Film Opening Outtakes

I made a outtakes video of some of our film opening bloopers. This was mostly for us to laugh at but it also helped me with my editing skills so that our actual opening can have the best editing possible to ensure it looks professional.
When looking at this footage, it meant that I was able to see where there were mistakes, for example, when my shadow was forecasting over the shot. This reduces the professionalism of the film so we have to reshoot a couple of shots.

Vlog 2 - Filming Day

Today was our filming day for our opening so I decided to vlog about our day and a couple of the problems that we faced.

Napoleon Dynamite Title Sequence

In lesson, we watched a couple film openings and the one that caught my eye most was the Napoleon Dynamite opening as it is solely focused on the title sequence and arrangement of the credits. I thought that it could be a good idea to use a similar concept to this in my own opening as it highlights the importance that its an opening rather than a two minute movie and we could use a variety of camera shots and angles to achieve a good result.
After thoroughly discussing our film opening idea and coming up with the plot that we did, we remembered this opening and the research we did on Art Of The Title and still thought that the title placement was essential so we decided, as seen on our storyboard, that our opening will have the credits and title sequence embedded onto our clips of the candid, polaroid photos as we thought the arrangement must not look random to ensure professionalism is achieved.

Casting Decisions

In our pitch I mentioned that one of our top picks to cast as the protagonist in our film opening was Zoe Stamoulis and after considering many different options, we decided that she was the best choice for the role. We consulted with Ms Foster about our decision and she agreed. The reason we chose her was because she is very innocent looking yet we envision her to look very good at being distressed. She was a GCSE drama student and now does drama lessons outside of school and we knew (from personal viewings of her performances) that she would be great at acting this role, making her the best choice.

Filming Dates

We decided that the best day to film our opening will be Sunday 23rd of October. This was because it is during the half term, ensuring our whole day is free if we needed it to be and the park won't be as busy as it would be if it was a Saturday.

10.30 - 11.00am: Cast and crew arrival near Lower School to walk to Hillys.

11.00 - 11.20am: Quick discussion of camera shots to that we plan to do. 

11.20am - 2.00pm: Filming all shots 

We planned to repeat this schedule if we run out of time, this will allow there to be good lighting continuity in the shots. If we run over our time schedule, we plan to continue filming on Friday 28th October.

I made sure to check the weather on Sunday and the weather is forecast to be exactly what we are hoping for; a cool crisp autumn morning with little chance of rain. There will be a good amounts of sun that we could capture through the trees for our establishing shots but we also planned that if that doesn't work out and there is a cloud cover, then we could also use this at our advantage as it will allow the scenes to be partially dark, giving some shots an ominous feel, which is what we are aiming for.

Storyboard For Film Opening

We decided that it was essential to draw a storyboard for our two minute film opening so that we knew how long all the shots would be and to see if it would add up to +-10 seconds of two minutes. We took a picture of each shot, composed them and edited in the ambient and diegetic sounds that we wanted to use in our real opening. On the video of our storyboard, we were able to get an idea of exactly how long the shots would last for. We had a couple times when we over/under estimated some of the shot lengths so to resolve that we changed it so the audience would not get bored of lengthy shots.
I think we could've improved it by adding zip and footstep sounds so we could get a real idea for the sound use but it was still very beneficial for us to do because now we have a clear plan of everything we want to do and can now move on to filming.

 

Knife Research

For our film opening, we need a knife to put in our box and to make sure the knife looks just right, we went through quite a long selection process to choose which one looked best. We had a choice from 4 different knives of different shapes and sizes.

Knives 1, 2 and 3 (descending order)

Knife 4

Knife 3

In the selection process, we asked six different people what knife would look best in the context of our plot. We got three votes for number 1, two for number 4 and one for number 2. These results significantly influenced our decision but we had to take into consideration which knife would fit into our selected box. The favourite knife (number 1) was perfect but unfortunately was too large to fit comfortably in the box so we had to compromise and choose knife number 4 which was the second most favoured. We ran into a problem after the fourth knife was selected as we found it had the brand written on it, though we quickly worked around this issue as we discovered the other side was clear of this writing so that side will be shown in the film opening to ensure it looks professional.

Vlog 1 - Sound

Title Sequence Research

Due to our piece being a two minute film opening, it is essential to include a film title and film credentials. As presented in our pitch, we decided to really focus in on the placement of our title and credits and to ensure our film opening is as professional as possible. To research this, I used a website called 'Art of the Title' where I found five different title sequences from TV shows and films that I really liked and that I thought could possibly inspire our title arrangement.

Trapped
I liked this title sequence because the placement of the credits were obviously thoroughly thought out and placed in very specific places, like we want ours to be.
I thought that this could inspire our film opening because while watching the clip, it provoked the feeling of isolation and abandonment whilst also being quite sinister, which is what our film opening is supposed to be like so we could inspire ours on this to ensure it looks professional and good quality.

Olive Kitteridge

This title sequence was another one that I liked because the establishing shots use pathetic fallacy to possibly foreshadow the protagonists feeling which I feel we could use in our sequence by filming whilst it's raining to convey the feeling of isolation and panic in our heroine.
The non-diegetic music that plays in the background of the opening really entices the audience as it's slow and just simply a piano and violin which are instruments that are used in music to create the effect of sadness and/or isolation which we could use in our film opening to create intensity of emotion from our protagonist.

Jessica Jones

I found this title sequence really appealing as throughout it, the characters faces aren't visible, provoking the audience to become intrigued by their mysteriousness. It also means that nothing is revealed about the characters and gets the audience to watch onwards. This inspired me because we could use this by not showing the whole of the protagonists face, maybe just the eyes, to show mystery and conjure the viewer to think about why this choice may have been made, intriguing them into watching more.

Gone Girl

I really liked the title sequence from Gone Girl because the lighting throughout is very dark which portrays a sad, possibly sinister tone. Also, the placement of the titles is very simple but effective which inspired me because in our film opening, we could just insert the titles in simple places so it's not too technical but is still very effective and eye catching.

Veronika Decides To Die

I was really inspired by this title sequence. They placed the credits very selectively and it was very effective. Also, the music selected to accompany the dialogue was very slow and calm but it created the effect of intensity of emotion; really gripping the audience to listen carefully to what she's saying, intriguing them to continue watching.

Box Research

For our film opening, it is essential that we have a box to contain the photographs, letters and knife for our protagonist to dig up under the tree. As this is a key part of our plot, we thought that its very important to spend a lot of time deciding which box. In choosing which box to use, we had to main objectives that the box must meet: to look aesthetically right for the role and to be large enough to fit a knife in. These are the boxes we looked at:

1.

  

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

After extensively looking at each box and weighing out the pros and cons of each, we finally decided to use box number 5. This is because it matches both our objectives. Its aesthetically right as it looks like a box that a young child would own and put all of the evidence in. We, also, measured it to be 30cmX20cm so it will easily fit the chosen knife in.
It was difficult to choose a box because it we liked them all but number 2 and 6 were too childish and we didn't like the patterns on them. Number 3 didn't look like a box that a young child would own and it clearly had "the twilight saga" written on it, so it was obvious that this could not be used. Boxes 1 and 4 were too small to fit the knife in so we couldn't use them.

Location Research

In our pitch, we thought of possibly using one of two locations; Hilly Fields or Trent Park. I visited both parks over the course of the weekend and took a couple of photos at each location of possible places.

At Trent Park

At Hilly Fields

At Hilly Fields

After carefully analysing each location, as a group we decided that we liked the idea of it being located inside the forest as the first and third pictures demonstrate. Once we decided upon the setting, we planned what location to film at. We chose Hilly Fields because it was easier to access than Trent Park and our favourite location picture was the third one because it had a lot of open space for our protagonist to run about in, after the police find her.

Storyboarding For The Prelim

Prior to filming our Prelim, we made a storyboard to plan out the different shots and angles we would like to use. Before the filming day, we were able to organise what shots we needed to take, how long the shots would be filmed for and what camera movements we could use so that we didn't waste essential filming and editing time on procrastinating because we didn't know what we were doing.
Making a storyboard, also, meant that we could see what shots we were taking and if we needed two shots in the same position, we could film them at the same time instead of filming in a chronological order and having the shots be slightly different in angle.
In this exercise, the storyboard helped us to plan where we were going to use the techniques 'match-on-action', '180 degree rule' and 'shot-reverse-shot' so that our prelim fulfilled the criteria given.

Film Opening Pitch

In lesson, we performed a thirty second pitch of our idea for the two minute film opening. Doing this pitch meant we could share our ideas with the class and get some feedback from them about what to improve. The pitch helped us develop the idea of having the box be planted by our heroine when she was a child and that the information (photos and letters), in the box, was evidence to help someone be relieved off a criminal sentence.

Having other peoples input meant that we could add more ideas into our opening to make it more exciting so if it was made into a real movie, people would actually want to watch it.

Our next move is to determine who we want to act in the opening and where it will be set. We are conflicted over where we want to shoot, either Hilly Fields or Trent Park and we need to clarify exactly what genre of our film opening is.

MAC 5 - Prelim

For our Prelim, we decided to use lyrics from the Bohemian Rhapsody because we found it difficult to think of something to say, this helped us develop the idea that, in our two minute film opening, we need to spend more time on dialogue choice so that the audience is more gripped to the film.
The Prelim helped us improve our understanding of continuity and we tried our hardest to keep hand and chair placement the same so it looked realistic.
Reflecting on it, we could have definitely improved our Prelim as at approximately 0:04; you can hear the sound of River zooming in, which could suggest that we were quite careless about the verisimilitude.
I kept smiling and looking away from the camera which made it seem quite unprofessional and I have learnt that when filming, our facial expressions must be serious and we have to keep eye contact with the person being spoken too to ensure realism is achieved.