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.