Q5-How did you attract/address your audience?

It is important for any film to grab the attention of the audience in the opening sequence. There have been some legendary openings in films such as The Matrix, Saw and James Bond. It is the opening sequence what sets up a film for the next couple of hours or so, and you can usually tell a lot about the rest of the film by the way it opens. When analysing an opening sequence your are looking for the use of camera, sound editing and mise en scene. Each is important as the other and making sure they are all addressed is part of making a good opening sequence. We wanted to make our opening sequence unique, exciting and mysterious. Our aim was to keep the audience guessing throughout by experimenting with camera and editing techniques such as low angle shots and montages. We also wanted to make sure that our character contained ecological validity, which means that her personality and character reflected a real human being.

As I said before e wanted to create mystery and confusion in our opening sequence as we believed that this would be an effective way of keeping the audience interested. We had seen this technique used in other films such as Saw were in the opening sequence the narrative is made unclear and the identity of the main characters remain hidden. We wanted to mirror this effect. To do this we placed the camera behind our characters shoulder creating an over the shoulder shot. This made sure that her identity was hidden but we wanted to make the scene more exciting for the audience. This is where the idea of a close-up (zooming) came in. We believed that if we slowly zoomed into the scrapbook we would make the audience feel as if that time is slowing down. This would allow them to gather emotions such as sorrow and remorse in a manageable time.

Although we had accomplished what we had wanted through the camera there still didn’t feel as if there was enough sadness in the scene. We wanted the audience to feel confused and mystified but at the same time start to build up all different types of emotions. We had seen this done in other films by adding a soundtrack to the back ground. Scene’s in films were a character may be near death or situation may be coming to its climax there will be a soundtrack added to give that scene the additional atmosphere. This is why we added a very melancholy soundtrack to our opening sequence so that we would create the extra piece of atmosphere we believed would ease the audience in to feeling an emotional link towards our character.

Once we had showed the scrap book we had our actress open the scrap book and revile the pictures inside. So that the camera didn’t seem too static at that point we decided to fade the two scenes together. This allowed an easy and smooth transition between shots and also made sure that the audience’s attention was not lost between the transitions. Once we had our character open the scrap book we placed the camera just above the first picture on the page. We still used a close up shot so that the audience were able to see the photo in detail. This was important as the photo’s held the key to part of the narrative. We wanted to represent a passage in time from photo to photo so that the audience would feel that they were going through our characters past. To do this we used a tracking technique which meant that the camera moved smoothly from each photo. We hope that because the speed of the tracking is slow it will allow enough time for the audience to analyse each photo.

Once the scrap book scene is finished we allow a period of time where the screen is just empty and a black screen is only visible. We believed that by doing this was giving time to the audience to reflect on the information they had just been given. This is where we believe that the audience will become curious and want to understand what is happening. This will lead them into wanting to carry on viewing our production. The blank screen then fades into what seems a room with a table and telephone taking the centre spot of the frame. We used a low angle shot as this allowed us to keep the identity of our character hidden which was vital as it was one of the main factors which mystified the audience. The identity of a character is important to an audience as they are able to draw conclusions from the characters they see in the production. We didn’t want this to happen in ours so we made sure that her identity was kept hidden by using a variety of different shots.

We wanted the audience to feel as if that what they were watching reflected a realistic stetting , so it was important for to make our setting look as if we was actually filming in a bedroom. We created a fake wall by sticking wallpaper onto a hard back board; we then placed carpet around the fake walls. This came up well on screen and added realism to the scene. If the audience feels as if they are watching a real life story they may develop more emotional links to characters. In the last scene, were we used this set we had our character enter the set pick up the ringing phone and then drop it. As our character entered the room we added a voice over which we had recorded previously. The dialogue was dramatic and short so we hoped that that it would have a hard hitting effect on our audience. My Sisters Keeper is an example of how effective an over can be on an audience.

The ending of the last scene sees a close up of the phone dropping to the floor in slow motion. In this shot we focused on the editing more than anything else. We slowed down the frames so that the phone looked like it was falling in slow motion. What we wanted this to represent is the moment in which everything slows down when she is given the bad news. This will show to the audience that a change in the narrative has occurred and will encourage them to want to carry on watching.