Planning and Research

In terms of the institution who would produce my film, I would like go for new line cinema. They were responsible for the Mortal Kombat movie, as well as many other martial arts/ action film, E.g. Mortal Kombat, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Surf Ninjas, The Street Fighter, Rush Hour etc… By choosing New Line Cinema the audience will know what kind of film they are going to get out of it, and will expect good things as well, as they are responsible for blockbusters such as the Lord Of the Rings.
In the Fearless (http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=WQnBrEAzvE4) film the two characters are fighting over honour, in the Mortal Kombat clips they are fighting for the sake of fighting, however, the good guys are fighting for a bigger thing than there own gain, they are fighting to save the world. I think honour is very important and is often used in Chinese film.
Back in the 70’s, nearly all of Hong Kong martial arts films would revolve around a students master or friends being killed, and then the student going off to take revenge. Examples of this are in films such the 36th Chamber of Shaolin, and Fist of Fury.
In my film I think I’ll go for that but go the other way, where the protagonist realises that his master is not all he’s cracked up to be and ends up wanting to go the other and take the life of his master to reclaim his own honour, in the process realising that it isn’t honourable to kill people, I got this idea from Jackie Chan film, The Fearless Hyena, and his father tells him that he teaches him to fight so that he doesn’t have too.
However this will not be a period piece like Fearless, but more of a Hollywood product like the Mortal Kombat film , that way I can bring it up to date a bit. I’ll do this by incorporating a more ‘rock’ styled soundtrack, similar to that of as well as the more Chinese orchestral music associated with Fearless.
At the beginning part of the film I will use a tracking shot towards the church building, much like in the intro to Mortal Kombat deception . This will provide a good platform for my opening credits to stand. I’ll interlope it with short cuts the fight going on inside the church, much like in the clip. This will allow the audience to anticipate the coming fight scene.
Fearless uses intentional jump cuts and intentional ellipses that connote the pace of the action, I’ll hopefully be able to incorporate these ideas. Also in Fearless, a cross between fast and slow motion is used in combination to make what the actors are doing more spectacular. Slow mo is normally used in more epic parts of the scene, or if something needs to be noticed and is too quick for the eye to see properly, I plan to make use of this too as it will help with some of the more complicated bits of choreography.
During the fight I’ll also take elements from the Mortal Kombat fight scene, between Johnny Cage and Scorpion. In it are used an array of mid and long shots, but most importantly in this scene are the POV shots. This allows the audience to feel more a part of the battle and it makes the scene a lot more intense.
When it comes down to when the sorcerer takes someone soul in my film I’m not sure what techniques I’m going to use. Due to the abysmal budget I can afford to give it amazing special effects. So I think I’ll incorporate the ghosting effect on adobe premier to make the whole scene seem more surreal.
In terms of the slower part of the scene where two people are just talking I shall stick to the normal recipe for film making, 180 and 30 degree rule, rule of thirds, match on action cuts, and all the elements I need to include and are looked at by the examiners. These techniques I have already used when doing other films with film studies and earlier in the preliminary exercise.
After seeing the characters from these three fight scenes, it is clear who the ‘badies’ were, through the way they dressed, acted and how other elements portrayed them. From the Deception intro the two ‘bad guys’ are dressed in darker and more sinister clothes. One has pale skin and tattoos with spikes on his clothes with dark green trousers and the other wears red, with quite expensive looking clothes. These colours and costumes connote these two as shedders of blood and that they are very good at it. The fact that the fight is two on one also shows their lack of honour, not giving a fair fight. In the other Mortal Kombat scene, as well as being dresses in dark yellow, and his eyes are clear with no pupils, making him seem all the more sinister, the music also portrays him as evil, whenever he comes onto screen heavy rock music plays, connoting his anarchaic nature.
The goodies in all three clips however are dressed in more simple clothes, in Deception Raiden is in white and light blue clothes, conoting his purity. Jet Li’s outfit is plain too, and Johnny Cage is the Hollywood generic hero personified.
For my film the only real bad guy, the sorcerer will be dressed in a most sinister outfit. I have seen from horror films such as Halloween and Friday the 13th , how scary a mask can be to an audience, so I shall give the sorcerer a terryfying mask to wear. In this scene there isnt particularly a good guy, however, the two fighters will be dressed in dark but simple clothes, much like in Jet Li’s Fearless but will still cover their faces much like scorpian in his film, making them seem more like tools for their masters to use as they wish.
The masters of the fighters will be dressed in suits, as they will be rich and powerful. In a sense the masters will be going against the dominant ideology of rich people as a civilised people. Being that they are betting on the lives of these two fighters, shows them as nothing other than savage and brutal.
The audience of all these clips are male, aged 15 to 24. It is for those who are into action and fighting, who are prodominantly male. The two Mortal Kombat scenes id say are for a B/C1 audience on the jicnar scale, more so the film than the deception intro. I think because they wont really reach a higher audience as it follows too greatly the hollywood formula and todorovian plot. However, the Fearless film puts a lot of effort into being beautiful and portraying a lot more emotion in the characters and storyline. The fact it’s subtitled also means that a less mainstream audience would go and see it and the morales involved in the plot make it for a more interlectual audience, a more B/A audience. As much as I would like to aim it at the highest end of the jicnar scale, my film probably won’t be able to reach that audience no matter how much I want it too due to lack of funding and depth of the story, however, I think a B/C1 audience will be my most likely target, as I can still appeal to them with complicated choreography and an interesting but easy to follow storyline.