Hey guys so as of this week I officially started working on my portfolio project. From this point on all of my posts will be graded by Cambridge bigwigs so Hi I think. Up until now my In class projects have been preparing me to be able to do something on this scale and I think they have done quite a good job. This week we started class by taking some notes on different types of film openings. Some of my favorites were the Scream (1996) opening and the Stranger Than Fiction (2006) opening. I realize that both of these openings are very involved with the characters they feature and use them as a way of developing context for the story before starting the movie.
The next day in class we had a lesson on how to blog effectively. I took some notes and read plenty of examples, which opened my eyes to what a really good blog actually contained. I had read the blogs of plenty of friends who have taken this classs before but I never had taken the time to break them down and understand what made them good blogs.
After this my group for the opening met up and decided on a concrete goal for the opening. We wanted it to develop character, and we wanted to model it after the format of many 2000's teen tv-movie film openings. I think the reason we are so fond of these films (even if they may be before our time) is because we still grew up with the atmosphere that these film were created in, and changed under. Two specific opening that we looked towards were the openings of The Devil Wears Prada (2006) and Legally Blonde (2001).
The reason why I think our group likes these opening is because they do a really good job of developing character (1) but also establishing how the world this character is in contributes to not only how they are now, but also teases how they might change. For Andrea in The Devil Wears Prada, New York is the backbone of everything that occurs in the film. The opening shows how her life in working class New York has developed how she is today, and through cross-cutting, it shows the vastly different world the other two girls have come to live in, although in the same place. Meanwhile, for Elle Woods in Legally Blonde, the opening showcases the protected Sorority sisterhood environment that she has become immersed in, and really shows how much her sisters love and care for her, which leads the audience to naturally question how she would do outside of this protected atmosphere, which sets up the rest of the movie where she is taken out of that setting. While looking for this opening on youtube I found a very helpful video by a channel called Art at Midnight which does a really good job of explaining just why this opening is so great:
The reason why I think our group likes these opening is because they do a really good job of developing character (1) but also establishing how the world this character is in contributes to not only how they are now, but also teases how they might change. For Andrea in The Devil Wears Prada, New York is the backbone of everything that occurs in the film. The opening shows how her life in working class New York has developed how she is today, and through cross-cutting, it shows the vastly different world the other two girls have come to live in, although in the same place. Meanwhile, for Elle Woods in Legally Blonde, the opening showcases the protected Sorority sisterhood environment that she has become immersed in, and really shows how much her sisters love and care for her, which leads the audience to naturally question how she would do outside of this protected atmosphere, which sets up the rest of the movie where she is taken out of that setting. While looking for this opening on youtube I found a very helpful video by a channel called Art at Midnight which does a really good job of explaining just why this opening is so great:
Overall this first week of class has really helped me understand not just what to do with my project, but I have come to understand what I want to gain from it.
