Moodboard of Movie openings

Attached are a few images that are relevant to the theme of my film opening, which associate with some Ideas i have generated. For example, i want the opening to be very British, and i will be filming in a resonably cold season, as this automatically makes the opening more eerie, as the season isnt as happy and bright as if it were to be based in sumertime. I wanted to have an almost split opening, i want to included lots of fast, weird angleing shots of different possessions and ite,s, in rubble, and between leaves and twigs ect, as it its a scene and these have beeen left there. Then i wanted shots to change around abit, and more be reavealed ot the audience, possible a body? ..or hint that there has been some sort of weird activty around this location, which will be set in a countryside, in britain, casue if this were to be made into a full liength feature film, it would be an independent movie, and this is the sort of location a indepent movie owuld be based in.

As i am looking at thriller/drama as my genre i want the shots to be quite eerie and questioning for the audience. 

Then the shot may then change or something then happens, and its the girl going about her day to day activites, this will creating an emense ammount of questioning from the audinece and will have them gripped (hopefully!) Attached are some pictures which i think are relevant to my idea, the location in which i plan to film is a very typical british home, which will work well, as if i attempted to film in a location featured in many blockbuster moves, it would be very hard to portray and very poor quality, as resources used to film these movies aren't accessible. I have also aded pictures of possible prop ideas and similar locations to where i could film.

Conventions of a Film Opening

I have looked into what does and doesn't work well on a typical film opening, and conventions of a film opening, and i found this website particularly helpful and had all the information and examples i needed to understand how a good film opening works.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/14626722/Code-and-Conventions-of-Film-Openings

Looking at Film Openings

Dirty  Dancing

• Starts with credits over the top of a slow motion black and white video of couples dancing in the background, gives a classic look.
• Portrays Key theme of dance being a big part of the movie.
• Audio is very slow and chilled, sets the mood, fits well with visual.
• Credits finish cut to scene.
• Family driving to a holiday destination, key shots reveal body language.
• The main characters voice is over the top of the video, setting the scene.
• Family attitudes are portray, i.e.. that the daughter and farther are relatively close.

Elf

• Opening with cheerful christmas music, expressing the movies key theme of christmas.
• Introduction starts as an almost storybook being told be a key character, 'papa elf'.
• Clips are being shown that go along with the story, filling the audience in on the background history.
• The main character 'Buddy' is introduced.
• Effectively sets one of the main scenes, north pole.
• Credits are shown on opposite sides of the storybook alongside every new piece of info.                                                                                                                                                           

Stand by me

• A peaceful tune sets the scene, showing an old american landscape. 
• Camera shoots and zooms to a car with an older man sat inside, starts talking about his childhood.
• Upbeat songs kicks in and switches to the past when he was a child.
• The story continues from this clip, the start is effective as its sets the backing story and suits the children's attitudes to life, in the terms of music used, i.e.. youth is fun and up beat.   

Grease

• The opening opens with old fashioned cartoons and illustrations showing characters and credit.
• This express the time in which the movie was filmed.
• The credits finish and cut to the two main characters playing around on the beach, they look like a couple, so this reveals the main objective of the movie.
• They talk about summer, effective as it reveals the main characters and their background, and the events that happened leading to those event.

What elements do film openings have in common?

There are a very wide range of openings, from many different directors, and for many different type of genre of film. But there are some general things that film openings have in common, that either main characters are introduced, or that the history behind the movie, .i.e events in the past which have lead to the situation that that the movie is too reveal, if a whole subject is not revealed usually an event is occurring which captures the audiences attention and makes the audience continue watching the movie, which is particularly effective.

Main Purpose?

The main purpose of an opening is to draw in the audiences attentions to keep them intrigued and wanting to watch the movie, as the audiences attention needs to be grasped from the start, making the movie watchable and popular, and revealing something to the audience that makes the want to carry on watching, and also cliff hanger, or interesting subject.

Hollywood and Independent movies. What's the difference?

Hollywood Movies

Hollywood movies are classed as being mainstream movies, as are blockbuster movies, referring to the idea that they are ‘in the middle’ and entertain all over the world. Hollywood movies are usually associated with big named producers and the movies will be known names around the world before even hitting the big screen, which will happen for certain as, Hollywood movies have a very large budget for the making, producing, publishing and advertising of the movies, leading to them being able to be shown in cinema screenings all over the world.

A typical Hollywood movie?

A typical Hollywood movie, would be a movie like Toy Story 3 which is a very renown movie that was distributed all over the world in 2010, and was completed on the budget of $30 million, along with $20 million for advertising, and was created using 110 staff.
The hollywood industry are so well established unlike independent movie companies they can fully fund hr movies and projects themselves and have massive budgets for the making of their movies, usually due to previous successfully produced movies. Also another important feature and asset of the hollywood movie industry, is the fact that they help to fund and distribute movies produced from independent movie companies, meaning they can successfully be distributed and marketed, meaning that hollywood movie companies, normally one of the big 6, will also receive money from the profit of the independent movie they have helped fund. 

Independent Movies

Independent movies on the other hand, aren't as 'put out there' as some might say due to generally having a smaller budget in which the movie is made. In order to be considered independent, less than half of a film's financing should come from a major studio, as independent films are films produced outside of a major film studio, the term can also relate the art films, this does not make the movie bad in any way, some people prefer independent movies as they think they are much more creative and artistic referring to they way in which they are made. 

A typical Independent movie?

A typical independent movie would be one such as This is England, which was distributed in 2006, with a budget of £1,500,000, which is equivalent to $327,919 in dollars, which is great comparison compared to the budget of Toy Story. The cast of This is England was totaled in being less than 30 people involved in the making. 


But an important factor that must be taken note of is the way in which independent movies are distributed and funded, and this is because independent movie companies on there own would not exist if it was not for important funding from hollywood movies companies and they invest lot of money into independent movie company. 

Evaluation for Preliminary task

I think overall our full video sequence worked really well, all the continuity editing was okay, but the video was very basic as not many different shots were used; but one featured that could have been made more accurate was the timeing between shot cuts, as sometimes the switching of clips in the middle of the characters conversations was a little inaccurate. This is one important aspect when keeping to the rules of continuity editing and i must be aware of this when filming my coursework piece.

To make my video more exciting as well, as i could have had more activity going on within the scenes, or the characters could of had a more heated discussion, or something that would have grabbed the audiences attention, having this may have been harder to keep alongside with my continuity editing, but would have made the video more exciting for the audience to watch. I didn't want to include music or anything into the background as this was set to be a real life situation and i planned on keeping it as realistic as possible.

Preliminary Task For Media As

This is my preliminary task that i created with another person, as we worked in a pair, which i thought went really well, although we had to retake our footage numerous times. Our video had to be around 30 seconds long and it had to include someone coming into a room and sitting down, and then having a conversation with another person; and this us our result!

First ever Piece of Editing work.

This a video i feature in, which was videoed around our school, by someone in our group. With the footage we collect we used a program called Final Cut Express to edit the video clips into making this short clip, which intention was to promote the sixth form at our school.

So, What is Continuity Editing?

Continuity Editing consists of arranging clips that are part of a sequence of shots to suggest a progression of events, to create different scenarios and feelings. It also refers to the directions that the shots are taken, for example from the viewers perspective if many different angles and views were taken of one objective, it may be very confusing and unrealistic for the eye. So continuity editing is involved in editing the production so pieces work well and make sence to watch, in result the piece is smooth over the inherent discontinuity of the editing process and this is then easy for the audience to establish a coherence between shots without noticing.




Here is a helpful visual and audio video explanation of Continuity Editing, using clips from the film 'V for Vendetta' i have found from youtube.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xauSCz1mEk

My Media Production Blog

My name is Chloe, and i have recentley started my first year of A level Media, and in my progress i am keeping this blog to keep recordings, etc.