Details For Opening Sequence

Props 

Genette Tate's bike 
Newspapers
Small wooden box with a latch containing objects from past kidnappings for example glasses, shoes, notebook and a watch.
laptop

Notes for actors

Two 15 year old girls - Not much dialogue just need to greet Genette 
One middle aged man ( supposed kidnapper) - He has no lines and doesn't need to be seen faced on only from behind.
One 13 year old girl who will play Genette - Doesn't have many lines 

Costumes and make up     

Because we are setting our opening in present day we will have the characters wear clothing that are worn today compared to the 70's.

Genette 

• Everyday clothing 
• minimal makeup if any at all 

Two 15 year old girls

• Everyday clothing 
• More makeup to show that they are older                      

 Middle aged man ( supposed kidnapper)                           

• Dark everyday clothes such as a hoodie and jeans 

Characters In Our Film

We want to represent our characters in different ways in our film opening and these were our ideas.

Genette 
We wanted our actor too appear vulnerable,happy,innocent and natural.We wanted this because we wanted our audience to feel sorry for her and for her to seem a likeable character. She isn't presented as a stereotypical teenager because she is active and working whereas teenagers these days are stereotyped as being lazy and constantly on social media. She is also not portrayed as an object to me or as part of the male gaze. She would be seen as a generic character (an innocent young girl who is victimised) a character that has been in films many times before. In our film Genette is the protagonist and we want the viewer to be drawn to her.

Kidnapper
Like Genette this character is a generic one because all you have to do is google the word kidnapper and various pictures of men being the kidnapper come up and in some of them you see women being the victim this means our kidnapper is a stereotypical kidnapper but because we wanted our film based on true events we couldn't change the character.

The two teenage girls 
These girls are only a brief part of the opening so don't really have much of a representation or a stereotype but you could say they are opposing the stereotype of teenagers like Genette is cause they are shown outside been active. 

Timeline Of Openings

I decided to do my timeline on the film Goodfellas because the genre of this film is a crime and drama film and that is what our genre is, I also chose it cause it is based on true events and so is ours. I watched the opening on Art of the title. 

Mood board For Our Opening

I created a mood board on Pinterest for some ideas for our opening like props, settings and costumes,it just gives us a few ideas on things to include in our opening.

My storyboard

These are the images of my completed storyboard which I used to create the animatic we did and help structure our film opening.

Our Pitch

On the 8th December Jasmine and I presented our pitch for our film opening to the class. We got quite a good response from the audience because most of the class put up their hands when asked if they would watch our film. The feedback to our pitch and idea was

"Its good that its based on true events"

"Very engaging" 

"makes me want to watch it" 

"appealing to a teenage audience"

"good enigmas" 

'lots of research to back it up"

Here are some photos to show of us presenting our pitch to the class.

From doing the pitch I learnt how important it is to really get facts and information correct so that you can convey to an audience your idea. In our pitch we talked about what are opening will be about, what characters we will need and what our setting and sound will be like. When talking about what our opening would include we talked about how we were going to have two scenes going on at once for example we are going to have Genette leaving her house to go on her paper round and are also going to have her supposed kidnapper looking through a box of old kidnappings he has committed. 

We also talked about what characters we would need for example we need a 13 year old girl to play Genette Tate two 15 year old girls to last see Genette and a middle aged man who is meant to be the supposed kidnapper. And after that we highlighted what sound we wanted as that is my job in the filming I explained that we were gong to have diegetic and non diegetic sound. For example for diegetic sound I talked about the voices of characters and the sound of cars on the road and for non dietetic I talked about how we could emphasize the sound of the door clicking as Genette leaves the house.  

For our opening we have four enigmas 

What happened to her ?

Where did she go ?

Was it planned ?

Why did she go ? 

We have also decided to use many camera angles and shots for our opening for example low angle shots of the bike on the road as well as tracking shots of it. when Genette leaves the house we have decided to do a match on action shot of her opening the door and when the bike s left on its own at the end www ill do a close up shot of it and the newspapers. 

Codes And Conventions

What are codes ?

They are system of signs which create meaning and are divided into two meanings.

Technical codes are all the ways in which equipment is used to tell the story in a media text for example camera work in a film.

Symbolic codes show what is beneath the surface of what we see for example a characters actions show what a character is feeling.

What are conventions ?

They are a widely recognised way of doing something which is to do with content form and style and like codes there are two types of conventions.

What are the conventions of a drama film ?

Exhibits real life situations with real life characters and realistic situations settings and stories.

Portrays journeys of characters development.

Purpose of a dramatic story line is to move the audience emotionally.

Structured climaxes and anti climaxes to keep the audience emotionally attached and involved.

Dramas can be linked with other genres such as tragedy and comedies.

What we are doing 

We chose to do a drama because they are interesting and easy to film because they have clear conventions like the ones above and we have adapted them in our own way as seen below.

We chose to do a real life situation of the disappearance of Genette Tate. 

It doesn't necessarily portray the journey of a particular character but could portray the journey of her kidnapper because of the crimes he has committed in the past.

I think that it moves the audience because it is a true event and so it moves the audience emotionally because they really feel for Genette and her family. 

I think the climax of our opening is at the end of it when the camera goes to the bike and Genette isn't there. I think this will involve and intrigue the audience because they will want to know what has happened. 

The other genre that our opening is linked with is crime because the disappearance is a case that involves the police thus making it a crime drama.

  

Art Of The Title

Opening scenes of drama films

Because we have decided to do a genre of crime drama for our opening scene I decided to research some film openings wth the genre of drama on the website Art of the title.

Forrest Gump 

This film opening is very simple and only includes one shot of the feather floating down to meet Forrest Gump's feet. The titles of the film are not layered in anyway or put in creatively and are more just put on top of the shots. I feel like when we do our opening we will try to include the titles more in the shot. There is a non diegetic music paying softly in the background and this means that the audience can't hear anymore sounds. The opening does not give a lot away that happens in the film and only introduces us too one character.




Goodfellas 


The titles in this opening come on in a swiping motion linking with the sound effects of the opening that reminds me of cars driving past. The opening also includes that it is based on a true story which is what we will need to put in our opening. The scene then cuts to the police car driving on the road and the date of when the even happened. For most part of the opening there is little titles and more dialogue that would be used in the rest of the film. However at the end of the opening the titles go back to how they were at the beginning with this time though there is a song playing. The titles aren't included in particular to the opening except for the fact that they are linked to the sound of cars.



Snatch

The beginning starts off in silence showing only a black screen and the titles, I think for our opening we should include a black screen because two of the openings I have looked at have them to put the titles on. The opening then goes to an extra of dialogue with no titles included. This is until the next shot of a security camera with people inside a lift and music playing in the background. In that shot the titles start reappearing. This opening reminds me of Goodfellas because of the order in which events and the titles happen.

Research On Genette Tate

For our film opening we had to do some research on Genette herself here is some of the websites and information we find out about her. We needed to make sure got the right information to make an accurate representation of what happened on August 19th 1978.                  

Animatic

This is our animatic for our opening scene. I learnt when drawing the pictures for the storyboard how crucial it is too plan for our opening so we know what the shots will be. When making the animatic we learnt editing techniques that would help us when editing our opening for example cutting clips to shorten them and scaling the images to fit to size. Our animatic has no sound however which is a flaw but we didn't feel comfortable enough with the software to do this and we were also pretty slow when making our animatic. That was noticed by the audience when they watched it however the audience did like the short sentences that went with the pictures so it was obvious what was going to happen in that scene.

Storyboard

This is my storyboard for our film opening we have changed some aspects of it so it doesn't directly compare to this.