Finally decided on a genre!

    Me and my partner have finallyyyy decided between our two options of genre. We were stuck between mystery and coming of age but we decided to stick with coming of age as we felt we would be better able to develop the opening with a focus on the character as a whole, which is what coming of age is all about.

    So, to get started with the brainstorming and keep the creativity flowing, I have started to look at inspiration by watching film openings of other coming of age films. 

    The opening scene of the movie The Perks of Being a Wallflower clearly introduces the main character that is going to be developed throughout the film. It starts with shots moving through a tunnel, like if it was in a car, but the car isn't shown. The moving through the tunnel and finally coming out of it can represent a journey that the character will go through. While the shots are moving, the credits are seen spread out throughout the shots. This is something i would like to include in my film as I feel like it is common for many films to do this and it would help the beginning of my film to flow better. After those shots, it moves to a shot of Charlie (the main character) sitting writing on his desk. The voiceover here helps us understand the character and what his journey may look like throughout the film as he is starting high school. 

    The second example of a coming of age film opening that i watched for ideas and inspiration was Mean Girls. Similarly to The Perks of Being a Wallflower, it started with the name of the production companies and then the title of the film, followed by the first shots. Throughout the first scene, there are multiple times that a voiceover is heard to help describe Cady's (the main character) thoughts of this new and strange place. It can be seen that she is used to a much different environment and this helps develop the character as we start to wonder if shes going to diverge from everyone else and keep who she's been all her life, or if she will convergence and start being like everyone around her. This will show the character development that is essential for a coming of age film. 

    Lastly, I watched the opening scene of a film inspired by a book that I read in 8th grade for English class: The Outsiders. This film is much older than the last two being that it was released in 1983 and the others were 2004 and 2012, which means some thing will differ between them. Similar to the other two, this film also begins with the production companies being credited, but then it cuts to a boy writing on his notebook, which then fades out into the sun and music starts playing as the title of film slides through the film. One major difference is that this film lists its cast members all at once instead of spreading them out throughout the opening. The Outsiders also include a full three minutes of full credits, which the other two don't. 

    For my film, I would like to inspire the credits more on the way that The Perks of Being a Wallflower and Mean Girls does it because I feel like having it spread out throughout the whole opening allows for development of the characters and will not cut my filming time short. Overall, I'm really happy with the inspiration I've gained from watching there and I'm so excited to get started on making my ideas come together into a storyboard!

    Here's a picture of my note taking process when watching these films to help capture the uniqueness of each one and help see the differences between each as well.