Comparing our film opening to other current films.

In this lesson I compared my tragic drama film opening idea with other current tragic films out in the industry today.

I think that my groups film compared the most with "My sisters keeper" and there are many reasons why.

Firstly I think that normally tragic drama films are independent but My sisters keeper wasn't as it appealed to a mainstream audience, was shown in the cinema and was hugely successful and this is what we want our film to be like.

Also both our films have completely different story lines (My sisters keeper is about a young girl fighting her battle through cancer however our film is about a little girl who has already died and we see the relationship between the girl and father were far from perfect, something isn't right).

Our films both involve a whole family who are involved in the situation and also there are deaths in both films although in My sisters keeper the death is at the end of the film where as in ours it has already happened.

Discussing the openings there is big similarities, both our films start with the little girl talking now in My sisters keeper the girl is talking about why she was born and in ours the little girl is talking about her memories so they are two different things.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LS55xHZWzEo
Lastly in the opening we both see clips and images of the family together which is another similarity.

Although there are lots of similarities with our film and My sisters keeper, the whole storyline is completely different we just have similar aspects that you can compare the films with.

Institutional Name & Logo.

In this lesson me and my group had to come up with our institutional name and logo for our film.

 For our main institution we decided the name that we most preferred was the one we were originally given which was Pink Productions. We decided to stick with this name as it fitted in with our style of film but also was the kind of name which could easily relate to a lot of ideas.

We also came up with a second production name as we felt we needed another one which defined our group. We came up with different ideas of what this could be called and all agreed that the kind of name we wanted to go for was something that was quite innocent and child like. We then thought of different toys and objects associated with childhood and decided whether they worked or not. we came up with institution names such as; Finger puppet productions, Roundabout productions, The Music Box and Happy Bean productions.

In the end we decided we were keen on on Happy Bean as we felt this was the most original idea but also was not sure whether the audience would get the wrong impression before our film started and that they may think it was a film aimed at children.
We then decided that The Music Box was something that could fit into our film really well. We decided that the music made from the logo could be a light instrumental tune that could carry onto the beginning of our film.

Planning our film & what we need to consider.

In this lesson me and my group started planning on the things we need to consider in our opening, we discussed actors, location and costume.
Actors - For our opening we will need the voice of a little girl which we will be allowed to do because we are only filming her voice and not actually her physical appearance. We need to find someone to play the Mum, this person needs to be middle aged, they also need to come across distraught and emotional because of there daugthers death, they don't really care about anything else. Lastly we need a Dad, now he is going to be the antagonist in our opening, you see the bad side of him as he didn't care for his daughter, he comes across quite cruel and intimidating.

Location - We started planning where we were going to film and the following locations/settings we will need are:
- A Park
- Kitchen for birthday decorations
- Study room
- Bedroom
All these settings are very easy to get we just need to make sure they look right and consider the mise en scene.

Costume (colour, connotations) - We started thinking about what our characters could wear and this is what we came up with.
Mum - We want the mum to be dressed very casually, in comfy baggy clothes and this is because it shows she doesn't want to make an effort, her daughter has died so she doesn't care what she looks like, she just needs to feel relaxed. I think she should be wearing neutral colours, to show her innocence and portray her as the protagonist.
Dad - We want the dad to wear a black suit, the suit shows him as a buisnessman who cares alot about his work and maybe more than his family, and the black shows him as dark and evil and shows him as the antagonist.

Initial Storyboard & Script.

I worked with my group to produce our first initial storyboard and script.

Script - For our script the main thing in the opening is the voice over of the little girl, we thought a opening doesn't have a lot of conversation dialogue because it's just introducing you to the film. The little girl is going to explain whats going on with her family to introduce us to the film, we wanted to make her sound very innocent. We didn't want to the script to be to complicated as an opening is quite simple and we want our opening to end with the dad and the mum just beginning to have a conversation.
At first the script was quite hard to do but once we got going on what the little girl was going to see we started working really well and was very happy with our first version of our script.

Storyboard - I found the storyboard very easy to do, this was because me and my group knew exactly what was going to happen because we had already planned the setting the acting and the titles so it all went together really well. When we finally completed our storyboard we were very pleased with it the only improvement we could make though was to maybe make it a bit more basic because I think its a bit too complicated for an opening but its our first initial storyboard so we can still make a lot of changes if we feel it's necessary.

To see my groups first story board and script you can go onto my group blog - http://ascvhsmediapmy.blogspot.com/

Timeline.

In this lesson I created two time lines which showed the titles for the opening of films. The reason I did this was because when it comes to me and my group making our film we need to start thinking about the titles as they are very important in an opening! I chose the opening of my sisters keeper because it's a popular tragic drama which is helpful because it's the genre I'm doing. I then chose to do Forrest Gump because that is also one of the best drama films out in the industry today.
My Sisters Keeper
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LS55xHZWzEo
0.00 - Start
0.02 - Film makers name
0.07 - Main actors name (female)
0.17 - Main actors name (female)
0.24 - Title of film
0.33 - Main actors name (male)
0.37 - Main actors name (male)
0.40 - Main actors name (female)
0.46 - Sub actors name (female)
0.51 - Sub actors name (male)
0.54 - 3 minor actors names (shown together) (male)
0.58 - Casting directors name
1.02 - Costume designers name
1.09 - Music directors name
1.12 - Co-producers name
1.25 - Editors name
1.29 - Production designers name
1.34 - Director of photography's name
1.41 - Executive producers name
1.51 - "Based on novels" name
1.55 - Producers names
2.01 - Screen plays names
2.05 - Directors name
2.05 - End

Forrest Gump
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7voy1vit6Y
0:00 - Film production and distribution company logo
0:12 - Film distribution name
0:16 - Film production name
0:23 - Producers name
0:28 - Main actors name
0:32 - Title of film
0:38 - Sub actors name
0:42 - Sub actors name
0:47 - Sub actors name
0:53 - Sub actors name
0:57 - Casting name
1:02 - Co-producers name
1:08 - Executive producers name
1:12 - Visual effects supervisors name
1:17 - Costume designers name
1:22 - Music by name
1:27 - Editors name
1:32 - production designers name
1:37 - Director of photographers name
1:42 - Based on the novel of name
1:46 - Screen plays name
1:50 - All the producers names
2:02 - Directors name

By doing this task I have started to realise how import the titles are in the opening, this opening is only 2 minutes yet it has 23 titles! I noticed that the title of the films came up very early in this both of the  openings as well (I wouldn't want ours to come up so quickly. When we come to making our film opening we will defiantly need to add in all the titles because they are very important as that's what makes and opening an opening. I am glad I did this task because it will really beniefet my group because we will be experts in what titles we need and the order they should go in.

Planning our opening.

In this lesson me and my group were carrying on planning our opening we started to think about our script, what the dialogue would be and any stage directions needed, we are going to have a voice over in our opening which will be the little girl talking about memories with her family. The other characters we have are her mum and dad but we are not sure if any of them will say anything yet but we will carry on developing our script next lesson.
We also began to consider mise in our opening, where it would be set, the lighting, make up, costume and props and we will again carry on doing this next lesson.
Lastly another thing we started planning was our story board but just a basic one and then we can make it more detailed when we have the rough idea of what's going to be involved.

Once these three pieces are complete (script, storyboard and mise) they will be on my group blog - http://ascvhsmediapmy.blogspot.com/

Considering Actors.

This is on my group blog. http://ascvhsmediapmy.blogspot.com/