Our Film Time Line

This is a time line of our opening sequence. I decided to create a time line as it would allow me to compare our opening with an existing media product.

Media Trip

          *Lots of small things can add up and get you better marks.

 

What is the task: Titles and Openings

 

 

1. Up to 3 minutes long.

Planning = 20 marks

Construction = 60 marks

Evaluation = 20 marks

 

2. Time frame and equipment

 

*Build your skills

*Build your research

*Build your planning

*Give enough time to shoot and edit

*Keep evidence throughout the task

 

3. Blog

 

*Look at other people's blogs

*Evidence

*Trial and error aspects

-Sound

-Camera

-Editing

-Foley

 



1. What does a film opening actually look like?
2. What do you need to know about titles?

"The titles and openings of a film task"

                                                                                    IMPORTANT
*Genre
*Narrative (enigma) } People may choose a film because of its  genre. How do you
*Character establish the genre? What give the
*Atmosphere genre away?
*Setting

-Do not try to tell too much in the opening sequence
-What enigmas are being set up?
-Any character trates being set up?
-Atmosphere? Soundtrack?
-Are your actors convincing?

1. Start general
2. Home in on specifics
3. Make your research focussed and relevant

www.artofthetitle.com

Student Opening - The Edge

Target audience - Peers (us), main character is a teenager. Uses roller blades and fast action.

Titles are placed in an intresting form and people acntually take notice of them.

Parrallel Sound - represents what we see and feel.

Pace works really well. Slow at beginning. No use of diagetic sound. Sets/builds up pace for the rest of the film. Titles went away too quickly. Music fits genre. Titles look professional. Taregt audience mainly men, Tranisitions are clear. Considers the task that is set.

Student Opening - Reflection

C close up, good camera shots, panning shot
L natural lighting
A very convincing, adults, older
M natural make up
P phone, tea, police badge
S a house, convincing and realistic

T
O
P very slow paced

P parrallell sound
O on screen knock on the door
D
C
O
N non diegetic soundtrack
S didn't vary enough, mysterious

Notes:
More of a soap than a film e.g. TV drama.
Not enough enigma gives things away.
Genre needs to be more obvious.
Confusing narrative.
No titles, they were not used appropriatlety.
His black costume, her light costumes - good.
Good use of foley.
Use of a logo, more realistic.
Dialouge makes sense and is convincing.
Piano.
The cuts are good and in sync.
Protagonist and antagonist introduced.

Initial Pitch and Presentation

Final Voice Over Script

Voice Over


This is the voice over that we have written for the male character within our film. We want our opening sequence to be quite heart clenching and we want the voice over in particular to draw the audience in. After writing down many idea's about what this character could say which would be the most effective, we all came to an agreement that these idea's fitted best in relation to the action that takes place when they are watching the films opening. In the first few shots, we will be showing various angle's in our female character's room getting a text and then getting ready; doing her hair, makeup, jewellery etc. Whilst this is being shown we will have the voice over begin so that you can hear the male character in the background at most times, speaking about the love of his life and a loss of something (Evie). We want the audience to be taking note of what the male character is saying in the background as he's voice speaks over the soft music which, as it picks up, starts to come to an end and then picks up as the music becomes quieter again. When we did practise shot's and filming, we found that when we put the action together with the voice over, too much was going on so we are thinking removed some of the voice over so that the audience can focus on the action for a while rather what the character is saying. The action taking place will be able to be followed on from what the male character has been saying so the audience will be able to interpret for themselves what is going on.

We felt that the voice over will give the opening sequence the romantic mood and sad emotion that we want to potray within our opening and i also feel that it makes ti easier for the audience to interpret what is going on if there is a voice over to listen to as well as the action taking place. With too much of the voice over on whilst the action is being shown, the audience will get confused as they wont know what part of the opening to focus on which is why we are only using some parts of the script, not all of it.



KEY:

LINES BEING USED A

LINES NOT BEING USED A



They say its better to have loved and lost,

than never to have loved at all [PAUSE]

You were my first and my last love [PAUSE]

My only love.



The very first thing i think about when i wake up,

and the very last thing i think about before i go to sleep [SHORT PAUSE]

is you.



I lie awake at night, thinking [SHORT PAUSE]

Thinking about what could have been.

I couldnt imagine me, withought you

And my heart being only half full [PAUSE]



I'll never forget that very day we met, one of my favourite memories [SHORT PAUSE]

You looked at me, straight into my eyes [SHOT PAUSE]

my soul... right through me.



You gave me your everything, and i never said thank you for that [SHORT PAUSE]

I thought i might get one more chance [PAUSE]

And now i'll never have a chance.



You were beautiful [PAUSE] body, mind and soul.

[LAUGHS] what would you think of me now?



The very first moment i met you, i knew id have to have you.

But i never thought i'd have to lose you. [LAUGHS]

When you smiled [SHORT PAUSE] so innocent, so sweet.

The dimples in your cheeks, the way you fluttered your big blue eyes. [SHORT PAUSE]

You never ceized to amaze me.



I wish i could hold you forever, i wish i could hold you in my arms.

You really did teach me how to live [PAUSE]

But whats the point in living an empty life.

You brought meaning, to my life. [PAUSE]



I'm always reminicing out story, how could i forget our beautiful story? [LONG PAUSE]



And the rest is history.. [TITLE]

Planning Photo's

 

These are photo's from the planning stages of the consturction of our film. The first photograph shows Libbie researching for relateable images that reflected our thoughts and ideas for our film - these thoughts and ideas were going to be placed on to our mood board. She used search engines such as Google and Yahoo in order to find a variety of images and icons that would portray our ideas in a convienient and interesting way. We also hoped that this research would give us new ideas and inspiration. The second photo located on the top right of the page portrays another member of the group, Daniella, creating the mood board itself. Daniella volunteered herself to draw the mood board as she has an artistic side to her personality and enjoys drawing. The final image shows myself, Sydney, taking note of everything that we, as a group and as individuals, were doing and also what we planned to next lesson in order to make progress and she improvement within our overall work.

 

 

Synopsis Final

Synopsis Planning

Discussion of narrative relating to the soundtrack



Discussion of production

 

Above shows my planning and contribution towards my groups efforts. The first image shows our target audience and the social groups in which our opening is aiming to relate to. The second picture shows actual synopsis planning. I used a flow diagram to show how our opening would progess. The final picutre shows a mind map of themes that we could potentially incorperate into our opening.

Font Research For Titles

DVD Covers

Shot List

Story Board Final Piece

Catch Me If You Can Opening Analysis

Media Trip Notes

And The Rest Is History - Story Board Timeline

This is our initial idea for our story board. It clearly presents the idea's that we first thought about such as the home video's.

As the story board begins we can see that there is a shot showing a credit saying 'SLED productions presents'. This is one of the shots that we will be showing at the beginning of our film so this is one of the aspects that will remain the same whithin the next story board that we do for our final piece.

SLED productions stands for SYDNEY LIBBIE ELLIE DANIELLA. We feel that this is quite effective but we are not yet sure on weather to use this as this was going to be our production name. We have now thought of other ideas to use for this aspect of our film opening.

The next shot is another credit showing 'In association with County High Media' another shot that we will be using in our final story board.

For the rest of the story board, a lot of the idea's that we had about shots such as the artistic shot's we are no longer including as we felt that too much was going on within the first scene when we did practice shots.

When we included the voice over on top of the background music and all the different shots that were going on, it began to look more like a short film rather than an opening sequence; It looked more like we was trying to show shots that were significant throughout the rest of the film which is the opposite to what we were trying to achieve which was to create an opening which left the audience in enigma wondering where the two people in our opening sequence were going to go.

The shot that we see after the first set of credits in our story board, suggests that we were going to show blurred shots of people walking around a train station, buying tickets etc but we felt that if we did this too early on then the audience would know where the characters were heading and enigma wouldn't be able to be fulfilled effectively.

There is multiple aspects of this story board that we will be using in our final idea such as some of the animations.

We feel that through the animations we have created for our story board we can make an effective opening by drawing the audience in more using conventional film opening iconic animations portraying characters emotions and helping set the atmosphere of the opening.

The shot that show's sam's character crossing the road will be a similar shot to something we will use within our final piece as we feel that this is very effective that fact that he will have his hood up as he crosses the road. This will give the impression that he is in deep thought and isn't thinking about his health and safety when crossing the road although we will take full precaution when filming this shot.

Shots after this will be our action shots showing 'home video's. Something that we will not be using in our final opening sequence filming.

We decided against this as we felt that this was an aspect that could show that it looked more like a short film or a trailer rather than a film opening. (When we done our practice filming, it was established clearly that this wasnt going to work).

From 0:56 in the story board to 1:38, shots are shown in the story board that we will not be using as they are all related to home video's and the idea that the past tense is being shown.

From 2/3rds of the story board onwards, we will be using a lot of the idea's that we got from this story board to complete our final one.

When filming, we are hoping to portray the idea that time is passing as the two characters are getting ready.

We are going to do this through the use of props such as clocks and the idea that time is passing as the sunrise's which is shown within this story board.

At the end of this story board, the point in which the music begins to pick up and the audience can see that the two characters are pace walking towards one another, enigma is created which is why we feel that this will be a very effective shot to film and use.

At the end, where the two character's walk passed each other in the train station, the title will be shown much like it is on this story board but we will be writing it either on a black screen as a title on its own or we will give the impression that it has been embedded on the brick work of the wall that they are passing on.

We feel that this will be very effective in our final filming as it creates a lot of emotion and makes the audience build up enigma and tension as they begin to think that the two people/animations that have been advancing towards one another, are going to join together.

The rest of the film's story line will remain a mystery as not too much will be given away within the opening sequence. This will leave the audience wanting to watch more and full of suspense as we want them to feel soprry for the male character as he speaks so nicely about (what the audience think of as) his girlfriend and yet when they pass eachother they walk completely opposite ways like they dont even know eachother.

Film Preperation

When we arrived at our setting, Ellie's bedroom, we made sure that we paid attention to detail by replacing all of Ellie's photo's with photo's of Kate, our main character. We did this in order to ensure that everything would be correct and realistic. If we did not do this, then the audience may notice a picture of Ellie and then they would resultantly have the enigma of 'Who is she?' The pictures on the right appear in the opening sequence as a close-up, meaning that the detail would be very obvious to the audience - this is why we felt it important to make changes to these particular images as the setting is structured to be Kate'sbedroom within the film.

Breif Shot List

1. Production Name 'Blooming Productions'

2. Pan left to right - from a pictured wall to Kate sleeping

3. Close-up of Sam picking up a coffee cup

4. Point-of-view shot from Kate of a phone recieving a message

5. Title 1

6. Close-up of a phone recieving a messge

7. Title 2

8. Close-up of Sam showing his facial expression

9. Title 3

10. Close-up of a light switch being turnt on

11. Mid-shot of Kate doing her hair

12. Mid-shot of Sam getting dressed

13. Long shot of a train station acting as an establashing shot for the next setting of the opening

Costume Research

In the opening of our film, Kate whom is playing the leading role of our main character Evie, is seen in bed. Due to this aspect, she needs to be costumed in pjs and comfortable clothes. I have done research as to what looks natural but still professional for costume, hair and makeup. Here shows two young women in big, baggy and lose clothing - this conveys comfort and makes the audience want to be in bed themsleves. The fact that the shirts are so lose makes it appear as if the shirts could potentially be a boy of love intrest. This would be a good feature to add to our opening as our genre is romance - this would allow our costume to link in with our genre and narrative as Kate has a boyfriend within the lot of the film. Both the models hair are down and ina natural form: this appears more realistic than having completely straight hair as it would look as if it has been styled in a specific way, rather than spontaneously. All of the colours used above are autum/winter related - this too reflects upon the season in which our film opening is set in. Both the models have their skin showing; whether it be the legs, the sleeves rolled up in order to show the arms, or the buttons done loosely in order to show the collar bones. This gives sex appeal and would target the male auidence well and would make them want to watch it. Both model's make-up is very natural and the pair looks naturally beautiful. I will use this informaiton to help myself and others in my group come up with the overall look for a female character's first costume.

Characters Costumes

Characters Costumes

These are the costumes that we have used to portray our characters.

This is Katie's, playing the role of Evie, first costume. Her look is very relateable to the audience of teenage girls and is too very appealing to the viewers of teenage boys due to the length of the shorts that she is seen wearing in the picture. The shorts consist of the pattern of a cow, showing a vunerable side of the character as it portrays how young she is within the film. The length and fitting of the shorts flaunt her figure and make her appear asthethetically pleasing to the audience. Girls would apire to have the same figure and boys would find her attractive. The black hoody is lose on Kate and appears to be too big. This could make the audience assume that the jumper is in fact a boys, showing how Kate has some form of love interest - this is what the upcoming events in the opening sequence will too link in with and portray through the use of camera work and the narrative. The colour of the hoody is black representing how something bad could be about to happen. Overall Kate's costume 1 look is very homely and comes across to the audience as realistic and natural - this makes Kate's character as relateable as possible to the audience. She is wearing fluffy scocks. This is an extra added touch that our group decided to go with as we all discovered that we all wear fluffy socks to bed in the winter. The texture of the socks convey a time in season to the audience and give them a sense of stability as it answer some of the engimas that they would automatically recieve when watching the opening sequence to a film. Kate's hair, at this point, was in a messy bun and she was styled to have no make up on in order for her to look natural and appear as if she has just woken up from a nights sleep - this is also why she is styled in pj's. The two tassels on her jumper are uneven in length: This makes it appear more realistic as although we have thought about the details of her costume very hard, it looks as if we haven't and that this was by accident.

Kate's next costume shows her ready to leave the house and go out. She is seen wearing casual clothing and wearing a coat due to the weather conditions of the early winter. Alike to most females, she is carrying a handbag with her that would contain belongings such as a purse, makeup, a hair brush, money, travel cards and possibly an umbrella. Due to her coat being a plain colour as well as her plain jeans, we decided to give a brightly coloured red bag in order to show some fun and happy personality traits. It makes the outfit look more appealing and positive. The coat conists of lepard print fur on the color: the lepard print portrays fashion and style, and the fur portrays the winter and her need to keep warm. Kate is wearing a necklace to show detail within her outfit and like she has made an effort to look at her best. The necklace is also girly. Overall Kate's outfit is very girly and relateable to teenage girls of this time as she fits in with the latest fashion trends.If a girl was to see Kate wearing this outfit they would see her as fashionable and popular due to the statement she is making with the bright bag and aniaml patterns. The outfit is matching and colour coordinated.

Sam's outfit portrays his characters personality well. His look is chic and he would be seen has an outgoing person in the way he makes his fashions statements. He looks smart and the audience can clearly see that he has made an effort. This would also make the audience think that Sam is going out somewhere that he feels is important and where he needs to look formal. His overall look contrasts with Kate's in the way that she is smart/casul and Sam is pure smart. This could give the impression that the two are going to different destinations. The colours within Sam's outfit are very dull and give off negative connotations. It implies that he is not feeling to good and that perhaps he is depressed. All of his buttons are done up correctly and he appears to be well dressed. He is posing with his hands in each pocket, showing how he is a laidback person and feels relxaed within himself and the enviroment that he is situated in. He is wearing a tie: this adds detail to his outfit and shows how he has made an effort - impying to the audience that he has a priority for his appearnce. Both Kate and Sam are wearing at least one item of black clothing: this gives off negative and depressed connataions. His trousers are tightly fitted, linking in with his chic look.

Prop Ideas

Ideas of Props we can use for our opening sequence

In the opening of our film we want to use various props such as train tickets, phone text messages, newspapers, train bulletins, posters and close up's of clouds etc. Within the opening we need to be able to portray different emotions and establish the overall atmosphere at the same time. By the use of train tickets as props, we want a close up of the ticket's information so that although it is shown as a ticket, it has space for credits on the front which we can replace the information with.

By using this it gives the audience an insight into things that are going to come up such as when kate makes her way to paris. This scene wont be shown to the audience as we will only be showing the opening two-three minutes and we dont want to give to much away but this is something that our opening sequence will advance into. Being a romantic theme, we want close up's of props such as phones so that we can clearly show text messages which we also feel will be a good idea to put credits on. We are thinking about using an iphone and sending a text to it with 'directed by' ( for example ). Newspapers, magazines, billboards posters etc are all quite stereo typical of a romance to have to the titles or credits on but we feel that using these as props purposely set up for the credits will be perfect for the mood of the scene's that we are going to try and establish through the use of the props. It is common to see people on and off of trains reading and holding newspapers, magazines and books etc so this would make the film opening seem more realistic yet creative at the same time. We were thinking about changing the title of the newspaper that someone is stood at the train station reading for example. We feel that as a member of the audience watching other peoples openings and films that already exist, the audience most commonly try and read the front of magazines or newspapers that a character in the film are reading so we feel this will be ideal. Another idea we thought about for props was things like keyrings and small items which may have no significance to the rest of the film but help establish the atmosphere and theme's and we can use creatively to show the credits.



Natural Props such as clouds could be used as they pass by as the blue sky and the bright white clouds will help contrast the mood of the opening sequence leading up to the happy home video's so the bright sky can resembly happiness. We will also be able to use things such as clouds and the sky to put our credits on. As the film opening progresses, there will be several different scenes such as in the home videos, ( bedroom, kitchen etc) so we can use different parts of each room or different props i the rooms such as mobile phones to show the credits.





Much like the music will we want the props to help build up the atmosphere and mood of the setting so each prop will show something different such as happiness, sadness etc. As the music picks up and then slows down at different times we can use the relevant props. For example, when the music is quite slow at the beginning we can use the phone, train tickets etc which actually have some kind of significance within the rest of the film's story line. Props such as the front of newspapers, magazines etc can all be used as the music begins to pick up a bit as the audience will be foccusing more on what is actually happening within the film rather than the titles being shown. The credits we will be using at this point will be the less important ones such as the makeup team etc. When the film opening begins to draw to an end we will have to introduce the director as our last credit so this one will have to be the most obvious one in the whole opening so we can place this credit on a plain page of its own withought any props.

Title Trial and logo idead

Potential Logos For Our Film Opening

Idea 1: Sled Productions

We felt as a group SLED productions would be a good name for the production company because it was an idea that had all of us involved as each of our first initials was used. The aspects we didnt like about this logo was the idea that it had nothing to do with romance and may look slightly inappropriate being used at the beginning of a romance genre film if the production company that created it was called SLED. We also felt that there wasn't much we could do with the sled to animate it apart from the obvious so this wasnt very effective when trying various animation techniques out. Furthermore, we didn't feel that this was a very catchy name such as some of the other ideas that we had thought about so we decided against using this idea as the audience wouldnt be able to interpret for themselves that the word SLED stood for the initials of the group members.

Idea 2: Dove Productions

As a group we felt that the idea of the dove opening up it's wings would look effective in the opening of our film as a dove most commonly reprisents love and peace which is two large semantic fields we want to try and portray within our opening. Although Dove production's relates well to the idea of romance, we had a lot of difficulty in the way that we was going to add any type of animation or sound effects to make the dove seem life like or anything like a logo in a normal film opening. When trying out various techniques we discovered that this was a lot harder than we intially thought it would be and because it is only something extra to add effect to the opening, it wasnt vital and so we didnt want to try to produce something that was going to extremelly time consuming which may stop us from doing other things of more importance such as the editing etc. In conclusion, the main reason why we decided against using this icon as our animated logo was because it was too time consuming and took a lot of skills to be able to make the logo look effective in relation to our genre.

Idea 3: Heartbreak Productions

Heartbreak productions was an idea that sprung into all of our minds when we started to draft ideas about logo's we could use. Considering the genre of our film is romance and our film idea's are based on the break up and part of a boy and his girlfriend, we wanted to try and portray these idea's through the use of the production logo either through an iconic animation or a significant title. We felt that through the use of a love heart this was done effectively and the heart could be animated quite easily through the use of an open love heart and then a fade transition into it breaking in half with the words coming out the middle of the hearts crack. Although, a down side would be that 'Heartbreak Productions' sounds to typical and boring in relation to what people would expect. We wanted something which was a bit more artistic yet not too complicated that we could use to portray the emotions that are about to be shown in the opening.

Idea 4: Blooming Productions

The idea of Blooming Productions was one that we all agreed would be really effective and worthwhile making. The 'Blooming' word came from the idea of the flowers, being the iconic animation we would use, opening up as the words appeared on the screen. This logo could suggest many things about the film opening being not only that it was a romance but that some kind of love story was either about to blossom in to something or was going to suprise the audience with something completely new as it 'opened up'. This is the exact intended effect that we wanted to achieve through our logo and we felt that the use of flowers usually reprisents guilt or passion if it is coming from a male, to a female. This can also be reprisentable within our opening as it portrays the story line to be about a possible guilt story. The begginning of our opening sequence begins with very slow music so we are hoping to use a logo that will be able to fit in with this kind of mood and tone as the flowers open slowly in time with the music being played on the background. Further more, by having flower's which arent too detailed such as roses for example, we can easily edit them into an animation on a fixed black screen which will be very effective as the colours will contrast well. The only downfall would be that it wasnt as appealing to all audience members such as boys for example. The other idea's such as the dove arent as gender specific and so they can be aimed at anyone although we don't feel that this is something that is of great concern as only a very small minority of boys would want to watch a romance anyway.