Research: What makes an affective opening to a film

To make an effective opening to a film it should include a range of Micro and Macro features. Micro features include; camera, lighting, sound and editing. For example to make an effective opening to a horror film it would include dark lighting and low camera angles to give and idea about the genre. Macro features are genre features for example; Setting, Iconography, Themes, Characters and narrative features. So horror iconography would be items such as knives and masks and the setting for a horror film would be somewhere very isolated and run down to show that it is a horror film. 

So as shown in this picture it is clear that this is an element of a horror film and this makes it clear to an audience the genre of there film.

I think these aspects are very important to show in the opening sequence as it helps to she the audience the genre and give them an idea what the film is about. 

It is also important to show a hook in the opening sequence to keep the audience interested and make them want to keep watching.

 I am going to look into different film openings to see what makes them effective.  

Main Task Brief

The Brief we have been given for our main task is to create the opening two minutes of a film. Myself and Laura decided to create the opening sequence for a horror film and chose this genre as it is easily identified, through costumes and iconography. To ensure we portray this well I have conducted some research in to the opening sequences of horror films and other genres to see what makes an effective opening.
I am working in a group with Laura, as there is only two of us in our group we will have to use other people to act in the film. We each have different job roles to ensure the work is evenly distributed between us.

Preliminary Task Story Board

This is the story board for our preliminary task, this allowed us to plan out the basic story line for the piece and also allowed us to think about the different camera angles we would use for the shots.

Preliminary Task Video

Preliminary Task

Our objectives for the continuity task was to film an somebody walk in to a room, show them having a conversation with another actor by using shot reverse shot and exit using a match on action. I think myself and Laura managed to do this well.
In my group we discussed what the preliminary task would be about and once we had decided we completed a story board, we then began disussing the different locations. We thought about filming outside on the field however it wasnt very well lit, so we choose to film inside the school because it was very lit and we were able to walk out to the playground.
Myself and Wendy acted in the film whilst laura operated the camera, i feel Laura did a very good job at using the camera and showed the shot reverse shot well, and the match on action was very good. I feel Laura learnt some good skills and i also assisted her when it came to some of the decisions.
After filming the preliminary task one of our group members left, so when moving on to the main task we had to think more throughly as we only had two members in our group and we also had to edit it with just the two of us.
So myself and Laura edited the film and we did it fairly well, however it was slightly jumpy as we used windows movie maker and we were unable to cut parts down as much as we wanted and this made it jump between shots.
If we could redo this task i would:
1. Ensure I use pinicle to edit the footage so that there are smoother cuts.
2. Used better planning and choose a better script
3. Developed the story board further