Working Titles: Fargo

 

Case Studies.

Pre-Production

The rights to the film were sold before the comic had even been released.  Mark Millar pitched the comic to Matthew Vaughn and they wrote the comic and book at the same time. They approached Jane Goldman to do the screenplay.

News of film pre-production on blogs and websites such as www.behindthescenestv.net and www.thefilmstage.com

Hollywood's major studios all said a straight out no to fund Kick-Ass (most worried about the character "Hit Girl") so Vaughn decided to fund the project himself.

Production

Major studio's approached to do the production of the film but, unlike most companies with vertical integration, they did not buy it at the scrip phase. Vaughn therefore approached smaller production companies and ended up with Plan B  productions. Started filming in Elstree Studio's. Vaughn showed clips of the film at Empire movie-con and San Diego comic con. These clips were widely written about ( article talking about it can be seen here ) and this led to it being more appealing to distribution companies)

Distribution

Matthew Vaughn approached many conglomerate distribution companies once the film had something to show for itself there was a lot of demand from distribution companies as can be seen here. Universal UK and Lionsgate USA agreed to distribute the film and Paramount ended up losing out. 


What it made at the Box Office


Worldwide the film grossed $96,188,903 which is 60.0692581 million British pounds.

Media Representations

Representations

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Working Titles

Thriller Opening Analysis

Preliminary Task Evaluation

The original idea was a Mafia-inspired storyline of an exchange of money between Al casino, head of an illegal money-making team and Paulie, an old friend who borrowed money just at the wrong time. The first thing we did was write a treatment which was decided and written amongst the group and then jobs were dealt out. One person did the storyboard, the call sheet and shot brief. This worked well as it meant the jobs were distributed between everyone equally and so the workload was relatively light and everyone had a chance to influence what they were doing with their own ideas. If we worked together again there is little I would do differently as we all got on and completed the work well. Having shot the scenes, it perhaps would have been better if we had taken more footage so we had more to play this as we had to re-shoot some bits to compensate for lack of varied footage.

In terms of production paperwork, the most useful to me was the storyboard as it acted as a visual aid to the kind of shot we needed to go for as well as shape an idea of the atmosphere and mise-en-scene we wanted to create in our clip. The call sheet was off little use for this task but I believe it would hold more importance on a bigger project that needed strict organisation. Overall though it was useful getting ideas down in a structured way so as to get a framework for what the clip was supposed to be like.

I drew the storyboard which was the fundamental basis for how each shot looked in the clip. I wanted everything to look relatively streamline and structured to reflect the clean cut appearance of Al Casino and to make the whole thing more stressful for the already fumbling Paulie. The storyboard, and therefore the basis for each frame, did evolve during editing as shots that were at first decided to be still became zooming in shots. We stuck to the treatment though as we felt this was a sturdy background that went well with the script and lent itself well to the characters. 

 

I think that for a first try our production conveyed promising skill in regards to camera placement and editing. Our editing cuts are smooth, despite some bits in my opinion being too quick and jumpy, but that is a matter of opinion and the clip viewed objectively is well edited and shot. The lighting also turned out to be extremely good and it gave a warmth to the production without a washed out or shadowed effect. This is due to our knowledge of white balance and the importance of using it so the picture is clear as possible. 

News Corp

News Corp