The ideas behind our opening sequence

From watching many different styles and genres of children's films, our group have designed a storyboard using various different themes that childrens films present. For example, we wanted to create an adventurous, sci fi like, quest film, that children could follow but still be gueesing, and using there own imagination to decide for themselves what the story means to them.

We begin our storyboard with a slow zoom, long fade with the camera facing a boy sat in the centre of a room. This boy is facing the camera, and on his desk in front of him is a picture. A picture of a woodey setting where later on in the opening scene, the picture becomes real.

    

How our film incorporates challenges

Our opening sequence follows the conventions of having opening credits overlaying the footage. This shows the main directors and character names in the film as it would do in a professional film.

The image shows how we used credits.

We think we challenge the stereotypical children's film as ours shows darker scenes in the woods whereas many children's films are far happier. However the movie 'A series of unfortunate events' is alike our opening sequence as they are both dark settings.

The dark setting compared with many Children's Films

We also share our plot development with other children's films as it changes when he enters the dream. This is alike other films like 'Alice in Wonderland' as the main plot give away happens when Alice enters the underworld.

This is the comparison of the two dream worlds where they reveal the plot.

Key Features of our Film

Key features of our film are:

Character

• Stereotypical character (Jack played as a typical 12 year old school boy, who has dicscovered something within his picture)
• Stereotypical mentor character ( Harry plays a more confident, higher status character who enters with power and authority. He confuses the audience in the opening sequence by only saying one line, which keeps the audience guessing to what part he plays in the film. But in later sequences we discover he is a mentor character)

Setting

• The opening sequence is filmed in a mysterious school in an arts and crafts class, where the main character draws a picture of the schools woods, and begins to dream he's view of the dark, mysterious setting in front of him. After jack enters his dream he finds himself sitting on his chair on a field, where the woods is close by. As the camera angle changes we begin to see jack walking into the woods, and from there, the rest of the opening sequence is filmed in the woods.
• The first few scenes are filmed in an arts and crafts class, where the teacher is the first character we discover. He is only seen in the filmed sequence inside the classroom, which helps the audience understand that the classroom room is where he works and stays for most of the film.  

Storyline

• The plot of this opening sequence we have designed to be tension building, and suspense like. This resembles to the long walking scenes that jack is in, and helps draw out a suspicious, questionable introduction.

Comparing characters

Central Characters

The central characters in our film are Jack and Harry. This is because Jack is the main character filmed and Harry is shown to have a important role. Jack is seen as a main character because he has most screen time in the opening sequence and the camera is following his life. Harry shows that he has an important role when Jack finds the mysterious device and Harry says "you have found it". This leaves the film on a cliff hanger and allows the audience to ask questions about the characters and the device.

Comparing with a professional film - Alice in wonderland

We can compare our children's film with Alice in Wonderland we are alike they're story of the dream world. The character in our film of 'Jack' can be compared with 'Alice' because they both find themselves as the main character exploring through an adventure and ending up in a dream world. Jack has fallen asleep into a day dream and Alice falls down a hole into underworld. They both experience a confused and strange feeling as they appear in the dream world. This is shown as Jack questions his location by saying 'huh?' and how Alice finds this underworld resembles her nightmares. 

Harry can be compared with the cheshire cat in Alice in Wonderland as the cat is shown as a mentor and Harry is also shown as this mentor figure. This can be shown in the opening sequence as Harry shows that he is the more powerful character as he tells Jack 'you have found it' and makes Jack look vulnerable .

Intended Audience for our Film

The age range for this film, we believe, would be from 6 to 13 but with slight adult humor, and has an resemblance to modern adult society. Adults will also find this interesting to watch because they will pick up on parts the children may not and they will try and decipher them.
We did this by having stereotypical characters which are easy to understand and their status' are easily worked out by having camera shots that determine status and power.
Also, we have included a catch soundtrack that the adults will enjoy more then the small children, but the small children will still enjoy it.
Our storyline is very basic to understand and we have used Disney's Traditional storyline which has many highs and lows and this helps the children relate and understand the film.

BBFC Classification for our Childrens Film.

We feel that our children's film 'Misunderstood' would be a PG. In the opening scenes, the viewers may feel that this is harsh as the opening sequence includes conventions of the 'U' Classification but on the basis that later on in the film there will be slightly dark and frightening moments with mild bad language and lighthearted, comedic violence.

For example, when the main character enters the woods, the setting is dark and startling and small children might find this frightening, But we lightened the mood by putting an upbeat and 'happy sounding' soundtrack within the scene.

The Misunderstood Final Render without black beginning

What went well

The cinematography went well as we completed all filming in the allocated time and were pleased with the footage we had taken. We also had finished filming mostly within the same day so that the lighting changes were minimal. This worked by recording all of the outside scenes on one day and recording the inside scenes on another to allow for continuity.

Our planning also went well as we didn't need to improvise in any sections as we made a detailed storyboard and many blog posts to ensure we made it correctly. Our planning also showed that we combined two storyboards or ideas to get a final product of one storyboard. This allowed for many good ideas to be combined and get an adventure.

The editing and soundtrack went well  as they were perfectly timed together so that the music links with what is happening. 

What didn't go well

Firstly we think that there was some continuity problems in some of our shots as Harry was in one of them and also the tripod was in the other. However we quickly found these problems and re-filmed each clip. 

Another problem would be that during filming there was ongoing background noise to make it that in the final 10 seconds of the opening sequence we couldn't hear Harry as clear as you could hear Michael and Jack. We couldn't lower the background noise and keep the same voice level of Harry talking so we had to leave it as it was. 

Originally we had a 20 second black screen during the beginning of the film and found that this was a problem.