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;

Group discussion...

Yesterday we had another talk about our plans, and we came up with a couple of ideas for our film opening, such as having the first shot fade in from black and have diegetic sound (e.g. sound of cars driving past/police sirens?/etc.) playing for a bit before any image is seen on the screen. This will make the audience wonder why these noises are being heard and who is hearing them.
An example of this can be seen in the start of this clip from the film 'Sin City';


When I was searching for another example of diegetic sound being used before the first shot is shown on screen, I remembered the opening credits of 'Monty Python; The Holy Grail' and how the humour of it is enhanced by the sound, although it is non-diegetic it will still help us to understand different ways in which sound can be used to create a feeling in the audience members.

We also decided that we'll be meeting up over the christmas holidays to plan every shot, make our storyboard and sort out everything about our film, that way we will be ready to start filming as soon as we get back to school in the new year.

Change of plan...

In yesterday's lesson, our group had a discussion about whether or not we had enough footage to produce a decent film opening - following the criteria - and we eventually came to the conclusion that the footage we had taken and the content was not sufficient enough to produce a film that we would be happy with and that would fulfill the criteria.
Although we will be starting from scratch, all of the research we have done so far will still be relevant because we can take the essential elements of this research and apply them to the conventions of the genre we choose.
We will most likely be still doing a thriller film opening but we have also had some ideas about doing a spoof/comedy. Both have their benefits and faults; for example, a thriller would be easier to make in the sense of keeping it simple and just having good camera angles and shot composition, whereas a spoof/comedy could be fun to make and potentially interesting if we get it right, but it would be really easy for us to find it all hilarious in the moment, but then watching it back it may be really not funny at all.
We are going to research previous years A2 media films before deciding on anything, but I am leaning towards doing another thriller film opening.
We had a few vague ideas, such as - after looking at the opening of the film 'Donnie Darko' - filming something very obscure in order to intrigue the viewer.

For example, we discussed having footage of somebody sleeping and showing quick flashes of bad dreams they are having mixed with flashs of close-ups of their face flinching and then at the end it zooms out as they wake up and they're in an odd place, such as a field, a car park, etc.
These are just very early ideas and we will continue to brainstorm more ideas.