Final Opening Sequence - Question 5

Q5 – How did you attract/address your audience?

Almost instinctively when our group decided that action would be the genre for our opening sequence, I envisaged one of the codes and conventions being a piece suspenseful, mysterious and a bit dark music playing in the background and  running parallel with the story of the opening sequence and representing how susceptible others, including the target audience, are in terms of knowledge compared to some of the main characters. We looked and gather vital elements from successful action films like Casino Royale (2006) and Quantum of Solace (2008) from the James  Bond series and Rush Hour (2007), particularly the opening sequences, a common element spotted was a group of antagonists or antagonists individually carry out mischief that originated from a plan and then the protagonists are made aware of the damages the antagonists inflicted as well as their main intentions and so the protagonists more or less plays catch up with the antagonists; hunting them down in the process, other elements could consist of the protagonists seeking for allies or gaining allies along the way due to the intentions they share involving hindering the antagonist regardless and the protagonist being saved from being the victim of ultimate peril. Although, this was our main problem, we thought too much about the elements and codes and conventions in the action film that the logic of the storyline originally was little, with it originally set ‘in the heart of California’ and having two robbers stage one of their typical bank robberies, having mentioned that, we virtually forgot that it’s only an opening sequence and that it doesn’t have to include the majority of the codes and conventions required to attract the audience, who from their perspective, can be well kept in the dark in anticipation of what’s going to happen next in the film.

One feature of the mise-en-scene that I believe honestly stood out really well when compared to the other features, now that we’re analysing our opening sequence is the effectiveness of the camera shots. Diverting from our original shot list (quite frankly scrapping it for something more ambitious and audacious), Hannah from our group brilliantly thought of making the medium close-up and two shots of Mitch and Donny in the media office lower whilst they’re discussing the plan, to reflect the sense of mystery of their plan as well as symbolise the extraordinaire that is Mitch and Donny’s background. Although not originally intended, we actually thought that the two-shots and the manipulation of the frame positioning whilst Mitch and Donny were talking in the office reflected how equally authoritative they were, both being in the foreground rather than one in the foreground and the other in the background, holding themselves in equal regards and importance. The titles and how they were presented, which included bond font and was quite variable and high in striking potency, fulfilled it’s main intentions: which was simply to be different from the other titles other films had, to ensure that the opening sequence itself had it’s own  personality. The setting of the opening sequence in the form of it being in a secondary school and the storyline within the opening sequence personally created a queer type of atmosphere which would make the audience wonder, what is so valuable that would prompt them to steal from the school? As a school is quite a strange and rare location itself to have items stolen from. What I envisioned with the type of music embedded in my mind didn’t come to fruition unfortunately and went completely out of the window, with there being a dispute over whether the soundtracks, which was one of my responsibilities, matched the storyline of the opening sequence, ultimately we went for a copyright-free soundtrack that was downloaded from Incompetech.com and slightly more ‘grooving’ and ‘upbeat’ known to be Rising and it flowed fairly well, not to honestly say the others didn’t. Moreover, the special effects with the cropping, which added that dynamic feel to the opening sequence, and the cross/additive dissolves helping to reduce the extent of mistakes made in shooting that couldn’t be helped come editing, where they were used in the opening sequence was essential in that the fluency of the shots was great. When I think of lighting for exploited to create a positive or negative atmosphere, it frankly wasn’t considered and when it was mentioned by the team, it was mainly an issue, so I would say it was neutral in the sense that it wasn’t considered and subsequently wasn’t ‘tampered’ with. The props were deeply thought of, questioning the impact and significance each prop would have, the gloves placed on the workstation next to Donny when he throws his phone onto the workstation after texting Mitch to display his preparation to conduct the theft and the mobile phones themselves are vital for the communication that goes on throughout the opening sequence.

The knowledge that the target audience would have for action films prior to viewing the opening sequence of The Plan is the codes and conventions discussed earlier on and by implementing the aforementioned and discussed codes and conventions both efficiently and sufficiently not but too much, to convince them that The Plan is the ideal action film to watch and enjoy as well as take something meaningful onboard, namely the lives of Mitch and Donny, which is explored in the film fairly extensively.