Production
What are the pre-production issues for the production company when making films?
Whose idea was the film? Did the idea start with the writer, or were writers brought in to develop a preconceived idea?
What are the issues with the genre of the film?
Where did the idea come from? Was it an original idea, or perhaps a book first, or TV series, or comic strip, or from some other source?
Who wrote the original script? Did other people become involved in the writing as the project progressed?
How easy was it to arrange the financial backing to make the film? Who were the financial backers? Why?
Casting – who were cast in the main roles and why? What other films featured the stars? What were the associations they brought with them?
Who was the producer? How did he or she become involved?
Who was the director? How did he or she become involved?
Who composed the film music and why was he or she chosen? Consider the sales of the CDs on Amazon, etc. Seek out reviews.

§What were the issues for the production company during the production phase?
Was it an easy ‘shoot’? If there were difficulties what were they? Were there tensions between any of the creative personnel, often known as ‘the talent’?
Was any part of the film shot on location? If so, where? Why were some locations chosen over others? Were costs a factor?
Where there any difficulties with casting or with acquiring the stars/actors the producer wanted?
How significant was casting to reach specific audiences?
What did the studio film cost to make? How much did the stars get? Where did the budget go? Was the film shot within budget? Was it ever in any danger of going over budget?
Were there any changes to the script during production? How many changes or re-writes? Did the same scriptwriter(s) stay ‘on board’ all the time, or were some replaced?
List some of the key people who made contributions to the production and highlight some of their individual contributions.

In what way do the institutions involved in your films try to connect with and empower their audience?

My films all have different techniques in which they use to connect and empower their audience with. I have chosen the films of Knight and Day, Skyfall and Source Code and looked into what the institutions have done to make the audience more involved.

In terms of E-Media, all of my films obviously benefit from social networking sites such as twitter and facebook. Skyfall specifically uses twitter to gain a larger fanbase and encourages audiences interactions by using quizzes and competitions. This in turn makes the audience more active. Source Codes presence on facebook (in which has over 500,000 'likes' currently includes exclusive photos of scenes, information about the actors etc. Institutions benefit from User Generated Content highly online. Knight and Day does not have an official Twitter page, but as it's a fairly low budgeted movie it comes under the Fox official twitter. There are seperate fan-made pages that have 1.5K + followers that offer additional audiences to comment and review the film. Although Source Code does not have an official website, it does in fact have many fan sites linked to it. 'Source Code fansite' being the main one, featuring more behind-the-scenes information avaliable to the audience (According to uses and gratifications for surveillance reasons). There are specific fansites for the actors in the film, Jake Gyllenhaal has a large fanbase and so all of the websites created for him feature Source Code and promote it.

In terms of print, Fox distributed only one Knight and Day official poster that featured the silhouettes of Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz both carrying weapons. This was to immediately connect with the audience; as they can identify the celebrities in the film and also the genre of action. Skyfall used the typical silhouette also of the 'James Bond' pose to catch the audiences eye and allow them to know straight away what film it is referencing.Source Code did a similar thing with the posters that they distributed. The poster featured Jake Gyllenhaal smashing through glass with a gun indicating action, danger and mystery. This would intrigue an audience and encourage them to investigate more into the film. All of the posters feature weblinks at the bottom, which helps the audience gain access to the information on the e-media platform. They all link to the institutions websites rather than any official website for the films, this helps to promote the company as much as possible and make the audience more active within the whole film franchise.

In conclusion, all three films have in some way, connected with the audience through the different platforms and allowed their films to be accessed in many more ways than just on-screen. There is a higher demand for the background of the films and for exclusive gossip and information, and the Institution must adapt to meet these needs.