Film Opening Group Discussions [1]

For today, I was put into a group with a few other people to discuss and receive feedback on our progress. For our group, there was an issue on timing, visual representation, and filming issues. From our discussions, I was reminded to not incorporate too many ideas into the film opening to prevent it from becoming a short film instead. There should be just enough information for context and foreshadowing to an extent. It is fine not to incorporate every little detail from the original plot and much of it may end up irrelevant.

To visually present something I cannot physically obtain or is just inconvenient to film, coming up with alternatives is crucial. For my project specifically, the red string would be difficult to film so I decided to portray it by animating it. It not only gives it the visual representation of the thread but would also fit nicely into the fantasy genre. Someone in my group needed to present heroin-- since their film revolves around the effects of drug usage-- and since the drug itself is not obtainable, he said he would use an alternative: a fake needle, basically. I found this idea to be appropriate since he did not just discard the idea when he acknowledged that the real prop was not obtainable.

Timing is quite important in this project as there is a time expectation. And due to this, it may not include too much content. As I have not started the storyboard as of now, I have not yet encountered the issue. However one of my groupmates did. She wanted to incorporate a lot of plot-relevant content but it caused her the worry and issue of exceeding the time limit. She was planning on the opening of a film about a new artist that creates replicas of another artist's artwork. She wanted to portray in the opening the route of the original artist's life because of their own obsession with their own art which led to death, but also the obsessive nature of the new artist. We offered the advice to shorten the new artist's time to focus on the old artist's route. Since the question she is trying to raise for the audience is "Will this new artist follow the same path as the original artist?", I thought it was probably best if she gave more context to the old artist. This way, there will be a clearer focus, and the opening to fit in the time frame.

Filming itself is one of the main issues I will be encountering. As I am working alone, I must invite two other people to help-- either both as actors or one to film and the other to act. However, my issue is that I am very intricate in my camera shots and their movement of it-- so much so that people typically are not able to comprehend my particular directions. Because of this, I may need to be the one handling the camera-- but I also do not have two people to help. I only have my sister to help as all of my friends are studying and working on their own work. I was suggested to just use the same actor in different clothes and use shots to not show the face of the second character. I decided to go along with this idea until I find someone to act.

Overall, I believe this discussion helped and will help me as I continue to develop my film opening it reminded me to acknowledge other possible issues I may have, and having these people discuss this is useful as solutions are much easily solved with more minds.

My group!