Opening Sequence

1/5/13 Crime drama opening sequence- ‘Hidden Identity’ Draft 1:
This is our first draft for our crime drama opening sequence. We have put together a questionnaire for people to complete after watching the production, so that we are able to see if there are any improvements that we need to make with things such as the camerawork or the audio. We have also included other questions such as what genre do you believe that our production fits under etc.
Our opening sequence is about a teenage girl names ‘Jessica Smith’ who is talking online to a boy who she believes is 16 years old called ‘Charlie Cooper’. Throughout the opening sequence you see Jessica talking to Charlie on Facebook, and also you see the way her friend ‘Danielle’ reacts when Jessica tells her that she has been talking to someone online. During the opening sequence you also see Jessica having a conversation with her mum ‘Sarah’ about girls talking to people that don’t know or have never met online and then when they go to meet up with them they are not who they said they were. Jessica continues talking to Charlie online despite her mum telling her not to talk to strangers online and arranges to one day meet up with him. At the end of the opening sequence you come to realise why meeting up with Charlie Cooper may not be such a good idea.
After getting feedback from people, who would be a range of different ages and gender, we will then decide if we need to re-film anything. Also after discussing within our production group about what we believe that we should change and re-film, we have decided that we will change these things regardless of what feedback we get from people.

Here is the link to our poll which you can vote on to say what you think about our opening sequence.

What did you think of our opening sequence 'Hidden Identity'?

15/5/13 Crime drama opening sequence- ‘Hidden Identity’ Draft 2: 
This is our second draft for our crime drama opening sequence.
Our opening sequence is about a teenage girl names ‘Jessica Smith’ who is talking online to a boy who she believes is 16 years old called ‘Charlie Cooper’. Throughout the opening sequence you see Jessica talking to Charlie on Facebook, and also you see the way her friend ‘Danielle’ reacts when Jessica tells her that she has been talking to someone online. During the opening sequence you also see Jessica having a conversation with her mum ‘Sarah’ about girls talking to people that don’t know or have never met online and then when they go to meet up with them they are not who they said they were. Jessica continues talking to Charlie online despite her mum telling her not to talk to strangers online and arranges to one day meet up with him. At the end of the opening sequence you come to realise why meeting up with Charlie Cooper may not be such a good idea.
We re-filmed all of the scenes which took place in Jessica’s house and also the scene where Jessica is talking to her friend Danielle at school about Charlie Cooper. In this scene you will see that we have used the 180 degree rule as it shows Jessica and Danielle having a conversation but shown from their point of view. We have used this to try and show their facial expressions more when they are talking as in our first draft you wasn’t able to see this very well. Also in our second draft we have used more close up shots and also included a close up shot of Jessica’s face whilst she is talking to her mother at dinner. This is because we wanted the audience to be able to see Jessica’s facial expressions about the conversation which is taking place, and also we wanted the audience to see the fact that Jessica is lying to her mother by saying that she is not talking to strangers online.
After completing the editing of our opening sequence our teacher went on to review it and mark it and agreed with us that our second draft is up to a higher standard than our first draft. The lighting in each scene has improved and also you are able to hear what the actors are saying more clearly. Although we still need to make some improvements to ensure that our crime drama is at the highest possible standard that it could be. In the scene where you see Paul’s (Charlie Cooper’s) hands typing we are going to make this scene darker. This is because we want the audience to be able to see that he is the bad person in the storyline, and therefore by making the background darker it will reflect this. Also it will make the scene look creepier which is what we wanted to achieve in the first place. Another thing that we are going to improve on is by adding transitions, such as fades, to the end of some scenes so that they flow continuously into the next one. Also we are going to do this on some pieces of audio so that the audio also flows continuously throughout. There are also other little changes which we will be making to our second draft to do with the editing so that it will look more professional and also so that both the audio and video quality will be at a higher standard.

22/05/13 Crime drama opening sequence ‘Hidden Identity’- Improved second draft:
This is our improved second draft for our crime drama opening sequence ‘Hidden Identity’.
Our crime drama opening sequence is about a teenage girl named ‘Jessica Smith’who is talking online to a boy who she believes is sixteen years old and is called ‘Charlie Cooper’. Throughout the opening sequence you see Jessica talking online on the social networking site Facebook to Charlie Cooper. Also you see Jessica have a conversation with her friend ‘Danielle’ at school about Charlie, and Jessica tells her friend that she has been talking to him online. During the opening sequence you also see Jessica having a conversation with her mother ‘Sarah’ about girls talking to people that they don’t know or have never met online, and then when they go to meet up with them they are not who they said they were. Jessica continues talking to Charlie online despite her mother’s advice telling her to not talk to strangers online, and one day arranges to meet up with him. At the end of the opening sequence you come to realise why meeting up with Charlie Cooper may not have been such a good idea.
We had improved our second draft by adding more transitions to make our crime drama look continuous throughout. The first transition which we used was the ‘cross fade’ transition. We used this transition on some scenes where we wanted them to overlap each other. An example of this is the title shot which says ‘1 month earlier’ and then the shot after which is the establishing shot of Jessica’s house. We used this transition because we wanted the shot to overlap and fade into the next one, and also because we wanted every scene to look continuous and to flow into each other and by using this transition it caused both shots to flow into each other continuously. Another transition which we used was the ‘fade to black’ transition. We used this transition a few times during our opening sequence, and an example of this is when Jessica is getting ready for school and then the next shot is an establishing shot of Queensbury Academy. We used the fade to black shot in between these two shots because it shows that time has passed during each shot. Another place where we used this transition to show that time had passed was after Jessica had been having the conversation with her mother at dinner and the shot after she was walking into her room. The third transition which we included in our opening sequence was the ‘constant power and constant gain’ transitions. These were used to make sure that the audio is continuous throughout. We used this transition at many points during our opening sequence, but the main place where we used it was during the conversation between Jessica and her friend Danielle at school. This was because we used the 180 degree rule and therefore the background noise in each shot was different. This made our crime drama look unprofessional, and to ensure that the sound levels are the same throughout the conversation we had to put in the constant gain or constant power transitions. The final transition that we used on some parts of our opening sequence was the‘warp stabilizer’. We used this tool on some of the shots, such as the ones of the computer screen, as they were shaky. By using this tool it helped the shots to become still and made our crime drama look more professional. After adding in all of these transitions we then went back and cut down a few shots which were too long, and we also added music to the beginning scene. We added the piano cover of ‘Adele-turning tables’ in the beginning scene of our opening sequence, which was to add more emotion to the scene.

After editing together the improved second draft of our crime drama we now believe that we have done everything possible to ensure that it is at a high and professional standard, and that both the audio and scenes flow continuously throughout.
After looking over all of the footage and the way in which we had edited all together, I believe that we have done anything to the highest possible standard although there were still a few things which I believed could have looked better. As soon as the opening titles appear and the music begins it came in quite quickly. Therefore to make it look as though it would fade in, and the music wouldn’t come in, I put in two transitions at the beginning of the titles and at the end of the last scene. The first transition that I had inserted was the fade to black shot, which I had put at the end of the scene where you see Paul (Charlie Cooper) typing on his laptop to Jessica. I did this because the shot was able to fade out and the titles could then fade in so that our opening sequence looked continuous throughout. I also inserted the transition ‘exponential fade’. This transition allowed the music to fade in slowly so that it didn’t just start straight away. Another thing which I changed whilst reviewing our crime drama was that it some scenes the shots jumped from one to another. To change this I re-inserted the original piece of footage and then cut it in half and inserted another shot between them. This made the scenes again flow continuously into each other. After making all of these changes to our crime drama I believe that it is now up to a professional and high standard. Also I believe that by using the transitions that we did it has helped each scene flow continuously into each other, and therefore has caused our whole opening sequence to flow continuously throughout.