Above are the characters we need to cast for our film opening. In order to achieve a successful film opening, choosing an actor for a particular character correctly is vital. I have listed the suggestions for each character in order to give me a choice in cast therefore giving me back up in case one of the chosen suggestions is unable to act or make the filming time.
After deciding on the names of our characters, we realised that the name "Danny Connolly" didn't appropriately fit with the theme as it portrayed too much complication. Therefore, we changed it to 'Toby Hunter' which automatically made the character seem younger helping the genre to be displayed accurately.
In order to portray the genre of my title I have to be clever in terms of choosing one to represent my film opening. For example, previous films have used fonts relating to the topic to further accentuate their themes.
This colouring of pink used portrays the fact it is a chick flick mostly based around the female genre. The boldness of 'MEAN' illustrates how being 'mean' is a significant aspect of this film. In terms of my film, I brainstormed several ideas which I could use for my fonts in order to convey the theme and genre.
As the film opening is based around the internet, we could use the title as one to relate to online fonts.
Below I will analyse existing films' logo's for their title as it helps to address the genre and type of film further.
This title of 'Wild Child'immediately conveys the genre of being a chick flick because of the colouring used. The addition of diamante glitter in stage lights enhances the confidence of the main protagonist also highlighting their importance and significance within the film. The addition of gold and purple portrays the contrast of the main protagonist against the main characters also matching the clothing worn by the character in the advertisement.
The significance of the red in the title implies the horror and thriller genre. The use of videoed title portrays the way the film is recorded throughout, giving an insight into how thrilling the film is due to the lack of information given by the advertisement.
Trust is the closest film to which is similar to my film opening in terms of genre. The use of font on the title enhances the genre being focused around technology also enhanced with the addition of the underscore at the end perhaps indicating an on-screen name for a chat room. The use of the red conveys the danger and threats given by this sort of theme with it linking to the red roses portraying the main focus of the danger in the film being about love over internet. The monochrome colouring used on the female indicates her obliviousness and how vulnerable she is as a character.
CATFISH OPENING TITLES Catfish (2010) is a documented true story of a male who creates a strong connection with a female across the internet only to find she is not who she says she is. Below are the opening title credits helping me to gather an idea of what to put into my opening.
0.11-0.21 - UNIVERSAL
0.38-0.41 - Relativity Media 0.42-0.48 - iamROGUE.com 0.52-0.56 - ROGUE PICTURES PRESENTS 0.58-1.02 - A SUPERMARCHE/HIT THE GROUND RUNNING PRODUCTION 1.05-1.10 - A FILM BY ARIEL SCHULMAN & HENRY JOOST 1.12-1.17 - EDITED BY ZAC STUART-PONTIER 1.19-1.24 - EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS RYAN KAVANAUGH, BRETT RATNER, TUCKER TOOLEY 1.26-1.31 - PRODUCED BY ANDREW JARECKI & MARK SMERLING 1.33-1.37 - CATFISH (TITLE) 1.49 - Yaniv "Nev" Schulman 1.52-1.55 - Yaniv "Nev" Schulman//Age 24//Photographer
The film, Trust (2010) is based around the same genre as what we are planning to do for our opening - online predators. Originally, we had planned to film the conversation of the protagonists however we realised due to this requiring filming a computer screen furthermore causing the quality to decrease, we decided we could possibly have the chat merged with the titles. In this opening we see the chat between the characters who as of yet we do not know about. This intrigues an audience in a sense of wanting to find out who the characters are shown on screen. We could somewhat use the idea of showing the chat as titles within the opening alongside using screen-names to convey the vulnerable, childlike aspect of the film. By doing so it will persuade the audience to continue watching due to the grabbing first scene.
Online Predators After much deliberation and brainstorming of ideas, we finally came to the conclusion that the most successful film opening idea was 'Online Predators.' It would allow us to research into true stories and convey how dangerous and in-depth situations like this are. We decided to reject the other ideas as by using those genres it would mean that the location would be difficult to find and we would need a large cast therefore causing too much hassle. By selecting the theme of Online Predators, it meant that immediately we began to think of different shots, cast numbers and where we could film. By using previous research of Todorov's theory, if we were to begin to create a story based around this theory it would follow the following: Equilibrium - teenage girl is content with an online relationship with who she thinks is a teenage boy Disequilibrium - she meets him realising he is not who he says he is, she gets blackmailed being forced to do things she does not feel comfortable doing Equilibrium - she opens up to her parents, receiving help from police and the predator is charged Location: - ordinary teenage girl's bedroom - dark room, possibly lacking lighting/no windows, stripped walls for example:
We were thinking of producing a film opening which could relate to technology and society within the 21st century. By doing this a moral message will be achieved after watching the film persuading viewers to re-evaluate how open they are to those from the public who they are not familiar with. Facebook launched an app called 'Take This Lollipop', to encourage users to re-think who they have viewing their personal information and how serious cases like this can be. It was a successful app in terms of helping people realise the mistakes they could make by allowing strangers to view their profiles, however serious cases like these still do occur.
Another example of a film which conveys this type of issue is Catfish: The Movie(2010). It documents a male's life of how he connected with someone online only to find that they weren't who they said they were. The man involved within this film has now produced a TV series documenting thousands of other citizens who experience the same situation with online predators. This reflects situations which occur frequently around the world, often with young teens resulting in serious consequences.
Peer Pressure
Another idea which we could do for our film opening would be the well known, broad topic of peer pressure. By selecting this genre it allows several routes of the topic to be produced into a film. For example, we could go down the path of peer pressure within school for example stereotypes and how people can be forced into performing things which they don't feel comfortable doing. We could also show the pressures in drug taking or smoking however these would normally require a large cast and finding a busy, noisy location could be difficult.
Anonymous bullying/hate blog
Our final idea was to possibly convey the dangerous yet popular uses of technology through social networking. Recently, many stories have been revealed focusing on the disadvantages of social networking and online cyber bullying. By creating a film about this it will clearly illustrate the two sides of online abuse and how it can manipulate someone completely. Within this day and age, many sites have been created where anonymous answers or questions can be directly sent to any user signed up to these sites. This anonymous aspect is often a route to cyber abuse making it an easier way for bullies to target a victim without conveying who they are. For example, sites such as ask.fm and formspring have caused much deliberation as the consequences within several cases are tragic.
