Research

For my film, I am creating a Science Fiction film based on an original story that I wrote called 'Ctrl, Alt, Delete.' I decided that the target audience for my film would be secondary school age and above because I felt that this would be old enough to understand what is going on and young enough to think about whether what happens in the film really could happen in the future. I discovered that there are lots of science fiction fans in the world so I needed to make sure that these people would look at my script, poster and DVD cover and decide that they would go to see my film. I would also make my film aimed at a mostly male audience because, from my research, I discovered that males were generally more interested in science fiction than females. I think the main audience for my film would be people who enjoy and are interested in science e.g. more intelligent people. For the pre production task, I created a script. To research this, I gave my story to a group of people who became my focus group and asked them if they would watch a film based on this idea. I got positive feedback for this so decided to keep the idea and use it for my script. I then looked at some websites to find the correct layout of a script and the best possible way for me to present it. I discovered that scripts are generally written using courier font. The websites that I used for this research were

http://www.bbc.co.uk/writersroom/ and others. I found that these websites were helpful because they were very informative when it came to layout and how to set out the stage directions. I then sat down with my focus group and showed them a first draft of my script. Most of them said that they liked it but gave me things to improve on such as more camera angle information and more stage directions. I took this feedback on board and changed some of the ideas for camera angles etc. I also watched the opening scenes of some science fiction movies such as Wall-E and Avatar. When watching these films, I discovered that they used a lot of high tech computers and facilities which I felt would be important in my film. I also used Google images to find some inspiration for setting and even characters. I searched for the Top 10 highest grossing films of the past 10 years and I found out that 'Avatar' was the highest, it made $761 million. It was also the highest grossing film of all time. This was closely followed by 'Star Wars: Episode I' which made $475 million. I realised that people enjoyed films that have lots of special effects. I found this research very helpful because I then knew what kind of film people were interested in and I was able to base some of my ideas on this e.g. the idea of computers and high tech facilities.