What sort of features do you expect a film opening of your chosen genre to have?
What age certificate do you usually expect a film of your chosen genre to have?
U
PG
12A
12
15
18
X-rated
How old are the characters usually seen in your prefered genre of film?
Under 12
12-17
18-25
26-39
40+
What generic conventions would you usually see within a drama film?
Can you name a drama film that includes the conventions that you have listed?
Have you seen more independent drama films or more mainstream drama films?
Independent
Mainstream
Who do you normally watch a drama film with?
Can you name a drama film that has not used the normal conventions properly?
If yes, has the film still been good?
Does the film opening of a film determine whether you want to continue watching it or not?
This audience questionnaire will help us when making decisions about what genre we want our film to be. We can look at clips of the examples of films from the results and pick out the conventions used so that when we make our own film opening we can incorporate them.
What is a Film Opening?
A film opening should tell the audience the genre of the film, setting/location. In addition to this, it may tell some of the storyline to keep the viewer watching and to also give an idea of the narrative. The most important part of the film opening is that it's good so it can then build an element of suspense and it should also include different techniques - which includes camera angles, non-diegetic/diegetic music and also fast/slow paced editing.
Genre must be conveyed in a film opening because it's very important. This is because the audience need recognition and understanding.
there are 4 main types of film openings:
Blank screen
The blank screen film opening is a very simplistic film opening. The film titles will appear during this time. Usually the blank screen is black with white writing on it, this creates high contrast which will make the writing easy to read. This type of film opening is generally used if the institution doesn't have enough money to produce any of the other three types. A blank screen opening is a way to present the necessary conventions of a film opening in a clear simplistic way.
Moving image
The moving image film opening includes some form of moving image with the opening titles on top. There isnt usually any dialogue, however a soundtrack is generally used. A moving image opening gives the viewer a hint towards the narrative of the film, or it gives the film a starting point.
Animation
The animation film opening is usually a moving cartoon, however, sometimes it can be a series of still cartoons. To create an animated film opening, it requires a reasonably large budget as a lot of digital technology is required. Animated film openings are used a lot in action/superhero films with a comic effect.
Still images
Still image film openings are quite a low budget opening. It includes a still image in the background with a the films opening titles on top. The pictures give the viewer clues about the genre and narrative of the film. A still image film opening is a slightly more elaborate version of a blank screen opening.
This is the second design for our institution logo, we decided that it matched the name a lot better as it included the animal, however, we think that it is too bland. We don't want to do too much more to it because if we add too much, the logo will become too busy and therefore it wont look industry standard. We think that it might look good if we incorporate this with the first design that we had created.
Creating a second logo was useful because it ultimately made us have another idea for our potential final logo.
This was one of our ideas or the institutional logo, The idea of the landscape came oabout because this is the sort of place that you would see a muntjac. We think that this is quite a smart logo , however we eventually decided that the logo needed to involve the actual animal to relate to the name.
Why we chose to remake the opening to Reservoir Dogs
Our first reason for producing a remake of reservoir dogs is because it is an independent film, which is what we will be producing when we make our own film opening. The opening to 'reservoir dogs' has a lot of shots, this means that we would have to do a lot of matching up when it came to putting it together and it also means that we would have to alter the shots a lot to make sure that the timing is correct. This is quite a helpful thing for us to practice because it is one of the things that we found difficult when editing. Another reason that we chose to remake the opening to reservoir dogs was because one of the many genres that this film falls into is 'drama'. We have decided that we want to make a drama film opening, therefore, re-making a drama film opening would be really useful because we would be able to practice demonstrating the conventions needed.
Making this opening title sequence has helped us because it has given us practice of how to film different camera angles. We have had to prepare for this task just as we will have to prepare for our own film opening and therefore this has demonstrated exactly what we are to expect. this task has pushed us to explore what different resources we have. We have had to look at different transitions that we could use, fonts that are most suitable and we have also had to find audio that matches our specific opening. In the process of editing the film opening, we practiced lining the video clips up so that they are on time. We found that practicing this was very helpful because at first we were having bit of trouble understanding how to make all of the clips match the correct amount of time. we are now both a lot more confident when it comes to doing this and therefore it shouldn't be such a long process when it comes to making our own film opening.
We made a storyboard of reservoir dogs because it will help us know exactly how the film is supposed to look when we are filming it. rather than having to keep watching the film opening over and over again we can just refer back to this.
The reason as to why we chose the genre 'Drama', is because we looked at other drama films such as '12 Years a Slave'. By looking at this film then showed us that Drama films can tend to go on real-life situations and this is what ours is based on.
Another film that comes under the genre 'drama' is 'The Fault in Our Stars (2014)'. By also looking at this film relates to real-life situation that are currently going on and that people are having to deal with.
Most drama films have some sort of impact on their audience. The main impact they will have is emotionally, because the audience watching the particular film may-be able to relate towards it.
We decided to look at where the genre 'drama' came in the leading genres.
This is what we found out:
From looking at this, you can see that 'Drama' is 4th out of 14. This shows us that the genre is quite popular, which means we have more chance of people wanting to watch our film - whether this is because it's their favourite genre, they like watching that type of film or they can relate to the film whether it's emotionally or just in general.
Due to the fact our film is based on peoples misfortune in their lives and how they're dealing with it. Focusing mainly on two characters (brother and sister) and the impact they are having on other characters lives, as well as there's.
Dramas normally relate to real life situations with realistic characters, settings and stories. It an also portray the character's journey, which can also move the audience emotionally.
The conventions of drama films include:
Heart of drama is conflict and the conflicts include inner/outer realistic struggles depicting difficulty and pain.
They also have a specific structure with climaxes and anti-climaxes to keep the audience emotionally attached and the tension on-going.
The genre drama is split into separate categories:
Biography
Dramedy
Historical
Melodrama
Period Piece
Political
Romance
Tragedy
Some sub-genres in drama break the specific conventions of
it. For example the scene in Titanic when Jack dies, breaks the conventions of the genre.
The type of Drama I will be creating is a Tragedy. 'A Tragedy is a genre wherein the downfall of the character is caused by a flaw within a character. The genre is really about the self-destructive behaviour of the character. The flaws of the character come to a head and can ultimately result in death or other form of degradation.' - This relates to our film as one of our characters are going to end up dying.
But we are also going to use the codes of emotional peaks
and can relate to the protagonist – they’re going through some kind of
emotional journey.
We decided to look into what the three most popular films were in the genre 'drama' with this research, we found out that the 'most popular drama feature films' were:
The Revenant (2015)
The Hateful Eight (2015)
Spotlight (2015)
By looking at the three most popular drama films then gives us an idea as to what type of audience are interested in drama films; what they like to see in them (which includes the film opening).
This task has helped us consider different types of genres that we could potentially produce. We have looked at the key conventions that these genres include and made our decision based upon that. From doing this we have decided that we want to produce a drama film.
That was The Partridge Family's "Doesn't Somebody Want to be
Wanted?", followed by Edison Lighthouse's "Love Grows where my
Rosemary Goes" as K-Billy's Super Sounds of the 70's weekend just keeps
on... trucking'.
Our institution
We decided that we wanted to be an independent institution, this is because we felt that it would be the most appropriate according to our resources. A larger budget would be required to make a mainstream film so that we could cast big stars, use expensive equipment/special effects and have a much more lavish mise en scene. Producing an independent film is much more based on the context within the film, we won't have such extravagant props, however we will be able to use suitable props to convey meaning within our film. We feel that an independent institution would be the best option for us as it enables us to explore different narrative themes and produce a much more contextualised film.
An example of a drama film produced by an independent institution is 12 years a slave by Film4.
Why we are doing a film opening remake
We are creating a remake of a film opening, this will help us when it comes to making our own openings because it highlights what we need to include. This task gives us ideas about different camera shots and editing techniques that we could use and it also works as an example of the general conventions that a film opening needs. We will have to gather suitable props, find a place where it could be set, demonstrate multiple camera shots correctly and edit our footage as close to industry standard as we can get.
The location of our film re-make is going to be in two different settings that relate to the actual film opening. These are going to be:
The school canteen
The carpark/outside
The reason we are going to film it in the school canteen is because the first scene of the film opening they are sitting round a table as they have just ate some food. This location will be ideal as we can use the counters in the back of the shot to act like the area that the waitors are standing at.
The reason we are going to film the other shots in the carpark/outside, is because all of the other scenes our outside and include some sort of brackground of a brickwall, cars and a road. This will be ideal as the carpark will have all of these features so we can get an exact re-make of the opening titles.
Shot Types:
Whilst watching the opening titles of the film, we took down notes on the shot types so it would make it easier for us to film the re-make and we could get the exact type of shots that they used.
Editing Techniques:
When researching into the different titles, we came across a font that looks similar to the one in the opening titles of the film. We will use this as we want to make sure that are film re-make is exactly like the one that has already been made.
Characters:
In the film they use 8 characters which are all men, but to switch things up a bit and to make our film re-make look different we are going to use 8 girls instead. By doing this, we then have a unique take on the film opening re-make. Included with our characters, we will bring props in of glasses for them to wear so that they then have a similar convention to the original film opening credits.
