Approaching the Film Opening: Planning

 

 

    Beforehand, I had talked about the kind of studying I did to try and understand the art of an effective and establishing film opening, but here I will talk about my own process for my film. What the film openings I studied did was similar to an essay, start by hooking the audience in, and establish the tone that would be followed in the rest of the film. In my opening, I would establish the characters, showcase what kind of film this would be, and use film techniques and mise-en-scene elements and provide a specific tone that would draw the audience in. In order to provide the kind of tone used for the rest of the film, I would actually need to figure out what kind of movie this would be, and what it would be about. There were multiple iterations, for instance, an action movie, but being a young student with no budget, it would be too ambitious and difficult to film from a logical standpoint. Another thought was romance, but it would likely required good, or almost professional actors to be effective, which I didn't have.

     A big part of the process and what I scrapped was done because of logic and reasoning; I needed something that was easy to do and was simple enough to come up with a plan with but could still be an effective opening for setting up the film. If I decide to stick with something and later find out it's to difficult to do, I can't change it at that point and I'd have to be stuck with it. Even now I am still struggling to come up with a concrete and completed plan for what I will do, but what I think I would do is a kind of drama movie about the life of a man. The film opening would likely introduce this man and the kind of problems he goes through without revealing to much and leaving a part for the plot, to make it intriguing as to what will happen to him next.