Evaluation Of Our Film Opening

Question 1By Amber Fancourt

9 Distinct Frames From Our Film Opening

The title of the film & setting/location & title font and style

Costume and props & Camera work and editing

Camera work and editing & setting location

Costume and props & setting/location

Camera work and editing & costume and props & setting/location & title font and style

Costume and props & setting/location

Camera work and editing & costume and props & setting/location

Camera work and editing & setting/location

Setting/location & costume and props & title font and style

Genre & How The Opening Suggests It…

The genre of our film is Crime/Drama and something we have noticed is that all crime films are focused on the lives of criminal, this influenced our opening massively as we also tried to follow this trend by basing the first 2 minuets of out film on a “criminal”. Our film opening is the result of combining the ideas of a few other crime films we have looked at. ‘The Innocent’ firstly focuses on creating suspense and capturing the audiences full attention, it also focuses on the stereotype of black criminals. One of the films that we analysed when looking at the genre ‘crime’ is ‘The Prisoners’ where the opening scene begins with a police officer in a café, the suspense then builds as we see him walk outside the café to a parked RV van facing a forest. It then finally reveals a person inside creating more suspense as we don’t understand who they are or why they’re there. The difference in our film opening is that it does challenge the forms and conventions in this media product/film in the way we present the film after the murder has taken place rather than starting the film in chronological order from the beginning of the story (pre murder).

Story & How The Opening Sets It Up…

Our film ‘The Innocent’ is based around a teenage boy and how his life was instantly turned upside down after a night of mayhem and murders. The whole film is him telling his story of what happened on that night and him explaining his innocence. In the opening it shows him after the murder has taken place with numerous shots including him with a bloody knife portraying him as the murderer although he isn’t, hence the title ‘the innocent’. As the voice over continues while the shots of the boy holding the knife are being shown, you can hear him exclaim that “it wasn’t his fault” and that “they’re after him now” hinting at the fact it wasn't him who killed anyone and creating suspense as we don’t know ‘who’ is after him. By the end of the opening it sets up the rest of the film nicely as he says “people will see what really happened that day, the truth will come out. THIS is my story…” this is where the film opening ends but if the film had carried on it would of gone even further back in time to before the murder took place and began his story from there, explaining exactly how everything happened and showing why he is innocent. This challenges the form of real media products as the crime film “the dark knight” does not start after the crime takes place and go back in time to tell the story after, the opening scene shows the crime in action and continues from there, unlike our media product.

How Characters are introduced…As we only used 1 actor in our final cut of the film opening, Niyi, there was not many people to introduce. He is introduced after the crime have taken place and is showing portraying a number of emotions to tell the audience that something has already happened, intriguing them instantly. His character is a boy who has been in the wrong place at the wrong time and is worried that the blame will be passed to him after his ex girlfriend is stabbed to death after a party. Initially, we planned to have the new boyfriend of the girl murdered in the opening however we decided not to show that at as we wanted to keep the opening full of suspense and not reveal to much in the first 2 minuets. The suspense built would keep the audience asking questions and wanting answers meaning they would be interested to carry on watching, especially as Niyi keeps repeating things such as ‘it wasn’t me’ and ‘it wasn’t my fault’. We tried to portray Niyi expressing 3 main emotion within the opening, these were anger, frustration and anxiety. ANGER – this is shown to the audience when Niyi throws the knife into the grass this could mean that he is confused with what to do and doesn’t want to holding the knife anymore as it brings back too many upsetting memories he wants to forget.FRUSTRATION – the throwing the knife could also be seen as a release of frustration as he is doing something aggressive to express his angry emotions, also he is frustrated with himself because he is confused which is why he could be grabbing/rubbing his head so much to represent the confusion in his mind. ANXIETY – where Niyi is stressed about everyone thinking he is the murdered and also when niyi is walking and he hears the police sirens so he begins to run and hide, expressing his anxiety and worry.