Film Opening Inspiration and Ideas

At first, as a group, we looked all the different film genres that we could do and we came to a point where we had decided that we wanted to do either a romantic film, teen drama film or a comedy film. These were the 3 genres that we would base our film opening on and from this we explored the ideas in which we could go about these.

The first genre we looked at was romance the ideas we got for a romantic film were:-
- 2 Main characters; male and female
-Typical romantic film - falling in love with one another
- Possibly obsticles as to why they can't be together
- Characters that might not have wanted the main 2 characters to be together
- Possibly a hint of jealously as a twist

- Could encounter social class problems

- Could be a love hate relationship

However, once exploring these ideas we realised that we weren't comfortable as a group to act out these characters and have them falling for one another. We also found that this would show a typical romanctic type film and we wanted to do something different and fresh with our own ideas rather than using those that have already been made into a film. Moreover, it might be a bit too hard to try and portray the romantic feel to the film in just the first 2 minutes of the film opening, as usually the story unfolds and makes the audience realise later on in the film that it is a romantic film and how they go about telling the story.

The second genre we looked at was a teen drama. This genre is very broad and allows us to take the film into any direction we wanted to. Meaning that it could be about anything to do with teens and their lives.
Some ideas we came up with were:-
- Teenager having problems from their peers
- Teenager suffering from family problems
- Teenagers encountering something they didnt expect
- Following typical teenage life

- Shows the positives and negatives to teenagers lives

- Social class hierarchy's

- School/college based problems

- Friendship disasters

- Teenage aspirations

- Teenagers portraying family relationships

- Teenage love and the understanding of it

- Social groups

- Teenage phases

The list could pretty much go on and on and therefore found that we really liked these ideas as we are teenagers ourselves, and could therefore relate and make the film opening better as it will be from a teenagers point of view as well as being able to take these ideas and develop them in any way we wanted to.

Finally we looked at comedy. Again this is a very broad genre to look at and we could take our film any way we wanted to. However, we did realise that it could be very hard to achieve as some comedy isn't always to everyones taste. For example, something that i find funny might not humour someone else. This would therefore cause a problem before we have even started any of our filming or even thinking about where we want to take our film and what sort of humour we want to show. Moreover, it would be hard to show in just 2 minutes rather than a full film, this could make the film opening seem boring. There could also be the ambiguity of the film being funny because its meant to be, or funny because of the poor acting (as we are not professional actors and actresses) in which case we would be laughed at for our work, which is not what we want to happen.

Regardless of these points we still explored the different ideas that we could use for a comedy genre film. some of these were:-
- Following someones life and all the bad things that happen to them
- Having humourous characters feature within the film, therefore allowing small parts of the film being funny and not all of it
-Characters being deadly serious about something, yet the audience will find really funny, e.g a character loving another characters hair, but it actually looks really hideous.

- Silly characters e.g 'Dumber and Dumber'

- Characters lying about something, but others believing, when its a really bad lie

- People getting hurt e.g tripping up/ falling over

As you can see, we couldn't really think of many ideas and realised that this wouldn't be one of the best choices to chose from. We therefore knew that we really didn't want to do a comedy genre film as it would be too hard to go about.

After looking at all these ideas we all agreed on producing a teen drama film. We thought that the ideas from this genre were the strongest and were more able to achieve with the time limit that we were given to work with.

One of the main things that gave us inspiration for how we would execute and go about our film was one image that we took, when we visited the garment district.



This image was basically the starting point and gave us a vision of how we wanted our film to look and what it would constist of. We liked the thought of someone being by the canal and maybe being a dishearten character. Going back to our ideas list we thought that it might be good to shoot the character being upset over either their peers or a family member. This would therefore make it very personal and would allow us to understand the reasons why as the film went on.

25th February 2010 - Filming Scedule And Locations

As a group we will start our filming on Tuesday 2nd March.
We will be filming near the Garment District in Manchester, where we will be mostly filming near the cannal to help create an eerie feel.
Hopefully, the weather will be as we want it and the filming won't have to get postponed to the Thursday instead.
In the first 2 hours we intend to get all the shots of Fiona walking along the cannal. These shots will be varied of different shots, such as close ups, long shots and mid-long shots and so on.
We hope to get all these shots done in 4 hours of filming. This would mean that we would have shot half the sequence already.
After this, all that is left to do is the shots of Ife, lying near the cannal, this of which would also consists of a variety of shots. However, because it's very tricky where we want to film Ife near the cannal, it might take a longer time to do. We are therefore aiming to film him on Thursday 11th March. Being tricky to film this may take up to 4 -6 hours. This would depend on how well we apply the dead body make up and how well we can film within the restriced location.

Here is where the scene starts. It's dirty and desolate and has a dangerous feel to it which is exactly what we wanted. This is where Fiona will start walking down the side of the cannal making her way towards Ife at the other end.

This is where the film opening ends, as Fiona comes round the corner and finds Ife lay dead on the floor. We liked this area as it put Ife out of view and allowed Fiona to come into the shot with him to discover Ife's dead body.

The overall plan will be:

2nd and 4th March - Filming Fiona and her walking by the cannal

9th March - Testing make up for dead body affect on Ife and making sure we know how to do it again for the real thing

11th and 16th March - Filming the rest of Fiona's shots near the cannal amd making sure we have all we need.

18th and 25th March - Filming Ife dead near the cannal and all the close ups and different angles of Ife.

13th and 15th April - Filming any last shots that we need to do or may need to re-film and making sure we have everything we need.

However, everything may take longer than sceduled and may need another few lessons after to make sure we've got everything filmed thats needed.

25th February 2010 - Costume and Props List

For our main task there are only a few things we would need for each shot as we are keeping the scene simple.
Therefore basic costumes are used and only the colours have been thought about to help signify each character.
Also, we won't really be using any props as the scene only needs the location to help set the scene.

For Fiona's costume she will be wearing a red coat, vest top, skirt, tights and dolly shoes.
This is a simple outfit that helps signify the the death of Ife as her red coat will show the danger that she will occur; Ife's death.

For Ife's costume he will be dresses in a blue hoodie, jeans and pumps.
His clothes are simple as there isn't much significance to the character he is playing. This adds suspense as we don't know anything about him and is dresses like a normal teenager.

He also has make up on his face to make him look "dead". This was achieved by putting on pale foundation on his hands and face so that it gives off the dead look. We also put faded brown colour lip balm onto his lips to make them look like they have faded colour and have also put dark lines of black eye liner under his eyes so that he looks like he's been dead for a while.

Prop List
The only props we will be using is an ipod, which Fiona's character will be using as she is walking along the canal to show how she's inconspicuous doesn't know what she's going to come across.
However, this wont be seen very much as Fiona will have the earphones in her ears and the ipod will be in her pocket.

Other than that there won't be any props needed.

Treatment for main task.

For our main task we have to plan and film the opening of a film. Our opening has to last two minutes. We decided to film the opening to a teen drama/murder mystery as it makes and interesting opening with the viewer asking lots of questions. We plan to film by the canal in Manchester's inner city area near to the Garment District because we want to create a feeling of danger and lonliness surrounding our character.
The main character, a teenage girl played by Fiona, will be filmed walking along the canal alone as if she's on her way to meet someone. The other character, Ife acting as a dead body, will be lay by the canal and almost discovered by the girl. The first shot will be of the body. The camera will pan from his feet to his head, the shot will switch to the girl walking by the canal while there will be music playing throughout that gives the film an element of suspense. We will also build suspense by changing shots more quickly as the scene goes. Throughout the two minutes, we will build the suspense up with the music as the girl gets closer to finding the body. We will switch between the girl walking and the body, using different shots and camera angles for both using cross-cutting.
At the end of the film opening we will show the girl turning a corner towards the body so at last the body and the girl are on the same shot. Here it will end, before the girl has seen the body. The screen will go blank and we will show the title of the movie here.

9th Febuary 2010 - Shot Treatment And List

Our shot list will consist of a number of different shots. We are aiming to do about 30 different shots in the space of 2 minutes. They will consist of shots such as close ups, long shots, mid long shots, panning shots, handheld shots etc.
Because we chose to do a murder mystery and teen drama genre film opening, there will be alot of close ups.

For the first shot it will be a close up of Ife's foot, this would help open the film by bringing mystery right from the word go. It will capture the audiences attention and will make them want to know what is going on, or even, what or who they are looking at. It also helps with keeping the audience interested and not having them drift off right at the start of the film, it makes the audience want to get to know the character and find out a bit more about who this person is and what they are doing on the floor. It opens with a number of reasons running through the audiences mind and makes them confused as the 2nd shot is of Fiona which is completely different and contrasts with the extreame close up of Ife's foot.

As we will be cross cutting between Ife and Fiona the second shot will be a long shot of Fiona walking by the side of the cannal, towards the camera, this helps with the narative strands in the film as it links in the 2 shots as both Ife and Fiona are by the cannal. Therefore, the audience get the gist that both characters are either involved with each other, know each other, or something between them will happen. Moreover, the fact that Fiona is walking towards the camera will help with getting to know the character from just the first shot as she is revealed the closer she becomes to the camera.

The next shot will be another close up of Ife, this would be a close up of his legs, as we will be working up his body to cover the mystery of his identity. We will also be seeing different shots of his body so that it poses confusion on the audience, still not knowing what is going on. As each close up is shown it helps create an imagine of Ife in the audiences mind so that they can piece together of whom they think is lying there on the floor.

The next shot would go back to Fiona again walking in and out of the shot, still walking by the side of the cannal. This would also be a long shot, helping to show the continuity of her walking in and out of each shot, as if she is still walking and carrying on from where we left the last shot of her, but slightly moved along to show that time has pasted and that both shots of each characters are happening at the same time.

It will then go to a close up of Ife's hand, again keeping the mystery of the Ife and whether or not he is dead, however, this still helps uncover the character even if it is only showing a small section of the character. Also, even though it is uncovering his identity slowly it helps keep the audience on the edge of their seats and starts getting the audience anxious and wanting to uncover the character.

keeping with the cross cutting of both characters, the next shot will be of Fiona again, walking futher along beside the cannal. This will be a long shot and then ends as she walks past the camera and out the shot. This would again help show that Fiona has been walking for a while up the side of the cannal.

Following this shot will be another close up of Ife. futher up his body adding suspense to almost revealing his identy but just as the audience think that they will find out who it is the shot cuts off and we see Fiona again.

The next shot of Fiona helps add more time onto finding out Ife's identity and sort of acts as a shot that helps pass time. however at the same time it questions as to why Fiona is walking up the side of the cannal while Ife is lay on the floor, possibly dead.

The next shot will be a pan of Ife from his feet up to his torso, leaving out his head and still not uncovering his identy, as the face helps the audience picture Ife's character. However, the close ups also help tell the audience what sort of character Ife is playing from the sorts of clothes he is wearing and what position his hands, feet and body are in.

In each shot of Ife it will help show mystery of his character and wont reveal his face until the very end when Fiona sees him. This would mean that both, Fiona and the audience, will find out at the same time and as though the audience is in Fiona's shoes, relating to what is happening within the film.

Shot List

Extreme close up of Ife's foot

Long shot of Fiona walking towards the camera

Close up of Ife's legs

Mid-long shot of Fiona walking on from the back and around the slight corner

Long shot of the follow on from the same path through a tunnel

Close up of Ife's thighs while lay on the floor

Long shot of Fiona walking out the tunnel towards and past the camera

Mid-shot of Ife's legs and feet

Mid-long shot of Fiona Walking down the path by the canal walking into the shot from the left

Panning shot of Ife's legs

Close up of Fiona's feet coming into the shot from the left and out the right

Back to Mid-long shot of Fiona but this time walking out of the shot

Extreme close up of Ife's hand (One on his chest)

Extreme close up of Fiona's face

Close up of Ife's torso

Mid-long shot of Fiona still walking by the canal (walking in and out the shot)

Close up of Ife's other hand

Long shot of Fiona walking

Mid-long shot shot of Ife from his feet to his neck

Long shot of fiona again walking in and out the shot from left to right

Extreme close up of Ife's eye

Long shot, panning, of Fiona walking past a bridge

Handheld close up, point of view, of Fiona's feet, as if the character is looking down at her feet

Panning shot of Ife from his feet to his neck

Point of view Fiona going under the bridge

Close up of Ife's face

Long shot of Ife's whole body

Point of view shot from Fiona as she comes round the corner and see's Ife

This is a rough outline of what we think will get done and the number of shot we will intend to include. There will most likely be some changes and rearrangements to the order of the shots but this is more or less the idea we are going for.

9th Febuary 2010 - Evaluation Of Preliminary Task

During the filming of the preliminary task, we learnt that the filming wasn't as easy as we thought it would be. We had to make sure that we got the right shots and that they were good enough for the end product. We therefore took a series of shots for the same shot just to make sure that it was right for the final piece as well as making sure that when we came to the editing it would follow continuity. We also learnt that the cuts from each shot had to be on point for it to work well.
We also had to make sure that we stuck within the 180 degree rule. We acheived this by only shooting from one side of the location; this of which was inside the canteen.
As the sound didn't upload on the editing programme, we couldn't cut the conversation properly so we guessed where the next shot started and ended.
Something else that didn't go to plan was that the tripod was slightly bent and not straight. We would therefore have to make sure that the tripod is straight and that the shot is straight too.
We also would have to make sure that when we cut to the next shot, we would cut for a reason and not just randomly. This would also be applied to to main task

2nd February 2010, Preliminary Task.