Overcoming obstacles

When starting our initial planning we researched codes and conventions of horror films as this is what we had initially decided on for our genre idea. Different research methods helped us to widen our understanding of the thriller/horror genre, such as creating mood boards and looking further into the history of thriller and how it has changed overtime (see other blog posts).

Mood board:

Continuing deciding ideas for our opening we came across problems, such as not making the idea too generic, and ensuring we apply some of the codes and conventions of the genre. We discussed some ideas as a group and began storyboarding for a thriller/horror genre.

As lessons progressed we found it easier to generate ideas for a different genre, social realism. This was because we could relate real life problems and situations and apply them to the genre and ideas we were thinking of. For our initial idea we had to consider location and this was a problem as it was difficult to find a suitable place that looked realistic, we overcame this by deciding to do a different genre and as a result this worked better and was more fitting.

Our second idea was an improvement as we found the idea more arrangeable and had the facilities and time. Our second idea was about a girl with an abusive boyfriend and who was very troubled. Although we thought this genre would be difficult to include in just a two minute opening, additionally it is fairly generic and we wanted to think of an idea which isn't just like a duplicate of other social realism films and an idea that was original.

With our third and final idea we were a lot more able to storyboard around and think of little ideas which implied our genre, as one the main things is to make our genre apparent to the audience viewing it. The current idea, is about a young teenage girl who struggles with her home-life as her mum is an alcoholic, the short opening demonstrates how this begins to have a knock on affect with regards to her schooling.

We have began filming parts of our opening which was really helpful in allowing us to decide ways we can change to improve and see what adaptations needed to be made and it was a first draft. When filming, we underestimated the amount of time it would take to film as we had assumed we would be able to get most of the filming complete in one evening, which we later found we weren't as it needed to be precise and carefully thought through. Secondly, looking over our first draft, we felt it didn't look very professional nor was the continuity consistent throughout. Although our first time filming wasn't as successful, it was successful in helping us to identify our problems and giving us opportunities to change them to then make our final product the best as possible.