Film Opening Coursework. EVALUATION - TASK ONE.

Question 1: In what way does your product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (i.e of film openings) 

The title of the film 

The title of my film opening is called Revenge. We called it Revenge because the plot, if it were to be made into a feature length film, would be about a boy who tries to work out who killed him and get revenge on that person/people. The idea of revenge is a typical plot of thriller and horror films. For example, the film 'Dead Mans Shoes' is based around the idea that the killer was tortured and abused both mentally and physically by drug dealers which resulted in him taking revenge by killing them one by one. This is similar to the plot of ours as the boy, Marcus, who is murdered, decides that whilst he is in the Inbetween, he will take revenge on everyone who bullied him.


The setting of the film opening

This is the only screen grab I could get which would roughly show the main setting of the film opening. This is a medium shot of two of our characters dancing in blow up handcuffs. You can see in the background some of the setting and you can see the UV lights around characters. The main setting of it is in the top of a garage which is mainly used for parties. It's rigged with UV lights, strobe lights and speakers to make it the optimum location for a party. This is very similar to many social realism films about drugs, alcohol and teenagers. Also, because it looks like an enclosed space, it makes it look like it was more of an illegal party or a free party which suggests that they are underage. For example, in the hit TV drama Skins, they frequently attend underground raves where strobe lights, UV lights and loud music are common. One key stereotype of teenagers is that they like to go out to parties which supports our genre of a social realism/thriller as I said, most social realism films are based on drugs, alcohol or teenagers.


Costume and props

We decided to let the actors choose their own clothing as we thought it would represent the typical teenage style a lot better  than if we told them what to wear. The only thing we said was that they had to wear something that would show up really well under the UV light. As you can see from my screen grab, these three girls all decided to wear white tops of different styles, one of them being cropped and the other two being very low cut. This represents what a typical teenager would wear to a party - not overdressed but definitely look like they were making an effort. We also provided UV body paint for everyone to apply with the most style of applying the paint being two stripes on each cheek. In the film "Project X", the teenagers are all wearing smart casual clothing just like our actors so we haven't challenged any conventions of teenage fashion. You can also see that one of the characters on the right hand side is holding a bottle of cider. This supports the idea that teenagers like to go out drinking and partying. We also bought fluorescent shot glasses to pour water in to mimic people drinking shots which are seen in the first shot of somebody pouring liquid into the shot glasses.

Genre of film opening

The genre of my film opening is a social realism/thriller. For the most part, the film opening suggests that it is only a social realism film as it focuses on teenagers having parties, drinking, smoking and doing the stereotypical teenager things that the media represents. This shot here shows many shot glasses being filled up with vodka. The whole party scene is very much like the film "Project X" which is a semi-realistic comedy about a boy who throws a house party and over a thousand people turn up. Even though our film isn't a comedy, throughout both my film opening and Project X, there are teenagers seen partying and generally being reckless and causing mayhem. According to Project X's IMDB page, many of the smaller antics which happen e.g. dancing, throwing things around, smashing things, were improvised by the extras and weren't directed at all. This is similar to our film opening because during the party scene, myself and Dan gave no instruction to our actors other than that we wanted them to have a party and act even more wild than they normally would.

How characters are introduced

In my film opening, the first few opening shots are of people preparing the party and no faces are included in the shots. It is obvious that people are getting ready for a party because there are shots of people pouring shots out and applying make up.
Characters are properly introduced in the party montage because you can see everyones faces. However, you can't work out who will be the main characters and what their names are which makes people guess. In most social realism films, there is one main character who is introduced straight away, for example in "Trainspotting", the main character is introduced in the first scene of the film with Renton, played by Ewan McGreggor, running away from security guards with a monologue put over the top of the footage of him talking about "not choosing life". Even though the monologue itself does not introduce his name, we do find out that he is a heroin addict and doesn't want to be the same as other people. So, our film opening challenges typical social realism film openings as we don't introduce anybody, neither do you find anything out about anybody other than that they all like to party. You could say that the final scenes of the people waking up introduce the characters as it focuses on three people; two people waking up and one person who is dead but just by watching the film opening you would not be able to tell anything about them or why they are in that situation without watching the rest of the film.


Camera-work and editing. 

Throughout my film opening we used a variety of different shots and editing techniques, especially in the party montage. This shot here is an extreme close up of one of our actors faces looking very excited and happy with his tongue out. He is looking directly into the camera and I have put this shot strategically in a place which fits the music exactly. The music at this point is building up to a "drop" which is the climax of a piece where there is a switch in rhythm or bass line.  In our film opening, we used medium shots, close ups, extreme close ups, low angle shots, high angle shots, long shots and POV's. There are a few low angle shots of people partying and dancing. The reason I chose to do this is because low angle shots suggest power and authority and because someone eventually does get killed at the party, it very discreetly hints that someone has power over someone but this is not obvious at all. When choosing my soundtrack for the film opening, I spent a long time checking tracks beats per minute (BPM) and making sure the drops happened in the right place and that the tracks had the perfect atmosphere for our party. When I found the right one, the one that is used in our setting up of the party scenes and the party montage, I went through my shots and edited them perfectly in time with the track. I did this by making sure the shots changed exactly on the beat (the piece was in 4/4 time meaning four crotchet beats in a bar). This makes the editing a lot cleaner and slicker. We used a tripod for the waking up scenes but not for the setting up or the party montage because this gives the shots a more gritty, realistic feel. Making the shots shaky also resembles the effects of alcohol and how alcohol affects the body.


Title style and font

I have already put a screen grab up of my title (see point 1 of this post regarding the title of the film) so I have put this screen grab up of our actors billing as I thought it would be a good to mention the colours and what they might represent. For our character billing, we used a black background with red and white san serif font in capital letters. The red represents the blood from the dead character and the anger from the dead character as he tries to get revenge on the people who killed him. The white represents the innocence and the purity which these teenagers should have, but lack because of the amount they party, take drugs and drink. The reason I chose a sans serif font is because it is typically less formal and more childish looking. Whereas, with my title I used a serif font. I did this because it shows that the situation is a lot more serious now. Again, I used red to represent the blood and anger and the white to show innocence and purity. The use of red is typical of thriller films because most thriller films are about blood and anger.

Story and how the opening sets it up 

The story behind our film opening is that there is a party full of teenagers and a boy is murdered. No one knows how he is murdered or who killed him. Throughout the film, if it were to be made into a feature length film, it would focus on the guy who got killed whilst he is in the afterlife, trying to figure out piece by piece who killed him and why he was killed. This high angle shot is one of the final shots in the film opening which shows our main character dead in the middle of a field. This helps the audience realise that something has gone wrong and that the plot of the film is probably somehow based around the death of the character.


Special effects

For our special effects, we used UV make up to make the party seem more like a rave. The make up shows up well under the UV lights we used and makes the shots look more colourful and fun instead of dark. We also used used fake blood for our dead character. It looks very real and doesn't look over exaggerated. We mixed corn flour, red food dye and water to create the gloopy texture. By doing this, it doesn't just look like red paint which we found in an art department or something. There is evidence of this under my blogpost "Filming one of the "Morning After" scenes where it shows how we created the blood and another piece of evidence is the picture above of our dead character. Another thing we did was that for the morning after scenes, I put the sounds of birds over the top of the footage. This creates an eery feel to the footage as we have just come from scenes of loud music and partying and now we're in scenes with only the sounds of birds and its very quiet. It helps provide suspense to the scenes as something bad has happened and instead of having dark, mysterious music like we were originally going to have, the contrast between the birds and the bloody scene provides a lot of suspense.