Scouting For New Crew

We have lost one member of our film crew due to private circumstances. I have other candidates that can replace him so that we do not fall be hind. I would like to have a woman on our team because all the other opening sequence are full of men and this feels prejudice and discrimination towards women.

It's Not What You Know; It's Who You Know!

I have a very good friend that is very good with film and she has been giving me some brilliant tips for media. I will be incorporating these into this course  because the will be beneficial as well as give me an advantage over the other groups.

Using My Skills

Because I am taking Performing Arts as a A Level, I think it would be good to incorporate these skills into our soundtrack because the soundtrack of the opening scene is extremely important because it also tells a story along with what can be seen by the audience. Furthermore, I am using IPhone's GarageBand in Music as well as Media so it would be brilliant to play around with this skill.

BFI, Southbank, London

This is the BFI.

BFI Trip

The chief explained that we cannot just jump into what we are doing because if we do, our work will be terrible. He gave us the perfect site that has film openings, analysis of filming, editing, shooting, how to research and plan a film, comments on all areas of making films from directors and producers. YouTube is another good site to use but, he warned us to be careful on how deep we go with YouTube because a lot of the film openings stray away from our coursework. If you would like to view this site, I have put down their web addresses: http://www.artofthetitle.com/ then go onto sequences or, you can go onto YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/ or just YouTube and type in ‘opening sequences’

Because we have just started our courses and we have not got a lot of experience, the chief showed us a few opening sequences of a few films and explained the different strategy‘s that we can use when making a film opening and that we should try and look outside of the box and regardless of how silly or difficult an idea may seem at the time, we must still keep it and work on it, we should think of different ideas and add to them.

The first film we watched was Catch Me If You Can which stars the infamous Tom Hanks. I noticed that the sound was fast paced and jazzy, it had a tempo that rose and fell quickly, and I had only discovered all of this within the first 10 seconds of the film. The music was very mysterious, tense, angry, sad, happy, scary, and so hard hitting that it was baffling. We can here the saxophone which is a smooth instrument but, I love how it has been changed into an almost violent creature that plays psychological mind tricks with its rapid change of tempo, notes, and chords.

The animated picture pictures are very fast past with a rich with an array of colourful, confusing, mysterious, tantalizing, and hopeful colours that the atmosphere throughout the audience was tense and in upheaval. This is very effective and took around 5-6 months to make.

The graphical effects on the motion pictures of a range of people partying, in meetings, flying, some seemed to by spying, birds, and sunbathing, glamorous people in suits and dresses drinking, in conversation, working, and so many other things was absolutely astonishing. It was confusing but, not to confusing were I could not make out what was happening, it was interesting because I have not seen many films that have managed to do such a complicated and tiring, both physically and emotionally, edit with so many components and features in the space of 3 minutes and pull it of so well. It looks so easy and effortless and captures the audience. What made it work so well is that the timeframe of an opening scene should only be about 3-5 minuets long and they graphical designer have managed to fade in so many different shots which are ram packed with lots of action and detail.

BFI

At BFI we leant about Reel Films and the key features or components that all films must have to be successful, regardless of the budget or of the film is a blockbuster or an AS Media Studies Course work. The chief of Media gave most of the presentation and I found it interesting and very benefiting because it showed the group and I where we had been going wrong, what we need to improve on, tips on how to improve, and things that we have not thought about and what we don’t know already.

The key features anyone must be understand, be aware of, and be able to demonstrate and be able incorporate into what ever type of film that they are doing are:

Genre- Type of film i.e. Thriller, Drama, Sci-Fi, Horror etc.

Narrative-What is the film about i.e. is it about a teenager who has to look after his four young sibling’s while his parents have abounded them?

Character-Which is being played, what are they like, what is their significance in the film, what part they are playing.

Atmosphere-What is the mood of the film? How does it make the audience feel and what effect does it have on the audience? What effect is it meant to have on the audience?

Setting-Where is the film set? What is the time period? Why is a specific location being used as the foundation for a film?

At BFI Southbank in Waterloo, I went with my group to learn about how to make the most out of researching, planning, shooting, editing, and evaluating our opening sequences. We also had the privilege and, I felt, the honour to have the well-known actor and rising director Dexter Fletcher, who some of you may recognise from the teen hit show Misfits, he play Simons dad, also you may also recognise him from the film Press Gang, and Bugsy Malone in which he plays the character of Baby Chris, come and tell use about his experiences through acting and directing and tips on how we can improve.