Planning Process - Proposal

The following post provides more of an insight and extra information on our planning process with regards to the proposal and what our driving motives were regarding the main ideas for our film opening.

For the first two weeks of the planning process, we needed to arrange the proposal for the film opening. Therefore we had to focus mainly on the six practical areas of the film:

1. Audience
2. Media Institution
3. Genre
4. Representations
5. Basic narrative
6. Basic Outline of the 2 minute opening sequence

We focused on thinking on an idea for an opening and a target audience for the first part of the planning process. We held numerous meetings in order to establish these with two main factors driving our discussions: we wanted to create an opening sequence for an action film and we wanted to portray women in a different light. We all agreed on the fact that we wanted our protagonist to be a strong female character without being heartless or losing her femininity.

Inspired by "Kill Bill" and a television drama called "Revenge", we came to the conclusion that we wanted our whole film to be about a woman who wants to seek revenge for and find her sister who has been kidnapped and sent to a brothel. This would enable us to make a film that is gritty and acknowledges problems that do occur in modern life whilst also combating the usual stereotypes of women in modern media. As well as this, by coming up with the story line, we were able to choose the perfect genre for our film with ease. We came up with a brief synopsis of the whole film and then used this to think of the most effective film opening for that specific story and genre.

After this, our next objective was determining the ideal target audience. We thought that it would appeal to a wide range of people because of the genre. As an action film, it was likely to be popular globally and, conventionally, for a male audience. However, due to the presence of the strong female protagonist, we felt that it was likely also to appeal to women as well as increasing male interest due to the sex appeal. We thought that it was likely that a film which contains brothels  (therefore references to prostitution) was likely to be rated at least a 15 and therefore narrowed the viewer age group from there. We thought that we had the ability to make the film appeal to a global audience, mainly western, due to the fact that the themes we have chosen could occur anywhere in the world so are identifiable.

We chose the Lionsgate Entertainment as our film institution due to the fact that it produces films with similar themes and within similar genres. It has produced other films such as "The Hunger Games" and "Abduction" and also focuses on foreign films. Being an American institution, this would be relevant for our film as it is British. It would also aid us in the distribution of the film due to the fact that it has its own distribution companies within specific countries and areas: France, Australasia, North America and the United Kingdom.