The final film posters have been created. Using elements of our Mise En Scene and costume, we produced high quality posters in order to promote our movie and develop our marketing campaign further. In contrast to the black and white effects used in the production, the posters are bold and striking, not monochrome as you would expect. Bright colours are used such as red to attract the attention of the target audience. The reason behind using highly saturated posters it to contrast with the darker atmosphere of the movie itself, therefore intriguing the audience, convincing them to watch the film.
To ensure our poster had a professional look, we checked we made no spelling or grammar errors on the names and titles. We used the software, Photoshop, to create our posters and used tools such as the lasso tool and affects to make sure our poster was high quality and advanced. We want our posters to be displayed in a variety of areas such as billboards, bus stops and across cinema.
As a part of our marketing campaign, we needed images to use for posters and our future website which we will construct alongside our opening sequence. Therefore, we took some photos with a variety of facial expressions and character position as well as some images of props to help us create our marketing features.
As the filming finished, we decided that interviews with cast and crew members would have been an important method to promote and advertise A Dame With A Clue. As explained in the research, it is a clever way to promote a film when asking members of the cast and crew questions, as it can draw audiences in. Below we have filmed two interviews:
Alongside our filming and editing process, we need to think about our film becoming a success with methods of marketing. Since our film is low budget, we need to convince and persuade many people so see our movie. Alongside posters and other ways to advertise, we decided to include a website to give our movie a professional appearance as well as a modern twist since we are making our marketing method unique to how Film Noir is usually promoted. A website will widen our target audience internationally and more people will be able to hear about our film. The link to our website is: http://adamewithaclue.wix.com/adwac As well as having a website, there are other methods we have used within the website to promote our film. To encourage Film Noir fans, we have released short clips and previews of voiceovers and music to persuade users to watch the movie. It also builds up suspense and excitement to those who wish to see our film. The research below further develops our methods of marketing.
We presented our feedback in the emaze below based on our first draft of the Film Noir opening sequence. We will use this feedback to develop our opening further as we have taken on criticism to make our production better.
In response to our first draft, our teachers gave us feedback on what to improve on to perfect our opening sequence. We received good points as well as criticism to take onboard.
Our first draft is now complete for A Dame with a Clue opening sequence. In order to be given feedback based on the movie opening, the first draft has been uploaded for everybody to see and share opinions on.
Dialogue is majorly important during an opening sequence, since it reveals many elements such as the narrative. The exterior shots includes dialogue between the two main characters. The Femme Fatale meets the detective, therefore dialogue is necessary and we have put together a script in which both main characters will follow. Since our production heavily revolves around binary opposites of male and females, the majority of Lana's lines are persistent yet softly spoken. However, the detectives speech remains rough and lots of slang is used to emphasis his casual personality.
Both pages of the script are shown above. All necessary script requirements are included such as stage directions, speech and use of props.
Exterior Dutch tilt/pan shot of building - exterior building shot which is a traditional Film Noir convention Close up shot of lamp post - zoom out then stop at medium shot of Lana's back to the camera - walks towards lamp post Wide angle shot of Lana Lombard under lamp post - looking suspicious Medium close up of Lana opening the office address note Behind the shoulder shot of Lana opening the office address note Wide angle shot - Lana walking towards the gate of the supposedly office building Car interior window shot - inside of car point of view as if someone is watching Lana (standing under lamp post) from inside Close up/level angle - Lana's footsteps - exterior - going to the office Still shot - Lana walking in to frame - walking in an alleyway with back towards the camera
Interior Tracking shot - Lombard walking in hallway to detective's office - voiceover Blocking shot - blinds (Film Noir convention) - interior - office - introduction to Reynolds, drinking, working on desk Close up/level angle/over the shoulder - match on action - Detective Reynolds name on the door - Lana knocking on the door outside of office Medium angle - match on action - of Lana coming into the office Shot reverse shot - conversation between Femme Fatale and Detective about the case Close up/over the shoulder shot - Reynolds opening the note/clue that Lombard gives - Lombard leaves Level angle shot of Reynolds on the phone asking someone what they know about Lombard Level angle shot of femme fatale walking out of the room Mise en scene close ups to portray 1940s era e.g. old fashioned telephone, typewriter, decanter, costume (putting down gloves), items on detective's desk
Today's focus was providing ourselves with a shooting schedule which we will be completing throughout the week. Having a schedule to hand allows us to make the most of our filming abilities. We will have a clear vision and representation of what we are trying to film and this will make sure everybody is in required frames and important conventions are included.
The second half of our filming will be the office scene which is located in a school office. To ensure we remained safe, we researched the location and stated some of the precautions in case any incidents took place.
This risk assessment includes the risks that we face and what should happen if we become involved with a risk. Our nearest A + E location is also included as well a first aider on sight. This was further approved by our media teacher.
Here below is our location information and risk assessment which ensures we are safe around any possible hazards. Our risk assessment was then signed by our teacher to show we had filled it out appropriately.
Using this allows us to control our filming and our location and the nearest hospital at this location in case of an emergency with anybody on set.
We are now beginning the filming phase of our production. Our first filming location will take place in Brentwood. We will film all of our shots tonight outside, making them exterior. They will be shots of myself as the female character. Elona and Angel will be filming the shots from a variety of angles and having two people film gives us the advantage of filming a variety of shots at the same time. We are filming, however, on an estate where people live and we don't want to get in the way of resident's lifestyle or annoy them whilst filming. To avoid these issues, we have been provided with a permission to film letter which covers us to film due to educational purposes. If there are many misunderstandings, we can present them with this letter to avoid any problems.
As part of final preparation of editing, we have decided the order in which are titles will appear on-screen. We took into consideration the way titles were displayed in other Film Noir motion pictures. We used elements of classic Film Noir titles such as using several names together on-screen and modern opening sequences of individual names appearing and combined the both together. This allowed us to display our titles in a modern yet conventional way to give the Film Noir a modern twist:
As we are approaching the filming phase of our opening sequence, as a method of inspiration we decided to use another Film Noir to perfect and correct the order of shots within our opening. This research has given us methods and ideas for our shots and the order of shots. We chose "The Maltese Falcon" to analyse and annotate shots and this allowed us to make brief notes based on the angles, shot types and order.
It is vital to ensure that we have a target market for our movie and an idea of who we are creating the film for and how to make it pleasurable for our chosen audience. If we do not succeed in this part of the movie making criteria, we may not include important features that are needed to appeal to an audience and this will disinterest people in coming to watch our production. This will eventually make it unsuccessful on the big screen, and we wont be able to achieve our main ambition on reintroducing the Film Noir Genre.
Today, we produced some research based on institution and how this portrays the type of films they are distributing. Budget is also an important factor to think about which has been incorporated into our research. Whoever distributes our film, it is important to consider the factors stated above as if we don't use a correct distributor, we won't be able to afford aspects of the film since it is low budget and we may even be attracting the wrong target audience.
We plan on releasing our film in January, since this is the time when academy award films will be released. This will then increase the popularity and quality of our movie.
It is always vital to have a storyboard during the making of a opening sequence to resemble the genre as well as having a plan on shots. Today's planning phase involved drawing and crafting the types of shots and what will occur in them on paper. We then made a montage of all the images with a voice-over explaining what will happen in each shot.
Some of the most important shots included in our opening will include:
Today's lesson topic was discussing some of the codes and conventions of Film Noir. Using some inspiration from the BBC Documentary "The Rules of Film Noir", we produced some research on what to include in our opening sequence to display the genre clearly.
The mood-boards created during the researching process display some of the most important aspects of Film Noir. These include costume, hair, make-up and setting.
Classically, Film Noir always features a certain type of music. The slow, jazz style music is a major convention to the genre. Our musical research is expanded further below.
Iconography and Mise En Scene is very important in Film Noir since there is lots of symbolism we need to include to make it look like the on screen appearance is set in olden times. Some of these shots require important props which have been analysed by us below.
A key feature of the research phase is analysing the representation in Film Noir. Film Noir is filled with representation in male and female figures. The research carried out here involves the portrayal of men and women in Film Noir as well as some of the previous actors and actresses traditionally starring in this genre.
We are finally carrying out our initial ideas and we have managed to decide on the pitch we like the best for our final piece of coursework. This was also my individual pitch which as a whole, the group decided on. We are now spending the next couple of weeks planning, constructing and evaluating our opening sequence based around the following pitch. Most of my ideas from the individual pitched remained the same but there were some minor tweaks to the location and narrative. The title of our production is "A Dame with a Clue" and the title is relevant to the narrative since the female character goes to the detective over a framed murder.
Another common mistake made by media studies students previously is how the titles appear during an opening sequence. Depending on the genre, titles will appear differently. These differences can range from the order of names, font family and style or even text colour. I have analysed the opening titles of blockbuster horror movie "A Nightmare On Elm Street" and the titles are portrayed in a particular way that symbolizes the genre clearly. Such as having contrasting colours from background to text and blood red titles on some occasions. Carrying out this research will aid me with my construction and planning stages of the coursework since I will ensure that the titles are entered correctly.
In order to help us succeed in our coursework, we was looking through past AS movie openings to ensure we had some inspirations and ideas. Using the marking criteria, I have evaluated some previous AS movie openings based on their strengths and weaknesses. We can then further use this as guidance to ensure we use the strengths as inspiration and avoid the weaknesses. I have chosen three movie openings in particular to evaluate. Inner Evil
Judging by the iconography of blood, stalking and music, we can clearly see that the convention is a thriller. There has been appropriate material used throughout the sequence. The Mise En Scene was heavily supported by the iconography. There are lots of conventions of a thriller which I really enjoy about this opening. For instance, the face covered with blood in the beginning was really effective with the makeup. It didn't seem amateur or unprofessional like using fake blood. The target audience I would presume is to older teens and adults since thriller's don't tend to be aimed at younger viewers. Titles are also presented interestingly by having them fade onto the screen. It is very similar to the opening sequence of "Gone Girl", a thriller movie. The institutions are displayed at the correct times which is a good, but there are some flaws in this part of the criteria. The use of the word 'starring' is incorrect since this is only used in television production. As well as this, the title is displayed at the end of the sequence which appears to be more like a trailer rather than a movie opening. Apart from these minor flaws, the titles appeared very clear and interesting. Sound was mostly non-diegetic, so it would have been better to use some non diegetic noise rather than purely relying on one melody. However, the song was very effective as it was not chart topping or known. It was atonal which allowed it to build suspense and intensity for viewers which I found interesting. The editing was excellent, the faded filter really set the scene of the production as it wasn't bright and colorful. This aspect also supported the Mise En Scene. Some scenes however, the camera wasn't very controlled and it had the tendency to shake about when doing tracking shots. The tracking shot was the only interesting angle used in the sequence. In my opinion, a wider variety of shots would have made it better. Finally, I particularly liked the transition used between the girl having her throat slit with the key and her standing on her porch. It gave the impression that she was having a vision as the transition flashed brightly when changing scenes which I found intriguing.
Mark Out of 60: 51 Blitz
This is another thriller from the G321 AS opening sequence category that I thoroughly enjoyed. The sound in this clip is particularly effective and interestingly used as there is a combination of diegetic and non-diegetic sound. You can distinctly hear the prime minister speaking on a war basis in the background and it has been edited in this specific way to support other sound effects in the background such as the air raid signals and bombing. The panning of the camera around the bunker is also very high quality, the camera doesn't shake at all and high quality equipment was clearly used here to see in the darkness and to fully focus on the torchlight. The layout of the room presented at the beginning of the opening sequence really supported the Mise En Scene, a small enclosed spaced with minimum lighting represents a nuclear bunker. There are also war posters and children's toys which show that people are perhaps trapped in the bunker. The camera remains consistently focused throughout each shot which makes it a much higher quality. To be totally honest, there isn't much I would improve on this project. Maybe including some more interesting shot styles like tracking, match on action etc. The titles are spot on to when they are suppose to appear on screen. I couldn't see a flaw in this aspect of the sequence. Mark Out of 60: 59 The Edge
The opening itself is very fast pacing, which would lead me to believe that this is a huge action convention. The opening sequence as a whole appeared very professional with high quality filming, excellent incorporation of titles within the Mise En Scene such as when the men in suits are coming up the stairs and the use of smooth transitions which were edited in. The use of adults in the sequence makes it unique since the majority of examiners will watch teenagers in most of the opening scenes. This opening however uses two adults and a teenager escaping which gives a variety in acting. Finally, the location was very suitable for the filming since the framing was very appropriate for the scene, there were no disturbances of people or weather as the car park was virtually empty. I felt as if however, there could have been more diegetic sound used since the soundtrack dominated most of the sequence. Perhaps using Foley for the roller-skates across the car park and perhaps some speech would have been suitable for the shouting when he was escaping. This would have balanced the sound use and therefore accessing high marks.
Most of the negative feedback on the prelim tasks we watched was sound. We discovered how lots of the background noise was overpowering over elements in each sequence. Therefore, we was educated and spent a lesson where we learnt about the presentation of sound in professional movies to assist us on sounding techniques in our future coursework.
I have already discussed the term Foley in a previous blog post but it is basically rerecorded diegetic noise is used to emphasize a background noise. It is commonly used for footsteps, text message tones or doors opening.
Synchronous Sounds are types of sound matched to the object or item displayed. For instance, clapping or cheering would show a large group of people.
Asynchronous Sounds however is the opposite of synchronous. This when a particular noise cannot be heard but the object is not shown onscreen. For instance, a siren could be heard in a particular scene when a character finds a dead body. You can't actually see the ambulance or police car but the body is a symbol of danger.
Sound Bridge noise will link scenes together. An example of this would be a school bell ringing in class gradually changing and entering a part of a song for a musical sequence. The school bell will be on a closeup in the classroom then the scene will change to a typical musical scene. Perhaps a school dance or stage production.
Ambient Sound tends to be used to confirm the location of a scene and is very supportive for the Mise En Scene. For instance, if a scene took place by a river, the sound would focus on the gushing tides, babbling brooks and perhaps feint chatters of nature to set the riverside scene.
Voice-over usually involve a narrator explaining or sharing a story to reveal information about a particular circumstance. You are most likely to find most voice-overs in documentaries or children's films. This sound method heavily reveals the movie plot.
Types of Music Used in Film:
Symphonic Music is performed by a large orchestra
Melodies are distinctive tunes
Atonal Sound has no established key and are commonly used in horror films to add suspense and intensity
Rhythmic Sound are sounds in percussion used to form a beat
Dissonant Music doesn't contain conventional harmonies
After the completion of the opening sequence, all of the media classes and teachers spent the commencing lessons watching each others preliminary tasks in order to retrieve feedback and criticism on the scene we created. Teachers also had influence and involvement in feedback that was given to us as a group.
Peer Evaluation
Generally, the feedback received over the genre convention was good. Most people stated that we was displaying a musical clearly and that it was easily understandable. This was due to some of the iconography we used such as the lip syncing, natural teacher-student conflict and the stage production at the end of the opening sequence.
We included all of the shots in our production so we received positive feedback in regards to the shots included. Many of the viewers complimented our tracking and high angle shots as they took a unique approach to some of the regular shots used in this content.
There were mixed opinions on our camera, editing and Mise En Scene work. Some of the viewers explained in the feedback forms that the content displayed on the camera was good. Some people liked the setting such as the running in the corridors, the props used for the end shot like the plants and the black headband and the spotlight used on the characters to highlight their importance. So overall, our Mise En Scene was quite successful. Camera work was mainly complimented on. However, we did receive some negative feedback on some scenes when the camera lens was unfocused and how it was shaking in some of the shots. Although this was due to the tripod not catering very well for the camera, not many of the viewers realized this. Editing was one of the main criticisms in our production. Many of the audience stated that we should have spent more time on slowing the pace down on the songs and including more effects and transitions. Some of the positive reviews we received though was based on the Foley we used for footsteps and the door opening in the match on action shot.
Most of our criticism was received on the script and the story line. Several viewers stated that they couldn't quite understand the concept or the plot of our production. There was also negative feedback on the fact that the characters didn't say anything. There was so set script that we included on our production since the opening sequence just involved lip syncing, During the planning phase, we agreed that we shouldn't use dialogue in order to portray the genre convention clearer. However, it was proven that this was successful therefore it is something to improve in our future coursework.
Overall, most of the comments received on our production was positive. Most viewers stated that it wasn't too bad. There were mixed reviews on the humor of the content. Some people found it funny and enjoyable whereas others despised it and couldn't grasp the concept of the sequence. We scored on average 35/50, which is the equivalent to a B grade at A level. We agreed as a group that this was a good score for our preliminary task, however, some parts of the process prevented us from accessing higher marks which we will improve on in the future.
Teacher Evaluation
As a whole, the teachers gave us mostly positive feedback. One of the strengths we received that was positive was the tracking and high angle shots used in the production. They liked the way that the students were hiding behind the wall from the teacher who couldn't see them . They further explained how the high angle shot clearly depicted this. They also complimented the Foley used throughout the sequence and they enjoyed how it was cleverly inserted for the establishment shot. Finally, they found that as well as it being a musical, there was lots of humor associated with the genre. For instance, the guitar scene with Luke and D. Amato's confused look when the pupils vanish from detention. Overall, teachers concluded that it was a funny yet interesting approach taken on an opening sequence.
However, not all of the feedback was positive. Some criticism was given on the camera quality and that it should have been less fidgety and more focused for improvements on our opening. We was also told that we mostly relied on non diegetic sound on the soundtrack and that we should have used more natural background noises. However, it was quite difficult to incorporate diegetic sound in our production as the wind was too noisy to use and we needed songs in our project to convey that it was a musical. Finally, we was told that we should have included a final miming sequence in the end to improve the script and story line of our opening. However, due to the amount of time given, we was unable to include this in our project. This is a further improvement for our future foundation coursework.
Over the course of these few weeks, I have expanded my knowledge on film openings by finally carrying out a practical task on creating my own ones in groups. We have learnt many key factors to producing a film opening and I can now evaluate my work as well as what feedback I have received from teachers and other members of my media class.
Self Evaluation
Who did you work with and how did you manage the task between you? My group consisted of Myself, Elona Woodford, Luke Weldon and Jack Bezant. Since me and Elona had more musical influences that we have seen before in movies, we decided on the majority of the plot and sequences. The remainder of the group contributed to soundtrack ideas such as using "Queen" as our main musical number structure. We then gave each team member a specific job in the creation of the opening sequence. Elona and Jack were our designated actors, I was on filming duty and Luke had taken charge in the editing department. However, since we had a large amount of editing to do, we slightly split some of the jobs on editing to save time. Luke mainly focused on "Foley" for some of the sounds, Elona focused on trimming down the songs needed for the production and I ordered all of the recorded footage as well as creating bloopers at the end of the sequence. We all contributed equally in the planning stages but unfortunately we lost our storyboard footage which had to be rerecorded after our filming phase.
How did you plan your sequence? What processes did you use? We began by choosing the genre musical. We decided to follow the generalized plot of a typical musical involving a school setting as well as a classroom and a performance stage. We began to debate on how to showcase the production. We concluded that two friendly characters are trying to get to their play on time whilst avoiding the teachers. Since most of the setting used natural light, there wasn't much involvement with specific processes however during the closing scene, we used a spotlight on the two characters to show that they were starring in the play and that they arrived on time. Whilst planning the sequence, we was heavily inspired by High School Musical and We Will Rock You.
What theorists do you think you could apply to your tasks? I feel as if that I could apply both Strauss and Aristotle to our opening sequence. Since Strauss believed in binary opposites, there is a sense of good and evil in the opening. The students being the cheerful characters who took part in miming who needed to get to their play whereas the teacher was the villain making them stay in detention so that they miss their play. His attempt to chase after them as well shows that he is trying to prevent their happiness. Aristotle however believed that movie plots follow the same pattern by having a beginning, middle and an end. In this case, the beginning shows the students escaping detention. The middle depicts the characters avoiding teachers whilst running to the play. Finally, the ending would show that they arrived and are about to perform.
What factors did you have to take into account when planning, shooting and editing? One of the main factors we had to consider was the deadlines and times we had to produce each part of the prelim task. We only had a week for each phase which means that lots of hard work and dedication was needed to complete the task. This was why we split the tasks within our groups to ease off pressure to complete the project. Another issue we approached was the location for our filming. We had to make sure we kept the same location for our classrooms as the final cut would have looked odd if we used different classroom for each of the shots. Luckily, all of our necessary locations were always available for shooting in. Finally, costume was our biggest issue as a couple of the actors in our sequence didn't wear the same clothes on shooting days. Such as the teacher changing colour shirts in one of the shots. This was an issue because once the editing was completed, the final cut looked inconsistent. I must ensure I control this factor better in the future.
How successful was your sequence? Although the task and genre was quite difficult, I felt that it worked reasonably well. This was because we remained quite religious to our storyboard and followed our shooting schedule so that we had structured lesson plans. Our only fault was that due to our timings, we didn't have enough time to include all of the shots we needed therefore having to to change our story line slightly. Fortunately, this adapted to our shooting schedule successfully. Another problem we encountered during the sequence was that the camera didn't fit the tripod correctly therefore some of the footage wasn't as good a quality as we expected it. Especially the first shot which was really shaky. This may have prevented our opening being as successful as we hoped but it was a challenge to keep the camera skills. This is definitely something that must be improved for the future.
What have you learnt from completing the task? I was previously stating the costume incident with our production. As a group, we have learnt for our future coursework that costumes must be kept consistent in all of the shots as this may cause issues and confusion to viewers. We may even drop marks in our final task so we must control this factor. As well as this, even though we evenly distributed jobs within our group, on one occasion some of the group didn't arrive on a shooting day which put us behind schedule. This caused a bit of tension and pressure on the completion of the task however we did manage. This has taught us that we should be more organised and prepared. Bringing our sequence to life was a complicated process as there were lots of inspirations and ideas for soundtrack and script. Some of the ideas we couldn't quite agree on either which caused some complications in the group. This has taught us that we must have balanced ideas from each group member so that it is a pleasurable group working environment for everybody.
Looking ahead, how will this learning be significant when completing the rest of your foundation coursework? Learning about keeping a consistent use of outfits will increase our chances of getting higher marks as a group in our further foundation coursework which is an excellent learning curve for the future. As well as this, organisation is the best way to prevent stress and pressure on the group therefore I feel that in the future, we should prepare and organize ourselves in a more effective way to decrease the amount of stress our group had to meet deadlines. However, after the prelim task I have much more experience in working in a group environment which will heavily assist me in the future coursework. It also allowed me to work with people I don't usually work. This was on of the first times I had been in this situation but I now have more of an ability to communicate with fellow members in my group as I will be working with different people in my future coursework.
On 5th October, it was announced to us that we was about to be given our preliminary task on which we was all very excited about. Our media class, 12D was given the task title which was that we had to produce an opening sequence on a genre of our choice. There were three stages of production we went through. The Planning Phase, The Filming and Editing Phase & The Evaluation Stage. We were given a three week deadline to complete our project and each phase was to take a week each.
Our process of deciding what genre we wanted to base our opening on was complicated but we finally came to a conclusion on producing an opening sequence to a "Musical". Following this introductory is an E-Maze I produced in which displays all of the processes we went through to construct our opening scene. We were also given a minimum requirement of shots needed in our scene. These shots included:
Reflecting on my blog, I noticed that I didn't expand too much on some of the other narrative theorists besides Barthes. There are three other key theorists that I researched into and these include Tzvetan Todorov, Vladimir Propp, Aristotle & Claude Levi-Strauss.
Todorov believed that most movie scripts/storylines roughly follow the same direction. He explained that there are five specific stages in which the plot will follow which consist of: Equilibrium - This takes place during the opening sequence which normally displays a happy beginning in which everything is correct and in order. Setting will be revealed to us here. Disruption - It is revealed to us that the next part of the story is disturbing the happiness and the plot will swerve into another direction. Recognition of Disruption - Characters will begin to discover any existing problems, they may even become involved in the circumstance which will perhaps cause a commotion throughout the cast. Attempt to Repair Disruption - The forth stage of the story will consist of characters trying to recover from the issue in the plot and attempt to resolve and repair the problems caused. Reinstatement of Equilibrium - In conclusion, the movie will finish with the problem solved and everything will resume to the movies original state, peaceful and answered questions.
Propp's was a firm believer in the fact that certain types of characters are always used in movies. He concluded that in every narrative structure the characters as followed would appear: A villain that battles with the hero. The hero that is seeking something. The doner that sticks by the hero's side as is willing to prepare a hero physically or mentally. The dispatcher that will send the hero on his way. The false hero that will take credit for the hero's impacts made. The helper that assists the hero in some way. The princess which is awaiting him as an award or a source that needs protecting.
Strauss came up with an idea about movies involving binary opposites and how narrative structure revolved around their conflict issues. Some examples of this would include: The Old and the Young, The Black and the White, The Male and the Female & The Wealthy and the Poor.
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher who in the early studies of film noticed the narrative to begin with. He identified that all types of narrative include a Beginning, Middle and an End.
A key word I feel is very important to go towards our projects is known as 'Foley'. During the Pete Fraser talk, we viewed some opening sequences that didn't receive full potential. This was due to the dialogue being drowned out by the surrounding of natural sounds such as wind, rain or other natural noises. Therefore, Fraser suggested that it would be ideal to use Foley which involves rerecording/reproducing sound effects such as footsteps or door opening to make the sound more effective. The term is used a lot in the filming industry when the quality of a sound effect doesn't sound particularly good whilst filming compared to the rerecording.
On Friday 2nd October, we was lucky enough to receive a talk from a British Film Institute ambassador, Pete Fraser. He gave a presentation to all of us media study students based around film openings and how we can produce and create an excellent film opening sequence as our main project for the coursework.
The first part of the talk consisted of us watching various opening sequences of different genres on the main screen and thinking of what type of hints symbolise the genre. We also looked about the way actors and production related jobs are portrayed during the opening scene of movies. One of the opening scenes we was given was "Napoleon Dynamite", a teen comedy. We could tell by the bright colours, cheerful font and high school related meals and objects the genre we was given. The order of names during the first scene is also important to consider. For instance, the first name to appear on the screen was "Jon Heder". Pete Fraser explained that certain actors pay money towards what position they display in the opening scene, as well as there importance in the movie. Therefore Jon, in this particular sequence, is the central character. We watched a variety of other movie openings alongside this one which we then analysed as a group as to what genre each sequence is displaying. The other examples included "Catch Me if you Can" and "Dawn of the Dead".
We also watched a variety of other students film opening tasks and textually analysed their quality and how good they were presented. We watched a wide range of terrible, bad, good and excellent openings. We was given very helpful advice on what makes a good opening sequence and how we can create it in a high quality format.
Do not follow the common film opening route and create something unique. The most common opening features that are included are:
Saw Opening: Victim tied up in a shed.
Scream Style Sequence: Male hooded killer stalks a female character.
Se7en Opening Style: Character sticks knife into a polaroid photo.
Lock, Stock: Gangsters playing cards which breaks out into a fight.
Waking Up Scene: Cleaning teeth, brushing hair, leaving the house.
Flashback or Flash-forward: ...Two Weeks Later...
Don't make a common error stated below:
Making it look more like a trailer than a film opening.
Don't have an insufficient amount of titles.
Always consider sound and lighting.
Remember to use suitable actors and costumes during production.
Try not to squeeze a confusing story in just the opening.
Follow the five stages of planning an excellent opening sequence:
Step One: Take Stock - Where is the task? What's the assessment? What's the timeframe? What's the equipment?
Step Two: Set up a Blog - make sure to keep evidence of every task I complete.
Step Three: Build up Skills - skills on sound, editing and camerawork.
Step Four: Investigate - What do film openings actually look like? What does other student work look like? What do you need to know about titles? How are you going to do something that stands out?
Step Five: Brainstorm Ideas - Possible Scenarios for pitches/treatments. 25 word pitch. Mood Board treatment. Peer and teacher feedback. Realistic Expectations.
