Introduction to the Coursework

The year’s media foundation portfolio is: ‘The titles and opening of a new fiction film to last a maximum of two minutes’. In order to achieve this task and get a good grade, we have eight sections we need to do just for the pre-production of the two minute opening. In order, these are:

• Form – For form, we need to research all of the conventions of a film opening. Things like the film studio logo at the start to what time music begins etc etc. To do all of this, we shall watch many openings of films and do timelines for them.
• Genre – In order to create a successful film opening, we need it to belong to a specific genre and what that genre is should be apparent when watching it. To choose a genre we will look at what you would find in these specific genres (for example, in a murder mystery film there would usually be a protagonist trying to solve a crime). We will then choose our genre and look at audience pleasures and what audiences expect from the genre.
• Idea – This section of the pre-production is pretty straight forward as it means coming up with our own idea for the opening. However, you can’t just think of an opening for a film so, it means we have to think of an idea for an entire film plot.
• Pitch – Now taking the film idea we have, we need to rehearse and write a professional pitch to present to our class and our teachers.
• Script – To make sure we know exactly what we are doing in our opening, we will need to write a script and to write a successful one, we need to research a lot of things. This means researching the conventions of a script and getting to grips on how the layout looks. This process may be quite long and features lots of blog posts; there will be many versions of our original script.
• Storyboards  – The obvious part of pre-production is in fact: storyboarding. For this also, we need to research the typical conventions of a storyboard. These will be hand drawn and at some point in the process, animated. We will be expecting feedback to make further improvements.
• Branding – Every film opening has a film company’s logo at the start of it and since we have to make our own opening it means we have to make our own film company too. We will have to learn how to use professional software to create an animated logo to put at the start of our opening.
• Practical Preparations  – Preparing for filming means preparing for every little detail that comes with it. Things like: costume, locations, filming schedules, hair, makeup and equipment will all be thought about before the filming process with blog posts about each.