Screen grabs for evaluation

Including key features of an opening sequence

Titles:

For our titles we decided that the teacher would write 'featuring' on the board, then we would edit in names of characters afterwards. Our idea would be that the teacher says 'you may begin your lines', and a split screen would show the three girls writing their names and the characters they are playing. For the titles at the beginning, we decided on a simple black screen and white writing showing who edited, filmed and featured in the opening.










Introducing main characters:

The character's are introduced when the teacher says 'you may begin your lines', the camera then pans round the classroom which then stops at the characters, showing them bored. As they are in detention is may suggest that the girls are rebellious and don't follow school rules.



Introducing setting:

After the teacher says 'you may begin your lines', the camera pans round the classroom which establishes the setting. we used a panning movement to show the entire room instead of using separate shots because it gives it a sense of continuity from the beginning when the teacher writes featuring on the board.




Introducing genre:

Our genre isn't introduced immediately because we wanted to build suspense. However when the characters receive the text from 'Unknown' saying 'IT'S TIME!', it becomes obvious to the audience that the characters are not the typical school children, and this is where the genre first becomes clear. We then fully establish genre when they run out and the split screen shots show them in fighting poses and our title appears saying 'Teen Spy', which tells the audience what type of film it is going to be.










Sound:
We used diegetic sound to further establish setting, its important that the teacher said 'you may begin your lines' because the audience may be confused as to why there were only three people in a class. Furthermore, this made the audience aware that the pupils were in detention.
The opening begins with calm music as not much action is happening. But by the end of the opening there is a contrast in the music as it becomes faster and intense showing that there is action and something big or unexpected is about to happen. We also used digetic sound to exaggerate and emphasis the ticking of the clock. This helped show its significance and let the audience know that they have somewhere to be in such a little time.

Target Audience

Our intended audience consisted of children aged between 7-13 as we felt that this particular age bracket
would enjoy it the most. In order to make our film opening appeal to this target audience we included a
fast-pace soundtrack to create an exciting atmosphere. We used characters of which they could look up to
or relate to so that it would create more interest. We used a location of which they were familiar with, this
enables them to relate the scene to their own lives and by using 'ordinary' characters it allows them to
imagine themselves as that character and therefore get more involved within the storyline.

Teen spy

Above is our final edited childrens film opening.


Things we thought we did well:

We experimented with split screening as we thought that it would fit in really well with the spy aspect of
our film. After attempting to split screen the clips both horizontally and vertically we thought that the
finished shot turned out really well and allowed us to fit in more action within the short amount of time we
were given. Another affect which we thought was successful was our match-on-action shot. This featured
the main characters running out of the room and out of the door. This shot made the audience more
involved within the action and created a fast pace which fitted in with the theme. In our film opening we
also included a shot in which the camera zoomed in to a phone message saying "IT'S TIME!" from an
'unknown' sender. We thought this went really well as it created suspense and mystery as to who was
sending the message and what it was they wanted. This very popular in sci-fi films but not so much in
children films. We experimented in adding this to our opening and we thought it paid off as it keeps the
target audience gripped and wanting to know more.

In our filming we made sure that there were no continuity issues. We did this by wearing the same clothes,
using the same location and making sure our props were in the same position throughout each shot. An
example of when we did this would include the split screen shot where the phone is still featured on the
table as it was in the other shots within our opening.

Things we thought we didn't do so well:

On the other hand we have many things which we would do differently if we were do do this again. One
problem we found was that there was an issue with time management as we got towards the end of the
filming process we realised that we didn't have as much time as we wanted for our editing. This made
the process more rushed and therefore, we were unable to put 100% into our editing & we feel this showed.
We also wasted a lot of time re-filming shots as our acting was not up to scratch and this wasted time could
have been spent on valuable editing time.

Due to lack of people in our group we had to compramise with the filming of our opening scene. In our
first shot when the camera pans round from the teacher to the students we had to change camera person
half way in order to allow us to include all our characters within the scene. This caused complications as
it was difficult to film with one camera person when this person was also featured within the shot.

Overall we think that for our first try at a film opening we did very well. We have now learnt a great deal
as to what would work and wouldn't next time and what could be improved.

Character comparison

These characters in 'Spy Kids' are similar to our characters because they are in a similar age group. This picture influenced our split screen shots of each of our characters as the audience can tell that they are spies because they are doing action poses, and not vulnerable children. The audience can learn that the characters are out of the ordinary, in that people would think they are normal by going to school, but they have a secret life of a spy.

Children's Film Opening Ideas

I filmed a quick film opening of running to get ideas for my final children's film opening. I also edited music in as from watching the A team clip, i found it was a great way to show fast action. From watching the M.I High video i also found it is good to film from different angles/perspectives so i included that as well:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJnUu-nbdJU

Written Story Board

After our first attempt of following the first storyboard we were faced with some problems and so decided to  film a new children's film opening. This is the Storyboard we followed:

1.Teacher (Lauren) is righting on the white board in detention, This is also a way to introduce the Titles
2.Panning is then used to show the location (classroom)
3.Main characters (Kisu Maisie and Alexandria) are then introduced looking bored.
4.Digetic sound to conclude the titles (lauren says: you may begin your lines, main characters then write up the titles)
5.Phone of the main characters go off, symbolizing that action is about to occur
6.Reaction shot to show the characters expressions.
7.Tracking of the main characters running