Eleventh Draft

This is our film with the background music added, we decided the voiceover was too dull without music and there was also too much attention paid to the voiceover which is only meant to be an added element to the confusing images. The recording is bad quality again as we are still editing the track in Garageband. We also added bird noises at the end of the opening which leads the film on to the rest of the film.

Use of Sound

In the song In Regards To Myself by Underoath it begins with a clicking noise similar to a tape recording which would be used in a police interview. We decided to play a noise similar to this to create the sound of the recording effect to make the film opening for atmospheric.

The sound is used at 0.00-0.09
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDRmbQLftLw

Seventh Draft

After watching the opening of Step Brothers (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sczh_KjjFNU) we decided that we really liked the way that the production companies names appeared before any visuals and decided to attempt this with our film opening.
We put all our names at the beginning however it is a bit long to watch and ends up being very boring for the audience and also our footage became a bit full-on with out the name credits breaking it up

Credits Research

In lesson we watch film openings to a selections of films such as Babe, Derailed, Bourne Identity and In Bruges so that we could see where each film placed their credits to help us with our own film openings.
Most of the films had the production companies names appear, then credits and then the title of the film.

We've decided to move the title of our film to the start of the opening after a production company name and after that our names appear spreadout through our footage so that we can have sound before any footage is shown similar to all of these films which makes our film opening look more realistic.

Sixth Draft

After watching over our fith draft we decided we needed the make the time differences a lot clearer especially after getting people to watch and they were confused between past and present. We made the present day shots a lot slowed and changed the effect from 'Vignette' to 'Romantic' which makes the shots lighter and hazy around the edges rather than black to give a waking up and hazy effect. Slowing down the shots made the film slower paced so that our film opening looked a lot less like a trailer.

To stop the film looking like a trailer which we are in danger of we decided to have a black screen with sound paying before any footage is shown. For a test we added walkie-talkie noises over the beginning of this curent draft. We all liked this sound but we obviously cannot leave it simply as this.

After getting a few people in the lesson to watch the film opening they said the 'Filmed and Edited by' finished too quickly to be read so we have also extended the time it is shown on screen.

Script For Voiceovers

Policeman and Woman (Leylas Mother): This is PC Smith interviewing Mrs. Richardson concerning the disappearance of her daughter Leyla Richardson. Time is 12:43.

Possible Questions From PC Smith
- Mrs. Richardson, when was the last time you saw or had contact with your daughter?
- What was her mood like?
- Did she say or do anything that you consider out of the ordinary?
- Is there anyone that you know of that would have a desire to harm your daughter?


Possible Answers From Mrs. Richardson
- She was at home yesterday, we had a cup of tea and lunch together. Just like we always do.
- Well she's a typical teenager, how do you think her mood was?!
- She was on the phone for a long time, probably to that boyfriend of hers, and she wasn't paying me enough attention. I shouted at her for getting all tarted up in those heels and she stormed out. That was the last time I saw her.
- No. Maybe you should be talking to her boyfriend, not me.

This is our decided script for the News Report;
Concerns are being raised after the disappearance of a 16 year old girl, Leyla Richardson, who was last seen a week ago in North London. The police have stated that the case is becoming more serious than they initially thought it would be. Mrs.-, Leyla's mother is urging people to come forward if they have any information on the case. All those closest to her are being questioned but so far the police can't seem to find any suspects and no-one seems to know anything about the mysterious disappearance of Leyla Richardson.

However the 'Richardson's' will be blurred out similar to Plan B - Suzanne

Voiceovers

We had a group discussion about the idea of a voiceover, so to help us we made a spider diagram of all the possible ideas we could think of such as a police interview with the characters mother or friends, the character herself, simple narration or even news reports on the case. We also discussed who would be suitable that we know for these voices as we mainly need well spoken people (like a news reporter etc). We decided that a 4 minute conversation between two characters would be too dull and a 4 minute news report would reveal too much information to the viewer so we decided to mix our voiceover together to show chaos. We heard the song Suzanne by Plan B and thought the news reported sounded very effective especially how the names blur in and out.The entire song is very graphic however I think this is what Plan B was obviously aiming for particularily with the squirting noise of blood and chainsaws, the news report is between 2:58-3:24.

Group Dicussions & Decisions

To keep a clear difference between present time and flashback we decided to change the complete black and white to having a hint of colour as the complete opposite effects between the black and whites and colour was too different and made our film seem inconsistent. We needed an effect for the flashbacks to create the hint of colour/drained effect, so we began to play around with iMovie's effects until we found one called 'Old World' which looked dream-like unlike others which were very dark and dim and we then manually changed the colour settings and it looked alot better than previously.

We decided we needed transitions also to stop the film being jumpy as well as making flashbacks and real time clear so we added a 'Fade to White' transition before every flashback although creating the perfect timing has been hard as iMovie decided automatically how long each transition should last.

We also discussed our credits again and confirmed that we all liked the creepy effect created by the Seven Credits, also like the Bulls on Parade video. We experimented how to make the flickering effect and after strenuous amount of fiddling we managed to create it by making several text boxes for every flicker of text and then changing each text box to make the writing look as though it is moving.

Here are the Seven opening credits which shows how we want our credits;

First Draft of New Film Opening

This is the first drafted opening for our new film opening. We decided to simply piece together our footage and see how parts looked together so far. We still have another day of filming so it is quite repetitive at the moment.
Some of the clips were not muted before uploading so there is some sudden noise.

Storyboard for Second Film Opening

As a group we made a list of images and how we wanted to shoot them and from which angle. We want all the shots to be shown in a way to confuse the audience so they initially do not understand what is happening (to add to the psychological genre) so that they will want to watch the rest of the film to understand what has happened. To do this we may speed up or slow down particular shots.

We want to include a few shots from a car in night and day time to possibly show an elipsis of time and a point of view of traffic lights changing and radio stations changing. A few shots of woods and forests to make the character look lost. Over the shoulder shots of the driver, shots through the wing mirror. Different shots of a girl lying in the forest.

Here is a storyboard for our filming;

Visit to CLC

Despite not having a film opening we visited the CLC with the rest of our media class and were taught alot of techniques which we are going to use in our film opening. We played around and managed to create alot of tense pieces similar to the film opening of Seven, which we were trying to create

Another Discussion On New Opening

On Friday we continued to discuss our film opening. We discussed locations, even though I think we should research more before even thinking about the location. However a little woodland path in Forty Hall was suggested aswell as large fields in Trent Park.
I think that we need to research more as the more we research the clearer our idea will be as one of the problems with our last attempt was poor research and not thinking absolutley every detail through.
We did brainstorm a few ideas and after watching a past media students coursework we discussed the idea of a woman waking up and not remembering the night before as she may have taken drugs on a night out.