Planning - Film Opening
Me and my group were very keen on the genre of Action. We were interested in making an action-packed film opening which would grab our audience straight into the film. To make a good action film, we decided to research the conventions and what actually makes up the genre of 'Action.' I found that an action film is based around either one person or a group facing challenges. Normally involving fights, chase scenes, life threatening situation, gun, explosions and an evil villain. Action is a genre that allows the audience to see the story through fights explosions, car chases. I then researched the 'codes and conventions' of a good action films which we should implement in ours to create a good film opening.
My group and I started to plan for some ideas for our action movie opening. We came up with many ideas for what makes a good action movie. We brainstormed many ideas for our film openings, it helped us to put all ideas onto paper and into one. We had the task of deciding which one we should use as our final idea and had to decide which film opening would be easier to film within a class enviroment as we are not on a hollywood budget so therefore had to think small but also make sure it was more appealing to watch for our target audience. We eliminated many ideas and came up which was professionally and easy to portray with all our skills put together. We combined a number of scenorios which helped us to come up with the main story. We brainstormed many key concepts that makes a good action film this would help us to focus on how to make our action film the best it can be. We ended up thinking that the most important elemstns where storyline, camera, editing, lighting and good sound effects.
We began to discuss and mind map some ideas which would help us make a good film opening. These are some of our ideas that we have discussed and wrote down.
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After we discussed our film openings idea we discussed what makes a good action films in terms of editing, camera, sound and miss-en-scen. These are some of our ideas.
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Our Final Story
It starts off with a fight scene of the villain taking out guards, making his way into an office building. Once he is there he plants a bomb which connotates him as being the villain to the audience. Our villain then goes outside and triggers the bomb with his remote blowing up the entire building. Towards the end we added a new report revealing We believed this would be a very intersting opening since it has some action, explosions and also makes the audience think about the purpose of why he is doing this.
Scripts Draft & Final
We first wrote a draft script giving us a rough idea of how our final script will be, then I typed up the final script. I chose to color code the final script for the camera shot and the camera movement making our filming process much easier as well as quicker. We didn't have much dialogue to add in scene 1, therefore we wrote down what was going to happen and what cut was going to lead each shot after the other. The reason we wrote a draft script was to put our ideas of what each shot was going to entail. After making the draft and everyone in the group being happy with the scenes we decided to make the final script which had the different camera angles and the editing styles we were going to use. This has helped us to visualise what our actual film opening is going to look like and makes it easier for us to understand as it was more clear gave us structure for what we needed to do.
Storyboard
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Costume & Props
Costumes
For our costume we decided to do the 'typical' action, adventure genre costume which is a suit. This seem ideal since we are requiring for our villian with breifcase to go into a building where everyone is dressed very smartly and therefore makes sense to have the suit as our costume. Also it is very easy to get hold of and is not hard to find which allows us to spend more time in making a good film rather than spending a longer time looking for good costume. For our news report we also decided to have smart clothes as from examples we saw like in the left gave us a clear indication that smart clothes are a must for the news report.
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Props
GunsWe thought that having guns would be great prop for our action genre since it straightaway represents our genre. We beleived it would also add excitment to scene giving certain individual more power than others, giving the audience mixed reactions at certain times, leading to the audience wanting to watch the film. Me and Pawan (in my group) have had experience with SFX softwares like after effects has made it easy for us to add muzzle flashes to make gun shot seem realistic. We believed that this would give our film opening a much more professional
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Remote for explosionI thought of having a remote like this for the building explosion over having a time bomb. I mainly believed in this because the remote is very small, explosion will be very big and therefore this will help signify the power of the villainn. I believed that having a remote to set off the explosion would imply how our villain is in control of what he does rather than timer which. |
Black BriefcaseI thought of having the bomb in the black briefcase. This made it less suspicious as well as a mystrey to the audience when our villain leaves the breifcase on the desk. I believed this would help us achieve our aim of audience questioning themselves, guessing what would happen next and wondering what is in the bag, helping us achieve our sole purpose of audience wanting to watch more of the film. The fact that the briefcase is black also foreshadows that something bad may be about to happen. The colour black represents dullness and negativity and therefore it may hint to the audience that something bad is going to happen.
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Character Profiles
AntagonistName: Alex Zang
Date of Birth: 01/01/1991 Age: 23 Height: 5' 7'' Current Residence: City of London Employment Status: Unemployed Skills: Pro MMA fighter, Degree in Pyrotechnics Bio: After the death of his father due to rivals in the big business world, Alex is on a mission to seek revenge for the death of his father who he loved very much. He has mastered Pyrotechnics and MMA allowing him to fulfill the main purpose of his life which is to get his revenge. He has been succesfull killing 4 people responsible for his fathers death leaving the last business man waiting to be assasinated. Will he be successful... |
SidekickName: Pawan Saunya
Date of Birth: Unknown Age: Unknown Height: Unknown Current Residence: City of London Employment: Works as a Security Guard Bio: The security guard spots Alex with a gun entering the building. Trying to stop Alex in the lift causing a fight scene leaving him very serverely injured. This shows the true strength of Alex and how firm he is about his mission. |
Locations
LondonWhen filimng an establishing shot in london it had to be clear and very effective as it was going to be the very first shot of our film opening meaning it was a very important shot as the audience will see this shot first letting them decide what the rest of film will be like. We used centeral london to film the establishing shot as the bussiness corporate side of london made the shot look more professional and making our film look more expensive even thought we are not on a million dollar budget.
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HotelWhen filming the action scene we decided to use the interior of the hotel as it looked very expensive and professional. As previously we had used a MMA club where the fight scene took place however the interoir looked ameturish and didnt fit the mise en scene of our film. Therefore using the hotel fitted our story more, as having london in the establishing shot meant we had to keep up to those high standards of making the locations look expensive and bussiness like.
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ElevatorThe elevator was used when filming the fight scene. It was a small compact palce and was quite difficult to film a fight scene. However it made the fight seem more effective, as there wasnt much space to move their fighting still had a big impact. The elevator had silver metal walls with no mirrors, due to there only being 3 walls the elevator fight scene creates alot of tension.
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