Film Opening - Storyboarding and Animatics

This post links to the post about title sequences.
We went through a very large amount of ideas, producing many sketches and idea for storylines, some of which we put onto storyboards. The reasons for change was the problems we encountered during the production process, as locations and scenes would be impractical to film, so we had to think of shots that would achieve a similar effect without comprimising our intentions.When we felt we had come up with a good ideas that were feasible to film, we put the storyboard together and uploaded in an animatic-esque style.

Film Opening - Sound

In order to add atmosphere and realism to the film we considered adding enhanced sounds.

- Leather boot straps being tied.
- Sounds of crying
- Sound of the wind
- The sound of gunshots in the distance or shells falling. (this was the sound effect we ended up using)

We are also using two peices of music, with very diferent moods to them. The first is a relaxed song, played over the shots of the scenery. The song was called Les Feuilles.
The second was a song by the Russian Red Army choir, and has a much more serious military feel to it.
Both songs were found using YouTube, and were avaliable to sue for free.

Film Opening - Production company name and logo

We chose the name Red Star Productions. It sums up the genre of film opening we are producing, and is an exciting name that could become associated with producing both historic films, or those based on action and war, to produce titles similar to those found in our research:

• Hunt for Red October
• Saving Private Ryan
• Che

 We brainstormed for ideas for a logo. On paper, we made sketches of potential candidates, deciding we needed a logo that was bold, bright and represented the film we were producing. Eventually we combined two of our ideas coming up with the following logo.
Here is the logo produced to represent what our film company is about: It is simple yet very bold and straight to the point. The Red colour and hammer and sickle symbol were chosen as they provide a bold and recogniseable image when the logo appears in the opening titles of our film opening.

The logo was created using Adobe photoshop CS4 for the shapes, and Adobe flash CS4 for the filters and shading (flash was used as the filters can be changed in an animation, for example where the logo fades in the titles)

Film Opening - Ideas

Originally we thought of creating a zombie movie which focused on thoughts and feeelings of a lone protangonist. However we did not think this style of film would be easy enough to film and also contain all the information we needed in a 2 minute section. We started to watch some openings (usingYouTube) to get a better idea of what we were trying to achieve and also understand the limitations of an opening a bit more. We also used websites such as IMDB We had to keep in mind the type of equiptment we would be using will be basic and so this limited the type of shot we could produce, the type of costumes we could use which all would affect the whole stlye and structure of a film opening. 

We studied films such as:
- Enemy at the gates
- Che
- Saving private ryan
- Black hawk down   


We eventually came to the descison that we would create an opening for war film based around the Red Army. We thought this would be a good idea, due to the simplistic nature in which we could film the shots and also potray feelings and emotions even with lack of dialogue. The inspiration came from the fact that all of members in the group are also history students and all very interested in Russian history. However we still had to decide what period of russian history and what events to base the film on. We started to plan how we were going to shoot our opening, and also get an idea of what the opening should be about. We brainstormed many ideas, all to do with Russia however we began to relise the real limitations we faced while thinking of an idea. We decided to keep it as simple as possible because of the obvious limitations like setting, cast and props.

Film opening - Mise-en-scène

As we're making the opening for a historical film set approximately 80 years ago, Mise-en-scène is incredibly important for making our opening look believable, interesting and showing good continuation.
We wrote a list of items we could potentially need and went about trying to collect them. This ensured that when it came to filming we had a convincing set with excellent Mise-en-scène.

• Any bullets, bullet casings or shells.
• Any military style uniform, such as boots, military jackets and hats.
• Indicators of the location, era and situation the characters are in (war time) 
•  Documents and papers, some with black boxes over parts of the text.
• Ashtray
• A smoking fire/camp fire, or a campfire effect.
• Any replica weapons

Combined with our plans of making the titles and music represent the location and era, this will make our film opening look authentic.

Film Opening - The Briefs

Here are the four breifs we where given the option of using as a guide. We where given a reasonable amount of freedom to change these ideas to get a more creative and well made product.

Film Brief 1

A mainstream action film that will appeal to 15-25yr old males. Your film should appear to be based on a "fictional" comic book(Opening to Dark Knight, Kick Ass, Sin City etc)


Film Brief 2
A supernatural thriller that will appeal to female audiences. Your film should appear to be an international co-production
(Opening to The Others, Gothika, Shelter etc)


Film Brief 3
An independent movie featuring a young protagonist. Your film should appear to be financed through regional funding
(Opening to Fish Tank, This Is England etc)


Film Brief 4
An  art house feature to appeal to adult audiences. Your film should appear to be based on an actual event in the last 2 years.
(Opening to Elephant, Milk, Che etc)

Pulp Fiction - Opening scene

Presentation

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