Audience Demographic Categories

What are the codes and conventions of Action Adventure Film?

Narrative

• 12/15 certificate, maximising youth audiences
• Often hybridised with Sci Fi/Adventure/Romance
• Major Hollywood studio produced and distributed
• High production values including CGI FX. Fast paced editing
• Classic Hollywood 3 act narrative structure
• Predictable chain of events – cause and effect
• Single stranded, linear, closed narrative
• Dramatic non-diegetic sound (soundtrack music)
• Clear binary oppositions (good v evil)
• Star Marketing: Audience identification/expectations (Cruise/Pitt/Johnson/Thurman/Jolie/Tatum/Craig/Di Caprio/Damon)
• Generic Typecasting and Secondary Persona apply (stock characters)
• Romantic sub-plot, humorous dialogue
• Relationships with new technology (youth audiences)
• Use of close ups
• Dominant representation of gender: male/female action hero.

• Narrative led films contain tightly woven story arcs, where the dialogue drives the plot rather than builds character.
• An action adventure film is essentially one long quest with a succession of different chase sequences, each one more death defying and seemingly impossible than the one before. The trick for the producers is to ramp up the tension as the film progresses to a storming end sequence. Will our intrepid explorers make it, or will the evil antagonist get there first.
• A strong story ark of a quest for treasure, or an incredibly valuable object, or an item which has occult power.
• Love interest that both hinders and supports the main quest.
• A fast moving narrative with constant set backs that are overcome one by one, leading to fairly complex plots.
• In many respects this genre of films derive their energy from being more exciting, more adult and much more dangerous versions of children’s stories of adventure such as Enid Blyton’s Famous Five or Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons.
• Thrilling action where the protagonist saves his fellow travellers through a variety of non realistic but apparently logical escapades.

Characters and locations

• These are not realistic films, although the characters must be believable. They are set in a stereotypical world of the not too distant past e.g the 1930s, or the fictional world of storybook adventures e.g. A high tech, futuristic maze.
• A main protagonist who is a seen as a 'normal' person and who just happens to have amazing powers of endurance in the face of extreme danger, and is also very clever. James Bond is a Secret Service agent. Captain Jack Sparrow is at first an ordinary good for nothing pirate with incredible agility and luck, although he later takes on supernatural powers.
• There are always helpers who are a team of innocent characters who happen to get caught up in the action.
• Humorous dialogue often diffuses taught and sometimes frightening situations.
• The characters take the twist and turns of the plot very seriously as they are often in mortal danger from an assortment of unusual animals, machines and monsters orchestrated by an evil antagonist.
• Exotic locations where the characters have to contend with extremes of climate, as well as evil forces.
• The aim is to please the audience by keeping them on the edge of their seats through a series of mind boggling chases, exotic locations and hair raising adventures in historically inaccurate but somehow elementally possible settings.
• Action Adventure films are designed to create an action-filled, energetic experience for the audience who can live vicariously through the exotic locations, conquests, explorations, struggles and situations that confront the main characters

Task: Having read through this description of the action adventure genre (characters and locations), apply each area to an action film of your choice.

The film must be from the last 5 years.

Explain your points, using examples from the film as evidence to support your ideas.

Walliams and Friend research

You need to know the following information: the day, time and channel of the programme (in this case Walliams and Friend).

Research the following:

• Who commissioned the programme?
• Who produced it?
• What audience is it aimed at? Why?
• Why is it on at that time and on that channel? Link to 'type' of comedy and target audience. 
• Is it on after the watershed? Why?
• Know the audience demographic

Magazine Evaluation (Year 11)

You need to answer the following questions in as much detail as possible. This is a very important part of this project.

Answer each question in as much detail as possible. Add examples from all parts of your work.

• How effective was your research into similar magazines and relevant target audiences. What did you learn from your research into these two areas? In what ways did this shape the creation of your magazine?
• What creative decisions did you have to make at the different stages of your magazine production? How did your magazine change as your work progressed?
• How closely does your magazine follow the forms and conventions of existing magazines? Gives examples of real magazines you reference.
• How successful is your finished magazine? What are its strengths and weaknesses?

Candidates offering a written commentary should aim to write between 500–800 words. 

Complete all work in PowerPoint and then add to your folder.

Today is deadline day

By the end of the second lesson today (period 4 with Mr Smith) you need to have submitted the following:

1. The final version of your magazine cover - printed in colour on A4
2. The final version of your magazine contents page - printed in colour on A4 or A3 as applicable
3. The final version of your magazine double page spread - printed in colour on A3

If you need work to do then you can make a gallery of the creation process for the cover, contents page and double page spread.

Edge of Tomorrow - Battle scene

Spy Kids - OCR exam 2014