R+P Post 8: Our opening sequence idea

In order to create a seamless opening sequence we decided to make a few lists of what representations we wanted to show etc. Here are those lists:

Settings Needed:                    

-Home -Boys bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, hallway and front door.                      

-School -School entrance, school corridor, classrooms, teacher's room.                                

 Characters that should be introduced:

-Arthur (the focus)               -The Athletes   

-Mother        -The Chavs       -The Hipsters
-The Geeks   -Teacher           -The Emos

After doing this we started to ask ourselves question in order to raise any problems. After having found question that we weren't sure of the answer to we decided it would be useful to refer to other similar films and use their methods as inspiration to solve our problems.

How will the audience know that it is his first day?
We had a look at the Mean Girls intro to see how they introduced that it was Katy's first day.
After reflecting on their choices we decided this:

-Props
       -> Arthur will be holding a map of the school as he navigates the school corridors.

-Dialogue
      ->His Mum will wish him "Good luck on your first day"

      ->The Teacher will then anchor this by saying "Hello, are you the new boy"?

How should we introduce the different groups without it taking along time and becoming boring?

After watching the school scene in '21 Jump Street'    we decided that having all the characters segregated into their different groups in the same area for Arthur to walk through would be effective and funny to watch.

We continued to do research and the came across the hallway scene in 'She's the Man' and immediately we decided that we could do the scene in a one-shot track that dipped in and out of different conversations between groups. Despite the challenging nature of a one shot we felt it would make out opening even more immersive for the audience and help them to sympathize with Arthur, our main character.

What will be shown in the morning routine section of the opening sequence?
After creating a spider diagram of ideas for actions in the opening sequence, we decided that there would be too many to fit inside the time frame that we had designated for that section. Instead of cutting back on the number of shots or the length of shots we decided to do some research into other opening routines, one of which was the opening for '127 hours'. Although the genre and theme of the film is completely different we were intrigued by the use of split screens and felt that would be extremely useful to solve our problem.



Titles:

We looked at a large number of different opening credits from all different genres, however we decided to create ours as a combination between 'Perks of Being a Wallflower' and 'Juno'. We adapted the order of what was written from 'Perks of Being a Wallflower' (Distributor, Production Company, Main Actors, Title) and then merged this with the title movement and placement (in the shots) that you see in the 'Juno' opening.