FILM OPENING

 Ruby Lawson 1996

I worked with Finlay Williamson 1986.

Our brief was to make the titles and opening of a new fiction film (to last a maximum of two minutes). We made a apocalyptic drama thriller film opening entitled Chain Reaction. 

I took responsibility for a lot of the camerawork and filming. In particular the scenes of the man being attacked in the tunnel, the close up of the calculations, the newspaper scenes and part of the discussion between the scientist and the friend. As well as this I helped direct alongside Finlay for some of the scenes.

I also took responsibility for part of the set design, such as the newspaper scene where I created newspapers to fit with our film and then laid them out on a table with candles. 

I designed and made a production company logo, entitled Rocking Horse Productions, which featured at the start of the film opening. I used Adobe Photoshop to create the initial logo, I then edited it to make the rocking horse image move as I thought that this would be more interesting for the viewer. 

In addition to this I created the film title which appears at the end of the opening, I used Photoshop to create this. I started by making the background of the title which is made up of calculations in a red colour to match and fit the theme of the film, I then added the film title in the centre of this and then put an outline of the text over this title to give it a more 3D affect so that it would stand out.

REFINEMENTS, CHANGES, EDITS AND REFLECTIONS

MEDIA THEORIES

I researched theorists such as Curran and Seaton to understand how large conglomerates distribute films, this helped me to learn about different types of successful marketing campaigns that would help me to understand how I could market my own film.

 

CONSTRUCTION: FILMING THE CONVERSATION BETWEEN SCIENTIST AND FRIEND

We initially filmed this scene in the school's drawing room, we chose to make the shot slightly out of focus so that the audience could not see the face of the friend, however we found that this did not work as well as we intended and it was difficult to hear the conversation. We decided to reshoot this scene, however we had to change our filming location due to the drawing room not being free; by using a range of different in focus shots, our new location worked well and the scene worked much better in our final edit.

CONSTRUCTION: FILMING THE NEWSPAPER SCENE

For this scene we needed multiple slow zoom in shots of the newspaper headlines which tell the audience what is happening in the world of the film. I placed the newspapers on a table covered in a black cloth and then put candles around them to light up the headlines, the candles also help to tell the audience that there is no energy in the world of the film. When filming, it took me a few tries to get the right shots that had a good camera angle and were in focus. I tested out having the lights on very dim in the room as I thought that the candles would not be bright enough, however I found that after adding some more candles for light it looked better when the lights were off completely. 

CONSTRUCTION: FILMING THE CALCULATION LIGHT SCENE

For this scene we chose to film a birds eye view shot zoom in of the calculations written by the scientist. We shot this scene with the lights off and using LED red coloured lights to shine onto the calculations which were placed on a black cloth as the background. It took a few takes for us to get the correct shot that we wanted as we had to get the framing of the paper and the intensity of the LED lighting correct.

CONSTRUCTION: FILMING THE TUNNEL SCENE

Initially we chose to start the opening of our film with the camera following a man walking in the tunnel, we were going to have the camera track/follow him from the side however when filming we felt that this did not work as we expected; therefore we decided to change this camera shot into a series of shorter static shots with different angles using a narrow depth of field. For the final shot of this scene where the man gets attacked, we used a canted angle and changed the camera settings so that it was out of focus to create suspense for the audience. To create these effects we used a Cannon EOS camera as this allowed us to change and control the focus as well as increasing the quality off the footage. 

In the final edit of the film opening we decided not to use all of these scenes due to them not helping to explain the narrative and the length. However, we kept the final scene we filmed as we felt this created suspense as well as being an important part of the narrative.