Questionnaire results

Questionnaire results

If any of these are your favorite could you please explain why?

1. Sherlock Holmes is my favorite because it isn't like other films in the crime genre and that Sherlock Holmes has a power of deduction which aids him in solving his crimes.

2. Bones is my favorite because I like how they go about solving the murders and the different murders which are in the show.

3. Sherlock Holmes is my favorite because the detective (Sherlock Holmes) is unique in that he has his own methods of solving murders with of course the aid of Dr. Watson

4. CSI Miami is my favorite because I enjoy watching the scenes where they show the murder happening and then instantly cutting to the crime scene.

What I have learnt from this.

What I have learnt from my questionnaire is that people are looking for new and upcoming crime shows because as you can see peoples favorite show/film is Sherlock Holmes and Bones and they are both rather recent I have also learnt that people like the unique ways in which some of the detectives in these shows go about solving the crimes for example Sherlock Holmes and his power of deduction, and also that showing the murder and then cutting to the crime scene or the detective might give more excitement to the audience and so I will do this in my trailer.

Questionnaire

How old are you?

·         17 or younger                   {  }

·         18-21                               {  }

·         22-29                               {  }

·         30-39                               {  }

·         40-49                               {  }

·         50-59                               {  }

·         60+                                  {  }

Gender

 

Do you enjoy watching detective films/shows

Yes                                               {  }

No                                                {  }

Which of the following Crime Detective genre shows/films have you seen and is your favourite?

·         Sherlock Holmes            {  }                  

·         CSI Miami/NY                {  }                        

·         Law & Order                  {  }       

·         Miami Vice                    {  }       

·         The X Files                    {  }      

·         Bones                           {  }      

If any of these are your favourite could you please explain why?

Thank you for your time.

Curtis Cragg.

This is the Questionnaire which I am going to give to people and see what the results are I have done this questionnaire because I think that this is the best way for me to learn what my target audience will want from the detective genre and all the questions on the questionnaire are relevant and will help me when it comes to plan more film into more depth I also included a question on what there favourite detective film/show is to find out more on what makes those shows so entertaining and good to watch so hopefully I can take some ideas from other shows and films and include them in mine.

Regulation Research!

When creating a short film it is good to have an understanding of what should or shouldn't be included in your film to meet the regulations of that area of media and in this case it is the BBFC which handles this specific area of media. I think that in having a good understanding of the guidelines in the certificate I want to aim for will help me when filming my film.

The BBFC is an independent, self-financing and not-for-profit media   content regulator. They operate transparent, consistent and trusted co-regulatory and self-regulatory classification and labelling systems in the UK.

As a highly expert and experienced regulator, there mission is to:

• protect  the public, and especially children, from content which might raise harm risks
• empower the public, especially parents, to make informed viewing choice
• recognise and respect adult freedom of choice within the law
• respond to and reflect changing social attitudes towards media content through proactive public consultation and research
• provide a cost-effective, efficient classification service within our statutory remit
• work in partnership with the industry to develop innovative service models to provide content advice which support emerging media delivery systems
• provide an effective service to enforcement agencies.

Here are some of the things the BBFC look for when deciding what classification a film is:

Drugs

• No work taken as a whole may promote the misuse of drugs and any detailed portrayal of drug misuse likely to promote or glamorise the activity may be cut. Works which show drug misuse while emphasising the dangers may receive less restrictive classifications than works that present drug misuse in a neutral manner. Where smoking, alcohol abuse or substance misuse feature to a significant extent in works which appeal to children, this will normally be indicated in the Consumer Advice and/or Extended Classification Information.
• This is good to know for my film because the killer might have psycological problems and might be using drugs ro escape his problems.

Language

• I am allowed to use a frequent use of the word "fuck" and stronger words may be used but only if they are justified by context I need to know this for my film because the victim might be screaming or swearing at the killer.
• Aggresive use or constant use is unlikely to be acceptable and this could pose as a problem because there could be a scene where the victim is swearing a lot but from this I can cut that scene out.

Violence

• Violence may be strong but isn't allowed to dwell on the infliction of pain or injury.
• The strongest gory images are unlikely to be acceptable so when doing my film I will have to watch out for this because I need to shoot a scene with a victim being killed.
• Violence will be a key feauture in my film and I think it will be easy for my to stay within the guidlines because I won't dwell in the injury or use the strongest of gore.

From looking at the guidelines for the different classifications, I have managed to see what my film will be which is a 15 and the different things which you can include for example in a 15 you can include frequent use of strong language which may be a thing which will be included in my short film. You are also allowed to use some imitable behaviour such as hanging/suicide/cutting themselves but you can't dwell in the fact they are doing it, so this might be another thing which I include in my short film because I want the killer to have psychological problems or maybe a troubled child hood, also in my film there will be a lot of violence (the murder taking place and perhaps the final confrontation) and this would make my short film a 15 because you can use strong violence.

From this task I have learnt the guidelines which people have to look out for when making a film and targeting at a certain audience and seeing what they can and can't include it's helped me int he fact that now I know what I can and can't include so when it comes to filming I know more in depth what the scenes will include.

Textual Analysis on my Ancillary task (Magazine cover Featuring my film)

 The other Ancillary task I have decided on doing is the magazine cover featuring my film. 



This a film cover from Empire featuring Iron man 2, Empire is a widely known company that specialises in Film reviews, Movie news and Interviews. So whenever a new film comes out Empire are almost always the first on the scene to hear about it. The magazine itself seems to be very in your face and big, and the magazine puts the highlight of the magazine right at the front with the main character of the film in a pose, the character also covers up some of the words and this could mean that the company already know that people know who they are and that people only need a couple of words and this is good because if they are successful I can learn some good techniques from them. The style of the magazine is also very modern for example it looks very polished and prestigious also the font of the text Empire corresponds with the type of movie for example in this magazine cover the words are electric and the film is based on technology.

Like the other magazine we can instantly spot that Empire use the techniques throughout their magazines so from this I know that the style in which they use works because as you can see the main character is standing in front of the text and dominating the screen to grab your attention maybe as you walk by it in a shop and again like the other magazine the character is in a pose, the difference from this magazine compared to the other one is that this magazine has more text around the picture and in this one it shows other things within the magazine to try and grab more attention and to show how much more is within the magazine. So from this magazine I have learnt that having the main character in a pose in front of the magazine seems to be an effective way to grab peoples attention with the name of the film on the character or slightly underneath also to make the text like very modern because it adds a nice effect to the magazine.

 This is a another company called Total Film and Total Film is like Empire because Total Film is a guide on up-coming movies so when reviewing this poster I will also know that this is valuable in helping me to come up with my idea. Like Empire Total Film places the main character of the featured film in that magazine on the front page in a pose and mainly dominating the magazine, also the text is very big like the other magazines to grab your attention as you are walking by it in a shop, unlike Empire, Total film seems to have more text on the page and  have lines such as "No School. No Rules. Can Harry cut it in the real world." to give away a bit of the story line to grab your attention and make you want to read the magazine, also like the other one they use very bold colours to grab your attention for example this magazine has pure red just in the background.

What I have learnt

What I have learnt from doing this task is that I am going to use a lot of the ideas from these two major companies for example I am going to have my detective in a pose on the front of the magazine and taking up the majority of the page and I am going to dominate the page with a bold colour (Not sure yet) Also I am going to have little text and maybe a snappy line to grab attention with the name in bold over the character to show people what to expect within the magazine.

Textual Analysis on my Ancillary task (Poster)

One of the Ancillary tasks I have decided to do is the poster for the trailer of a film.

This poster is interesting because like the other CSI posters it shows the rest of the cast posing in the background and being the main centre of attention but at the same time a lot of the focus of the poster is the hand on the road and they have done this to give you an idea of what the show will be about that and also the fact that in the centre of the screen it says CSI: Crime Scene Investigation in green, and they have out this in green because it stands out over the black background and also the font of the writing is in a robotic style telling us that CSI will involve a lot of technology which it does with things such as blood analysing and determining the date of peoples death. The most interesting thing on this poster is the writing in the top left which says "Brace yourself for a killer season" and this is clever because the word killer in that sentence has two meaning one being the fact that the season will be amazing and also that there will be a lot of killing involved in the season and like the other words on the page it has a different font colour making it stand out from the background.

As you can see this other poster from the same brand is different because unlike the other one where everyone is posing towards the camera in this the only person doing it is the main character and the rest are investigating a murder and they are all crowded around the body trying to determine what happened, also unlike the other one there are no witty captions and only a line of police tape across the middle saying "Crime scene do not cross" which can also be seen as witty because obviously it is about a crime scene and like the other one they have placed the CSI in huge caps dominating most of the poster and in a very clear font which stands out the it is also white so it stands out from the dark background.

I have chosen to study a different crime TV show as well which is called Law & Order and the style of this poster is very different in comparison to CSI and the other two posters and that this poster doesn't focus on what the show is about and more about the cast and expects you to know what it is about, which is obvious because of the title and from this poster you can see that the show is serious and mature because they are all wearing suits and have a serious faces on the poster is mainly dominated by the faces of the actors and also the text saying Law & Order criminal intent" which gives further depth into what the series is about.

From looking at this poster I don't think i will copy anything from it when doing my own poster as it is very plain and I want to include more things such as a crime scene in the background.

How doing this task has helped me.

From doing this Analysis on posters from the genre I have chosen I have found out many different techniques I could use when it comes to the time when I design and create my poster, because now when I create my poster I think I will include the police tape idea going across the screen with the detective standing behind it either looking on a body or looking off into the distance, I will also include other things such as the weapon used for the murder and I will do this because I think it will grab peoples attention and help them to realise what type of murder will be occurring, and the name of the film will be in bold at the bottom almost taking about 1/3rd of the screen as that seems to be what a lot of posters do to grab peoples attention.

Target audience.

Age:

The age of my target audience will be between 18 and 28 and this is because the scenes within the film will be violent so the audience can't be lower than a 15 because I think the film will be a certificate 15 and I have chosen 28 because I think that people will still watch this type of film even as they get older because the film will be mature. I have set my lowest target audience at a 18 instead of a 15 because from my research on the web many people said the target audience for the crime law and CSI genre were generally older and around the 18 bracket, and I agree with this because when I was 15 I didn't enjoy watching CSI, law and crime shows/movies but the certificate 15 will remain the same because even though I am targeting at the 18s I don't think my film will be violent enough to push it to a 18 and also having at a 15 will attract more customers. 

Gender:
The gender in which my film is mainly targeting is males because the film will include a mainly male cast and will also include a lot of fighting scenes which from my research a lot of women get bored of during films, there will also be a deep story line which creates sympathy for the main character which might attract a female audience as well. 

My web research.

I furthered my research onto the web to find out more into the people which watch the CSI genre and the source which I used was The Guardian: TV ratings, and in the article I read it said that CSI the first episode of the ninth series got 3.9 million viewers taking a 16% audience share, so doing this research into the CSI genre really helps me to see that there are still a lot of people which watch this type of genre as 3.9 million people all watching just one episode is a lot this would also mean that they would of had a wide variety of audience because the episode was on at 8:05 so a lot of the audience may have been elderly, also from another source which isn't very reliable and just a persons thoughts (Yahoo Answers) said that the target audience was people between 18 and 35 and in doing this I think I will change the target audience I am trying to reach as I think fifteen is a bit low and people do still watch when they are past 25.

Socio Economic Classification

The target audience in which I am targeting will be a from C all the way down to E2 because I am targeting at a wide variety of audience and I believe this is the film that no matter what your status is you will still enjoy, I didn't include A and B because I thought that they may not be into the action scenes with murder and that it would make them bored so if I were to target at audiences such as students then I will attract a lot more customers.

The origins of the detective genre.

The detective genre truly began in 1841 when Edgar Allan Poe made a short story on a brutal murder and the police are baffled as to how it happened so a detective appears on the scene and helps to solve the mystery. The genre hit a high when with the creation of the "yellow blacks" which were cheaply produced throw away publications which contained detective stories within them. 

During the late 1800s and early 1900s, forensic science expanded to include technologies like body temperature to determine time of death and the systematic use of fingerprinting for identification which greatly changed the genre making the stories different because the detectives could now catch their victims just from a finger print.

In modern CSI, technology has rapidly advanced because forensics in modern times have built on their technologies making it easier to determine what happened. Because these days they can gather clues from the blood, the fingerprints the way in which the glass shattered if the person was thrown through the window because they can work out how much force was used and the angle in which they were thrown at so technology now-a-days has greatly changed the genre because when people make films/books within the genre they have to keep up with the modern technologies because they change how easy it is to catch the murderer.

Doing this has helped me to see what I need to include in my film for example I need to make sure that I use up to date technologies if I am to set it in the present time else it would be out of date and also this means I can include different ways of catching the murderer and include different ways of how the detective finds out where they went or what happened to the victim for example.

History of short films

• The very first films were presented to the public in 1894 through Thomas Edison’s Kinetoscope, a peepshow-like device for individual viewing. 
• The best-known film from this time is perhaps the Lumière brothers’ Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat (1895), which supposedly had audiences fleeing in terror as a celluloid locomotive hurtled towards them.
• But in the early 1900s, improvements in recording and editing technology allowed film-makers to produce longer, multi-shot films.
• Georges Méliès’s A Trip to the Moon (1902)  A well known short film maker of his time and is often celebrated as the first western
• From about 1910 onwards, studio competition and audience demand induced film-makers to make even longer, multi-reel films and the first features were born.
• Features were regarded as more respectable than shorts. Their length and narrative complexity allowed them to be compared more favourably with theatre and opera than with the base pleasures of the fairground.
• Short films were used as propaganda to get people to join the army and to support people already fighting in the army.
• In 1960's they stopped showing short films in commerical cinemas.
• Since 1981 and the birth of MTV, music videos have also represented an alternative outlet for short film-makers.
• In the 21st century short film makers now produce films on websites such as Youtube and sometimes short films are shown just before a children's movie, so short films haven't died out because people view them everyday.

Information on short films taken from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/film-life/7593291/The-long-history-of-short-films.html

Reasons why I have chosen a CSI film idea.

One of the main reasons why I have chosen to do a detective film idea is because of the song Lux Aeterna By Clint Mansell this song really inspired me to do a detective film because the song creates suspense and creates the feel that something sinister is about to happen, so the music will act as a huge part of my film to create suspense as the detective gets further into the investigation also I had the idea that my short film will have no dialogue and just this song playing in the background and as the music intensifies the detective will get closer to uncovering who it is who did the murder, so overall the music has to be one of the most important factors if I were to do this idea because there would be no dialogue and the film would relly mostly on the music which I put over the top of it, just from listening to this song I have already thought of many different scenes which I could include it in for example when the music picks up at 3:20 the detective could be breaking into the place where the murderer is or there are lots of flashbacks of him looking at clues (so the audience would know that he has discovered something or he has just realised something) then it would cut to the detective breaking into the murderers abandoned house/warehouse and him looking around whilst the intense music is playing to keep the audience on the edge of their seat and then just as the music hits 4:00 they could be staring at each other with their guns out and it could cut to the credits, obviously this is just an idea but it's a sense of how much inspiration this piece of music has given me.

Another reason why I have chosen to do this idea is because I believe that I could get the props required to make the film look good for example knives and guns depending on what murder I decide I am going to base my investigation around also I have a good suit in which I could use for my investigator to make him look official I can also purchase police tape to place around the scene, so I chose this idea because I think that I have the props and idea to pull it off and to make it look good and to make it work. I am also interested in investigation programmes such as CSI: Miami which I had previously researched to get some ideas on what the murder will be and the type of character the investigator will be but if I go with the idea of just music over the top that won't really matter so much also from watching the Sherlock Holmes films that greatly inspired me to do this idea because it intrests me how one clue takes the investigator to finally uncovering the murderer so that has greatly inspired me to do this type of genre.

As you can see from the picture to the left I am going to in my film try and re-crate a scene like this with the detective looking over the body of the victim trying to determine the clues with the plice tape going around the scene to make it look official 
also from this scene I have learnt that the murder seems to have taken place in a discreate location where no-one goes giving me an idea of where I could film my Muder scene.                                                                                                                                           

CSI Research.

In this post I will be researching what goes into the type of programmes like CSI: Miami for example the type of characters they use, there personalities, their clothing, the type of murders which occur and the ways in which they work out the crime and how they come about to finding the murderer and the reasons behind the murderer committing the murder.

The type of characters which are in the programme are well educated people for example in CSI: Miami one of the main characters is a former NYPD Homicide detective a forensic analyst and former bomb squad officer so the people in the this type of genre are well educated and have a lot of skills to them but every different person within the team has a different skill for example there is Someone within the CSI team who is a blood specialist and can also determine how long the victim has been deceased for.
The personalities of the people within the programme are mixed for example in CSI: Miami one of the main characters is very confident and won't hesitate to use deadly force, and there is another character who always follows the rules and standard protocol of how the investigation should go.
The type of clothing in which the detectives wear is normally a suit or black clothing to make them look more official, the clothing is important because when people watch my short film I want them to instantly know that the person they are looking at is a detective just from the clothes in which they are wearing.
The type of murders that occur within CSI: Miami is usually just a murder and the reasons behind the murder include the other person cheated on them or they are just out for blood.
The way in which the detectives come about working out the murder is that usually the murderer leaves a significant clue behind for example a receipt and the detective would go to the shop in which the item was purchased at and view the security camera and take it from there.

From this research exercises which I did I learnt many different things in which I could use and do some things being that the way I am going to edit is that as the detective sees each individual clue the camera will cut to showing how that clue came about for example if the detective is looking at a cut in the tree then the camera could cut to showing the murderer missing the victim and cutting the tree and in doing this it would add suspense and keep the audience interested as to what happened overall int he end and the motives behind it, another thing I learnt from doing this is that the setting I will have to use should be like an abandoned warehouse to create even more suspense so even if the victim wanted to they wouldn't be able to escape and to show where the murderer takes all his victims, and another thing I learnt from this is that I will need a significant clue which will end up showing whom the murderer is and I still haven't decided what that clue will be just yet.

First ideas.

I am thinking I could make a trailer for a film involving a police chase so the genre would be a thriller and in the police chase there would be a lot of suspense created and the suspense would be created from short fight scenes or the chase, so in the trailer there would mainly be short bursts of action followed by a bit of the storyline being given away making the audience want to know what happens and who it is who did the crime, the idea that I was thinking that I could do if I were to choose this idea is that the police have been phoned up by local civilians that there are some dodgy looking people hanging around their neighbourhood but little do the cops know that the men hanging around the neighbourhood are on the top ten most wanted list with charges of murder etc. and this overall leads into a fight scene.

Another idea that I had that could be done is a western trailer although getting the props and set could be hard I think this idea would pay off in the end if it worked in the end because the trailer could show action scenes on horses/ showing a stand off and then showing in the trailer how they got to that fight scene. Also I believe this is a unique idea and that might give it a bit of credit as well if it were to be done, the idea that I was thinking of with this one is that there is three characters a man who is married to a girl but that is another man who is jealous of the two and is trying to take his girl from him which overall ends in a fight scene, this is a brief version and the actual film would be a lot more in depth with more plot holes and twists.

Another idea which I have recently come up with is a CSI type of idea where there is a murderer and a detective that solves out the puzzle of how the murder happened/Where it happened and who did it and the way in which I would film this is that as the detective is discovering each individual clue the film would cut to the murderer and show the audience what he did and how the clue came to be about, I believe this idea would look really good if I were to do it because of the editing which would make the film look good because the audience would see what happened but the detective would be putting the pieces together, I got this idea from researching various different shows such as CSI Miami and in those sort of shows you normally see the murder take place then the camera would cut to the crime scene with the forensics surrounding the scene I also looked at the film Sherlock Holmes and how that worked but I think I will go more along the lines of CSI instead of slowly finding  clue by clue because this is a short film and I wouldn't be able to go into great amount of depth with the plot.