Film Opening - 7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product?

My preliminary exercise was one of the first pieces of film i had ever produced, and as such, a lot of mistakes were made. I used these mistakes as a stepping stone to make sure i didn't fall into the same traps as before. One of our biggest problems in the preliminary exercise was the lack of structure to our storyboard: Everybody seemed to have a different idea of what we were doing. This time, my group and i worked as a team to make sure that everything that needed to be done got done, and that we wee all on the same page in terms of where we thought the film was going.
Our storyboarding and idea brainstorming was definitely an improvement, which paid off in both the production and post production process. With my preliminary task, this lack of an extensive pre production process had caused problems when trying to film and edit.
Another key point was the distribution of roles amongst our group. This time round we each focuses on a certain aspect, whilst maintaining support and providing ideas to the people in different roles. This made sure that everyone was kept busy with a job to do, and eliminated people arguing over how a role should be performed. 
      As an example:

• Preliminary exercise: The role of camera operator was shared between a few different people, with the person doing the actual filming changing each time.

• Opening scene: We had one person in the role of camera operator, meaning he maintained the feel of the film and kept it looking natural. This is not to say that the other members did not get a say in how the camera was operated, as ideas were discussed between us.

We also managed to include a wider variety of shot types, and more overall footage. This meant the film could be kept interesting by means of the post production editing. Other editing techniques such as music, a voice over and sound effect were also present. Editing is perhaps our most progressed skill since the preliminary exercise.
More advanced title sequences also played a role. Before the names of those involved were put in at the end as more of an afterthought than part of the film. Our opening scene allowed us to play with and develop the idea of more immersive titles, that can be used as a part of the film not just a formality
To conclude, i would say that every aspect of my media knowledge and experience has increased, as well as my confidence in using different, more imaginative techniques, editing and shot types.

Film Opening - Title Sequence

We came up with the idea of combining the initial shots in our film of the general putting on his military uniform with the screens with the titles. By breaking up these shots with titles, we created a smoother looking transitions between the shots. We also added a unique touch to the title screens to keep things interesting and hold the veiwers attention, as in our opinion we believed that the title sequemces shouldn't be kept on the sidelines, but actually be an interesting part of our production. This was done using a typewriter effect of the text onto the background, accompanied by pictures of famous scenes and people from our era and location. The typewriter effect exagerrated the historic theme of the film opening.

 Here is an example of one of the opening title slides. The typewriter effect will be animated in.

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)