In this piece of planning, we had to come up with an outline for our opening title sequence and film narrative. To show our original ideas I have made a mind map which covers aspects of media studies which will be expressed in our sequence, and codes and conventions that we will use to ensure our film fits in to the coming-of-age genre.
By doing this task, my group and I have been able to discuss which ideas we believe would and would not work and have been able to collect them all and form one basic structure that we are all happy with. We have taken into account aspects like lighting and setting and so we have chosen a location that will fit the needs of our sequence. We have also planned out our costume and other aspects of mise-en-scene so that our opening sequence will engage the right audience but also attract the secondary audiences of out film. Learning Comment:
In this task we have been asked to plan, film and edit a piece of footage recorded ourselves. The storyboard below is showing the scene in which a person walks through the door, goes and sits next to another person and exchanges a few lines of dialogue. I have tried to make good use of a few filming and continuity editing techniques that are used when filming much larger productions and these include:
- 180 degree rule is a filming guideline that the characters in a scene should have the same left-right relationship with each other, so filming only occurs on one side of the axis. If this line is crossed, it changes the viewer's perspective in such a way that causes disorientation and confusion. For this reason, crossing the line is to be avoided.
- Match on action (or cutting on action) is an editing technique in which one shot cuts to another shot showing the action of the subject in the first shot.
- The shot/reverse shot is often used when filming conversations. It is often a shot showing what the character is looking at, followed by a shot of the other character looking back at them, for example.
Below is my storyboard showing the outline of what shots I used in the filming of my short scene.
After this planning, I filmed and edited the recording I took of my preliminary task. I have made sure to include the match on action technique, shot/reverse shot and the 180 degree line rule. Below you can see the 14 second long video I've made to show my storyboard.
Learning Comment:
In the planning of this task, I have learnt the different types of camera angles and editing techniques that are used to create a continuous scene in films. For example, the 180 degree line rule; I have learnt through using this in my preliminary task that it creates a better perspective of the shot for the audience and it means that the serrate shots become much easier to edit together.
When filming this task, there are a couple of things that I will take away and use when creating my real opening sequence. E.g when recording, I have learnt that I will need to press the record button on the camera but then wait about three seconds before actually enacting the scene. This is because I found that when editing together my footage, the first half of sentences were cut off because I pressed record and the dialogue started at the same time, so half of it didn't get recorded. I will be sure to use this to my advantage when filming my sequence.
I feel that the editing of this task would have been a lot smoother and easier if I had made sure that I had taken more time when filming, and therefore left more time to fit slightly longer transitions between shots. For example, the last few transitions in my edited sequences are cuts, so when editing my sequence for the real task, I can use a wider variation to make my sequence more interesting.
For this task, I had to look at two other opening sequences from other media students in order to give me some ideas as to how I should make my opening sequence and which techniques I have found to be successful. This task has given me an insight into what is possible to make and what I should be aiming to recreate: The Edge
Roses Are Red
Learning Comment:
By watching and analysing a couple of other AS students' media work, I feel like I have gained a lot of knowledge about the conventions and techniques that are popular in a couple of specific genres, and I find that now I am able to distinguish between a piece of work that is A grade and a piece of work that is B grade. From watching the second title sequence, I have developed an understanding of what features are used in a coming of age opening sequence like I want to create, in order to engage a target audience of this genre from the start. The use of music is very important in an opening sequence so I think that I should use something that is upbeat but simple, and that if I can, the music should hit a crescendo at the most intense part of the sequence. Unlike these two sequences, I would like to use more non-diegetic sounds to set the scene so that it helps to link the audio and visuals together to attract an audience. On top of this, both openings used camera angles effectively, but I will aspire to use a wider range of angles and editing techniques, such as close-ups. A technique that I really liked the use of was the shot that followed the character's feet, because I felt like that gave a different perspective to the film and made the character feel more relatable to me, as a person of the target audience.
In this task, I have made a mind-map which expresses my analyses of the films, and the way in which the social group of young people are represented within them.
Learning Comment:
The social group I have tried to identify the representation of in the films I have looked at is young people. I have found that the use of sound, mise en scene, editing and camera angles all affects how the youth are represented in these films, therefore in these two analyses, young people are represented in two totally different ways. For example in 21 Jump Street, teenagers are represented as being reckless and immature, giving way to the stereotypes that society has of them and connoting the unpredictability and chaos that goes on in their lives. Whereas in the Submarine opening title sequence, teenagers are presented as being calm, peaceful and sophisticated. This is through the use of high camera angle shots and wide establishing shots of peaceful open spaces. Young people are also shown to be quite isolated in this sequence because the protagonist is the only person we meet, and through the use of mise en scene, the positioning of this character from a low angle looking up at large mountain ranges and oceans makes the area look desolate, and connotes to the audience that he feels quite insignificant and unnoticeable compared to everything else around him. I have learnt from this task that the use of codes and conventions throughout the opening title sequence is vital when it comes to how you want to represent your protagonist and their social group. My title sequence will involve quite a few slower transitions and editing effects because I have found that this is one of the techniques used to show the insecurity of teenagers. These representations also help the primary audience of demographic E to identify with the characters, whereby engaging in the film from the beginning.
For this task, I have made a mind-map on Spiderscribe that showed my analysis of three opening sequences of coming of age films, and how these used different aspects of media theories to entice an audience into watching the film.
I have used two films I have watched before, Wild Child and Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and then I have analysed a further film of which I haven't seen apart from the opening sequence, Stand By Me.
Here is the mind-map I have created to express my ideas:
Learning comment:
In this task, I have learned that I need to include: - A clear protagonist with a villain and helper to help establish a clear equilibrium. By showing these characters already in the opening sequence, it allows the audience to see clearer narrative elements and help to set up the narrative. (Propp) - After the establishment of the equilibrium, the disruption of the equilibrium is often shown or at least implied after the first few minutes of the film. This is because the film still needs to be fast-paced and give the audience something to look at, and put some sort of chaos in the storyline. (Todorov) - Showing binary opposites within my plot will help to expose the narrative to the audience because it will establish a clear opposition between the hero and the villain, plus it helps to contrast between good and evil, whereby engaging the audience's attention. (Levi-Strauss) - The use of action & enigma codes help to engage an audience in an opening sequence because they make the audience question the direction of the narrative, helps them to establish links between characters and also makes them question upcoming events through the use of enigma codes.
For this piece of research I have taken three opening sequences to coming of age films, and have individually analysed each section of typography. I have taken screenshots each time text appears and written about how they help to engage a target audience throughout the credits. The films I have chosen to look at are 10 Things I Hate About You, Austin Powers and Home Alone, and the videos I have created to show my analyses can be seen below: -
On top of this title research, I have chosen to look into an opening title sequence for a film I've seen that has credits different to any other sequence I have looked at. The opening title sequence for Trainspotting that was distributed by Channel 4 Films in 1996 has a different take on opening titles, so by clicking on the video below you can see my analysis of why they have done titles so differently:
Learning comment: Through looking at a wide range of opening film sequences, I have learned how crucial the typography is to the overall presentation of the film. It can help in constructing the narrative and establishing the genre to the audience, and this influences their thoughts of the entire film, right from the opening two minutes. I feel like now I have analysed the use of colours, fonts and text placement in four very well regarded opening sequences, I now have a much more in depth understanding of what key aspects of typography I should use to make my opening sequence. The titles that are the most common in opening sequences are the ones that I think are vital to include when making my own, and these are: Institutional information Film title Protagonist Other major cast Other minor cast Casting director Costume designer Music producer Editor(s) Producer & co-producers Director's name - presented last
As part of this assignment, we did a few different types of research in order to get a really good sense of what our target audience are looking for in terms of creating a coming of age opening sequence. The first thing we did was create a survey, which I then went to put online, so that we could have as many people as possible answering it.
If you click on where my video below, you should be able to see what results we were able to collect from our survey:
From this qualitative data collected by Freya Vincent and I from the target audience of our coming of age film, we have found that roughly 70% of teenagers are familiar with what the coming of age film genre is and that generally these people are female. This is helping to establish who the audience of our film is going to be, along with what we have found out about teens' favourite film genres. The clear favourite film genre of people in audience demographic E is the comedy genre, with others such as romance, drama and action proving to be popular. As this is our set task, whichever opening sequence type we make will be based around the coming of age genre, but for our opening sequence we will include other aspects of the aforementioned genres in our construction of the narrative in order to engage not only the primary, but also the secondary audience, as much as possible. This survey, along with the findings from our focus group interviews, will be a major influence to our opening sequence, and has already given us a few ideas as to what we would eventually like to create as a group.
Me and Freya then went on to do an audience research focus group with a group of AS Media students and gathered some responses as to what our target audience thought about film opening sequences and coming of age films:
As a group we also did some quantitative data analysis to find out which famous coming of age films have been the most successful upon their release. We used websites such as IMDB and other online sources to look at numbers such as DVD sales and cinema numbers, and you can see that beneath, Ella Henley has made a presentation to show the figures and research that she came across: -
And here are the finding's of Becky Moffat's audience research: - Learning Comment: Our audience research has brought me to many conclusions as to how my group and I should construct the narrative of our opening sequence, and the key conventions and techniques we should use to help in actively engaging the audience. For example from carrying out the focus group, I have discovered that the primary target audience of our film prefer having the protagonist and or/main characters established within the first few minutes of the film and so having them in the opening sequence is a good way to help to introduce characters to the audience and help them to understand where they stand with the characters. A style that I found to be successful when creating opening sequences is where you create the film sequence with a flow of music over the top, because this idea seemed to be very popular with our target audience and makes sure that the audience can link the audio to the visuals on screen. However, from my own research I think that there isn't enough use of other non-diegetic sound and that in order to create an opening that stands out from the others of this genre, I should use more of these to help engage my audience. This is also a convention used in a lot of Jason Reitman's well-known films, who has been very successful in creating films of the coming of age genre.
