Media opening plans (REVIEWED)

Media opening plans

 Casting:
Emily (main character)
Three of Emily's male friends.
Chloe (myself)

Emily can't get a boyfriend because she's really cliched at being hopeless in-love. So Chloe tries helping out by setting her up on dates with her friends, little does Emily know they are complete psychos, well, not literally. Really weird, would be a better term. The majority of these dates fail, so Chloe coaxes Emily into coming to the coffee shop with her for an innocent meeting. Little does Emily know, that Chloe has arranged another date. This is how Emily meets Billy and where the story line carries onto the main film.

 The setting of this film would be at Emily's house for the first date, so she's in the kitchen offering her date a drink when he freaks out. The second date would be at the park, hopefully Gillingham park or maybe even Emily's back garden. The final part of the opening would be at the coffee house. But instead of actually going out in public, we might do it in the school canteen. Then we don't have to ask for permission to use a cafe, but somehow we'd need to be able to get Billy to come into school.

The camera angles we're going to use will probably be the shot-reverse shot, close up and 180 degrees. We'll probably add more camera angles when we're filming, but we've not really discussed what ones we're going to use yet.

The costume designs- or what I will think them to be- have already been published on my blog. I expect for the first date, Emily to wear something she's a bit comfortable in, then the second date something a bit more formal and girly. This shows that she's fashionable and in-touch with her feminine side. For the boys' I've picked something casual and comfortable, so that the audience can see that it's the first stages of a date and that it's nothing serious at the moment. For the coffee date I've put both of the characters in something that's comfortable and still a bit girly, so it can show that it's a typical girly day out.

Why we've chosen to do a voice over...

We've taken into account that voice-overs are mainly used in trailers, so we've taken the liberty at looking at films with voice-overs that are either in the beginning or throughout. The films we looked at were Bridget Jones' Diary and Love Actually.

The reason why I think they've done the voice overs in the films is so that they give an insight into the characters mind. In Bridget Jones' Diary the voice over is by the main character, Bridget Jones who is played by Renee Zellweger. In Love Actually, the voice over is done by one of the main characters, David, who is played by Hugh Grant.

Costume Ideas.

My clothing idea for Emily's the first date. ^

What I'm trying to go for here, is the feel of that Emily is comfy at home on this date, that she's not really trying too hard. Although I didn't put the shoes on this set, I imagine her to be wearing slippers. This also shows that she is fashionable and comfortable at the same time.

My clothing idea for Emily's second date. ^

What I'm hoping this one shows is that Emily has been on a date with the same guy a few times, so she starts to make an effort with her appearance with him, even more. This shows that she can be fashionable, but I don't want it to see like she's wealthy. Because if it does, then that makes it out like she's too posh for the guys she's going on a date with. A majority of the clothes I have picked for all of these sets are affordable and are on the highstreet.

My clothing idea for when Blessing meets Emily at the coffee shop. ^

This is supposed to give off the element that the friend is comfortable in her own clothes and she's similar to Emily in taste.

Emily's coffee date idea. ^

This, I'm hoping, shows that Emily doesn't always make an effort. the make-up is supposed to be natural/minimal so it can seem like Billy is catching her at a bad time, when she isn't supposed to look her best.

The first guys' outfit for the date.

The second guys' date outfit

Billy's date outfit for when he first meets Emily

Story Board

This image is apart of our story board, showing what the opening credits are going to be like. The audio is going to be relaxed, happy and swing music. Hopefully the duration of this will be 30 seconds as we have to add the institutions. The music will be non-diegetic.

This is the scene where to voice over will start. The music will still be playing in the background, as it makes it more effective. This is going to be the scene where the first guy will cry about Emily having the same drink as his ex-girlfriend and it will be filmed in Emily's kitchen. We will have the title on action within this part and hopefully the duration of this scene will be about 20-25 seconds. The camera angles we're hoping to use in this shot will be the 180 degree angle, close up or an establishing shot. 

This is going to be a fast-forward of Emily's night and when she's going to get ready for her next date. The shots for this will be a long shot and medium shot. For the sound in this scene, we're not using music but we're using the fast-forward sound effect. Duration: 10 seconds.

This is going to be the scene where it's going to be the obsessive date. We're not too sure whether or not we're going to add music to this scene. The duration will be around 30 seconds. The camera angles we're going use are over the shoulder, a long shot and close up. The audio in this will be talking.

This is going to be where I introduce Emily to another date, but she refuses and meets Billy. This one will be about the resuming 30-40 seconds. The camera shots we're using are shot reverse and 180 degree angle. The audio in this scene will be talking, as well.

The film distribution we have chosen and why.

Twentieth Century Fox is one of the six major American film studios as of 2011. It is located in the Century City area of Los Angeles, west of Beverly Hills. The studio is a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch’s news corporation. The company was founded on May 31^st in 1935 by William Fox. Twentieth Century Pictures was founded in 1933 by Darryl F. Zanuck, Joseph Schenck, Raymond Griffith and William Goetz.

We picked this film distribution because we thought they had been quite successful with their films. The one downside to have this distributor is how long the intro is for the logo to come up. We decided this one out of a selection, which consisted of Universal Pictures, Paramount, Momentum, Pathe! and Lions Gate.

Two Minute Opening - The Vow

Questionnaire results and evaluation.

We created a questionnaire based on our ideas for an opening. We briefly explained what we were going to do with the opening and asked questions based on what we were trying to achieve.

"Our film is about a girl who goes on dodgy dates in the beginning, hoping to find her match, but epically fails every single time. In the end; she meets the boy who she’s supposed to be with, but do things work out?"

 We did this to find out if our ideas met our target audiences expectations. The opening is a rom-com, so we based our target audience on teenagers and young adults. The majority of people we asked were females. They gave a more positive result, whereas the men we asked weren't really into rom-coms.

Firstly, we asked how old the participant was and we got a result of mainly 16-20 year olds. We got the odd 30+ and 21-29 year olds. This therefore shows that our scenario is more fitting for young adults and teenagers. We asked what film genre they preferred and they did say action or thriller/horror; which is kind of bad as they're answering questions for a rom-com.

We then asked what film they had last seen and it was mainly the films that had been newly released on DVD or had just been released in the cinemas. The most common film was "The Avengers Assemble" or "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2". I think both are good examples, as one does have comedic traits in and the other is a love story. But they both include action, which our opening is lacking.

We then asked the participants if they thought that the title "Along Came Billy" was fitting for the story line. Everybody agreed with this, thinking that it was very fitting. This is good for us because we also thought that it was very fitting towards the story line and then we didn't have to come up with anything else. We then asked if any of the participants had seen "Along Came Polly". The majority of the partakers said they hadn't; but they had heard of it and identified it from our film title.

We agreed that "Along Came Billy" was a fitting film title, as Emily wasn't expecting Billy to show up in her life; but then he comes along unexpectedly.

Story Line & Script

Along Came Billy

20^th century fox – AS Media

Goes on dates in the beginning, throws them out because they say something wrong.

First: crying over ex girlfriend e.g.

Emily “You want a glass of water?”

Guy “THAT’S WHAT SHE ALWAYS ORDERED!” sobbing

Second: clingy-

Emily “It’s not gonna work out,”

Guy “What? No! Baby! I had the kids names planned and everything!”

Goes to café and friend tries to hook her and her friend up again, Emily refuses goes to walk out, gets something spilt down her. Either way, she bumps into Billy. Ends there?

Inspirational films;

The break-up

Just go with it

Costumes; 
Emily: two different types of date wear, and normal clothes for when in coffee shop
Date guys: something they'd wear on a date.
Chloe: day wear for when she's at the coffee shop.
Billy: day wear for when he's at the coffee shop.

Locations:
First date: Emily's kitchen - midday or evening
Second date: Set in park (not too sure which park yet, may be Gillingham park or Woodlands) - midday
Coffee meet-up: a cafe in Gillingham high-street or Chatham. - midday 

Camera angles-

Shot reverse shot

180 degree

Close ups

Target audience-
Our target audience would be young adults, teens and mainly females; seeing as males may not be as in to rom-coms as females are. 

Script

Emily (Voice over): I’ve always been unlucky in-love, and I guess this time wasn’t any different even if friends try to set me on dates. Sometimes the guys make it to the second date… and some don’t.

-Listen in on date, Emily and dude are laughing

Emily: Ha-ha, do you want a glass of water?

Guy 1: (starts getting emotional) that’s what she always ordered!

Emily stands there, freaked out not knowing what to do. FF to next date

Guy 2 knocks on door with bouquet of flowers, Emily answers, guy tries to keep making moves on Emily throughout the date, and she gets freaked out and runs off eventually.

Voice over: So this guy, he seems promising. It’s my fourth date with him and he’s done nothing to put me off of him, so far.

-Date is on going with non-diegetic music in the background-

Pulls out strawberries and feeds them to Emily. Waits until she’s eating them and then pulls out a book of baby names and wedding ring

Guy 2: So, which one first baby? –Wriggling his eyebrows-

Emily runs off, choking on the strawberry

Voice over: as you can see, it didn’t work out

Next day, at a coffee shop with Chloe

Chloe: this one last guy, I swear, he’s not that bad! Plus, he’s meeting us here!

Emily: No, no, no, I can’t be dealing with another one of your whack-job friends!

Chloe: Bu-

Emily cuts Chloe off by getting up and running into Bill, him spilling coffee or something on Emily

Billy: Oh my God! I’m so sorry!

Emily: O-oh, it’s okay. It’s not you; I’m just bad luck.

Chloe: And Along Came Billy! This is the “whack-job” I wanted you to meet!

Emily: Thanks for that, Chloe.

Billy: I don’t know; seeing as my coffee is gone, want to come with me to get more?

Emily smiles and nods and walks out of the coffee shop.

Romance Poster - Media Starter

This is the poster that I designed for one of our starter tasks. The teacher gave us separate pieces of paper with individual genres on it. Originally, I got Action, I think. I decided I couldn't do this because I couldn't really think about anything to do with Action movies. Stupid, I know. So I asked the teacher if I could change it, and she agreed, thus me being left with Romance.

I chose Emma Stone as one of my main characters because, basically, I think she's an amazing actress. I think my favourite films with her in are Easy A and House bunny. I also think she's really pretty, too.
I also chose Chris Evans because I've recently watched a film with him in and thought it was pretty great. The film was What's Your Number? There's also another film he's in, which I think is hilarious. It's kind of required to have a weird sense of humour to watch it, in my point of view. It's called Not Another Teen Movie. (I also think he's quite attractive, too.)

Genre Change

First of all, we (Me, Emily, Kayleigh and Blessing) decided to do a romance/drama type of opening. we then thought it would be that little bit more harder to construct. Whereas Emily was the main character, we thought it would be hard for her to burst into tears; and she thought the same. So we decided to change it into a Rom-Com.

Here are our original ideas for what we were going to be doing initially:

Media opening plans

Casting:

·      Andrew – Billy (Emily's boyfriend)

·      Isabelle – Emily

Plot:

·      Emily and Billy argue in the kitchen about Billy always working/never home, doesn’t pay Emily much attention because he’s always too focused on work – late for an anniversary dinner.

·      He says something wrong.

·      She slaps him, and he walks out after she runs after him, apologising. Emily collapses by the door in tears.

·      Flash backs begin to their first kiss.

Setting:

·      Emily’s kitchen

·      Emily’s back garden/ maybe Gillingham Park.

Costumes:

·      Billy:

-       Slap scene; work uniform (shirt, tie, trousers)

-       Date scene; Causal clothes

·      Emily:

-       Slap scene; formal clothing

-       Date scene; Casual clothes

Camera angles

- 180 degrees
- Close ups
- Shot reverse shot