film opening ideas

Idea 1:  A prostitute is alone on a street, and gets taken, the scene flashes back and forth from a police investigation meeting.  The flashes would get faster to build up tension towards the prostitute being taken.

 Genre: Crime

Certificate: 15

Idea 2: Starts off with a family filming having a good time in a park. The father firstly films his daughter, and moves on to film someone else, he then moves back to film the daughter again, and she’s gone.  Ten years later we see the daughter, and she is still capture.

Genre: Thriller/crime

Certificate: 15

Preliminary task

Here is our new video with the shot, reverse shot and the 180 degrees technique.

Preliminary task evaluation

Since the beginning of the sixth form year, we have been working on our Preliminary task. I had teamed up with Grace Robinson, Katie Parkinson and Shannon Sutton. Our aim was to make a short film, only about 15 second long, and to use the 180 degrees rule, shot reverse shot and the match on action technique.

Our first draft was when we filmed a teacher and parent evening. This consisted of all three techniques and rules, however it was too long, and we found it difficult to cut down to a maximum of 20 seconds. My role in this film was controlling the camera. This was important because I had to keep the camera still and time all the shots just right. especially for the match on action technique. Yet this wasn’t a big problem if I wasn’t, because it could've always been edited. Even though we were successful with using all three techniques, we had a technical problem to upload all of the shots. We never found out what the problem was, which meant it couldn’t be solved and resulted to us filming again.

This lead to us planning our preliminary task all over again. This time we filmed in a forest and was hoping to have a thriller genre. I think that we got the setting just right for a thriller, but it could have been improved by adding some background sound. This would have built up tension .Once again; my role on this was controlling the camera. Here, I used a variety of shots such as close ups. Eventually, after finishing filming and uploading the film, we took a while editing. This was the easy bit once you knew what to do. However we had problems uploading the video to Blogger. Turns out it had to have some sort of different setting.

The name of our film opening

We began our name title search by doing research on films with the same genre, and looking at their titles. We paticually liked the title "unknown". However this has already been used. So to find a title that is like this or has the same meaning, we looked on the google thesaurus to see if any words appealed to us. However, there wasnt anything that we was looking for.
Which means we carried on our research of origonal film names. There was other names that we liked such as "Taken", yet this still wasnt what we was looking for.
Our next thought was titles that was the name of the main character. In this case "daisy". We thought this was a bit too girly so we shortened the name title to "Daze". Here is where we thought we hit the jackpot. To make this our final decision, the group thought it would be best that we found the defanition of "Daze. This is what we found: "These verbs mean to dull or paralyze the mental capacities with or as if with a shock: dazed by the defeat; bemused by the senator's resignation; a boring performance that benumbed the audience; stunned by his sudden death; a display that stupefied all onlookers."... Just what we are looking for.
This name would be suitable because it links to how the main character it feeling... slightly paralyzed and mental... DAZED.

Preliminary task

Ideas from film openings that we will try to make manageable

Film: Kiss the Girl

]-·      Set in an ordinary house- just like the film

]-·      Creepy man in the cellar/attic (so the man can spy on the girls)

]-·      Set at night (or in the dark)

]-·      Instead of an injection drug, the man could spike a drink that is next to the girl. Hoping she would drink it during the night.

]-·      To use the still photo effect, we can use photo shop to build up an effect.

<!·      We can also use the photo shop to give effects on the titles.

Film: The butterfly effect

< · Film through slated blinds

<!· Set the opening scene in a dark office- with misted lights shining through the blinds (as if they were torches)

<!· Not showing the scared characters face

]- ·  Downloading copy write free tracks, with a fast and heavy beat to indicate a chase and the audience to sit at the edge of their seats.

]- · Like the film, the story can start at the end.

<!· Flashing to the next scene, we could film on a sunny day on a normal street. With a gentle character fixing a car. The sun and a responsible character indicates a perfect equilibrium… until she says “its too dangerous for him”

Research of fictional film genres and their conventions

There are many types of genres that can be used in fiction films. Such as :

• romance
• action
• adventure
• horror
• fantasy

A comedy romance genre is one of the most popular genres used in fictional films. They tend to be called "chick flicks" as they appeal mostly to girls. A film or plot with this particular genre tends to have love and humour above all other aspects. This genre causes a mixed reaction from the audience, from crying to laughter. A good example of this genre is "The proposal". A plot about a boss whose visa is running out and is going to be kicked out of the country, and the only hope to stay in that country to carry on the business, is so marry a local citizen. The films shows mixed emotions of romance, laughter and Different types of love.

Another popular genre used in fictional films is action movies. This genre can sometimes get confused with the adventure genre. This is because both tend to involve violence, new places and some sort of mission. Action films have some sort of villain and a good guy which finally come together and fight or have some sort of frenetic chase. These sort of films are traditionally aimed at male audiences, but recently female heroin films have caught a lot more or a mixed gender audience. A film called "Indiana Jones" is a fantastic example of an action film. However, it can also be classed as an Adventure film too. A film such as “Indiana Jones” has more than one film, which can help indicate the long travels and adventure the characters have. Another example is "Lord of the Rings", yet again it has more than one film, and as expected in an action film it includes mad chases and a lot of violence!

Thirdly is the Horror genre. They are unsettling, cause fear and the audience to sit at the edge of their seats. Horror films are often mixed with science fictional films and stories as the monster or villain is related to some sort or technology. In films with these genres, they tend to have creepy music and the camera is able to stay on a character to build up tension. An example of this genre is “Frankenstein”. It includes a science fictional character/monster which causes a fearsome and scared reaction from the audience.