As we began planning for our opening sequence we didn’t know very much about making a successful opening sequence. So we did our research and viewed a number of different opening sequences so we could get our heads around it and think about what we needed to do.
Research
In class we look at the opening sequence of Dirty Harry and then we had to pick one to look at ourselves, I picked The Hunger Game as it’s my favourite film. We then wrote analyses on each of the opening sequences which are both further down in my blog. Both of these are action films and that’s why we thought it would be good to do an Action/Thriller opening sequence. We watched videos off the internet that would help us make our opening sequence as we had to follow so key media rule for example we had to follow the 180 degree rule. This is where you must not cross the centre line whilst you’re filming. There is some much information that helped us from the internet.
Planning
We did all the planning as a group as we had to decide on key things for the opening sequence; for example, location, costumes, props ECT. Connor has already had experience on filming and editing, also he has his own camera, tripod and editing software which he was familiar and confident on using. Also we didn’t need to wait around for equipment; we could just get on with it. Connor was more confident on editing all the clips at home on the software he had instead of the MAC’S. Also he is aware of all the shots that we could do, so he was in charge of the camera and editing.
We was fortunate that Connor had a top quality camera that we could use for filming, it was a high spec HD camera; Panasonic SD60 a lot better than ones we could of borrowed from school. With this camera we were able to film in 1080p HD and 50 frames per second in 35x zoom if we needed to. Below is a picture of the camera we used.
As Connor had past experience on editing and had the software at home we decide as a group that he would editing our opening sequence at home and during the editing process bring in parts of the sequence so he could get our opinion on it and see if we wanted to change anything. He planned on using Adobe Premier Pro CS6 which is one of the best editing software’s. But he had some problems with that software so he had to change to Sony Vegas pro. This isn’t known as the best software but it’s not bad because of the SVP is all Connor used in the past and was confident with it. This did not affect the final product at all.
Once Connor had put all the video clips together he brought it into school to show us and check that we was all happy with it, then we have to choose the right background sound, non diagetic sound had to be added. But there was some background noise was lost when we did this for example my heavy breathing and the snapping of the branches as I was running away. This would of added suspense to the sequence but we managed to use suitable music to do this.
Evaluation
For the final part of our AS media coursework was the evaluation. We realised that we could use different methods to collect feedback instead of just using conventional method. We found out that we could use different ways for example collecting feedback off social networking sites, using video displays as this would be a more exciting way to do this. Also posting the video on YouTube would allow people to view it and then leave comments on what they thought about it and we could make some change from the comment and take the advice on board.
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