What we need to consider (with regards to audience) when developing our film opening

When developing our film opening we need to ensure various different things such as:

Strong Opening- Ensuring we have something that grabs the audience and holds the audiences attention. This will ensure that we interest our audience, so that they don't get bored and lose focus on our film opening. Also once you have the audiences attention, which is the hardest part, it makes it easier to ensure they are then engaged throughout the rest of the film. This is because if something happens during the film opening, they will want to know what happens in the end, ensuring you keep their attention throughout the whole film.

Build the character/Setting- When doing research and timelines from various different genres of film, in all of them, the opening scene is very action packed, almost setting the scene and characters without making it blindingly obvious to the audience. By this I mean they don't say 'this is our main character' etc, instead they focus on that character more than any other, and focus in on the setting maybe using establishing shots to enable audience members to know where the film is set. All these little things go un noticed to the audience, even though it does allow them to understand all the main characters and setting. Also setting the pace, tone and confirming the genre of the film by often including obvious iconography from that particular genre of film helps set the scene.

Make it obvious- Although the aim is to build tension and make the audience want to watch more, its important that we don't get too carried away with what we are filming, making it unclear to the audience what is happening. To help make it clear to the audience it could be wise to use continuous editing, this usually means actions flow in chronological order, rather than dis-continuous editing where there could be lots of cuts from one scene to another, which could complicate audiences. It must be clear and obvious what is happening in an opening scene especially, otherwise, later on in the film the audience will have no clue what's happening as they would have already been confused prior meaning they will lose interest and therefore not watch anymore.

Use audience figures to our advantage- After carrying out lots of questionnaires and research why not use it! It's important we use this information that we gathered so that we know exactly what it is the audience wants. This way it means that we are directly giving the audience what they want, meaning they are more likely to engage with it. In turn, we must include what they want in our film, therefore it's very important that before filming we use the analysis we made of the results and incorporate this into our storyboard, whether it means adding parts in or removing parts.

Similar Films- Is there any new films out from the same genre as ours? How are they doing? Did they have a good audience response? These are some of the questions we have asked. This helps us find out how films of the same genre that have been released recently are doing, if they are doing good, we then researched into how they have managed to build a reputation and get people in to watch the film. We researched into marketing campaigns, distribution techniques all to try and help aid us when it comes to doing the same with our film opening.

Calum Tween 8282