616 Amy and Tilly

Title Sequences The title sequence of a film opening is especially important as it aims to establish character, setting, genre, mood and atmosphere. The opening titles introduce  the title of the film and the key people involved in the film through visual text, i.e. the distribution company, the production company, the names of the primary/top billing actors, sometimes introduced alongside their character, the producers and executive producer and the director and then the film title itself. Generally the cast and crew of the film are introduced in this order and the director always comes last. Sometimes the editor, composer, costume/character designer, cinematographer and screen writer(s) will be included in the opening sequence, but this can depend on the overall running time of the film as well as the running time of the opening itself. Opening sequences are expected to include aspects such as an establishing shot, introduction the main cast, or at least the protagonist, and...

Basic Pitch What genre will your film opening be? The genre of our film will be a live-action family adventure. We would like to incorporate various themes, most notably 'imagination', that will help build the idea of family values and heart warming story lines, as well as endear the audience to the characters.  We plan to have the film made in a live-action format, with visual actors, as we currently do not have the budget or the skills to animate a full film opening.   Some examples of films we are looking at within this genre are: ' Ramona and Beezus (2010) ', ' Cheaper By The Dozen (2003) ' and ' Bridge to Terabithia (2007) ', which all feature these aspects.  What are the codes and conventions of this genre? There are various codes and conventions within the 'Family Film' genre, such as:  Comedy elements, usually slapstick or unfortunate scenarios happening to (often rude) adult characters e.g. Harry Lime and Marv Merch...

Hello! For our project, we have designed some moodboards to give us inspiration and insight into the aesthetic of our film: The first mood board is representative of what elements we want to include in our film, notably childhood wonder, exploration and, most importantly, imagination. They also depict the type of mise-en-scene we want to present in our film opening. For example, we plan to use everyday clothing as well as colourful costumes to show the visual contrast between 'real' and 'imagination' as well as a means to represent our characters in a childish but endearing way. As for setting, we hope to use a playground, possibly with a woods or forest-like area behind it to add to the general feeling of outside play and adventure, where the characters can use the play equipment as props to act out the stories in their imagination. We also wanted to include aspects of family by having the main characters being children of a young, pre-teen age. The mood bo...

Evaluation Explain about how you went about the three compulsory aspects of this exercise - shot reverse shot, 180-degree rule and match on action editing. The compulsory editing aspects of the preliminary task were all followed correctly throughout the entirety of the video.The shot reverse shot features the two primary actors (Claire and Tilly) sitting face-to-face at a desk when t hey have a conversation about how Claire had been stealing stationery from people’s lockers around the school.  The camera flicked between them numerous times varying between close up and medium shots. These shots show the facial expressions of our actors and help to pull the story line together. The 180-degree rule was a little bit tougher for us to follow, as we had to re-shoot the opening shot as we had accidentally broken the rule. However, the re-shoot meant that the rule was no longer broken and the editing could be completed efficiently.  The final compulsory aspect wa...

This is the video version of our preliminary. It features a match-on-action, use of the 180 degree rule and a shot-reverse-shot. The girl with glasses is Tilly, who is playing the 'teacher's pet' character, and the girl opposite is Claire, who is playing the 'delinquent' character.  These are the st o ryboards we used as the basis for our video. We tried to keep the live-action version as close to the original as possible. In the first day of filming, we did make the mistake of filming the wrong door in which Claire was supposed to enter, as the door depicted in the storyboards was opposite the one filmed. This was remedied later by re-filming the shot. Similarly, the first day of filming led to inaccuracies in regards to the 180 degree rule, as it was broken during some shots by accident, which we again later remedied on the next day of filming. There was no problems in regards to the shot-reverse-shot, but there were small, extraneous inconsiste...

Hello! I'm Tilly and this is Amy!  This blog is going to outline our Media A Level project, starting with our pitch and preliminary task until our final project, a 2-minute film opening of our own design. The final project will incorporate the conventions of film openings, such as establishing the setting, genre, primary characters, aesthetic, establishment of enigma and, most likely, it will include opening titles. We will also include various camera shots, camera angles, camera techniques (e.g. handheld camera adds tension, verisimilitude and can create POV shots) and a diverse cast. We also hope to create enigma and interest in the film.  We have chosen to explore the family adventure movie genre. As we don't have the technology to create CGI animated children's films (or the budget), we will be attempting a live-action children's film instead. Examples of this type of film include ' Home Alone (1990) ', ' Cheaper By The Dozen (2003) ', or ...