Film Progress Week 2

 This picture shows lilys car, one which follows Josh when he is running. We are trying our best to keep the shot moving fast enough but steady enough by using a tripod. We will use a panning shot to follow lilys car, and possibly even shoot from a head-on view as well.

This is the road we will be filming on. We chose a road that looked kind of abandoned but was not too creepy looking because we did not want to make it obvious that something bad was going to happen. This is our establishing shot which is the beginning of our film opening. 

This is the point of view shot from Lily's perspective. This represents the murderers, also known as lily, and me which will be shown soon, following josh and the intentions that we have. This point of view shot is interesting for the audience because it is a different point of view and shows the movie through the murders eyes. 

Filming Week 1

This week for filming, my group practiced how we were going to film and what shots we were going t use. Because all of my group members and I are very busy, we could not film at the actual location we had in mind, so we compromised and did practice shots at school.

This vide of Josh running is at the beginning of our film opening when Josh is casually on his morning run before he realizes anything was wrong. I used a panning shot to film Josh running because I feel as if it added suspense that was present but was not obvious to Josh at the time. One thing that was hard was timing how fast Josh ran. Because I had to follow Josh while he was running, I wanted to make sure I moved the camera fast enough to capture his whole body, but not fast enough to where the camera became blurry or hard to watch. In order to get the perfect run, Josh and I had to film this scene a few times before we got it just right.

This picture is an example of what the closing scene of our film opening looks like. After Josh has been hit on the head by a softball bat, he ends up unconscious in a basement. Josh is a very good actor so there was not a problem to try and get him to act dead. One problem I did realize was that I will need to be far out in order to film josh's' body horizontally laying down. Vertically, it was not a problem, but for our actual video, everything will be shot horizontally.

Preparing to Film

In our film opening....
actors are- Josh, Lily, and Erin
costumes- Lily and I will be dressed in all black, Josh will be dressed in an athletic outfit that he can run in
props- we will be using both my car and Lily's car, and a softball bat
location- a neighborhood on Marco Island and our friend Teagans basement for the final scene
dates and times- dates TBA, time, at dusk
scripts- our film is a silent film and has no dialogue
filming equipment- we will be using Maddie's camera but we will need to borrow a tripod and maybe some lights for the basement scene.

Story Board

This is my groups storyboard. We are doing the detective/mystery genre. The camera angles are included in the story board. Our plot is Josh being followed, jumped, and then waking up in a basement in complete confusion.

Film Opening Examples

Rise- really like how the camera focuses on close up objects when introducing the main characters, do not like how the title takes up the whole space, definitely do not want to do that in my film opening, seems very professional until the character dialogue, I think that is something I want to keep out. Really liked the music throughout the whole film opening. The over the shoulder view then focusing on something that the character is looking at through the over the shoulder shot is very cool.

offline - really liked the noise of the typewriter introducing the title and producers but did not seem as professional as “rise”. I liked the contrast between scenes. The dark filming looks very cheesy and granulated. Did not like this film opening at all.

Dear lover- shaky camera, definitely needed to use a tripod, the voice over was kind of interesting but the filming seemed very unprofessional and not that high quality., Narrator talking directly to the camera does not look professional at all especially since it was a voice over. Seemed way too complex for a film opening, should have ended way earlier

Dare to thrill- did not like how the music was playing but the characters were speaking. The music should have been the only noise and the characters should have been muted because it was not hard to follow what they were doing and their voices sounded loud and were very distracting. Really liked the close-up shots of the objects in the car, definitely a nice touch and change of view. Girls screaming at the end was very cheesy.

After watching these film openings and taking notes on some, I have definitely taken things into consideration to avoid when making my film opening, and things to add to enhance my film opening. First and foremost, my group will be using a tri-pod at all times when filming. It was very obvious to tell which groups used tri-pods and those who didn’t and the difference is incredible. Also, I think, well at least speaking for myself, that our film opening should be silent for the most part. Maybe a few pieces of dialogue but it made most of the films seem unprofessional. Also, another filming technique that really stood out as a red flag was filming with low quality/in the dark. One filming technique I liked was close up shots on certain objects when introducing the producers or just in general. From watching these film openings, It has made me more aware of what makes a good film opening really stand out.

What Inspired You?

What inspired me to chose the Detective/Mystery genre was my love for suspense. Through the work in this class and in previous years of watching television, I have developed a love for a rollercoaster of emotions when watching television and movies, especially when I feel as I am in the characters shoes.  As the school year crept around again in August, I, along with a handful of other seniors had AICE Media first period. Although not a single one of us had the slightest clue as to what this class would entail when it appeared on our schedules, we all continued to pursue into our first period on August 15th at seven A.M. without a second thought of hesitation. As weekly blog posts became a Sunday night ritual for us first-time AICE media students, we were told to have a thought as to what our film opening genre would be in the near future. Most of us, Including myself,  had completely forgotten about the blog post until the final day for submission, but it was okay because here I am writing about what inspired me to pick this genre. Although I did technically come up with my film opening genre last minute, many factors attributed to my group's decision such as previous work in the class, and a shared interest in Mystery.

Maddie, Josh, Lily and I all have many things in common, and one being our love for suspense. Mystery movies/tv shows always have each of us on the edge of our seats, but predominately me. On top of all of the classic mystery/detective movies such as Murder on the Orient Express, Sherlock, Silence of the Lambs, Momento, and more, my forever love for such a genre kindled through every episode of Hawaii Five-0.

Hawaii Five- 0 is a television series which focuses on two detectives who are part of an elite task force whose mission is to eliminate crime in Hawaii. This show really grabs its audience by each opening scene. The first two minutes of each episode starts with an establishing shot and establishes the whole storyline pertaining to each individual episode, and without these scenes, the show would be completely flipped around. The establishing shot includes the “crime” which the two main detectives, Steve McGarrett and Scott Caan, will soon be solving. By showing the crime first, rather than at the end, the viewer, including myself, automatically gets sucked in and is drawn to watch the rest of each episode, which eventually turns into being watching a whole season in one night.

What inspired myself and my group to chose the Detective/Mystery genre was not the fact that we had previously done a powerpoint on this genre, but the fact that creating a piece of work in honor and replication of something we love meant so much to us. Although everyone loves a good laugh and even a scream every so often, we decided to dedicate our second semester to something we have the most knowledge, passion, and love for… and that is the mystery/detective genre.

My Film Opening Project - Mystery/Detective

Maddie Hopkins

Lily Rosenblum

Erin Watson 

Josh Young