Film Opening Research

 Film Openings: Samples and Interesting Techniques Found

The film opening that has supplied a majority of my inspiration for our film opening is the one of The Virgin Suicides. While it obviously covers the topic of a teenage girl's suicide, which is relevant to my film opening, I was also always attracted to the entire film and its opening, as it introduces the aesthetic of the piece nicely while still being able to provide context for the story. The opening uses text on the screen stylistically to provide context and add visual appeal, which I would like to use in my film opening. 

The opening also uses dialogue sparingly, choosing strong phrases to really impact the audience, such as "Obviously doctor, you've never been a 13-year-old girl." Dialogue like this is used to evoke emotions in its audience. In this case, it makes you feel sorry for the character, as she is suffering in life from such a young age and feels misunderstood. By using strong dialogue in my own film opening, I will be able to somewhat manipulate the audience's emotions, making them feel bad for the characters in my film opening, and making them want to continue watching.

My absolute favorite part of this film's opening is the title card. I really just like how it looks. As it repeatedly shows the title of the film in different fonts, it gives a very 'cute' feeling and somewhat of a girly vibe to the opening, which helps to introduce that the target audience of the film is more focused towards the female gender.

Group Meeting

 Group Meeting #1

Yesterday in class, we held our first group meetings to get feedback on our projects from other classmates. Previous to actually meeting in groups, we watched a TED talk, shown by our teacher, providing helpful information on story writing. I will provide an image of my notes from the class period, in which I wrote down the most important things that I thought could benefit my film opening.

In the top section, you can see my notes from the TED talk video, and on the bottom, by quick notes from the group meeting.

    During the group meeting, I met with 5 other classmates, one of them being my partner, Alex. Each person proposed their idea for their film opening, and then we discussed any questions we had and any recommendations that could improve our piece. We also had access to looking at other classmates' blogs, to reference whilst they spoke about their ideas.

    The first thing I wrote down from the group meeting was not said out loud, but was more of a recommendation that I had for myself. I saw on my classmate, Agam Gago's, blog that she had written a blog on representation in the characters in her film opening, and I thought I should write this down as it would be a good blog post to create for my own film opening, as it will allow me to further research characteristics that the characters in my film opening will have, such as how they process emotions. This will allow me to create a better piece, in the end, as I will have a deeper analysis and understanding of our characters.

    When it came time to explain my concept during the group meeting, Alex and I explained our plans for the film opening together. While we did not have any major issues that we were encountering, our classmates were incredibly helpful in giving us recommendations to improve our film opening. As we explained that the film in its entirety would be about the older sister, Valerie, our group members expressed concern that the film opening seemed to be a bit too centered around Mara, and that if we wanted to introduce that the rest of the film is about Valerie, that we should begin showing this towards the end of our film opening. They proposed that we could show a scene, set a few days/weeks in the future, showing Valerie's strong emotions dealing with the loss of her sister. I think this was a great recommendation that solves an issue that I had not yet thought about, and I like the execution of the potential solution. After the group meeting was over, I discussed this with Alex and Andrea, and even offered that we could show dates on screen using text in the film opening to make it clear to the audience that time had passed.

     Overall, I think this group meeting was incredibly successful, as it not only helped improve my project by giving me feedback from others, but also allowed me to hear about my classmates' creative ideas for their own film openings! I can't wait to see their projects in the future!!

Small Update!

Character Names and Film Title

Character Names:

Last class, my partners Andrea and Alex, and I compared our research on names and came up with these final names for our characters:

Valerie(Val): For person A, the main character in this film, and the older sister of Person B.

Mara: For person B, Valerie's little sister, who eventually passes away in the film opening.

Isabella(Bella): For person C, the friend of both sisters.

    Research for both Valerie and Mara can be accessed here, in one of my previous blogs. The name Isabella, however, was proposed by one of my partners, and we decided on using the name as it is a very common name, and has a meaning that ties back to friendship.

Film Title:

    I'm excited to say that Alex, Andrea, and I have finally decided on our film title! We decided on the name 'Dear Mara'. The name of the film is meant to reinforce that the entire piece will be about Valerie overcoming the loss of her sister. We will be hinting at this title in our piece as we plan to briefly show Mara writing a letter addressed to her sister in the film opening(which the audience can later assume is something of a suicide note, leaving her last words for her sister to read). By titling the piece 'Dear Mara', the audience can make the inference that the film will be about Valerie overcoming her sister's passing, and that she would write a letter displaying her emotions after her passing and her journey overcoming this tragedy. Obviously, we are creating film OPENING and not an entire movie, and therefore we thought that using this title would be a creative way to hint to the audience what the contents of the film would theoretically be.

Visualizing Our Ideas

 Storyboarding Complete!

    As I mentioned in a previous blog, my partners and I completed an outline for our film opening in class just a few days ago. Before creating a script, we decided that making a storyboard would be the best task to accomplish first(I will insert images of the storyboard below). By creating a storyboard, we can visualize what shots may look like, and therefore reference the storyboard during filming. Additionally, it allows us to see what we will need when we are filming, such as mise-en-scene elements. In reference to our story, for example, we included in the storyboard a shot including a desk, so we must make sure our filming location has a desk to use. Or, we can set up a different location to shoot the required shots. As you can see, storyboarding helps as somewhat of a guide, allowing us to see ahead into what the production of this film opening may look like, and therefore allow us to avoid as many issues as possible.

    In our storyboard, we cover the basic visuals of what our film opening will look like by using still images. We include frames with dialogue and other techniques that clearly convey a message to our audience, as well as including others that make the reader/viewer make an inference to learn about the character.

    This storyboard begins with a quick showing of Person B, introducing them in a messy environment to show a chaotic state of mind. As you continue deeper into the storyboard, you can see that we plan to begin the inclusion of credits early in our film opening, around the time when Person A and Person B begin engaging in conversation. Continuing, the plot continues to unfold as the viewer finds out the reasoning behind Person B's sad and chaotic feelings(they are being blackmailed, this will be shown through text messages). The story continues, with Person C arriving at the location (Person A and B's house), and Person B can be seen focusing deeply on her reflection in the mirror. At the end, we focused on visualizing the scene in which a pill bottle can be seen spilled, which will show the death of Person B, and the audience can infer that the cause of death was an overdose.

    It is important to note that this storyboard is a brief visualization of our film opening. While it shows a majority, not every shot is visualized, although we made a point to envision the shots we deemed most important, as well as those that we want to begin imagining due to technical aspects(such as the shoots including credits and the title.)

Naming our Characters

 In my previous blog post, I simply referred to the characters that will be in my group's film opening as Person A, B, and C. My partners and I had a brief conversation that before creating our script, we should finalize the names of our characters. We made the ultimate decision that we will each research names separately, in order to focus on names with strong meaning behind them. Thus, I began to research potential names for our characters.

Each character in our film opening has a different role:

Person A is the main character of this film, and she is the older sister to Person B.

Person B, the little sister, which is shown committing suicide in the film's opening.

Person C, Person A's friend who is invited over, is also friendly with Person B.

 

    For Person B, I am very interested in the name 'Mara'. Depending in the culture, the name has different meanings, one of them being death. This is very direct to the characters' fate and thus I find it fitting. However, an alternate meaning to the name is 'bitter', which can be related to the root of Mary in Hebrew, which my partners and I can play off of because the root of the issues in this film would stem from"Mara".

For Person A, I am intrigued by the name 'Valerie'. The name Valerie means 'strong' and 'brave' in Latin, which would be key personality traits that I would like Person A to have, as she must be both emotionally strong and brave to face the trauma of losing a relative to suicide.

    Playing off the name below, I think Amy is a fitting name for Person C. As person C's primary role in this film is to be a good friend to the other characters, I tried to slightly alter the name 'Amity' by removing two letters, this way the name would originate from one with the meaning 'frienship', which is a strong characteristic that Person C holds.

    In the near future, my partners and I will review each other's research towards naming the characters of our film, and come to a final decision for the names of our characters together. 

Story Outline

 Finalizing the Plot

In previous blog posts, I mentioned the idea that me and my partners had for our film opening. Today in class, we had a long, thorough, discussion in which we brainstormed a large variety of ideas we had for the plot. I will insert an image of our *nearly* final idea and plot. We made sure to include the ideas of all members as well as work off of each other's suggestions.

One thing I would like to add is that we verbally discussed further details of person B's death. This was important for us to discuss as we want our film in its entirety to bring light to the struggles that come with drugs and addiction, and so we want to show that the cause of death comes from an overdose. In the scene of person B's death, we plan to imply the character's cause of death with a shot of a pill bottle with pills spilling out of it, similar to what can be seen in the image inserted to the left.

Additionally, I referenced the video below as inspiration for the death scene. I was reminded of this scene as the character 'Violet's' death was also caused by an overdose in a bathroom, as well as the male character 'Tate's' strong emotional reaction. My partners and I can reference this video during our storyboarding, shooting, and editing for inspiration on what the shots and pace of editing may look like during the scenes leading up to person B's death as well as when it actually occurs.

I was also interested in the use of a running shower to subtly hint to the viewer the idea that life moves on after death. This particular idea was inspired by Psycho (1960), in the scene in which a woman is murdered, but towards the end of the excerpt the camera focuses on her blood flowing into the drain to reinforce this idea. This will likely not be strongly apparent or emphasized in the film opening, but it is, hopefully, going to be present to hint to the viewers that the rest of the film would theoretically cover the main character's (Person A) journey overcoming her difficulties in life after her sister's (Person B) suicide.

Portfolio Schedule

 Scheduling/ Planning

As mentioned in my previous blog, my group members and I have determined the plot for our piece, and plan to include a sneak peek of the plot in our film opening. The plot for the piece covers the lives and emotions of teenagers as they experience the loss of a friend to suicide. In the opening we plan to show the characters suicide and the protagonist numb feelings caused by the death.

To properly complete this project with enough time and not create stress as a team, we have created a detailed schedule to follow. The schedule can be seen in the images below.

As a team we plan to follow this schedule and even attempt to get ahead of the schedule when possible. Seeing as I will be busy during many weekdays due to sports, me and my teammates have discussed the importance of communication. Luckily, we are all good friends, having know each other for many years, so we have regular conversations and know how to communicate  with each other well.