Character archetypes in the Action genre

Character Archetypes

In the Action genre a lot of characters are based on an archetype created by Propps. And are mainly associated with character roles such as the hero, damsel in distress, helper and the father figure. Another important thing is that the characters personality normally corresponds with the characters roles which can be seen in the list below.

Hero: brave, strong and fearless the hero always prevails by overcoming all obstacles to save the day. A good example of this is Superman from superman (1978) who in the his films always wins and stops the villain. And while stereo typically male there are a few examples of Female heroes for example Lara croft from the film Tomb Raider (2001).

Damsel in distress: Weak, powerless and must be saved by the hero a good example of this would be Marion from the film Indiana Jones Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) who needs to be rescued by Indiana Jones.

Sidekick: A character who assists the hero in his journey to save the Damsel in distress. They are portrayed as weaker than the hero of the film however are shown to be very useful. A good example of a sidekick is Robin from the film Batman and Robin (1997) who assists Batman throughout the film.

Villain: Evil, cunning and devious the Villain is the polar opposite to the hero and plans to eradicate any one who stands in their way (usually the hero). A popular example of this is Darth Vader from Star Wars Episode IV a New Hope (1977) who threatens the galaxy for the glory of the empire.

Henchmen: The henchmen are the foot soldiers of the Villain and do whatever they say without hesitation. Normally they are portrayed as being idiots and are easily outmatched by the hero. A popular of a henchmen are Stormtroppers which are seen throughout the Star Wars franchise.

Father figure: The father figure is a person who the Hero looks up to and despite the name they have no biological relationship with the hero as in most action films the heroes parents have been killed or have already died prior to the film. An example of this is Alfred who is seen in many Batman films but most notably The Dark Knight (2008) where he assists Batman.

Chase scenes in the Action genre

Chase Scenes

In our film opening the main thing in it is going to be a chase scene so I have decided to research how they are used in the Action genre as a whole. A chase scene is when the protagonist is being chased by the antagonist (normally it's the antagonists henchmen as it shows the antagonist as being powerful as he has control over his minions). The reasons for they are pursing the protagonist is usually because he has an item that is key to the plot of the film. For example in the film National Treasures Book of secrets (2007) the protagonist is being chased because he has stolen the Book of secrets from a museum. While in the scene it's a car chase it shows lots of conventions that are found in foot chases.

(Skip to 0:31 for the chase)

As seen in the clip, Chase scenes use lots of fast paced editing with lots of cuts being used very quickly which shows the protagonist and then the antagonists immediately after to show the distant between them. This is used to create suspense as it makes the audience fear that the protagonist is going to be caught. Another example of a on foot chase scene can be seen in the film The Matrix (1999) in the climax of the film the protagonist is being chased by the main antagonist which makes the scene much more intense as the antagonist is personally chasing him instead of making his henchmen chase them. 

What makes this chase scene good is that we see a wide range of camera shots which are used to create suspense in scenes. For example when the protagonist is sprinting a hand held camera is used to follower but when it follows him it is very shaky this imitates the the we are trying to catch up to him by running to him. Also the position of the camera is at times is closed in on his face or its following him from behind. This is used to show his facial expressions so that we can see his emotions which helps convey the tension within the scene as he looks scared throughout which makes the audience nervous as it shows the protagonist in a weaker state than usual. And when the camera is behind him it shows that the protagonist is being chased and that the antagonist is catching up to them which makes it more suspenseful as while the protagonist doesn't know how close the antagonist is the audience does which makes it more suspenseful for the audience 

Another good thing in this clip is that one part of the chase is set in a building which is useful for my group as we are going to film our chase scene in a building so it will be useful to my group as we can see how shots are filmed and edited filming chase on stairs normally has the camera at the top the stairs its or it's follows right behind them.  

Codes and Conventions continued

Codes and Conventions

To continue my Codes and Conventions research I have made a list of some of the conventions that I have found the list can be viewed below.

• Intense and exciting soundtrack which creates suspense and tension in the scene
• Contain lots of explosions so that the viewers don't lose interest in the film (Whammo Theory)
• Weapons are usually firearms but can contain melee weapons 
• Can have a chase scene were the hero/heroine flees from the villains henchmen
• Costumes vary among film can range from casual clothing to army gear
• most have a basic narrative so it can be followed easily by a majority of viewers
• Characters conform to a specific archetypes such as Heroes being brave, powerful and fearless (Propps character theory)  
• Todorov's narrative theory suggests film starts with Disrupted equilibrium and the films plot involves restoring the equilibrium
• A variety of camera shots are used for different reasons (Close-ups to show emotion)
• The setting can range from a busy city to an exotic temple

Characters in the action genre are normally associated a theory created by Propp which states that all characters in the action genre are stereotyped as a certain role. For example the heroic protagonist in the action film will be based on the hero archetype meaning they are brave, strong and fearless where as the love interest of the hero will be a damsel in distress who is weak, pathetic and will always be saved by the hero. A lot of characters in the action genre fit with these archetypes such as Indiana Jones as a hero, Stormtroppers as henchmen and Alfred (The Dark Knight) who  is a helper and a father figure. However, characters that are too stereotypical are often criticised as they reinforce a negative stereotype. Because of this i'll make sure that while my characters do show traits of the stereotypes they are based on they are not a carbon copy of that stereotype (the hero may show signs of weakness in the film opening). 

Questionnaire Analysis

Questionnaire Analysis

When we made our questionnaires we had to display our results and I choose to create a biteable presentation which can be seen by on the video below.

As you can see in the analysis above the my Prelim task received an overall positive reception from the people who I showed it to. And the criticism I received was mainly referring to the acting and the music in the background. The acting in the Prelim was to test the people in my group to see who was the best at acting overall so when we do film our actual opening we knew who should be acting. And the music in the background was just a humorous placeholder as I needed some music to place into the background and I just had the file on my computer from another task so I made use of what I had. Also as this was the last thing added to the Prelim i didn't have as much time to edit it as the deadline was near so I had to make do with what I had.

Codes and Conventions

Codes and Conventions

My group have now finished the prelim task and we have been now told to research the codes and conventions of the film genre that we are final film is going to be part of. Our final film is going to be a chase scene and while these can be seen in a variety of different film genres it's most commonly found in the the Action film genre so that is where i'll be looking for codes and conventions.

The setting for a majority of action films is a large, busy city with many tall buildings. This is because when intense scenes are filmed in busy areas they are made more realistic by all of the people in area  reacting to their situation such as fleeing the area when fight scenes occur this makes the film look more realistic. Also while it can also include exotic locations (temples, ruins, etc) that is more commonly found in the action adventure sub genre. The setting of our final film is going to be the sixth form building as because of the buildings layout (stairs, elevators, corridors, etc) it heavily resembles a office building which are found in large cities. This means it we can film a chase scene in this location and it won't look out of place as the location will make audiences think that it has been filmed in a large city.

The music that is found in the action genre is used to create suspense and tension in certain scenes where the protagonist is being pushed to his/her limit such as being chased by the antagonists henchmen (main antagonist would make his followers do his bidding). This is so that the audience does not lose interest when watching the film as if the chase scene had no music in the background it would be very lack luster so sound is a key element to a chase scene. However the music those not always have to be used to create suspense it is also used to make scenes more intense and in some cases it will be the films themes song which is normally used in final confrontation against the films antagonist. This makes the viewers get hyped as we are about to see an epic fight.

Above is an example of music used to make film scenes much more intense from the film Star Wars The phantom menace (1999). The scene it is used in is the climatic fight at the end of the film where   Qui gon jinn and Obi wan Kenobi must fight the sith apprentice Darth Maul and this song starts even before the fight begins which slowly builds up the intensity until they start fighting.

The costume that the characters wear is a very broad as in an action film one character could be wear a shirt and jeans and look like a random civilian and then in another scene be wearing a shirt and tie and look like they have a very rich person. But when I think about chase scene costumes I mostly associate them with the chasers wearing black suits as it makes them look more ominous so they stand out among everyone else in the scene where as the person getting chased will be wearing clothes that fit with the setting around him (Wearing jeans in a city and work shirt and tie when working in a office) this way they blend in with everyone else which from the characters perspective makes them believe that they won't get noticed as they don't stand out.

The video above is from The Matrix (1999) where Neo must escape from the Agents. I show this video because it will help me to explain what I mean about costume. throughout the scene the Agents wear black suits which compared to everyone else's makes them stand out more. Now look at Neo's outfit a business suit while this sounds similar to the Agents outfits we can tell that they are different but compare that to all of his co workers clothes and they look almost identical but this only works in this scene as it's a office building so you expect to see people in suits whereas you'd wouldn't expect someone like Neo to wear in outside of his job. 

And one of the most common conventions of a Action films explosions. These are found in almost every action film including sub genres. They are found in scenes with lots of action in them such as a final battle or escaping a somewhere that is about to explode. This is such a popular convention that there is a theory (The Whammo theory) which states that every 10 minutes there should be a 'Whammo' or a explosion of some sort so that the audience is entertained throughout the film. However for are final film it may be difficult to add explosions to our chase scene as none of my group have any experience adding Special effects of that scale to a film.

Prelim Task Questionnarie

So I could get some audience feedback I created a questionnaire show I could find out what my classmates thought about the film below will be a version of the questionnaire

           1.   How well do you think the acting is in the clip?

Good                    Bad

           2.   If you choose bad how could we improve it?

           3.   How is the editing in the clip?

                Good      to fast       to slow    continuity error

           4. If selected continuity error where was this in the clip?

                                

           5.   How does the camerawork look throughout the clip?

                     Good                        to shaky      

      6. Overall do you believe that this was a good filming attempt?

        Yes                            No

            7.    How do you believe we could improve our film in the future?

       8.  What do you think about the music in the background?

             Too loud            Too Quiet

            9.    Should we include music similar to this in our final film?

       Yes                      No

      10. Anything you want to say about the film?

Prelim Task Evaluation

Prelim Task Evaluation

When we created our prelim tasks I was the director of my group which means that I was the person who was making sure that my group was performing their roles properly so that we were all producing efficient work. For example during filming I had to make sure that our cameraman was the filming the scenes in a specific way (tracking, shooting from certain angle, etc.). The briefing was to create a short clip which includes the editing and camera techniques that we had researched in the past. 

Overall I believe that we meet most of the briefing as we had a wide variety of different shots and editing techniques so that it didn’t the clip wasn’t boring. However, there were also times when we didn’t meet the briefing for example while we used loads of different techniques we still missed out a few that I believe we could have incorporated into our prelim.I think that we were very successful during the production of our clip as we followed a majority of the scripts and storyboards that we created so we always knew what we had to do. 

Also I was unsure of the difficulties we were going to have when using the film cameras as before this all of us had only used digital cameras but I was surprised how quickly are cameraman got the hang of using it which made filming go much quicker than we first anticipated. But there were things that my group was unsuccessful with the main thing were our teamwork skills. I say this because during our first day of filming there were times where we butted heads as we all believed that certain things could have been shot in a better way which lead to a few minor arguments however we eventually resolved all of these issues and filming continued. 

Also we had to re film certain scenes as we had a combination of digital camera footage and film camera footage which lead to noticeable quality drops during production but we managed to resolve it quickly.During our production I’ve learnt how to direct a small film group and multiple film techniques to make sure that our film is of high quality. I also learnt how to edit films using Final Cut Pro which includes cutting clips together, applying transitions (fade in/out) and adding background music to make clips more interesting. 

I will use what I’ve learnt to make sure to improve our main task such as new camera techniques to create more interesting shots and I’ll use my editing techniques to make the final film look professional.When looking at my groups time management I think that we could have done much better as to my knowledge we were one of the last groups to finish filming as we had to re shoot some scenes with the film cameras this meant that we had less time to edit than the rest of the groups. This was also concerning considering that my group had one of the shorter prelim clips just going over 30 seconds so we should have been one of the first to finish. So one my main goal for directing our final film will be managing our time so we can improve our film.