Using Initial Research

What I’ve learnt from the research so far

The first two minutes in all of the films that I have watched do not have that much of the plot in them. The main use of the opening sequence was to introduce some of the main characters and to give the audience an idea of the place that the film is set. It doesn’t have much of the story in the first two minutes but the audience can get an idea of what type of film that it is going to be and work out who the key characters are and startto make predictions about what is likely to happen to them.

In the first two minutes of “Friends with Benefits”, even though at that point the two main characters had not met yet, they made their two stories link and used cross cutting to introduce them quickly. I like this idea and hope that we can use this sort of idea. We are hoping to use a similar technique in our piece, although our characters are enemies rather than a couple destined to end together.

Also, non-diegetic music was used in most of the films that I watched to set the initial tone of the film. Even though the films I watched as research were completely different genres, it taught me the music plays a big part in the first two minutes. By choosing the music carefully I think it could really help the first two minutes feel convincing. It tells the audience how to interpret what they see on screen.

I also noticed how important it is that the audience engages with the characters quickly, to care about what they will do next. We want our geeky girl to be the heroine, so we need to make sure that we choose shots and film in such a way that our audience will warm to her and be supporting her even at a very early stage in the film.