Developed
While producing our film opening sequence, we had to develop lots of features so they would fit the common conventions of coming-of-age while also suiting the narrative of our film.
Typography/Font:
During the planning stage, we had to decide on a font for our typography. In the planning phases we wanted to use a slightly ominous font to portray our horror sub-genre. However, we changed our narrative's genre a few times meaning the font yet again had to be changed. This time we developed our font by keeping in mind that most coming-of-age films use a bright, bold and slightly curled font to convey childishness - implying the films genre and characters. So, we decided to search on websites such as "Dafont" to find a new font. In the end we discovered a font named "DK LEMON SUN." We chose this font because it is slightly ominous but it still has childish vibes as the font looks like it has been written in an untidy way. We also decided to colour our font white because we believe that by adding bright colours to our font it would take away from the eerie undertones and possibly convey our sub-genre in an incorrect way. So, we decided to stick with white to avoid this.
Narrative:
We had lots of problems when planning the narrative of our film. Since we are only filming the opening sequence, we didn't fully plan the whole equilibrium. However, we did fall into the trap of almost overthinking the entire opening sequence. For example, one idea featured flashbacks, however we were planning on having at least 4 flashbacks in our opening sequence, and this seemed like too much detail to have in a small amount of time. The most common narrative for coming of age films is usually revolving around teenagers in school while they learn about themselves, for example, "Mean girls" - the narrative revolves around trying to become most popular in the school. This helped us to develop our narrative to a similar scenario as our narrative also revolves around a school scenario - we had many ideas based around a school scenario but some of these ideas seems to be too detailed or didn't completely fit. So, we developed it further more by planning a cheating scenario as our narrative because it is a common problem in schools and it establishes what the main focus of the film will be.
Sound Track
The sound track was by far the hardest convention to keep to. Most films have a very memorable soundtrack, for example "Ferris Bueller's Day Off." There are many well known songs used throughout the film. While searching for copyright free music we stumbled across a few tracks. However, they didn't quite seem to fit. The songs were slightly too happy and didn't have any sinister undertones, which is what we were hoping for since we wanted to convey the effect that something is wrong. In the end, we developed our music track by shifting genres and choosing a track that had a strong beat while also sounding pretty simple. This provided the sinister undertones and also let us time some shots to cut on the beat while also still seeming "indie" and suiting our film genre.
Shot Types:
During filming, we filmed lots of conventional shots, some of which being close ups, pans and over the shoulder shots. However, we wanted to have more varied shots so we tried to develop our shots to make them more effective. So, we decided to add shift focus shots and included a cross cut to make our opening more effective. By adding these shots, they worked well with the close ups and pans to create a very effective, suspenseful and interesting opening sequence. We also tried to develop these shots further by changing the timing of the shots. Since we wanted our opening to be dramatic we decided to shorten how long the shots we on screen for. On average our shots are 3-4 seconds long. This is ideal as the shots aren't too long to make the audience lose interest, they also are not too short to convey an action or horror genre.