Our Film in Different Genres

-Jenna

Mainstream Institution Company

We would like Praying Mantis Productions to represent a mainstream institution company because we feel that our film idea will appeal to a mass audience and by being a mainstream company we could afford to pay for very well known actors and actresses to be in the film which would increase the appeal to an audience. This means we could compare ourselves to companies like DreamWorks and MGM who produce big films and therefore they make more money and can use better effects like CGI etc which will increase the popularity of our film.

-Makenzie

Independent Research on Film Openings

Independent Research on Film Openings

Most films institutions aim to make the first 10 minutes of the film as interesting as possible to ensure the audience stay to watch the rest of the film. It is said that if your screenplay isn't interesting in the first few pages the script reader is most likely to stop reading your script and not make the film.
Movie title sequences can often be the most important part of a film. Setting the tone, atmosphere and characters for the audience, the opening of a film can either make or break the film.
Usually the most successful film openings bring a well developed sense of intrigue that will leave you settled into your seat desperate to know more about the story and the characters that are going to occupy your time for the next one and a half to two hours. If it is particularly inventive there will be some dramatic foreshadowing that will enable to hint you at the problems that are going to occur throughout the story. 

For example Sky fall uses different ways of intriguing the audience. The film opening gives away different parts of the film like a house being on fire or somebody dying. This therefore makes the audience want to watch the film to find out what is going on in these scenes of the film. Also due to the opening being of high quality it will make the audience see the rest of the film as being of high quality and make them want to continue watching the film.
-Jenna

Drive Remake

Here is our Drive Remake. It helped us understand how to use the camera but we did face difficulties with getting a clear shot in the car scenes as the car was moving and this created a shaky shot. Overal we are happy with our Drive Re-make as we feel we have got it quite close to the actual one.
-Jenna

How we are making our Re-make

We are using Sophies dad to star as Ryan Gosling in our Drive remake. We decided to film at night in order to get the true effect of the opening. We also carefully selected our titles and where we placed them in order to replicate the real thing. We filmed every shot 3 times over to ensure that all the shots were suitable and we had enough if we saw a fault with one. We tried to use as much of the remake as we could but couldn't film the new york skyline for obvious reasons.
-Jenna

How re-making Drive helped us

We have done a re-make of the existing film Drive. By re-making this film it allowed us to see what software and equipment was available to us, this meant that when we cam to making our actual film opening we would already know how to edit the frames, add text/filters etc.

By re-making a film that already exists it meant that we did not have to focus on content so much or scripts and we could concentrate on getting the correct shots and editing them with non-diegetic music as well as using transitions.

-Makenzie

Storyboard of re-make: Drive

Here is a storyboard of our re-make of Drive. The storyboard allows us, as a group, to know exactly what we need to film by breaking it down into different shots. This will help us when creating our re-make as we are able to follow a clear order and also gives us experience in creating a storyboard so we are prepared when creating our film opening.

- Sophie, Makenzie and Jenna

Drive Timeline

This is the title timeline for the film opening we are re-making. It shows the timings and order of the titles  in the Drive film opening.  This helps us to understand how the titles work in the opening of films so we can relate this when we make our own film opening.
- Jenna

Drive Shot List

Drive Opening Titles – Shot List

This shot list will help to understand exactly what shots are used in the opening titles of Drive which will help us to recreate this opening and also help us with our final opening so we know what short of shots we could include.

Shot Type	Framing	start	finish
Establishing	Showing the city	0.00	0.09
	Fade Into
Mid / Close Up Low Angle	Actor in the car	0.09	0.22
	Cut to
Over the Shoulder	Of actor and out of the windscreen	0.22	0.40
	Cut to
Over the Shoulder	View of inside of car and out of windscreen	0.40	0.50
	Cut to
Close Up	Side of actors face	0.50	1.01
	Cut to
Birds Eye View	Showing the city from above	1.01	1.14
	Fade Into
Close Up	Side of actors face	1.15	1.20
	Cut to
Long shot Panning	Car driving into the car park	1.20	1.26
	Cut to
Over the Shoulder	Of the actor walking towards the lift and showing a woman coming out of the lift	1.26	1.31
	Cut to
Long shot	Woman walking away from the lift then lift door shuts	1.31	1.34
	Cut to
Long shot	Actor in the doorway of apartment	1.35	1.39
	Cut to
Over the Shoulder	Actor walks into the apartment	1.40	1.49
	Cut to
Mid Shot – Low Angle	He stands there and then walks out	1.50	2.01
	Cut to
Birds Eye View	Of road and city from above	2.02	2.21
	Cut to
Over the Shoulder	Showing the actors view out of the windscreen	2.22	2.34

End.

- Makenzie 

Drive opening embeded / why we chose to remake it

We, as a group, decided to re-make the opening 2 minutes of Drive. Out of all of the film opening options given to us this seemed one of the more interesting to re-make. One of the advantages is that it has fairly simple camera shots which, we think, is good for a first time go at getting use to shooting and editing to make a good re-make. Hopefully the practice will help us familiarise ourselves with good editing techniques we can use in our final piece. 

Name and Candidate Numbers

Sophie Hughes-Narborough - 9185
Jenna Tubby - 9278
Makenzie Dougall - 9145