First Day of Filming

We began the filming for our opening sequence today and have started to make progress with the project. We have scripted much of the dialogue and already filmed a couple of scenes which we will use to build our opening around. We also started to think about sound for our film, having chosen a possible soundtrack and emailed the copyright owner in order to get their permission to use it. The song is 'These Love Songs Don't Make Sense' by The Vindickers. The song is relevant to the genre of our film (romantic comedy) as it deals with the theme of love, also dealt with by this genre of film. It is also useful as the Vindickers are a local band that I am in contact with and so it should not be difficult to obtain permission for use of their material.

We encoutered some problems during filming; mostly because of the time of year in which we are making our film meaning it gets dark fairly early, limiting the hours in which it is possible to film outside. We did not forsee this as a problem but are now aware of it and can therefore prepare more effectively for this eventuality by filming outside scenes earlier in the day and leaving inside seens for later as we can use artificial light for these. Another problem which we encoutered was the camera running out of battery. In future we will make sure it is fully charged before we begin filming, hoever this time it was not a huge problem as in the time it took to re-charge we were able to script a large proportion of the dialogue from the later scenes which we are still yet to film. We also managed to arrange the next day of filmimg which will be saturday providing that the weather is still workable with.

This Is England (2006) - Opening Sequence

The opening sequence from This is England, directed by British director Shane Meadows in 2006, is interesting because we are not introduced to any characters or narrative within the first 2 minutes. However we do get a strong sense of setting from the genuine 1980s footage (the film is set in 1983) and the music which we hear over the top of the footage (54-46 Was My Number - Toots and the Maytals) gives a strong sense of the skin-head subculture which the film portrays. This has made me consider how I will create a sense of setting in the opening 2 minutes of my film whilst at the same time introducing characters and providing a backstory for the events that occur later in my film. It has also affected my decisions regarding music as I have decided to use one track playing throughout the opening of my film which will fade out into the first scene much like in This Is England.

Halloween (1978) - Opening Sequence

The opening sequence from Halloween, directed by John Carpenter in 1978, has made me think about the choices i need to make for my own opening sequence. For example what credits should I include in the opening 2 minutes of the film. Carpenter's film is unusual as it shows a large number of the credits at the start of the film before the narrative has begun and before we have been introduced to any characters. The affect of this can be quite boring for an audience and therefore for my own film i have decided i will scale down the number of credits within the opening sequence. It has also made me think about whether I want to cut away from the narrative in order to show credits or have them as part of the shot. In Halloween all the credits are shown before the narrative begins, a technique which would not be suitable for my own film as it limits the amount of action i can include in the first 2 minutes. After the credits, most of the opening sequence is filmed in one take and we do not cut away from the POV shot used for a long time. This idea is also not suitable for my film as it does not show that i can use a number of different camera shots and techniques however it did make me think about how i would present a backstory for the characters of my film. In order to make a decision on this i will need to conduct further research into the openings of films.