1. Research into the same genre
For our opening we discussed as a group and all
decided on the genre of our opening to be a drama.
We researched other dance films such as street
dance, footloose, step up and Billy Elliot, and we
were influenced and inspired by these movies. In
our opening we wanting our shots to tell a story and
follow each stage of preparing and attending the
audition. Classifications for our opening in a PG as
its suitable for young children.
2. Planning our opening.
• Characters: young teenage girl that’s attending a dance audition at
a dance college as she wants to become a dancer.
• Locations: girls house, dance college and dance studio.
• Props: we decided not to use any props as we felt that it was not
needed.
• Costumes: girl at the beginning of the open is in casual clothes(
hoodie , jeans ,coat and yellow trainers.) this was done to represent
the character as a cool laid back, confident individual . Other
costume is when the girl is doing her dance audition she is wearing
dance clothes. We chose to change the costumes during the
opening as it makes it more obvious to the viewer than it’s a dance
audition.
3. Drama conventions.
As our opening consist of the genre drama it shows
that our film deals a lot with emotions of
people, for example our opening shows the
emotions of the teenage girl preparing for
something that could be life changing to her. To
show this we did a close up of her face just before
she began to dance, this close-up also lasted for a
couple of seconds and this was done to show the
intensity. Drama’s are usually serious , tense and
portray realistic characters. The theme that our
opening is based upon is a realistic , real life
situation.
4. Representing different social groups
and target audience.
Dance movies and our opening represent lots of different social groups
not just one in particular. For example, hip-hop movies typically
represent the underground culture , drugs and gangs.
Whereas, ballet/ contemporary movies represent groups that enjoy
watching dance and the beauty of it. The main target audience for
our film opening is teenagers and young children. The target
audience would be more females than males as the main character
is a female herself. Teenagers that are female would defiantly relate
to this opening as they can relate to the character as she's around
the same age and they can relate to her feelings. people that our
dancers themselves would also relate to our opening more and
may find it more enjoying to other people that are perhaps not
dancers or performers.
5. Media institutions
- Social networking sites as young people are
constantly using social networking sites
compared to magazines and newspapers
these days.
- YouTube as this is where young people are
always searching for videos and watching new
trailers of movies, as its free and easy to use.
6. How did you attract /address your
audience
• Made the opening modern and to the viewers
interests and dance movies are popular at this
current time.
• Interesting as it shows a good story line
• Chose to use funky backing music and
themes.
7. What I have learnt about technologies
from the process.
• During the process of constructing our opening , I
have found that I have become more similar with
the flip camera and find it much easier to use
now
• Movie plus x6 – learnt how to edit by using the
software movie plus. Every time that we edited
our opening I learnt something new every time, I
now feel confident and enthusiastic with this
software but would next time like to experiment
by editing on the Mac and I think that would be
an exciting challenge for me.
8. Process for preliminary task
• Looking back at the preliminary task I feel like I
have learnt so much and have seriously
improved.
• Learnt new camera angles and how to make them
effective and striking to the viewer.
• Editing- changing colour of the shots, fading in
and out, adding music, adding captions and
cutting shots to make them shorter.
• Since the preliminary task feel like it has been
easier working as a group as we know now what
each one of us is good at.
9. Camera angles we have used.
• Close-ups on the characters face to see facial
expressions and makes it tense for the viewer.
Also close ups of the girl dancing .
• Long shots, for example girl walking and dancing
so the viewer can clearly see everything that is
happening in the shot.
• mid shots
• Tracking, of the character walking and dancing
• Close up of the other character in the opening
who is playing the role of the judge this was done
to make the audition realistic as possible.
10. Overall , I have really enjoyed the process of
making our film opening.