Research

Research

For the main task of our media studies course we had to design, film and edit the 1st two minutes of the opening of a film. It had to have good continuity, different shots and be good enough to make you want to watch the rest of the film as if it was real. In my group there were four of us, and we decided to call our production company GC productions. One of the 1st things we did was to carry out polls on how often people go to the cinema and what type of film they like to watch there. We carried out these polls around college, making it on people around our own age, 16-19.




After looking at the results of what films people like to watch it was clear that the favoured genres are: Action/Thriller, Horror, Adventure and Sci-Fi. From this we decided that we should make our film in one of these genres.

To help our understanding of these film genres we studied the openings of films from these genres. The three film openings I watched were those of: 16 blocks, an action thriller starring Bruce Willis, Casino Royale which is one of the James Bond franchise making it also an action thriller including fantasy which stars Daniel Craig and finally Saw, a horror/thriller. We chose not to include a sci-fi film opening as we did not have the technology or money to create a decent looking sci-fi film opening which would include lots of special effects and costumes. This made it either an action/thriller or a horror that we decided we would make one of.

The opening to 16 blocks isn't the fastest of openings action wise, but establishes the location and scene quickly and also shows the main character that will feature in the film, that being Bruce Willis. The opening of Casino Royale as you would expect in a typical James Bond film is full of action, and gives an insight into the rest of the film as if the opening is action packed you would naturally presume the rest will be as well. It does set the scene so to speak, but as there are a number of locations in the film you cannot really set the scene for the film. I liked the opening of this film as straight away all of the action in it makes you want to watch on. The opening of Saw shows kidnap victims being held hostage, which again straight away for me made me want to watch on as I wanted to know what happens to them. The opening of this film is a lot darker and grimmer, as you would expect with a horror film, but one thing I did notice was that the mise-en-scene in the film had been thought out really well down to the last detail. I say this because the rooms in which the hostage are held must look real enough for someone to be held in, and every last detail down to things like how dirter the room is has been thought about. Below is a behind the scenes shot from Saw which shows the director talking to one of the actors playing one of the people who has been kidnapped, and also shows part of the room.





I could not find a link to the opening of Saw on the internet, but below is a link to a website that contains trailers for the film, full cast lists and the synopsis of the film.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387564/

Here is also a link for the opening of Casino Royale, and the second link goes to the same website as the link for Saw, except of course this time containing all of the information on Casino Royale.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiGy8lD4a_c

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0381061/

And also here is a link to a trailer for 16 blocks as again I couldn't find one for the opening of the film.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16JgiFMcr6w


After watching and studying these openings it is clear the general theme is some kind of action happening in the opening to entice the people watching, possibly some kind of cliffhanger that will be concluded later in the film. At 1st we had a few different ideas for what our film could be, ranging from a horror kidnap to a James Bond style film. In the end it was my idea of a kidnap that we chose, and seeings as it was my idea I also ended up being the person who would be kidnapped in the film. We decided against an action/thriller as we thought the film opening might come out to samey to already made films as our ideas were based around already made action thrillers. After we settled on this idea of a kidnap the next step for us was to move on to planning of the film.