our main character Blake, is going to be portrayed as an average middle class man in his mid 30s so that the audience could sympathise with him. He will be shown as a good guy doing bad things in order to save his partner. His boldness and bravery is a key signifier of action protagonists, however his motive makes him more sympathetic to the audience; similar to Bryan Mills from Taken; because he is more than just an alpha male type protagonist, I think he will appeal to the audience more.

A damsel in distress

Another of our characters was Jen; an ex-police officer who used to work with Blake.  Her character follows the trend of women being portrayed as more strong/independent in recent action films such as Hunger Games and Guardians of the Galaxy, in which there were women who had important roles due to their strength in combat. She challenges more traditional stereotypes of women, as she is not just a glamorous sidekick or women being more meek or needing to be saved, etc. (damsel in distress stereotype). Women may be able to see her as a role model, since she is the one who takes action in our film opening as opposed to Blake, taking the initiative and killing both of the men who threatened Blake.

The two antagonists in our opening, Chow and Tim, are portrayed as lowlife thugs, representing criminals. Obviously this is showing criminals in a bad light, and since they are blank slates and generic, the audience will feel apathetic to them.

R+P Post 3: Our Production and Distribution

As an independent production company, FRP, we chose to work alongside a bigger company so that we would be able to make our high cost film; our production company is working with Silver Pictures. We chose this company because although it is an American company, they had produced many successful action films including the recent Sherlock Holmes films - these had a British feel to them which we intended to have in our own film opening, while having it also have the same Hollywood type production. Also, Dark Castle Entertainment is a subsidiary of Silver Pictures, which we thought was very important as our film will be similar to the Guy Ritchie film RocknRolla, which had a similar style to our own film.




The distributor we are planning to use is Universal Pictures; since, starting with Non-Stop in 2014, they have a five year marketing and distribution deal with Silver Pictures. We plan for the film to be distributed via DVD. Depending on its popularity in the UK, the film may be shown internationally, perhaps in the United States. We also plan for it to be available on video on demand services such as Amazon instant, Netflix and iTunes a year after its initial release if it is popular enough.

R+P Post 2 Our Target Audience

The questionnaire's results

The first thing we decided to do when thinking of our target audience was to make a simple questionnaire to find out which ages liked which genres the most. After having asked a variety of people at our school, we found that the action genre is most popular among all ages; so we decided to make our film opening be for an action film, targeting fans of action films as our primary audience. The genre has a wide appeal, appealing to people of different ages, as our questionnaire showed, and also appealing to different genders, however it appeals more to men than women. The action genre also appeals to a variety of ages, appealing to both teenagers and adults.

A film series that we thought was a good example of an action film which appealed to a large audience was James Bond, we specifically took inspiration from Casino Royale, which had tense scenes which clearly connoted the action genre.

Our secondary audience is 15-40 year old men and women. They may be more interested in the plot than the action elements in the film, which would be more appealing to teenagers. This is why we planned to incorporate both in our film opening, a story which had some mystery to keep the audience interested and also an action packed shooting scene to also cater to the action fans' needs; one movie which provides both of these things is 'Taken'                                                                                             
Teenagers would be the most likely to see the film and possibly see it with their friends in a large group, because of this they have a high spending potential. Adults on the other hand are less likely to go to the cinema and families will not be going to the cinema to watch this film as it is rated 15, so children cannot watch it. Adults still make up a sizable portion of our core audience of action fans though, so it is still important that the film appeals to them.

Both, teenagers and adults are a large part of our TA