In our group when we were storyboarding our ideas we had an idea that at the begining of our opening we can have the characters walking down the street looking cool and gangster such as the effect used in  reservoir dogs. But in our opening it starts with one character and the others join him as he gets to a certain point down the road such as what is shown in this video.

From 0:35 - 2:10 on this video the effect we want to use is shown however we will not be using as much characters or props as our charcters are meant to look sophisticated and cool and ultimately gangster. 

This clip uses lighting really well to emphasis the rider and grab the audiences attention. We can use this effect in our opening as we want the audience to be paying constant attention to our opening and as it is only an opening most of it will be setting the scene so using something as subtle as lighting to keep the audiences attention would be very worthwile. The slo-mo effect is also used to emphasis the riders tricks and we can implement this effect in our opening to emphasis the characters visual apperance when they are walking down the street. At 28 seconds there are two different camera angles showing the same piece of action which we can use in our opening to emphasis a certain piece of action to the audience to show it's importance.

Film Planning and Storyboarding

Today in lesson our group started planning our 2 minute opening and storyboarding our ideas on a sheet which i will scan in and upload to my blog once we have finished.

Crime Film Cliches

In crime films police are as bad as the gangsters.
The gangsters are shown as tough guys who have turned to a life of crime because it is the only way to get ahead or they were wronged at a young age by the authorities.
In crime films there is a vaugue code that cannot be violated.
Crime movies almost always have a rat, the rat can be an undercover cop, member of the gang or even the gang leader himself.
Gangsters always have a hard time identifying the rat, even though the rat is the newest and best-looking member of the gang.
Gangster movies often include a scene in a restaurant or nightclub where somebody says the wrong thing to the wrong guy and later regrets it.
In crime movies there is usually one straight narrow whom the gangsters respect as he is not completly crooked like them.
For a crime film to work, there must be a wizened, cynical cop who is close to retirement and a young cop who is about to get married who will most certainly die and there must also be a full dress funeral service, preferably in the rain.
Finally gangster movies would not be gangster movies without the crucial scene in the hospital where a good looking young cop comes on duty to replace a cop who is guarding an important witness and turns out to be a hitman. Never once is this cop asked for ID.

Possible locations

Me and Matt thought up some possible locations to shoot our opening.

We thought of using matt's house as we can use the fast forward morning routine technique when we record a morning routine (making tea, breakfast etc.) from different angles and in editing we speed the clips up and emphasise the sound to give an intersting effect. we might use the post-it notes as the opening credits technique during this scene aswell.

Another location we will use is a quite road that we can do the slo-mo walk down with side streets on it.

We will also need to find a threating area for the trio's old boss to be shown such as a junkyard or a building site as it is very dangerous and threatening for the characters and the audience. 

we will look for these locations in the near future and i will take my camera to photograph them and upload them to my blog.

Narration

An idea we are definantly going to implement into our opening is the monolougue/narration from one of the main characters (possibly me) in the flashback explaining what went wrong and how it is going to effect the trio and have this effect used again towards the end of the opening to engage the audience and keep them wanting to watch more.

More Ideas

me and matt carried on thinking up ideas in our free period. We thought that we could get some of our friends to play extra characters in our opening and use an A-level drama student to play to old boss. We also thought we could introduce characters by having the camera moving slowly down a road infront of Matt  looking at him and then Mitch enters from a side street and then i enter after mitch from another side street and we are wearing suits and we all put our shades on in a very reservoir dogs style slo-mo walk.

Ideas For Opening

Today in lesson me and Matt were thinking up ideas for our opening as Mitch wasn't in lesson. We thought the opening will show the main characters getting ready looking nervous about something and then there will be a flashabck in the pleasantville effect which shows the trio failing their last job it then flashes back to the present and they meet with their old boss who gives them 24 hours to sort out their mistakes or else!

Lighting and Colours

This video shows how we can play with lighting and colours in our two minute opening. The video uses light flares when the rubiks cube is picked up from the stone which tells the audience that the object is of importance and will have connections with the rest of the film. The changing of light can convey different emotions and change the audiences view and emotion towards a character or a scene because of the lighting used which can enhance our scene and add more depth to the opening two minutes even though it is such a short time we can build a base of emotions and feelings that the audience have towards certain things in the film.

The colours have been very cleverly editied in this clip as the colours in the shot are black and white except for the colour of the side which has just been completed on the rubiks cube. This effect engages the audience as the colour is changing often which catches their eye and keeps them intersted in the clip instead of getting sidetracked or maybe even bored. We can use this effect to draw attention to certain objects in the scene or characters. This would make the audience more interested in the opening and can symbolise certain objects of importance that could feature later on in the film.

Layer Cake Analysis

This opening scene has a few techniques that we can use in our opening scene. The main technique from this clip is the monologue that is playing over the clips, this could be used in our opening as it creates a special link/bond between the character and the audience which makes the audience feel more involved in the film as you know more about the main character than other characters in the film which makes the audience feel as part of the the main character.

Another technique is when Daniel Craig is walking through the pharmacy and all the products on the shelves are changing as he walks past them to show a change in time which also links in with his monologue. This technique could be effective as it can show we have a extremely good use of continuity editing and it can be combined with the pleasantville effect towards the end of the clip so colour gradualy comes back to bottles and products one by one to show the scene changing from the past (flashback) to the present.

Smallville's Time After Time

Today in lesson after we analysed the crime film cliches as a class our teacher gave us a really good idea for our opening two minutes. She said we could film in the cemetary just down the road from our school to film a very cliched funeral in the rain scene. Even though this is very cliched in crime films it is a very effective scene for the audience to see and can create all kinds of emmotion from anger at a main character dieing or sadness at innocent gang member getting killed in crossfire.




Even though this clip is not from a crime film you can see the effect that we could use in our opening and the effect it can have on the audience.

Guide To Crime Cliches

Today in the beginning of the lesson we were reading and highlighting key points in Joe Queenan's guide to crime cliches. This highlights some key points and cliches that can be beneficial to our opening two minutes. Points such as crime films having rats, we can include this in our opening scene to give the film a twist. Another main point from this sheet was that all crime films need to have police as it makes it more realistic and justifies the gangsters hatred and violence.

Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/oct/17/crime-gangster-cliches

Outfits and Weapons

This picture is from another crime film called Pulp Fiction
The characters again are wearing black suits and black ties showing a strong similarity between crime films. The suits show that they are organised but also ruthless which we could include in our opening two minutes because we only have two minutes to try and make the audience interested in the film so if the outfits can show this then we have more time to fit in other scenes. The guns add to the characters apperance and relationship with the audience and can be used to convey different emotions within the audience because a gun has the ability to end a life and the audience knows this and can get very emotional when seeing a gun used in certain ways in a film so using a gun in our opening could prove to be beneficial as it will help manipulate the audiences emotions. I have a BB Gun pistol at home that we can use in our opening. 

Crime Genre Outfits

This image shows the sort of outfits we intend to use in our two minute opening.
The picture is from Reservoir Dogs and the black suit black tie look is what we intend to use in our two minute opening as it is very stereotypical of this genre and the audience have a shared understanding when they see a group of males in black suits with black ties and black sunglasses.

Goodfellas Opening

This is the opening scene from The Goodfellas. This clip has shown me how we can use sound and light to enhance our opening two minutes. The sound is very detailed and amplified when they are stabbing and shooting the man in the boot. This tells the audience that these men are not very nice and catches the audience off guard because this murder has just happened within the first few minutes of the film starting. Then the main character starts reflecting/narrating and only the audience can hear his narration which causes a bond to form between the audience and the main character already and makes the audience want to know his story of how he got there and why there was a man who got killed in his car.

When the characters get out of the car you can hear crickets in the background which immediately tells the audience that they are in a rural setting away from anyone else. The sound in this clip is used to convince the audience that they are in a certain setting and intensifies the scene when the man in the boot is murdered.

The lighting used in this clip can also help us get ideas for our two minute opening because again the lighting is very natural, the car lights are the only things lighting the car and when they get round to the boot there are only the red tail lights to light up the characters which convinces the audience that the scene is real and because of the red over the characters you can relate that to anger and danger which there is when the boot is opened.

Genre

 

This clip shows some effects and techniques we could use in our opening that could be very effective if used correctly.

The film genre we decided to do our opening on as a group is the crime genre.We chose this genre because we didn't want to follow the stereotypical route that many other groups take in A Level Media which is to do an opening based on the horror genre.
We liked some techniques that are used in horror film clips that we watched on youtube that could be implemented into our opening based because techniques like the quick white flash to seperate camera angles we can use in our piece to show that someone has been punched without actually having to fake the punch in any way.

We could also experiement with the pleasantville effect in our opening. The pleasantville effect is when the whole clip is black and white except for one object which remains in colour. This effect could be used effectively in our opening as at the end of the clip it could revert to full colour showing that the pleasantville effect was showing a flashback. This clip shows the pleasantville effect for a short while when he is bleeding from the mouth, it is used to clearly show the audience his blood and empathise the bloods colour if everything around it is black and white. This effect was used most commonly in the film "Sin City" where the one object in colour draws the audiences attention to it and can be used to convey different emotions to the audience.