Where I am in this investigation?

The direction that I am taking with this investigation is exploring the elements of the fantasy franchise.

I have discovered the main reason for these type of films to become a success is from the powers of CGI and special effects. From the media magazine article “CGI pest or pesticide?” explores the positives and negatives of CGI. It almost suggests the competition of CGI between films and how much they can benefit as it can be seen as an indictor of a big budget. However, there can be moments where CGI can be used as an extreme or OTT, which I believe happens in Lord of the Rings quite a lot, which can be used as evidence.

I also found that different types of fantasy films, including my focus films, fall under different fantasy categories. It places Lord of the Rings’ in the “High Fantasy” band and Harry Potter and Narnia in the “Contemporary Fantasy” band. So I have explored how my fantasy films have appealed towards different target audiences. Including the work on the Genre theory (from Genre and Hollywood by Steve Neale) the fantasy genre can be seen as a hybrid genre and another term I learnt whilst on the journey was ‘verisimilitude’, this applies to the props to make them seem believeable.

Notes to make in presentation

Harry Potter: Teen audience – elements of Action, Romance, High School

Lord of the Rings: Male blockbuster audience- elements of Action, War

Narnia: Child/Family audience- elements of Action and Child road style movie

This route showed me that fantasy films appeal to a wide audience, which makes them very popular within the film industry and therefore the fantasy genre can hold many expectations and pressures.