Feedback From opening sequence

FEEDBACK

after screening our sequence to an audience this is the feedback we got:

- suitable lighting
- sets up questions
- good use of lighting
- good use of editing
- good soundtrack works well with content not too sure about fonts of titles.
- nice camera work - good range of shots
- nice mix and match of color for titles
- great atmosphere in the party scenes
- suitable use of soundtracks
- protagonist is noticeable
- clear genre - teenage romantic comedy
- suitable music and title
- conventions : alcohol, smoking, drugs, sex
- good lighting
- genre clear
- protagonists identified early
- clear its a teenage romantic comedy because of the age of characters
- shows main characters at the very beginning
- music fits well
- good soundtrack
- good sound bridge
- good job
- needs Keeley in it
- how were group q1-09 aloud to use pre-made music
- good sound bridge : diegetic and non diegetic sounds
- liked the drugs
- good use of transition blurry edges on screen
- genre clear from teenagers at the start
- protagonists obvious from the start
- good use of diegetic sound
- effective lighting - emphasising on smoke at the beginning
- good music, suits genre
- nice transitions between shots
- follows rules of continuity well
- good stereotypical characters
- establishing genre well (appropriate music)
- identifies several possible protagonists - those with dialogue, main ones? - yes reinforced at the end with second piece of dialogue
- sets up questions for rest of film

Planning

As our chosen genre is a ‘teenage romance comedy’ we have thought carefully about how we will present out opening sequence. We have decided together that the opening sequence will be taken place at a house party, which is very relevant to the genre we have chosen, as teenagers are most usually stereotyped to be linked with drugs, sex and partying. As we have chosen our teenage romance comedy to take place at a party we will need to organise people to act as if they were at a party, to do this we have to make sure we are very organised so we are able to get all of the people to be apart of it, otherwise we will not be able to make the ‘appearance’ of a house party realistic.

Cast
Plastic #1Plastic #2Posh Girl Main Girl Main Girl’s best friendSlutSlut #2 (with main girl’s boyfriend)DruggieMain Boy (Main girl’s boyfriend)

Shooting Schedule (plan)
We have though carefully about how we need to include a storyline in the opening sequence that will later lead on to some form of romance later on in the film. We came up with the idea that one of the girls going to the party will walk in on her boyfriend with another girl leaving her heartbroken and alone, perhaps leading to a story or her finding another love in her life.
The first shot will be a long shot of the main girl character walking with her friend to the front door of the house party.

We will then have an over the shoulder shot of both the main girl and her friend talking to each other whilst waiting for someone to answer the door, here we will include some dialogue such as “I shouldn’t be here: you know I’ve got a boyfriend”, making it clear the viewer that the main character has a boyfriend and is un aware that he is at the party.

After the dialogue has finished, the ’posh girl’ opens the door greeting the two girl’s, we will then use a shot reverse shot showing the girl’s outside then to when their walking through the door.
Then we will use ’random’ shot’s of different aspects of the party showing dancing scenes, alcohol and drugs (obviously fake), we will use them in a sense of flashes to show ‘passing of time’.
We are then planning to use an over the shoulder shot of the two girl’s looking at the party, and through their shoulders we will see the dancing scenes of the party, we will then switch the camera to be facing the two girl’s for an reaction shot, though the crowd of teenagers dancing.
We will then start a process of introducing the other main characters and ‘clicks’ of the film, using panning and tracking:

The first character we will be introducing in this sequence will be the ‘posh girl’, we will have a medium shot of her walking through and giving money to the ‘druggies’ for drugs, their we will also be introduced to the druggies. Once the posh girl is out of the shot, the ‘plastics’ will walk into the scene walking past the druggies again and using facial expressions to show their personality and feelings towards druggies. We will then use a high angle shot looking down at the plastics walk through all the crowd, whilst all the other teenagers part and stare at them as they walk through. Then we will have a low angle shot looking up the stairs as both the plastics walk up them, we may have a close up of just the plastics shoes. Once the plastics are upstairs we will use a shot reverse shot, of them on the upstairs landing, where the ‘slut’ will walk out of the bathroom with a boy (presuming they had sex) and she pushes the plastics out of the way. The slut and the boy will then go into a bedroom together, once they are out of the scene the main girl character will then walk out of the bedroom, going into another, then using a shot reverse shot we film her going into the other bedroom where she find’s her boyfriend with another girl. Then we will use the last piece of dialogue which will be of the girl saying : “what the hell is this”, we will then have the last medium shot of her slamming the door, which will then be the end of the opening sequence and the name of the film will appear.

In conclusion this will be the main layout of how we will present out teenage romance comedy, however we are planning to shoot other shot’s that will be randomly added between the main shot’s to emphasis it being a ‘out of control party’ and also to show passing of time.
There will only be some dialogue at the beginning of the opening sequence and at the end, throughout the rest of it we will add stereotypical teenage music that will be usually found in a teenage romance comedy.

Our Amazing Group

Group Q1-09

Final Cut

This is are final cut we have had to take out the lady gaga soundtrack because it is part of the exam board rules and instead we continued on our garage band soundtrack. We also changed the titles at the beginning as they were to fast and didn't look right and finally we added in the tittle of our opening sequence which is Lovelies.

orginal planning idea

Our original idea was that the opening of our sequence would see our characters introducing their names e.g-
Pia: would write her name on the mirror.
Naomi: would write her on a fridge or white board of some kind.
Marianne: write her in drugs.
Sian: have her written somewhere on her.
We kept most of our other ideas the same, however we decided not to use this as we though it took up to much time, also we did not feel it looked right and fitted in with the opening sequence and we did not know if the audience would understand what it was about so we decided not to use it.
We also didn't use the Lady Gaga music because we needed more of the garage band and their was not enough time in the our video for the just dance as well. Instead we used my dirty little secret by All-American rejects as we felt in was more appropriate as it was more of a party teenage song and it fitted in well as our opening sequence is about a teenage boy cheating on his girlfriend, so the song made sense.

Music Analysis

Music


First of all our group thought of typical teenage romantic comedy music like
"Pass that dutch - Missy Elliot"
Then we came across the music video for Lady Gaga which to our surprise had loads of shots and scenes that we were going to be filming in our opening sequence like partying, kissing, drunken mess, lipstick a girl writing on the mirror etc. so we decided that we would use
"just dance - lady gaga" for our opening scene.



This music video was a lot like what we wanted our film opening sequence to be like, only with more writing like the girl does on the mirror with her lipstick saying "dance" we thought we could introduce our characters this way, although not only with the lipstick on the mirror.

However after filming these shots, our group did not like the shooting effect and the way the filming looked, so decided not to use them shots introducing the characters and just simply have them coming up in the smoke of someone smoking a cigarette therefore also decided on the music to be:
"dirty little secret - all American rejects"



None of the shots in the music video relate to our film opening however the music is very teenage Rom com and the dirty little secret relates to our story line so we thought we would use both lady gaga and all American reject songs and have a sound bridge like they did in 10 things i hate about you.

After our rough cut editing and music, we could not have lady gaga's "Just dance" because where we placed it on our storyboard was non diegetic sound and was not aloud, so we used our Garage band music instead.

file:///Users/mediastudies/Documents/Q1-09%20FILM%20OPENING%202008-9/Music%20Garage%20bAND.mp3

Rough Cut

This is our rough cut, we added in the music, titles fades and we will add more effects and editing for our final cut.

Teacher Comments

Further to our conversation in class yesterday, action points to take forward from the rough cut to final cut include (you may have been working on some of these points already since we talked about them):

- Edit your sequence so that the total running time is approximately 2 minutes

- Replace the brief segment of non-diegetic sound (the Lady Gaga track) with music you have created using Garageband.

- Ensure that your use of a pre-existing music track is only for diegetic purposes and segments (namely the party scene), which you are basically doing already, but given that the music is diegetic, the fade out when you cut to the exterior of the house is probably inappropriate and in that context would work better as a straight cut.

- Add titles (credits and the name of your film) to the sequence. Remember to make it look like an opening sequence.

Shooting Schedule

Shot 1- Credits- Valley girl production- this is of some pink lips with a cigarette in and we have smoke that you can see move a little bit at the end.
Shot 2- You can see Marianne lighting up a cigarette which we use for the rest of the credits, where we have a 'Rock star production' , and all of our names coming through in different colors. Over the top we have some music which we created in Garage band. This shot is a close-up.
Shot 3- We can see Ginti and Rubie walking along the road to the party, dressed up in party clothes, the music gets quieter and we hear them have a small conversation and wait for the door to open. This is filmed at a mid-shot.
Shot 4- Naomi (who's party it is) opens the door for Ginti and Rubie then shuts it. This is a mid-shot.
Shot 5- We see a close up of Marianne lighting a cigarette again but this is when the music starts and we get the idea that the film beginning is about to begin.
Shot 6,7&8- We then see a few different shots which are very quick and just add effect to the party scene, there's a lot of bottles of alcohol, shots of a TV and some random bits with people dancing, being mad and getting close. We use close-up shots for these.
Shot 9- The next scene is in the party where there are lots of people dancing in a mid-shot, it then zooms in to a close-up where we can see a reaction shot from Ginti and Rubie. The next few shots just show people carrying on dancing, having a good time.
Shot 10- We can see Marianne and Alex in a mid-shot acting as druggies then a mid-shot of Naomi coming in to buy some.
Shot 11&12- This follows in to Marianne taking some drugs and then get a reaction shot from Bruna ans Sian who are just walking past and don't agree with it.
Shot 13- We have another mid-shot scene with dancing and Bruna and Sian walking through the crowd.
Shot 14&15- We get a low-angle shot looking up the stairs where Bruna and Sian are walking up, this then links on to a mid-shot where Pia and Joe are coming out of the bathroom looking guilty and push through Bruna and Sian.
Shot 16&17- Here are some mid-shots of Ginti, Marianne, Naomi and some other people dancing, we then see a mid-shot of some stunt tricks on the stairs form Alex.
Shot 18- We see a mid-shot of Pia and Joe walking together again, they walk over Ryan who is passed out on the floor, then looking guilty walk into a bedroom.
Shot 19&20- We see a close-up of Alex and Mel making out in the bedroom but then Rubie walks in who is supposed to be Alex's girlfriend so obviously gets annoyed. Then see a reaction-shot of her slamming the door.
Shot 21- Here we have the name of our film, which ends the opening sequence.