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.
