Planning Our Film Opening

    We are finally starting our film opening, and we had a whole outline for it, but the ideas weren’t engaging enough for our audience. We have three different story ideas for our opening, and we still are making our script. But it will be centered around mystery and detective work and some aspects of psychological thriller.

For this opening I like how it starts off with an establishing shot and slowly zooms into the F1 car. As the car is racing and drifting through the track, the credits play as the car starts to drift. This shows a good example of transitions. The credits also transition as the scene panels back and forth from the F1 car team and the car racing. This movie opening uses a variety of shots from insert, over the shoulder, POV, and clean and dirty shots. Lastly, as soon as the credits reveal the editor for the movie, then the shots are erratic and fiercer to symbolize the editor's work. This inspires the camera work of our opening so that the audience finds   the connection between the scenes more intriguing.

Our film opening is going to start off with our protagonist Madeline, who is currently studying for criminology in her dorm room. This case is a toxicology case because she has a background in forensics. She is a college freshman, and she hears a scream for help with a loud bang in the room next to her. She goes to go investigate and finds one of her classmates, Lily, unconscious on the floor, with her water bottle spilling out. Madeline checks her pulse on her carotid artery and finds that she is dead. She then proceeds to smell the water, and it gives the odor of poison. She ends up taking a sample of it, and a time lapse begins as the credits roll as Madeline calls the police, the police investigate, the paramedics and coroners for the morgue arrive to take the body, and the janitor cleans up the water spill. Madeline, then proceeds to investigate who did this as the film opening ends.

I was studying some of the past movie openings by other students. I came to really like this movie opening called Perfectly Imperfect. This story follows a girl who procrastinates and gets late to her best friend's birthday, which signals a relationship issue in the movie. The cinematography was not that good, but the simple story and choreography made it better. I also studied the murder mystery script called knives out and I noticed on how detailed they were on every aspect of the setting and interactions with characters. I also saw that they used spaces to convey passage of time or beginning of new dialogue with another character. This script intrigued me because we are also going to be doing a detective-esque story. I cannot wait to get started on this film opening.