Initial Ideas

The intial ideas that our group have had are as follows below: A young man of an age of 21 leaves his home to meet his girlfriend who is overprotective/borderline skitzophrenic. To show that she is messed up, we'll shoot a scene of her in her room with pictures of her and her boyfriend everywhere but her boyfriend's face has been scribbled out of each picture she has loads of makeup on and she is crying with cut writsts with blood trickling onto her bed. The room will have low key lighting and could possibly be shot in black and white to emphasise the abnormality of her character.


He takes a shortcut to his friends house but, in doing so, he has to walk down a very dark alleyway. (The alleyway is key)As he walks down the alleyway he gets hit over the head with a rock, subsequently knocking him unconcious and then he gets robbed of his wallet. (We haven't yet decided what shot to use for this yet, we have thought to use either a point of view shot of the attacker or of the young man or a shot-reverse-shot.) The next shot reveals that the attacker is actually his girlfriend, she then kisses him on the cheek and chucks his wallet on the floor.

The chosen genre my partners and I have decided to represent in our short two minute film opening is the genre of suspense which is Crime/Love Thriller. Crime/Love Thriller we decided was an easy but effective type of genre where we could apply into our film opening quite comfortably. We examined a number of film openings to gain some valuable ideas to help us plan our beginning. The film we finally choose to base our film around is "Da Vinci Code" as its consists of many simular aspects we are atempting to apply to our film opening. During the duration of the upcoming week i will be posting our storyboard for this production and a short essay on how we applyed the ideas from The Da Vinci Code into our production.

Preliminary Task

We were given a prelimary task which was to create a short extract to help us understand continuty editing. In this extract we had to do these different types of shots and rules which were:

A match on action
Shot Reverse shot
180 Degree rule
So after we got given the task, the first target was to make our storyboards for the extract. Our storyboard had 12 frames in total, but when we were to filming, we decided it would be better to add and remove frames.

Analysis To The Opening Sequence From The Film 'Fatal Attraction'

In the opening sequence of the film Fatal Attraction, the first shot is a tracking shot of the roof tops of New York at sunset. This is then followed by Dan and his wife getting ready for Dan’s work event. The last scene from the opening sequence is the build up to where Dan Callagher, the protagonist, meets Alex Forrest, the antagonist. Within this sequence we (the audience), are introduced to four characters; Dan Callagher, a lawyer from New York who has a small family of three, immediately we’re geared to like to like Dan as he seems very affectionate towards his wife and daughter. The second character we’re introduced to is Beth Callagher, another protagonist and her daughter Ellen, who is portrayed to be very cute, the last character we are introduced to is the antagonist, Alex Forrest. The first time you see her she seems kind hearted, intelligent and good looking and there is an instantaneous spark between her and Dan. The settings for the film is Manhattan, New York.

The camera shots used in the opening sequence vary from tracking shots at the very beginning and at the party, to medium close ups of Beth and Alex. Medium close ups are used mainly for these two characters, because they are both dominant females. The editing in this piece brings the film to life as it develops a realistic, relatable atmosphere. Techniques utilized to achieve this include shot-reverse-shots and cuts. The diegetic sound at the beginning of the opening scene is extremely industrial, then immediately switches to the diegetic sound of the television. This cleverly portrays the economically motivated environment involved with Dan Callagher’s profession in law as well as the business connotations surrounding Manhattan. There is no non-diegetic music in this sequence; this adds another level of realism to the film.

The opening credits are effective as there isn’t much happening on screen, they’re positioned at the bottom of the screen in ‘Times New Roman’ like font and the colour is white. This is even more effective as the bottom of the screen is dark and the entire colour is seeping down from the top.

To conclude, Fatal Attraction has given me the inspiration to create this piece. It conducts a certain realism that I want in my piece, but the basic idea that a paired man and woman who are broken apart by a third party, is truly sublime.

Introduction

Hello, my name is James Brooke and I am currently studying at The Windsor Boys School. I am a year 12 student studying AS Media, AS Theater. For the coursework I've been set I'm working with Harvey Muddyman & Micheal Curtis.