The brief we were given was to create an opening sequence for a British Social Realism film. My partner and I chose to name our opening sequence 'Half Empty' because we felt that immediately sets up enigma due to the double meaning it holds. It can be said that the title itself is polysemic and different audiences may interpret it differently. My partner and an element of irony when we came up with our production company name, Euphoria means happiness and joy and the fact that BSR is far from that and is contradicts that whole idea and we strongly believed our niche, educated would understand this and notice this. We felt that this title also created a pessimistic ambiance that our audience would find intriguing and this would ultimately engage them into the verisimilitude of the film. In the opening two minutes the opening focuses on the protagonist Sam who is coming to terms with the fact that he is an alcoholic and the opening shows the trials and tribulations that Sam, as a young man undergoes and how society has driven him towards alcohol, we have explained this in more detail in our treatment. The reason behind using alcoholism as our main theme was done because my partner and I felt that this it issue is becoming more and more common in young people and It was imperative that we address the issue. I watched and researched the film 'My name Is Joe' were the narrative focuses on Joe a recovering alcoholic. We used this film as a guideline but our film differs in the sense that our protagonist is realizing that he has a problem with alcohol and it ends with serious consequences. We also asked our target audience what they felt about using Alcohol as our main theme and this enabled us to generate qualitative data and appeal to our audience.
In our opening sequence we aimed to create a stereotypical view of an alcoholic but at the same time subvert these by using a non-linear narrative of Sam admitting he is an alcoholic at AA meeting. By doing this it immediately informs the audience what the themes will be. We got this idea from London To Brighton which employs the same technique, the difference between this example and ours is that it does not haver the same intensity and action, however I believe that It still showed the most significant part of the film which what we were aiming for. I also think this technique worked very well and was very effective in the sense that we were able to establish the protagonist of the film.
Camera
One element of camera we explored was angles, this is evident when our protagonist Sam is walking home drunk, this is signified by a canted as it represents Sam's disorientation and puts the audience in his mind and allows them to build a connection with the Sam. When filming the shots in the alley they were all done handheld as we wanted to create a rough and ready look to the shots so that it would further reinforce how alcoholics live their lives rough and on edge and once again conforms to the BSR conventions. When filming Sam's his mother arguing we used a slightly lower angle for his mother to show how vulnerable and powerless she is and for Sam we used a higher angle to reinforce his dominance over his mother. We also show how Sam is unable to handle alcohol in the beginning of the opening, this is signified by a close up. We used this shot because we wanted to show how his addiction began as something quite minor and later develops into something more serious.
Mise En Scene
One way we constructed the representation of an alcoholic I believe was by using specific locations like alley ways, this creates a stereotypical view of were alcoholics may choose to drink their lives away, we used locations like these because they are hidden from society.We felt that there is a lot of stigma attached to alley ways and by using this it also conforms to the conventions of BSR. In these particular shots towards the end we altered the colour by making it slightly more darker and turning down the brightness on them as this acts as an indication to the audience that his life is going downhill and also to informs the audience that the film will begin soon. In one of the shots Sam is walking home intoxicated and it is during the day, this suggests that his drinking is not normal and is very unsociable, this is signified by him walking on his own. Our protagonist Sam was mainly chosen because of his ability to look scruffy, when filming different scenes ,we made sure that he wore similar but different clothing as we wanted to connote that he is from a working class family, but struggling. we also wanted to show that the times he had been drinking was on different occasions further suggesting his problem. So we decided that we would have dressed casually as this would subvert the stereotype of an alcoholic as they don't all dress like beggars and tramps. Another vital character was Sam's mother who we chose mainly because of her maternal qualities and because she dressed very simple and average so we didn't really need to adjust her costume, another reason why she was perfect for the role was because she wore glasses which immediately signifies that she is fragile and weak.
Sound
Another element of our opening sequence we looked into was sound, we decided that we would use minimal dialogue mainly because we felt that alcoholics tend to not speak as much when they drink so therefore we thought why not do the same with our opening and have no dialogue but we soon realised that it did not engage the audience enough so we used a non- linear introduction to do so and gain their attention and then included a voice over to assist the audience in understanding of why Sam was the way he was, when we got Sam to recite the voice over we made sure that it was very depressing and to achieve this we asked him to speak in a very low tone and make his voice sound very gruff and very straight forward as if he were talking directly to the audience this was all done to evoke sympathy from the audience.
Editing
We use continuity editing through out the opening especially at the start where Sam is at the meeting, this was done because we wanted to make sure that the audience knew what was going on. We also decided to include a lot of fades, the reason for this was to show the audience all the events that have occurred in Sam's life, and allowed them to build their knowledge on Sam and begin to generate an opinion on him. To some extent it creates the effect of a recap and shows the only most important sections. Another reason for using fades is so that it gave us an opportunity to include our titles.
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The brief we were given was to create an opening sequence for a British Social Realism film. My partner and I chose to name our opening sequence 'Half Empty' because we felt that immediately sets up enigma due to the double meaning it holds. It can be said that the title itself is polysemic and different audiences may interpret it differently. My partner and an element of irony when we came up with our production company name, Euphoria means happiness and joy and the fact that BSR is far from that and is contradicts that whole idea and we strongly believed our niche, educated would understand this and notice this. We felt that this title also created a pessimistic ambiance that our audience would find intriguing and this would ultimately engage them into the verisimilitude of the film. In the opening two minutes the opening focuses on the protagonist Sam who is coming to terms with the fact that he is an alcoholic and the opening shows the trials and tribulations that Sam, as a young man undergoes and how society has driven him towards alcohol, we have explained this in more detail in our treatment. The reason behind using alcoholism as our main theme was done because my partner and I felt that this it issue is becoming more and more common in young people and It was imperative that we address the issue. I watched and researched the film 'My name Is Joe' were the narrative focuses on Joe a recovering alcoholic. We used this film as a guideline but our film differs in the sense that our protagonist is realizing that he has a problem with alcohol and it ends with serious consequences. We also asked our target audience what they felt about using Alcohol as our main theme and this enabled us to generate qualitative data and appeal to our audience.
