Research 1

For the first part of my research I was going to look into what previous media students had done, and look at the flaws and find features that I liked so that I could try to incorporate these into my own opening. To do this I went to http://ocrmediastudies.weebly.com/coursework-with-levels.html where there was a variety of different clips that I could watch.

Roses are Red
The first opening I watched was called 'Roses are Red', I thought that it was a very interesting way to do the titles and I found it quite entertaining. The technique they used was to write the cast, directors, editors names etc. on different everyday items and shot these as a young girl got ready around them. As you can see on the

image below, one of the actors names is shown on a cup of tea the actress is about to drink. I thought this was a very interesting way to shoot the titles. I though this opening was just about the titles (which they did well), but they did also show us who the star was going to be and gave a hint that the genre was going to be a romantic teen film.



Gemini

The next opening I watched was 'Gemini', I thought this opening was very poor. It did not run cleanly through the clips and in one shot the actress was cut off before she had finished her line. Not only that but it was hard to believe as the news reporter in the clip looked around seventeen as did the police officer. This showed a lack of effort and would make a viewer struggle to get into the film. There titles (right) were very good however and you could tell that a lot of work and editing had gone into them. These gave the film a professional look and I felt these were definitely the best part of the film. After watching this
film I would need to make sure that my opening ran through cleanly and this would all be down to the editing.


A School's Nightmare
I thought this clip was very entertaining, you could tell from this two minute opening that genre of the film was horror. They used many different editing effects so that you could get the sense of movement. As you can see from the photo they used a cross hatch effect on a long shot to show a young child walking across a field. This worked well as instead of wasting thirty seconds showing him walking they only used around ten as he jumped from position to position. The studio graphics shown at the start of the film also worked very well as there was a lot of movement and that differed from most of the other clips. After watching this clip I would definitely want to watch the rest of the film to see what happened in the story.

The Edge
This clip was by far the best I have seen, although it ran a lot longer than the two minutes it was a lot more hooking than the rest. The graphics that went into the opening looked as though they were from a real film, they came in and out of the shots throughout the film. The music in the background made up for the fact there was no dialogue and it added to the suspense of the film. Point of view shots were used throughout as well, they were used as the boy was rollerblading around the car park. The tracking shots of him also added to the chase scene.


After this I also had a look into my own colleges previous videos, after watching most of them I thought the best one was definitely 'The LA Waltz', the voiceover and soundtrack worked very well and it was one of the only gangster genre openings that I have seen so that gave the film something a little bit different http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igzvbeFBohc

The preliminary exercise

Our group was set a short preliminary exercise to get us used to using the different camera equipment and also so that we could try our hand at editing some film footage. Within our group we shared the roles of actor, editor and cameraman so that we could each get used to the different aspects. We used different shots and angles to film myself walking down a college corridor, opening the door, sitting down and then having a short conversation with another member of the group. In the clip we used a mid long shot to show the character walking down the hall, then a close up as he opens the door. As he sits downs to have a conversation we used a mid close up to show him talk and then switch to an over the shoulder shot to hear the reply. As it was our first attempt it took quite a few takes and a bit of editing to make shots come together and look right, after it was finished we were left with this sixteen second clip.

The Brief

The the brief for my AS foundation Media course was to create a two minute film opening including credits, for a new original feature film. Throughout the exercise I will be posting updates on my blog to tell everyone what I am doing with the film and to also keep everyone updated. The posts will include videos, pictures, diaries and much more to keep it interesting and exciting.