My partner and I decided to create our own outlines of what we want our opening to look like and what elements we would like to implement. Therefore, I showed him what I had posted on my previous blog and he liked it much better than his idea so we decided to work around it. We did, however, talk about some of the few things that could be a problem or what he believed would work better for the opening, since in a group you always have to compromise. Here are some of the notes we wrote down when analyzing our plot:
Establishing shot of a house in the suburbs: (*In this shoot we agreed on having noises in the back of the family eating dinner to establish the setting and what is occurring all at once.)
Medium shot of a family having dinner: (*We have decided to keep away from having either of us as the main role in order for both of us to focus more on the shots being taken instead of acting.)
Silent dinner- mom, dad, son (*We actually plan on changing the main roles’ gender into a female: however, this could affect the role of the second character because we don’t want this to seem like a romantic movie featuring two teenagers. )
A friend is in the window and is signaling his kid having dinner to leave secretly- the kid does everything suddenly and clumsy
Kid asks to be excused to sleep and rushes upstairs- feet makes a lot of sounds as he rushes
Upstairs: (*We actually inspected a few houses to use for our filming and decided it would be easier to shoot in my partner’s house. He has a spacious house with a dinner table near 3 big windows that we could use to film. His sister’s room is also greatly decorated if we want to approach a female role.)
Opens window- Asks friend what’s up
Friend responds- “let’s sneak out”
Close up low angle- he hesitates and then starts locking his door setting up a dummy to sneak out
Dinner table:
Parents continue to eat- Parents refuse to act on all the noise upstairs and seem tired of being grown up (representation of lazy parent stereotype) (*Around this part to most of the end we will be implementing parallel editing in order to show the two different worlds of the people being represented in our opening: parents and rebellious teens.)
Upstairs:
the kid starts to get ready to jump down- kid looks scared and is very nervous and he and his friend yell back and forth. (*Unfortunately this part will not occur because the house we plan on using is a one-story house. Instead, we plan to replace the suspense of jumping by using tight shots and suspenseful music to establish the mood. This scene will also have parallel editing of the mom walking near the room as soon as the character decides to leave the house, but the mom never enters the room. It is the possibility of all going wrong that creates tension in the scene.)
SWITCH BACK AND FORTH WITH KIDS YELLING AND PARENTS STILL FOCUSING ON IGNORING EVERYTHING
5th: kid finally jumps (COOL MUSIC YET TO BE FOUND STARTS PLAYING LOW)- still unsure about showing a kid jumping or not.
Outside front lawn:
Kids grab their bikes- they seem filled with adrenaline and continue to scream and run away.
Switches to parents watching their kid through the window leave as they pour more wine
Mom- asks “Should we do something?” Dad replies with “He still sleeps with his teddy bear, mom nods like ‘Yeah he’s right he needs this’. (*This scene is getting deleted since our 2-minute time frame will not probably allow it. With parallel editing it is going to take up too much time limiting what we can show. We decided this part wasn’t essential to the main story line.)
Shot of house in the back as kids bike away- music gets louder.
Symmetrical shot of the street:
kids are biking- in the middle of the street and music gets louder and as the turn left camera stays on the same shot and tittle pops up. (*Title of the movie has yet to be discussed but I will be presenting my friend with some ideas I have come up with. For example, Younger, it was the same name we used for our band and we enjoyed the simpleness and audience attraction of the name. It calls for the past, looking back on old memories. Another idea was Ages 13-19, which are the teenage years in which kids begin to develop more the characteristic of being rebellious. I know it's not an ideal title but it also implies the age group we are looking to represent.)
These are the revisions we decided were important to our plot and opening scene. Thank you for taking the time and overlooking the decisions we believe could help our final project. We enjoyed critiquing each others’ work in a positive and productive aspect