BFI Southbank

Today, I went to the BFI in Southbank with my Media class. I really enjoyed it and I found it really useful. Firstly, Pete spoke to us about how the day was going to run and he taught us the basics of our openings like atomosphere, characters, genre, narrative and setting. He also spoke to us about credits and title design.
Pete then introduced us to a few film openings that he found quite interesting. We were shown 5 and they were the openings of Napoleon Dynamite, Dawn of the Dead, Once Upon a time in the West, Scott Pilgrim vs the World and Catch Me If You Can. They all had very eye-catching, technical elements to them that could give us some ideas.
We then had a man come and talk to us who is and has been an effects producer for films such as The Kings Speech and Soloman Kane. He told us how much hard work is put into a film opening as well as a whole film and what really goes on behind all the effects and techniques that we see. We got shown clips of how a film opening is all put together using the visual elements in editing for example green screening.

In the second half of the event, an actor and upcoming director came to speak to us called Dexter Fletcher who has been in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Misfits and Bugsy Malone etc. He mostly spoke about the film he has just recently finished directing called 'Wild Bill' which he describes as 'a western kind of film set in East London' which I am really looking forward to seeing once it comes out in March. He showed us his opening and then a short clip from the film. I loved how in the film, there are lots of establishing shots, close up's and tracking shots. His method's of directing really interested me because he said 'I like the music and imagery to relate to each other as well as the characters.' He also said that he added a lot of strong visual images into the film in terms of the purpose of the characters. This interested me because this is what me and my group are aiming to do by making the music reflect the imagery and making the character stand out as an individual.
Lastly, Pete shows us some film openings that have been done by students in the past and we had to give them all a certain level, the levels being levels 1, 2, 3 and 4. We got shown 3 film openings. Two of them were quite standard and one was fairly bad in my opinion but at the end of each opening, we were aloud to give our own view on what we thought of them which I thought was a fun exercise to do at the end.

All in all, I really enjoyed today and it has given me some ideas for my group's film opening and how we can make it better.

^ Dexter Fletcher!