Embarkation

Hey everyone, today was a special one because it officially marked the start of my journey towards creating my 2-minute film opening! Before I share the details of today's embarkation, I must preface by saying that my selected genre was drama, so you have an idea of why I decided to go about my research as I did today. When you're researching for a brief, it is best to research more professional works to gain a better understanding of your genre and its conventions, which aids in producing a better outcome for your opening. In today's research, I skimmed through three films and looked at each of their openings in hopes of finding inspiration, so I will be guiding you guys through my process!

To find my three films, I opened up one of my favorite apps to discover and rate films, which is Letterboxd. I filtered all my viewed films and sorted them by my selected genre (drama), and viewed all my highest-rated dramas.

I eventually landed on the Swedish film, 'The Seventh Seal'. I booted up HBO Max, then watched the first two minutes of the film. 

Similar to my first watch, my attention was caught, and for a second, I believed that this would be the film I would take some inspiration from for my brief, but eventually, I came to the conclusion that the opening was too vague and bland. I want my brief to be not very flashy, but still have some shock to it, which is not the case in this film.

Taking this realization, Francis Ford Coppola's 'The Godfather' came straight to mind as an opening that is not too flashy but also not too vague. I found its opening on YouTube and saw that this is a great example of what I seek at achieving in my brief. Though it is just dialogue, its writing and acting engulf the audience immediately, which is what I am looking for when my brief is completed. This is a film I will 100% be taking inspiration from when creating my brief.

To wrap up my research, I watched the opening to Richard Linklater's 'Before Sunrise', which was a huge help in finding inspiration for this opening. It has that humanlike aspect to it that I want to achieve in my brief, which I will then apply the dialogue aspect seen in the previous film opening I viewed. When Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy come on screen, they have this instant chemistry, something I want to achieve with my opening. I will for sure be incorporating some sort of romance into my opening.

After viewing these three openings, I am confident in entering the next stage of developing my brief and can't wait to see how it ends up!