Purpose

I thought it would be useful for my public to understand the origin of my posts and the purpose of their overall existence. So, to begin this journey I am about to explain the objective of the posts that I will be adding on to this blog.
I will be recording my though process, which includes but is not entitled to:
  • creative ideas
  • general brainstorming
  • storyboards
  • illustrations, pictures or images
  • inspiration sources
  • etc
I will be doing this with the objective of keeping track of the evolution of the creation of a film opening. For the next month or so, I will producing and directing from scratch a movie idea/pitch and actually recording a finalized film opening for that piece with an almost complete composition of original material.

Beforehand, I will begin this journey by sharing some incredible knowledge I encountered through my initial research on film openings and effective approaches used for these; some words I thought wise, from Ken Miyamoto (screenwriter, former Sony Pictures script reader/ story analyst).

"The best opening pages of a screenplay, and later, the best opening moments of the eventual film, MUST engage us.  We have to be engaged by what we are seeing and feel the need to continue on by turning to the next page or staying in our seats and watching the movie unfold.  

There's no one answer as far as how to do that.  The key is to figure out what not to do first.  Don't spend the first 10 pages of the script giving us exposition, introducing your characters, setting up moods/themes, etc.   Because you've lost us already by page 10 or whatever.  Novice writers show their hand too early.  We're forced to learn the whole back story (or a great portion of it) of characters in the first act, rather than the writer allowing any type of discovery."

CONCLUSION: I MUST
1. Make room for mystery... of some kind 2.Allow for discovery 3.Not reveal ALL at ONCE
Effective examples that followed the mentioned strategy:

  • Star Wars (Sci-Fi) - The opening in that film threw us into the world!  The Star Destroyer coming into endless view in pursuit of the smaller ship!  The droids making their escape.  The entrance of Darth Vader.  His confrontation with the Princess where we learn about the plans.  By the time the droids escape, we know what we're in for and we're engaged.

  • Scream (Horror) - The brilliant opening. The phone rings. Cute girl alone answers. Freaky voice. Pop culture dialogue about horror films. Scary things happen. Girl gets scared. Boyfriend is dead. We finally see the masked killer. The girl (played by a movie star) dies. We know the stakes ANYONE can be killed. We're engaged.

Source: https://www.quora.com/Movie-Production-What-qualities-make-a-strong-opening-scene-for-a-film

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