Trip to BFI Southbank.

On the 13th of November a group of us went to the BFI southbank for a confrence about making a film opening. The information that we recieved on the day was really useful as they gave us the do and don't's to making a movie opening.

One of the things that he said was that the main thing that is missed by a lot of students is the titles; they end up leaving them til last and just throwing them in without actually researching into them.

The key features of a movie opening:

• genre - how do you know what genre it is?
• narrative (enigma) - don't tell too much
• character - should establish at least one character
• atmosphere - soundtrack is always good to establish an atmosphere
• setting

When he came to talking about the titles he said that

• you have to be aware of writing 'starring' it's very rarely used in films
• the director always comes last in the opening credits

For the titles there are above the line, and below the line people. Above the line are the people who are starring the film e.g. actors/actresses. Below the line are all the people behind the scenes e.g. Music, Camera, Editing etc. 

Although not useful for our films it was interesting to find out that stars like Jennifer Aniston have it written in their contract what their appearance of teir name in the titles will look like - fonts/size/time it will be on screen. However the director woody allen has stated that every person who has contributed to the film in any way will get the same font size and style and the same amount of time on screen, they will be presented in alphabetical order. 

Overall it was a really good day, we had a lot of fun getting to London and also the confrence was interesting and very informative, I think that it will really helped us to develop our opening to the best of our ability.