Your summer task is intended to get you thinking about what YOU might do for YOUR film opening.
Thats the brief for the AS Media coursework - you create the opening 2 mins of a new feature film, including idents (see below) and titles. What the exam board will see, so what the marking is entirely based on, is a blog like this one, in which you can add video, PowerPoints, Word, pdf etc. You can see previous student blogs here.
I don't expect a high level of technical language/terms to be used (yet!!), though you could access some of the resources below to learn some of these ahead of starting the course...
PAST STUDENT FILM OPENINGS
This playlist should help you with some of the tasks, especially thinking about company names (they're often a play on students' own names, but sometimes simply more abstract, something they had a clear visual concept for!).
HOW DO I PRESENT MY WORK?
You can present this task as either a PowerPoint or a blog post using blogger.com (this site!). If you're really keen you could also present your findings as a video, something you will learn to do early on in the course!
WHAT EXACTLY IS THE SUMMER BRIDGING TASK?! FIVE FILMIC FEATURES...
I'm glad you asked ...
Basically, you will find/select and view any 5 feature film openings and note 5 points about each before summing your very initial idea of what we expect to see in a film opening! Then start thinking about rough ideas for your own film opening!
The opening of a typical feature film sets the scene before starting/resuming a titles sequence or just clearly moving on in the plot. While your task is to create the opening 2 mins most openings go on longer than this.
You can add further detail if you wish - researching the media language of film openings is a fundamental part of your coursework; YOUR text will be judged on how realistic it is, how well it reflects the conventions of film and the genre/s you have chosen.
You should be able to share these film openings, either as digital files or (much easier) YouTube links (that you can later embed to be playable from your own blog).
FIVE STEPS...
Find/select 5 film openings.
Note 5 things about each one: how they work, what they include. That can include music, titles, idents, editing and plot/narrative (do we meet the hero? is there some mystery at first?), shot types, genre signifiers (clues).
Summary part 1: List 5 things you expect to see in a typical film opening.
Summary part 2: No matter how rough or basic, give a brief outline of one or more ideas for your own film opening, including a working title. This certainly doesn't commit you to any idea: you will each work on and develop a detailed pitch after learning more about media language on the course!
Ident mini-task: you will use your own film company name for your blog address and will create an ident (eg the short video with the Disney logo at the start of their movies) for it. Your simple task: come up with your own film production company name! You can see above what past students came up with!!
NEED HELP WITH WHAT TO LOOK FOR/THINK ABOUT?
Remember, you're not (yet!) expected to be using technical language/terms. Even so, you may be unsure of what sort of things to make notes on, so try making use of this blog (there are multiple examples of film opening analysis) and student blogs!
This post should help: it breaks down film opening content and conventions into 8 big areas you'll eventually research and analyse, 3 more than you need for now!!
This is an old version of a lesson resource I use to teach the basic shot types and angles ...
This is a quick reference guide to some key terms you'll learn at the start of the course!!
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