Essay on similar film genre

My media essay on the first 2 minutes is on a film called “Rocky”.

During the first few seconds of the opening sequence, there is two adverts one being Metro Goldwyn Mayer and United Artists (an MGM company), the main music of the film being played by trumpets, in an old fashioned way (this is due to the film released), as well as the title of the film slowly going across the screen portraying “ROCKY”. This lasts for a full 7 seconds then after the last letter moves across there is a date of “November 25th 1975 Philadelphia. After it fades into film there is a close up of a picture of Jesus, this connotes to the audience that whoever owns this back street boxing ring is religious. Immediately after the camera zooms out of the picture, you can hear the non-diegetic people screaming jeers and cheers, this signifies that something must be happening such as a fight or something that has competition.
When the camera zooms out into an master shot three people are introduced one being an two being unknown boxers and a referee. There is fast paced fighting between the two boxers in a somewhat dim, scrummy venue that seems to be an “back room fight”. This is portrayed by the MES of the venue and the fact the referee isn’t wearing standard refereeing clothes suggests otherwise. Also the audience seem to throw objects onto the ring showing boredom as the fight isn’t as exciting as they thought it would be. The character with light brown hair is portrayed as a dirty boxer, one who is not really welcome this is shown when rocky is blocking him off, and as a result gets head butted by this unknown boxer which in boxing terms is a foul. As for the boxer with black semi long hair is positioned to be loved by the crowd, there for connoting he is a good person to the audience.
The camera angles used are mostly long takes during the fighting, but when the bell goes, there is a two shot of the good boxer with his trainer cleaning his face and giving tips, as well with a cut to another individual, portrayed as a friend of the boxer’s, motivating him to win or do better than what he is doing. During the fight, once the move half way across the ring, it cuts past the 180 degree rule, this happens quite a bit when the tempo decides to build up. When the camera is taking long takes, it is always placed in the crowd, making the audience watching the film feel they are part of the crowd as you can always see the ropes.
The opening sequence consists of two boxers fighting in a scummy ring. While halfway in to the two minutes the bell rings and rocky and his training trade words with each other as well as one of rocky’s friends.

Narrative Codes

Narrative codes

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Target Audience

Target Audience:
As a group we started looking at who our target audience may be. As we started doing this we had a look at similar films being released this year and came across a Film called “The Fighter”. The film is a drama, which is going to be released by Paramount studios in late November. The films plot follows the early career of “Irish” a young boxer in the early 80’s. Our film and “The Fighter” are both drama based films with a similar storyline so should have a similar approach to the target audience. Looking at this films Demographics we can see that it is going to have a male dominated audience of 75% compared to 25% female. With 55% of that audience being aged between 15-24, 23% aged between 25-34, 10% between 35-44 and 12% being 45 and older. Also looking at the social classes, AB-37%, C1 30%, C2 18% and DE 15%. The film will also be largely aimed at a straight sexuality audience, along with Black, Asian and White being the main races. Looking at “The Fighter’s” data it is easy to see how similar the film is to ours and why the figures also coincide with each other. Our film like “The Fighter” is aimed at broad mainstream audience, which shows why “The Fighter” is expected to have a medium size release and do reasonably well at the box office. Looking at Psychographics we expect the film to be aimed at strugglers seeking escape and the resigned looking for survival. Finally looking at lifestyle we concluded that we would be aiming the film at “Yaks” (young, adventurous, keen and single), “Dinky’s” (dual income and no kids). Here is an image of the data found on the Pearl and Dean website showing the demographics of the film “The Fighter”.

Preliminary Sequence

This is my Preliminary sequence. Filmed by Ollie and Tarbox. Acting by Carlos and music and sound by Matthew Lema (Me)

Enjoy!!