First Draft of Our New Film Opening...

Here is the very first draft of our new film opening, we just put together a few bits of our new footage to see how they look together. We still have loads more to add in like the longer shots of our main character waking up because it looks slightly too fast-paced at the moment.

We will probably change this quite a bit but this was just a rough draft to give us an idea of what we wanted it to look like.

(The night time driving shots were filmed on tuesday night after our first lot of filming and we forgot to mute some of the clips so mute the youtube video)

Filming...(again)...

Yesterday we began filming for our new film concept. We started by filming some of the car journey shots out of the car windows and got some good shots of traffic lights changing, people walking down the street, etc. All of these shots will be sped up when we edit our footage to make an interesting effect. It was light when we filmed this part, so we are going to get some similar shots at night, so that we can fade the two shots into each other.
Hopefully it will look something like this once we've edited it (minus the awful music);

As we were driving around we saw a phonebox which was perfect for one of our shots, so we filmed sarah running into it from behind the camera, then another shot of her doing the same thing but from the other side of the road. Then we took two different angled shots of her frantically dialling from inside the phonebox. One looking down at her and one looking up at her. We want to make sure we get loads of different, interesting angles so that we have as much variety in our film opening as possible.

We then saw a street lamp flickering (it was getting dark by this point) but did not quite film it in time so ended up with just a shot of a normal lamp post! All of the things we filmed today are just filler shots anyway to use in our main character's dream/flash back sequence so we were filming lots of short shots of odd things. We also stopped off at Hillyfields to film some point of view shots of someone running. Then we put the camera on the floor so that the ground was at an angle on the screen, and got Aimie to run over it so you could only see her legs.

I think this will all look really good when we've edited it so that it is really fast-paced and choppy. The whole idea of our film opening is to be just lots of short shots of the character's flashbacks put together to make an interesting opening and one that does not tell too much of a story.

Tomorrow we will be filming the part where our main character is waking up in the middle of the forest.

Camera Shots and Storyboard...

Here are a few ideas for the different camera shots that we are going to use in our new film opening;

• point of view shots from passengers perspective in a car (both night and day time, perhaps fade one into the other when editing).



• point of view shot of traffic lights changing.



• canted angle shot of the ground and someone running over the camera (to look as though the camera has been dropped by someone).



• close up shot of someone changing the radio station in the car.



• point of view shots of sign posts - lets the audience know a bit more about the character's situation.



• close up of car clock (again informing the audience).



• point of view shots of character getting chased and then point of view shots from that character's perspective.



• wing mirror and inside mirror close up shots.



• over the shoulder shot of driver.



• steering wheel shot.



• blurred night time car journey shots.



• high and low angle shots of main character sleeping in strange surroundings.



• pan over main characters body as they're sleeping.



• zoom out shot of main character waking up abruptly and then pan across surroundings.



• close up of someone's hands trying to find something on a shelf.



• shot of a clocks hands spinning round.



• close up of cup of tea as milk is being poured into it (when this is slowed down on iMovie might look really cool).



• shots at wheel level of car as it is moving.

All of these shots will be put together in a way that will make an interesting film opening about someone having a dream/flashbacks and then waking up in the woods. We think this will be effective because the audience won't really understand what is going on initially, so this would make them want to continue watching the whole film which is the main objective of any film opening.

Here is our storyboard for our new film idea;

GarageBand Training...

Yesterday we went to a GarageBand training session and got taught everything about how to use the programme so that we know what we are doing when it comes to adding music to our film opening. We all got the chance to play around with creating different pieces of music by adding in loops, etc. Our group came up with a few different things that we really liked the sound of but now we have got to make sure that the different parts of the track we eventually make fit in exactly with the action on screen to give our film opening a tension building effect.

Here is a picture of our group (minus Aimie!) at GarageBand training;

Some more helpful clips...

After starting to watch the first series of 'Six Feet Under', an american tv drama, I realised how much I liked the opening credits for it. I think it is well put together for many reasons. Firstly because of the very interesting shots they use and secondly because of the way those shots have been edited together to match the music perfectly, for example when the viewer is shown some sort of container filling up with liquid (at 0:47), the music changes abruptly and almost sounds like water dripping and splashing. Another example of this is the shot of the dying flowers (at 0:57), the music matches the action on the screen. Although this is not an opening for a film, I love it and hope we can use some aspects of it in our own film opening, like the way that the audience has not really been shown any storyline yet, but they still get a hint as to what the programme will be about.



Here is a clip from the TV soap 'Hollyoaks' which shows somebody waking up (at 0:07) in an unfamiliar place and is a bit a of a dream sequence too, this could be helpful for our film opening idea;

Sherlock Holmes

Saw the latest version of Sherlock Holmes at the cinema on wednesday and really enjoyed it. I especially liked the technique of slowing some of the action down whilst Holmes' voice over explains step by step what he is doing and then straight after the audience is shown the same action at normal speed. I liked the effect this had on the audience and their understanding of his character. We could possibly use some aspects of this technique whilst editing our film once we have the footage. Here is a clip of the film (the slow motion effect I mentioned starts at 0:31);