Evaluation Of "Queen Khan" Opening

THE BRIEF


The brief I was working towards was as follows "You have been approached by Film 4 to make a new British Social Realist film aimed at British 16-24 year old."


We chose the title "Queen Khan" because it would instantly attract our target audience because of it's relation to the boxer Amir Khan who's nickname is "King Khan" which also lets the audience connote aspects of boxing. We also felt this title worked well because it consisted of the main characters name while also being traditional to British Social Films because it was short like titles such as "Trainspotting" and "Harry Brown".

In addition to the meaning of the title we also chose the title after getting feedback from our target audience who preferred that title over our other working title "The Girl Boxer" which we considered using because of it has connections to the true story of Ambreen Sadiq which was inspiration for our film.


Our opening sequence opened the character of Noor Khan preparing herself to face off against a rival boxer for a chance at an ABA fight. We decided to not use the stylised approach of the opening occurring in reverse order because although interesting and engaging it didn't give the audience enough time to see Hashaem and hear him speak to Noor. That opening gave little time for the two characters to engage and show how much of an importance Hashaem is where as the opening we did use gave him a larger presence in the opening.

Our opening has a non-linear narrative with scenes occuring after the majority of the film because we wanted to get our audience asking questions about how the characters have ended up where they are,what's the importance of this fight, what is the relationship between to the characters. The non-linear was useful because with the addition of the editing style it gave the feeling of how Noor and Hashaem were in their mind sets, with more erratic jump cuts used with Noor while Hashaem had close ups and long shots to show his focus and intensity.

My opening explored themes of British Social Realist films by immediately making the theme of aspiration present with the Muhammed Ali quote being played over the character Noor Khan training, the thheme of dysfunctional families was also put into play with the dialogue exchange between Noor and Hashaem before she gets into the ring; during this exchange it should also be noted that to conform to British Social Realist films the characters use Urdu phrases to add realism.