Genre Inspiration

Our first inspiration for the genre of our opening sequence was 'Children of Men'. We decided this as we wanted our opening sequence to include an element of the future. Children of Men was a key film which we had watched and liked how sutbly we were able to see the difference in time. This was something that we wanted to achieve in our opening sequence also. From this extract, we also got many ideas of how we could technically manipulate our footage to realistically protray to the audience the period the film is set in.

An obvious way to indicate the time to the audience is to have the date visible on-screen. This is something we took into consideration when we wanted to clearly show the era.

Friday 20th January

Updating blog and scanning.

Monday 9th January

Today we continued to storyboard our opening sequence. Some shots, we knew what we wanted to show but weren’t too sure which shot type to use. Therefore we drew out both and decided that we would film both and decide during editing which shot we preferred. We also continued to think about casting. We made a note of people we would ask and the role they would play. Later during the day we asked some of the people whether they would be willing to act for us and photographed them.

We also checked that the dog would be available and her owner would be able to bring her to the location on the scheduled day. When this was confirmed we also checked that the dog would be able to do what we had planned and story boarded.

Friday 5th January

Today we continued to brainstorm ideas and began storyboarding our idea. Whilst doing this, we decided upon our locations to film and possible actors to fulfill the roles. Our story began in an alley way, where a man who we decided to be a tramp, was sitting on the floor with his dog. We then thought of various shots and angles we could use to build suspense. The story continued with the dog running off and the tramp following him into a shed, where he would discover a crime map on the walls. The tramp then investigates the map he has discovered, that the map entailed future plans for the worlds.

Each of us had photographed possible alleys way and sheds which could be used, although we were a bit sceptical about the idea of the shed and filming at this location.

Wednesday 18th January

Updated blog and scanning.

Wednesday 14th January

During the Christmas holidays, we each storyboarded an idea to pitch to the rest of the group. We discussed previous opening sequences we had watched, including previous students' work. We combined the ideas and shots we liked with our own ideas. A few opening sequences we watched from films and previous students' work. From analysing opening sequences we decided that we liked the use of a long shot where the actor walks towards the camera through a crowd of people. We also agreed that we like the opening sequences which included a voiceover. Therefore, we decided that we were going to try and include a voiceover or use a shot of someone walking towards the camera through a crowd, or both. Within our first meeting, we discussed this and the genre we wanted to make our film. We made a list of possible genres and ruled out comedy, romantic comedy, fantasy. We weren't also keen on creating a horror film because quite a few of the previous students' work we looked at used the genre of horror, and we found their narrative quite confusing, also we wanted our idea to be original. From the idea we put together from today's meeting, we concluded to use the genre of crime.

Tuesday 17th January

Sorted our footage into the right order, moved unwanted footage onto another window incase we wanted it later.

Monday 16th January

Today during our lesson, we uploaded the footage we had shot from the weekend.

Sunday 15th January

Shooting.

Friday 13th January

We drew up a call sheet in preparation for shooting so everyone including the actors knew where they needed to be and when. Finished storyboard.

Thursday 12th January

We wrote up a props list today and allocated a few props to
each person in the group.
Continued to storyboard. Aftershock! productions
We drew up a brief for each of our actors so they knew where
they needed to be, at what time and what to bring.
While story boarding, for each shot we wrote out alternative
shots we could film as well.

Wednesday 11th January

Scrapped the shed idea and the dog. changed the idea, pitched it to miss.
Today we realised that we only had 4 days until we needed to film. We made a list of everything we needed to do and checked with our actors that they were available to film that weekend. Luckily they were.

Welcome to Aftershock! Productions' blog for AS Media Studies!

Hello, welcome to Aftershock! Productions' blog for AS Media Studies. We are the Aftershock! Productions crew: Madihah Culasy, Ella Baker, Sam Haines, Tom Malins. on this blog you will find our weekly discussions, planning for the the opening sequence, pitches, and of course, our final opening sequence.