Tolu Lawal
Blog entry
25/02/09
For my opening sequence, through viewing various opening sequences of movies in the same genre as my own, I was able to adopt the micro-macro strategy. I wanted my film to follow the conventions of a typical thriller but at the same time challenge the conventions. The atmosphere created in my film by the camera work and music will be similar to that of the various trailers and opening sequences of thrillers that I have watched. The style of my titles and music will reflect the tense atmosphere I am creating in my opening sequence. I got the idea for the titles of opening sequence through watching trailers on YouTube and making a note of a reoccurring style of lettering and the sound effects that came with the style of lettering. The trailer that gave me the idea for my opening sequence includes ‘The Ring 2’, ‘Hide and Seek’ and ‘Collateral’. From these titles, I figured that the titles do reflect what the movie is about and add to the atmosphere that is being created. The music also reflects the happenings of the movie. As things become more tense or exciting the non diegetic background music tends to add to the atmosphere created. The Language of film is told through the non diegtic sounds and the diegetic sounds. This is when the dialogue is reflected through the soundtrack. In my opening sequence this is created through the murderer’s thoughts and the sound bridge into the flashback. When she says she still hears them calling her name, we hear the boys calling her name in a tuneful manner as if it what driving he crazy allowing the audience to hear her thoughts. This connection with the audience through makes the atmosphere extremely tense. Through the grammar of the edit, we are able to make connections through the flashbacks and the time changes throughout the opening sequence. Although my editing is non linear as it jumps through time, the audience are still aware of the happenings as the events will be explained by the main character in-between the flash backs. All our flashbacks will be in black and white to ensure that the audience are able to differentiate between the current time and the past. And during the first flash back there will be a caption inserted to show how long ago the events were. I believe we used the right transition effects eg fade to black as it is commonly used in this genre to portay the tense atmosphere being created . it is almost as if the viewer is having to wait to see what is going happen and the transition contributes to this feeling of anticipation.
The key mistakes made throughout the filming of my opening sequence were the constant changing of ideas and the gender of our actors. I could have been a lot more organised when it came to arranging times to film and actually getting the filming done. Our planning was good but I do think our story board could have been much more accurate. The errors I made in the preliminary task were avoided as I was much more familiar with the software I was using and the editing was technically harder but also easier because I had used the software before.
On a macro level, my film does challenge the traditional conventions of a thriller. Most thrillers I have watched start slow, almost portraying normal life but my opening sequence starts with a series of flashbacks and the confession of a murder in order to grasp the audiences’ attention. Instead of seeing the movie title first, the film title will end my opening sequence.
I do not make reference to any other particular film throughout my opening sequence.
My target audience will be young adults. It will appeal to many people as is a thriller but also a teen movie about bullying. The storyline of my opening sequence challenges the traditional conventions of this genre. Thrillers are not usually about teenagers murdering fellow peers. I think this difference in the storyline attracts a much wider range of audiences from different age groups. Those who like thrillers are likely to watch it and those teenagers who prefer to watch something they are able to relate to will also take an interest in the film.

Filming our opening sequence
Tolu Lawal

Maria and I are about half way through our filming. We have encountered several obstacles along the way. We have had problems with finding actors for our opening sequence. We have decided our bullies should be male and to keep our main character female. Also the weather has been a major problem for us as it has continuously been changing so some of the shots we filmed on different days cannot be incorporated into our film as they look too different. In order to avoid this, Maria and I have decided to film a scene a day.

12/02/09
Tolu Lawal
Sounds for our opening sequence

I watched a few trailers of thrillers and listened to the change in the sound as the story got more exiting. I found that they made very little use of popular music and the music fitted with the scene. It was synchronous and became more exciting and tense at the same pace as the scene. This is going to help Maria and I when we editing our video and adding all the music into it. Our music will also have to be synchronous and help to portray the current happenings of each scene.

12/02/09
Tolu Lawal
Changing ideas

Maria and I have once again decided to change the some of the idea for our opening sequence. We have decided to change the gender of our actors from male to female. This is because finding an older male character was proving very difficult so we decided to employ female characters as we found it easier to find an older looking actress to play the part of the woman. This changes the bullies into younger female characters. also we have decided to have a female Psychiatrist because all the other characters in th The main story line of our opening sequence is going to stay the same. Also we have decided that there will be no murder scene any longer, we have finalised the story board and have decided on all of our shots.

Tolu

Titles for the opening scene

For the opening of our movie I have done 12 second titles opening, I included our productions name and the title of the movie. Also I found an interesting image with and eye and world in space, which I thought would look very affective for our symbol. So I did a lot of work on it to make the eyelid move. I’ve used programs like Paint, Photoshop and Premiere element.

I edited the image and then put them one after another to create a movement on Premiere element. It worked out very impressive. Also I found a non authorised music; the song is very mystical and hunting which makes the image more interesting. I used simple font and text style to make it look professional, so the viewers believed that it is a real movie. Our movie is a murder mystery, so the opening has to be quite serious and representative.

Maria T

Further PLanning and ideas for opening Sequence.

Tolu Lawal

This shot taken from Mr and Mrs Smith, gave us an idea for one of the main shots in our opening sequence. In this scene they are with their marriage councilor but you never actually get to see his face only hear his voice. This is very similar to the type of shot we have decided to use to for the shot between our main character and his pyschiatrist. the only difference is that you will be able to see the back of the pyschiatrist's head so it an obvious point of view shot.

I found this shot on Youtube. It gives us an idea of the kind of atmosphere we want to create during our flashbacks where he murders a fellow pupil. It is quite scary and dark and this shot type will tell the audience that something bad is about to happen.

Opening Sequence
Tolu Lawal
16/01/09

Scene 1 – this will be set in the Hopeman mixed common room. It will be a point of view shot from the psychiatrist’s point of view. So you only get to see the back if the psychiatrist’s head.

The next shot in this scene will be a close up of his feet tapping continuously in order to convey a his nerves to the audience.

Scene 2- will be a flashback. This will be done in the woods and will be black and white making the audience aware of the fact that it is a flash back. It will consist of him walking thorough the woods after the boy who is alone and plunging the knife into him several times. We will have to film this scene just before it gets too dark so the camera is still able to pick up the footage.


Scene 3- this scene will be a series of flashbacks between the common room/ psychiatrist’s office and our final setting. This will be a range of different situations where his victims are bullying him. And we will flash back to the various incidents including name calling and tone throwing and flash forwards to close ups of our offender’s face.