Today, Mrs Ferdinand (one of our two Media Studies teachers (the other is Mr Roberts but we'll get to him later) gave us our brief for our coursework task. She informed us that we would have to plan, film and edit the first two minutes of the opening to a film and blog throughout the process.
Naturally I was buzzing with ideas about what the storyline could be, what camera shots we could use, what we'd use for inspiration and generally, how I was going to achieve the top marks. But after calming down and taking sometime to really consider the task I was given, I realised half the ideas I'd come up with really weren't what an opening sequence is like. The key idea was that it was an opening sequence and I couldn't give away much of the plot of the film in the first two minutes.
We initially began spending a lesson watching the opening two minutes of a bunch of different films. We'd already decided that we wanted to do a film based on the genre 'romantic-comedy' (or rom-com, as we referred to it from there on) as most of the examples we'd been shown from previous year groups were thriller-horror genre. Always up for a challenge, we, as a group, were adamant that we were going to try something different.
Our genre decided, we focused on films similar in genre. Love Actually, Pride and Prejudice and Fish Tank were the main films we looked at, Love Actually and Pride and Prejudice they were girly, romantic-comedy-type films and Fish Tank out of pure curiosity and a need to examine if there were any other genres we were interested in. Although Fish Tank was interesting, we thought that we should stick with what we'd originally planned, genre-wise.
The three films already listed were on DVD and since there weren't any other examples of 'rom-com' genre pieces available, we chose to look up a few classics we knew. I'd recently picked up Legally Blonde from my local charity shop (I visit frequently for clothes and what not (my purse loves Cancer Research) and I'd really loved the opening sequence of the film so I was anxious to introduce the rest of my group to it. After watching it, we really wanted to mimic the getting-ready-and-go feel to the film as it would give an impression of the character as well as adequately set the tone of the film without giving away too much of the plot.
Other films we looked at for inspiration were, unfortunately, American films like Wild Child, She's the man and Valentines Day. We found that 'chick-flicks' or 'rom-coms' weren't a very popular genre used by British companies (particularly companies like Working Title) and that aside from Bridget Jones' Diary, their focus, not a definitive list, are period-dramas, thrillers and documentaries.
In conclusion, it was really useful as we've collected initial research on genre and the types of filming techniques used in those romantic-comedy-themed films. We've got an idea for our opening sequence and understand what is needed from us to achieve are brief. All-in-all a fairly useful lesson and I'm feeling ever-excited about our project!
Pheebs OUT! ;)
