Ellie Muir Reflection of my Short Film Opening

Reflection of my Short Film Opening

The Foundation Production Brief was to produce a film opening, which must include titles and to be no more than two minutes long. My film opening is a Horror/Supernatural genre which is reflected through the editing and sound.

The first shot I used in ‘The Happenings’ was a close up shot of a lit candle, which is located on the left hand side of the shot, with a black background. The second shot is an extreme close up shot of the flame of the candle flickering. The third shot I then used is a close up again of the candle. Again the candle is flicking and is then blown out ‘on its own’ at the end of the shot. This shot adds suspense when the flame is blown out because the audience are not sure what is going to happen. These close up shots make the audience focus on this specific object. They give a sense of tension and propose a question as to what will happen next. The fourth shot is then brought in by the striking of a match, which is an extreme close up out of focus shot of the match being lit.  At this moment I made the volume of the sound of the match louder to heighten the suspense of this.  And the fifth shot is another close up shot of the candle being re-lit by a hand showing the audience characters are now involved.  The next two shots are of the outside of a house, they show all of the lights out in the house and then the candle is shown moving around in the front room. The music accompanies these first several shots well as it gives them an eerie, mysterious feel.

When thinking about forms and conventions of an opening of a film my media creation does this by using titles that mirror a certain order of titles that openings of films would use. For example the first few titles of my film are Film4 Productions, Co-Production with BBC Films,  the titles of the film, actors etc, which in my case are the two characters who are introduced in the opening of the film. After this the next couple of titles are, Music by, Costume Design by, Lighting by etc. Finally the last titles are Produced by and Directed by. Furthermore the film opening introduces the setting, which for my film is in a sinister and ghostly, suburban environment. The mood is also initiated, which in this case is unsettling, dark and quite ethereal, as it portrays a mood of indistinct happenings. Also during some of the beginning shots of the first character, I used a hand-held camera to add realism to the shot and to make the audience feel as if they were following behind the character, who is trying to find his way in the dark with a small lit candle.

My media product represents a particular social group, being middle class people. This is shown when you see the setting of the film, which is a modern, quite large house. Furthermore certain items inside the house prove this. For example the detailing of the sink tap, the fridge, the radio etc.  The setting is also established through the characters as the audience can tell by their accents that they are from Southern England, so they have typical London accents.  Gender is represented negatively in ‘The Happenings’ as we see the woman character to be very helpless and venerable. As my media product has a genre of horror/supernatural/ghostly, the audience that would be attracted to my media product would be teenagers and young adults who enjoy these types of genres in films programmes, documentaries etc.  I attracted my audience through the use of the unsettling, anticipating music that is played throughout the opening of the film. Not only this but another way I attracted my audience was through the title of the film. ‘The Happenings’ presents mystery and ambiguity as to what these ‘happenings’ might be.

Some of the media institutions that I feel would distribute my media product are Film4 Productions and BBC Films. Film4 Productions is a British film production company owned by Channel 4 Television Corporation. The company has been responsible for backing a large number of films made in the United Kingdom. Film4 Productions would distribute my film as they have distributed other horror films like mine such as 28 Days later, Friday The 13^th and Dark Water. The Film Industry could also issue out my media product, because they release in cinema and DVD’s .  Another distribution aspect could be Film4’s Online Distribution which they are hoping to create in the next couple of years. They are doing so because the number of broadband users increases worldwide and they are getting closer than ever to seeing regular delivery of movies/TV programming over the Internet. There are a couple of companies in the US already offering movie downloads (Cinemanow.com) but their titles tend to be studio fare, not the major box office material. World Cinema Online is distinct in that it offers award-winning independent titles from all over the world.

When creating the Titles for my film opening I first researched title sequences and film openings, using a website called ‘Art of the Title’. This has many famous film openings of different genres, such as horror, comedy, thriller etc. The film openings include the titles such as Film4 Productions, Directed by, Screenplay by etc.  Some examples of films that used these titles where The Blair Witch Project, The Devils Backbone, The Fog, The Haunting, and many more. As my short film is horror/ supernatural, I watched film openings which were similar to this genre, some examples of these films where Paranormal Activity, The Blair Witch Project, The Devils Backbone, The Fog, The Haunting, and many more. These film openings were extremely helpful, as they offered titles that I could use in my own film opening. The website also helped me to establish different types of soundtracks that could be used and how this type of music would affect shots and scenes within the opening of my film.

I have learnt about the different technologies needed to create my Film Opening. One specific technology which was used was Final Cut Express. Being new to this programme I had to learn and understand how to use it to help me with the editing of my film opening. Before the preliminary task of creating the film opening we were given the task of creating shots that incorporated Continuity Editing. For the duration of this we had to consider technical issues like the 180° rule and shot-reverse-shot. Creating this task helped me to identify how to edit shot reverse shots and keeping in the 180° rule. Then when creating the preliminary task we learnt how to create titles using Final Cut Express and as we weren’t familiar of how to do this, our storyboards which where created in preparation, helped us when editing and putting on the titles in our film openings.

I was then comfortable when coming to the editing stage of my film opening. Then to create music that we wanted to use in the openings of our films we learnt how to use GarageBand to select appropriate music and sounds. At first I created a soundtrack with the different loops on GarageBand, but once I tied it in with the shots of my film opening it didn’t work. I then used the help of Jessica who plays the piano to help me create chords on the keyboard which was connected to garage band. Once the music soundtrack was created it then had to be sent to iTunes so that it could be moved onto Final Cut Express. I decided that this was a better option for my opening as the sounds of the chords from the piano worked well with the shots making the atmosphere of them more unnerving and disconcerting.

The task of creating the questionnaire and getting people to partake in it really helped me as the feedback that was given helped me to establish which parts of my film opening where successful or not. The feedback from people confirmed that they thought the genre matched the story of my film opening and the shots and music really represented the horror/ supernatural genre. I also received a lot of positive feedback about the music used as people said that the music which was created really accompanied that shots used and created more suspense and eeriness. “The music added mood and drama to the opening.” And then some of the improvements people talked about were things like “I would like to have heard more sound in some areas and less dialogue.” And “More shots of the location i.e. maybe wide shots of a town or city and one of a couple of cars driving down the street to set up the house and location.” 

Finally, looking back at my preliminary task of the film opening, I feel I have learnt a lot from preparation techniques such as creating the storyboard, digital storyboard and researching different films to understand about titles to the final finished product as I was able to understand about titles and where they are positioned to create effect in the openings of films and to enhance the importance of work committed behind the scenes of films. I have learnt a lot about transitions and how they are used and also choosing good moments to use these as they create more emphasis and effect on certain aspects of the shot. Although I only used one transition I still feel I am confident enough to know how to use them when editing. Additionally now that I know how to use programmes such as Final Cut Express and GarageBand I understand that these are two important factors, between many more that assist in improving a film. Not only this but I have learnt how editing and sound impact an audience, as it can change the mood, atmosphere and feel of what the movie is trying to portray.