Update 30/10/14

We have decides as a group that Jesse Ringo is too close to Jesse James and Johnny Ringo and have decided to change his name to James Wesley-Adams as this is more catchy and less cheesy.
Progress has also begun on building the body armour, which will hopefully be finished in under 2 weeks.

Narrative Theories And How To Apply Them To Our Piece

Propp

Vladimir Propps character theory proposes that all media only features a selection of seven different character archetypes.

These are:

The Hero - who leads the story and usually marries the princess

The villain - who opposes the hero

The donor - who prepares the hero or gives them some sort of item to be used,

The helper - who assists the hero in his quest

The Princess - Often sought after throughout the plot and marries the Hero

The Dispatcher - Gives the Hero the quest or sends them out on it

The False Hero - not the villain, but often works against the Hero, appears at first to be the Hero, takes credit for the hero’s actions and/or attempts to marry the princess.

Our piece will only feature two characters, who we don't want to obviously fit into any category during the opening scene in order to build enigma and draw people in.

Using Django Unchained as an example of a western, the characters are as follows

The Hero: Django

The Villain: Calvin Candie

The Helper/The Donor: Dr. King Schulz

The princess: Broomhilda Von Shaft

There are other characters but these are the most important. Most openings, Django included, do not make it clear to start with which these characters fit into.

Levi-Strauss

Levi-Strauss proposed that we only understand words based on our understanding of their 'binary opposites'. He believed that Good would have no meaning without knowing what bad means. This can be applied to media in the contrast between the antagonist and protagonist, amongst other things.

The fact that the only two characters are the hero and villain will provide perfect opportunity for Binary Opposites. The good vs bad, law against bandit is absolutely polar opposites of the characters.

However, later in the film (not in our opening, but in the general plot of the film we came up with) we wanted to flip these black and white presentations of good and evil and make it that Bill Grieves was working for a corrupt and sinister government, and James Wesley-Adams was only an outlaw because he was fighting back against it. This not only subverts the expectations and genre, but goes against the idea of them being binary opposites since they both believe in the same ideals.

Star Wars is a good example of binary opposites since, taking example from the western genre; the good characters are dressed in white. This instantly symbolises the roles of the characters, and in the example of Star Wars: A New Hope it is instantly obvious that Leah, dressed in white, is good and Vader, Dressed in black, is the villain.

Todorov

Todorov’s narrative theory states that a story is usually split up into 5 different parts:

Equilibrium - At the beginning, a balanced normality is established.

Disruption - Something happens to destabilise this equilibrium.

Resolution - The characters find a solution to the disruption.

Restored Order - This solution is applied and the disruption is taken care of

New Equilibrium - usually different from the first equilibrium, it is a new order where everything is re-balanced.

Since our piece is only the opening, we will not be able to apply very many of the stages. In itself, the piece goes through equilibrium, the main character walking to meet the villain, and disruption, them shooting one another. In terms of the films narrative this scene would serve as a resolution, the hero killing the villain. (As our opening is a later scene from the film and not the very beginning of the narrative, making our film a non-linear narrative.)

Opening scenes can fit into this theory, but equally they do not have to. Using the previous examples, Django does, with the slaves being in captivity and equilibrium, Schultz arriving and shooting the men a disruption of this, the resolution and restored order being Schultz successfully incapacitating them and buying Django, and the restored order being Django going free and the others being left. Star wars does not follow this as it begins already in a state of disruption, the attacking ship, but follows from here with Darth Vader killing the rebels (resolution/Restored order), and taking control of the ship (new equilibrium.) Often opening scenes will simply be the equilibrium, establishing characters and setting in order for a major disruption later on.

AJA Feedback

Good work James.

Blog is up to date and posts are detailed and well presented.

Excellent work on costume planning.

Good use of progress updates - keep this going throughout project.

Come up with more of your own tasks to add - see example blogs on OCR Weebly (Kamini blog in particular):

http://ocrmediastudies.weebly.com/as-inset-materials.html

Well done.

Update 23/10/14

Today we finished off the final frames from the storyboard whilst drawing up preliminary ideas for our Production company logo. From these we can create actual logos to be used.

From these we can create multiple logos and decide at a later date exactly what we want to use. 

Update 22/10/14

Today we discussed ways to make the piece appear futuristic without explicitly stating anything. to do this we thought it would be a good idea to put another planet in the background, which is simple enough to do in Adobe After Affects. This shows the setting without us saying anything, and gives the viewer information in a simple way.

Other than this, there was very little within our budgetary and time constraints that would help add to this. Many Western/Sci-fi hybrids such as Cowboys and Aliens or Firefly use advanced technology or futuristic dress to represent the time period, but this is simply out of our grasp.

Update 19/10/14

In the last two lessons we have been discussing and drafting the storyboard for our film. This way we could debate ideas which means that our ideas are more refined and better than if we did it alone, producing a rough draft of the storyboard to be drawn up in better quality later on.

Modernisation

Based on our focus group and after discussions amongst our group we have decided to shift the setting from the old west to a nondescript, lawless 'near-future' setting that will emulate the look and feel of a western but with hybrid style of western and futuristic, similar to the cult TV show Firefly. To do this we are adding to the character designs with modern and futuristic looking props and costumes (like the armour for Bill Grieves) and they will speak in a more modern style, whilst still keeping some elements of the western genre such as the gun belts, desert setting and duster coat in order to create a genre hybrid, such as Firefly and Outland.

Audience Profile

Western Films can appeal to many different demographics depending on how they are made. More modern westerns such as Tombstone and 3:10 to Yuma are faster paced and appeal more to a young, modern audience, whilst classic Spaghetti westerns are slower and appeal more to older and more patient audiences.
Since our main target audience is white males aged 13-18 we are going to make a more Modern style western, with faster pacing and a more accessible storyline.

A picture of our target audience doing their regular thing.

Whilst this is our main demographic we still want the film to be able to appeal to many other different groups. specifically females and older viewers who are fans of original western films, and we would do this by including reference to these films and by not catering wholly to a male audience. Our main aim is to create something that is fun to watch and enjoyable, a 'popcorn film'. This would mean it could appeal to a regular movie viewer, who is not required to watch a lot of or appreciate films past their mere entertainment value. Films in this vein are The Avengers, Transformers and Godzilla. Big set pieces and action packed sequences are not required for this, simply a light and easily followed plot, entertaining action and accessible characters.

Both main characters are male and this is so that our film will appeal to a predominantly male audience through their ability to relate to and put themselves into the position of them, specifically the hero. We want to have the main character that guys would like, so he will be a stereotypically tough, emotionally stoic and masculine, similar to many characters such as John McClane in Die Hard, Harry in Dirty Harry or John Marston in Red Dead Redemption. The following of conventions makes it easily accessible to an audience who simply want an enjoyable movie, so we will follow this convention for the main Character.

Costume Planning

We spent a lot of time debating possible costumes, with influence from many classic western films. For Jesse Ringo, the antagonist, we first considered the iconic poncho from the 'man with no name trilogy' worn by Clint Eastwood.

Whilst an iconic costume and we would have loved to include a nod to it in our piece, it proved difficult to find a good design, or a high quality product, so we had to rule it out.
 After this we looked to other sources for inspiration, such as the video games Red Dead Redemption and Call Of Juraez: Gunslinger.

We all agreed that this costume looked great and was rather intimidating. It gives the impression of a character prepared for anything and living rough, however it would require a lot of searching to find all the parts and wouldn't be cheap. we thought a more simplistic costume would work better.

We liked this design for a few reasons, mostly that it was simple and the multiple guns suited the idea we had for the character, as well as the dismal colour scheme. Again however, it was difficult to find the right pieces for the holsters so we abandoned this idea choosing only to keep the large amount of grey and simplicity.

For the hero of the story, Marshal Bill Grieves, we wanted to find a distinctly different style.

The formal, expensive look worn by Lee Van Cleef in 'The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly' was very different to the rugged look we had wanted for Jesse Ringo, and would give him an air of sophistication parallel to Jess Ringo's rugged outlook, however we again had trouble finding appropriate props. we then decided to look at more cliché costumes for him.

We decided we liked the striking red shirt that Clint Eastwood wore in Unforgiven, and wanted to look more in this direction when it came to choosing costumes. overall though, this costume seemed ill fitting for the character as it was too much of a period costume whilst we were interested in going more for the spaghetti western style than a true western style.

Looking again at Call of Juraez, we liked the duster coat worn by Pat Garett, as it is rugged and tough, and wanted our character to wear something similar. This was especially easy since we already had access to a duster coat, however it is not leather like this one, but we have to take what we can get.

Finally, we stumbled upon some illustrations we immediately liked, by artist Denis Medri. Even though they are redesigns of DC comic book characters, they are stylised and distinct enough that we decided these specifically were what we would base our costumes on.

For the Marshal, we liked the duster coat, waistcoat and single gun that is shown in this design. A change in colour scheme is the biggest difference, with our character wearing a red shirt and brown duster coat instead.

For Jesse Ringo, this design met our desire for simplistic yet intimidating. The twin gun belt and leather gloves fit the character perfectly, and incorporating a darker colour scheme adds to portraying him as a villain. We are currently in the process of tracking down and purchasing various accessories to complete each look the way we want it.

In light of our decision to modernise the film, setting it instead in an ambiguous near-future time, we have decided to give Bill Grieves' character advanced looking armor. we decided to model this of off the desert ranger armour from the videogame Fallout: New Vegas.

It will feature the chest piece from this, along with similar lower leg and forearm pieces, which will give him an intimidating and futuristic look. For Jesse Ringo, he will wear a leather jacket that will make him more modern and give the impression of a biker, adding to the outlaw/bandit look.

This is the jacket we are using since it is distressed and rugged looking but still modern.

Focus Group Video And Analysis

So to gather audience opinions we gathered a small focus group. First we asked them general questions about films and westerns, then we showed them the opening scene from "The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly" and asked them questions about it.



As you can see we have some varying responses. The associations of the Western is as expected, however some features like frontier bars and horses are a little out of our budget so we will not be able to include them. We wanted a slow paced beginning, and film, to build tension and fit the genre. However, the focus group unanimously responded in favour of fast pacing. This we will discuss further within our group but i believe that regardless of these results, a fast paced opening would be inconsistent, ill fitting and not in the best interests of our film, and would prefer to create an extremely slow, tense sequence. Again, despite the response a modern setting for our film would not make much sense, however we could consider a modern setting which would subvert the genre slightly, as was preferred in the next question. Perhaps even an ambiguous setting could work in our favour, with the actual time period not explicit. Again, conflicted opinions on beginning with a scene from later in the film, so in this case we are most likely going to differ to our own opinions and continue with our original plan of having the first scene a flash forward.

The focus group seemed unfortunately unenthusiastic about the opening we showed them, which could be bad for our piece since this was what we hoped to base it on. However, like earlier mentioned, i still believe a slow, tense opening would be more effective than a fast paced opening. there was some agreement that the lack of dialogue was effective, and as we want to achieve a similar effect to this we will continue with our plan to use minimal or no speech. They agreed that music would have contributed to the scene, and we will strive to include an effective and fitting soundtrack to our piece, and the gradual building up music is what we wanted to include in the first place. Despite positive feedback the freeze frame is still something we need to discuss as a group at length, but i believe it would be effective in giving information and revealing something to the viewer, and would like to include them in our piece.

Overall, the focus group has given me some ideas to alter our piece and opened up the prospect of alternative routes that we could take the sequence, however i do not believe that we should focus on creating a piece to cater to the responses they gave. Certain aspects such as the slow pace are still, i believe, an important and necessary part of our opening.

Survey Results: Focus Group

As well as a video we created an online survey to be filled out which gave us more specific responses on our ideas, rather than simply about the western genre in general.

Our first question was simply about gender to establish a better idea of our target audience. As this shows, it was mainly Males that answered, however the gap is not particularly large, meaning that there is no reason why we would need to adjust the films content in any way to cater to the expected content for either gender (the male gaze).

Our second question was for the same reason, and it shows that our primary target audience is 13-18 year olds. For this reason our film will have to be PG-13 rather than R rated, and will be required to conform to the standards of this rating, with minimal swearing and little to no gore.

 For the title, people have chosen A Bullet For Jesse Ringo over our other two possible titles, so this is the title we will use for our film. Initially we were going to use The Pursuit of Jesse Ringo by Marshal Bill Grieves, however in retrospect we believe that Bullet for Jesse Ringo is a better name and clearly more popular.

A debate we had within our group that may seem trivial but we still considered important to the film was the Law man's (Adrian's)facial hair. The grooming of a character is an important aspect of character and can be used to convey different meanings, clean shaven being a man who looks after himself or stubble to show a character that is less concerned with the way they look. Overwhelmingly, the results show that people where more in favour of the stubble, so this is what we will go with for the final piece.

This result is preferable as minimal speech is a Genre Convention of western films, and was our original idea. Whilst we may still make the opening silent to build up a sense of enigma and tension, the main law man would be portrayed as a man of few words.

We wanted to know what kind of villain people would prefer to see, and as shown it is a completely even split. for this reason, we have decided to make the villain responsible for committing all of these crimes, which would make him all the more dangerous and sinister.

Another debate we had amongst the group was what kind of law man the main character should be, a local sheriff, Pinkerton agent or U.S. Marshal. The Marshal proved to be the most popular, so this is the title we will give him in the film.

Overall, this survey has helped us to adjust and settle certain features based on popularity, Having the input of others means that we can include features for the sake of popularity rather than choosing only the ideas we like best and running only on artistic direction.

AJA Feedback

Good work James.

You have submitted most of the required work and posts are well written and detailed.

Blog is also well presented, with good use of images, text and embedded video. 

  

1. Evaluate your prelim task in more detail please

2. Continue to post regularly to your blog – treat it like a diary 

3. Continue to come up with your own planning/research tasks to show your own creative journey

4. Post your initial planning mindmap (main task)

Good start. Well done.