Researching genres

We have the idea to base our main opening sequence in the genre of a drama thriller.

"Drama thriller: In which the story consists of the elements of a thriller and drama film. These films are usually slower paced and involves a great deal of character development along with plot twists."

-Wikipedia

I feel that this will allow us to easily create certain moods and include certain aspects that make other films interesting. We have decdided to base the main opening sequence on teenagers and young adults and have them as our target audience because we are teenagers ourselves and we know what teenagers like. This will mean that it is easier to plan and we will be able to focus more on the details.

We began our research by watching looking at the opening sequences of several films such as Se7en, Usual Suspects and Dirty Harry at school in class so we could see what we were supposed to be looking at. We then carried out our own research looking at films and TV programmes that fit in with our genre such as Zombieland, The Hole, and Skins.

Dirty Harry
We watched the first few minutes of Dirty Harry first of all to try identify the genre, narrative and to take notes on any really good shots we could 'borrow' and use in our own video. We decided that Dirty Harry fitted into the Cop Thriller genre as it involved a murder and also the police

Se7en
Se7en had the most interesting openting sequence of all of them as it included a montage of several shots of objects that weren't quite clear what they were. From looking at these objects we assumed that the film would be about murder and police as there were giveaway signs. I think it would be a good idea if we include a montage in our video as it keeps the audience interested without giving away too much of the film.

Zombieland
Zombieland was a funny film to watch. Although it is not necessarily in our genre, it was a useful film to watch the opening sequence of as it was really interesting. Told from the point of view of the main character,a teenage boy, it show how he had survived in a land now inhabited by zombies and all the rules he follows. The opening sequences give the audience and insight into what the main character and the whole vibe of the film will be like.

Skins

We looked at skins because we wanted to include teenagers in our video who are not typically 'good' kids and skins focusses ont he lives of a group of teenagers. Skins addresses contraversial issues among young people unlike any other programme and represents teenagers to be young adults who encounter the same or much worse problems than their parents in their life.

The Hole
The main characters in The Hole are all teenagers, aged around 17/18 which is the age of our target audience. The film is about a group of friends that find themselves trapped in a war bunker and it follows the troubled thoughts of a girl. We may want to have the main character/s of our opening sequence to have some sort of troubled mind aswell to make the story a little more interesting.

Preliminary Piece

Our first task to complete for our Media Studies Coursework is the preliminary task. This short sequence must be of someone opening and walking through a door, sitting down and exchanging dialogue with another character. We have decided to use people in our group to star in the preliminary task for convenience and also, two of us are already pretty awesome actresses! My group consists of me, Rachael and Kourtney. We chose to work together in a group because we are all good friends and have similar interests, this helped us when coming up with the storyline of our preliminary piece and also beginning to plan our opening sequence to a film.

The preliminary piece had to include the 180 degree rule and a match-on-action shot. As a group, we researched these on the internet to give us a full understanding of the concepts. This picture helped us work out the logistics of positioning the camera while filming the section of the task with dialogue.

We also researched into how to do a match-on-action shot by looking at videos on Youtube.com and found some examples that other people have previously filmed. This helped us gain an understanding of how to film this shot and give us ideas of how to include match-on-action into our preliminary piece.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tchLVE12tk

When beginning to plan our preliminary piece, we had to come up with a story board. This is a detailed plan of all shots that make up the final video. We decided to create a sinister feel to the video and have Kourtney walking through a corridor and hearing a noise in a room. She then enters and finds Rachael clearly traumatised by something that she has seen. We thought that this would be a good way to include lots of different camera angles that show that we know what we're doing. We also get to see Rachael and Kourtney's amazing acting skills!

SCRIPT:

Kourtney - Are You okay? What's Happened?

Rachael - (fast speech to show trauma) Well they came in and I didn't know what to do!...

Kourtney - Look calm down, whats happened?

Rachael - They're coming...

We also had to choose a location to film the preliminary piece and settled on using the old science block at school as it is no longer being used and would give the effect that we are looking for. There are corridors that have cut off sections which are perfect for filming a small media task. This location would also give us good access as we would be able to do all the filming during media studies lessons.

We had the option of using a camera supplied by our school but we thought that it would be easier and more convenient to use Rachael's video camera so that we could use it whenever we liked instead of arranging a certain amount of time to film our piece which would limit the amount of material we could produce. Also, using a piece of equipment that we already know how to use would mean that we can quickly and easily film, view and upload the scenes onto the computer.

The camera we used was a Flip ultraHD video recorder which was extremely easy to use. Features include:

- 8GB in-built memory

- captures up to 120 minutes of video at once

- one touch recording & digital zoom

- flip out USB arm that plugs straight into your computer

- HDMI port for high-definition TV output

Our Video - the ACTUAL preliminary!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rA1LTBHcPO8

After planning, filming and editing together our preliminary piece, we encountered a number of issues, such as continuity and over-thinking the storyline. At one point in the preliminary film, a point-of-view (POV) shot cuts to a lower shot of Kourtney opening the door however the light in the room, which you can see through the window in the door, is off to begin with then in the next shot the light is on. This is bad continuity and it has made us aware of what we need to focus on when filming our real opening sequence. I also feel that we had been over-thinking the storyline of the preliminary piece too much; this had been discussed within our group and we all felt that not enough focus was put upon the camera shots and skills needed to capture exactly what we wanted, but instead we tried to make the story too complex.

To make our main task amazing, we would have to think about continuity to make the video look professional, also we must come up with a simple idea so it is easy to film but will also be amazing, allowing us to include some pretty cool camera shots and things to make it really interesting! I look forward to planning and filming AND editing our opening sequence!