7. What do you feel you have learnt from the progression from your preliminary task to the full product?

I think that from my journey from the preliminary task, to the development of our second idea, to the creation of the final product, I have learnt so much in terms of production, filming and editing. For example, in the placement of characters within shot. In the preliminary task this was very poor, however I feel like since learning the rule of thirds, I feel like i have tried to use this effectively to draw the eyes of the audience to the right place.

I feel like the decision to change the idea from what we had thought of originally was definitely the right decision to make. This is because, as you can tell from the footage, it was not working effectively even after two attempts of shooting for the sequence. Filming for this proved to be really hard as we had two protagonists to film for, and trying to organise a few days which we could all be together for was really difficult. It was evident to us that after to attempts of filming, the idea wasn't going to work and so towards the end of December we decided to change our idea and try and come up with something better. This is where the idea for the Christmas theme of our newer opening sequence has come from. 

From task 1, I took away what sort of conventions opening title sequences used and applied in order to engage the interest of their audiences, and then in task two I learnt how the creators of coming of age films applied these conventions to their sequence successfully, so I started gaining knowledge of the sort of things to look out for and apply when it came to starting to create my own opening sequence. One of the best ones that I looked at was Ferris Bueller's Day Off and so it was from this film that I started making comparisons across media and took which things I liked and didn't like in terms of editing and narrative structure of a sequence. I also looked at the Breakfast Club and it was from here that I was inspired to do the jump cuts etc of things relating to Christmas and things associated with it, like they do in this sequence.

Sixteen Candles, a film I analysed in task 3, was quite influential to the ideas behind our project because it gave us a basis to go on as to how teens were represented in films: self-conscious, but also kind of overlooked by others in society. This was a way in which we represented the protagonist in our film in order to link her back to and engage with the target audience of our film so that they would empathise with her and see that she isn't so different from themselves. 

Tasks 4 and 5 were useful when it came to the production of our opening sequence because it taught me how different companies and directors use different codes and conventions to personalise and put their own mark on things that they produce. This made me realise that in order to make our sequence a success it had to stand out and be different from all the others, e.g in terms of atmosphere created and ordering of the narrative. Task 6 was then also really useful because it was all about audience research - learning who our target and secondary audience would be, doing a questionnaire to find out what people of our age group wanted to see in films, which ones they preferred and what it was about these coming of age films that they liked. We took away information from this task which was vital for the production of our opening title sequence, and this is how we built the structure of our new idea for the opening sequence.

Task 7 proved to be really influential to our final product because it was the titles which we struggled to get right a few times, but which in the end, I feel have brought the opening sequence together in that the authenticity and ambiance they bring to the sequence make it appear more sophisticated and professional. The typography we used was difficult to pick but on the place cards suited the titles really well, and we also learnt what the order of titles was here, and so this explains the order of titles in order to fir the convention of other coming of age films.

In task 8 I studied narrative structure within an opening sequence and is what lead us to revealing an equilibrium which was shortly followed by the disruption of an equilibrium in our opening. The representation of characters within this narrative was also really important, as I learned in task 9, because it was through this that I learnt the ways in which I could make the audience empathise with and feel sympathy for our protagonist, and also how I should present these characteristics and events to the audience. I learnt in this task that I should give the main character in the plot of the film an obvious hamartia which is what leads to the route of their problems, which in our characters case is carelessness in her youth.

Task 10 was where I finally got an idea of what opening sequences produced by others doing Media Studies A level looked like, and it gave me an idea of what they did well, what I certainly shouldn't do and also what I wanted my final product to look like. My final product from this course has turned out just how I wanted it to and so I feel like I have made something which fits the ideals of a coming of age opening title sequence.

The preliminary task made me realise what a difficult task it was going to be creating our own sequence and it taught me that I needed to learn how to control a camera, the techniques I should use for achieving good camera work, the correct positioning of characters and the way in which a narrative should be laid out in order to engage an audience in the opening two minutes. I feel like I have done all of these things from the progression from my prelim task to my final product, and that the development of my ideas for the sequence to the production and editing of it have improved vastly over the course of this task, and can be seen throughout the blog.