Study of Film Openings

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Film openings are extremely important to a movie's success; they are a viewer's first impression of the work and it is its job to hook the audience to watch the rest of the film and to credit the people who worked on creating the film. Now that my partner, Sofia, and I have established the genre we'd like to focus on, I'm going research a couple of film openings within this genre so that I can see what films of this type look like. The genre being coming-of-age, I am going to look at the following examples:

Dead Poets Society (1989)

My Girl (1991)

The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012)

These three films all embody the themes of coming of age in different ways, and through different challenges that come when one is growing up. 

Dead Poet Society (1989)

The opening scene for Dead Poets Society begins with a young boy that is getting prepared to attend an opening ceremony for a school as multiple people in the background do the same. There are a lot of young boys that are lined up all carrying banners that highlight the school's values, including tradition, honor, discipline, and excellence as they walk into a chapel where a long shot shows the many young students awaiting an opening speech by the director of the school as he guides these children through the values of the school, and, as he speaks, it becomes apparent that this school is very prestigious and wealthy. There is a good sense of the setting of the film as a school and its values and principles are introduced to the audience through of the social expectations that are thrust upon the Young boys in the director's speech. This approach to the film's opening develops the background for the sort of challenges that some students may face as they may oppose the school's approach to their teachings and it introduces one of the main characters that will drive the story through its plot—the new teacher Mr. Keating.

My Girl (1991)

The opening theme for My Girl (1991) introduces the main character, a young girl, claiming outlandish things to her father who pays little to no attention to her, even if she claims she has cancer and is dying. The shot then moves to her walking out of the house and a small text showing the setting—the location as Pennsylvania and the year as 1972—as she convinces a group of boys to join her, defending one boy when he is mocked for saying he must go home. When they walk into the house she makes sure that all the boys have paid her, which shows that her character is rather smart as she is about to scam them, and leads them through a ruse that ends up with the boys running out and her with her newly earned money.

 This specific opening focuses a lot more on developing the girl's character than the Dead Poets Society opening, which focused on the setting and background. My Girl introduces a girl who lacks a present parental figure in her life as her dad ignores her as he is preoccupied with his work and her grandmother is unwell. We are also introduced to her home life and its impact on her as she is growing up in a funeral home, and there is a sense of attachment and protectiveness over the boy in the beginning as she defends him from the other kids mocking him. This film opening manages to, not only introduce to the audience who the main character is and what she is like, but also hint at what kind of conflict the movie could lead up to as she struggles with growing up alone in a funeral home, (not that the ending is remotely predictable based on this short clip; this movie destroyed me emotionally. I love it.)

The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012)

Lastly, The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012) begins with slow music and views of a city as a car drives down an empty street tunnel as the credits play. The shot fades into the reflection of a young boy as he write an anonymous letter to an unnamed person through a voiceover narration. He writes that he hopes that there are people as good as that to whom he is writing, that will not judge, and explains that he has had a rough summer and is about to start his first day of high school, and is nervous. He doesn't have anyone to sit with during passing periods or class—his sister did not allow him to accompany her and his past friends ignore him—but he encounters a senior who is not intent on bullying freshmen and he meets his English teacher, who is a caring person who makes sure the boy is doing okay. During his English class, it is shown that the boy is passionate about the subject, as he gets the questions the teacher asks correct when no one else does, but he is still shy about participating and he also gets made fun of by a fellow classmate.

This film opening, like My Girl, is a lor more character centered than that of Dead Poet Society's. The main character here is describing his feelings and fears and concerns to someone, though to whom is unknown to the audience at this point in the movie, so that the viewer can get a sense of who this kid is as the story begins to unravel and is centered around this character. He is nervous about high school, and he is a quiet kid with no friends to be with, while he struggles with the universal horror show, I mean, experience that is starting high school.

Scheduling a Timeline

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One thing that my high school years have taught me so far is that procrastination does not help anyone. Especially for project of this size, it is very important to have a clear timeline of when things should be done for or worked on to keep a steady pace and ensure everything is completed while dedicating enough time to every factor. From this week, we have about 8 weeks until our project should be about done, and in that time there is a lot to do—research, planning, filming and production, editing, revising, etc.—so my partner, Sofia, and I came up with a sort of timeline to help keep everything in order:

Week 1 1/25-1/31:
Research
    (Genres and differing film openings)
Plot planning/ideas
Storyboard

Week 2 2/1-2/7:
Pre-production: 
Finish storyboard
Find locations/actors
Costume design
Props
Script

Week 3 2/8-2/14:
Start filming (if weather allows)
(focus on indoor shots otherwise)
Research
Music/Sounds

Week 4 2/15-2/21:
Finish filming (if previous week was not possible)
Start editing
Record foley necessary

Week 5 2/22-2/28:
Continue editing
Focus on sound
Revisions (critique together)

Week 6 3/1-3/7:
CCR
Plan
Create
Edit and Revise

Week 7 3/8-3/14 & Week 8 3/15-3/17:
Extra week in case of delays/issues

With this timeline in mind, it'll be a lot easier to make sure that we stay on track, so we will try to follow it as best we can, but, should any issues arise, and they will, we do have a week and a half/ two weeks as a cushion so we can fix the problems without running out of time or being stressed about doing so. Hopefully it will all work well.

How to Color? 🎨

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One of the visual aspects of film that interest me the most is the color scheme that each movie has depending on the style that it strives to achieve. When brainstorming ideas for how my partner, Sofia, and I wanted our film opening to look, we agreed we liked a very colorful aesthetic to represent a light-hearted feeling that we wanted when working within the "coming of age" genre. As such, I decided to do some research on how color schemes affect the overall meaning of the film and how we could use them to improve our filming when we keep in mind the effect that specific colors could have.

The psychology of color in film is often kept very similar from film to film as our brains already associate certain emotions with specific colors, but nothing is quite set in stone. Every filmmaker can assign a feeling to a color, even breaking the usual expectations for each color, and the intensity of said feeling can also vary based on the creator's choices. Hue, saturation, and brightness allow for a particular color to be seen in order to express a certain tone that can be different than that which the same color, albeit a different shade, exudes—a light blue representing calmness while a darker blue may represent power or authority. More than just a singular color however, the combination, or color scheme, that a director can put together can also help to set the right tone or mood for the film. There monochromatic, analogous, complementary, and triadic color schemes.

These schemes help to create a balanced color palette that can guide the viewers' emotions and help to  establish the film's theme. They can also help to emphasize important factors that drive the plot or message that the director is trying to portray. This can be done through discordant color, where the director actively chooses to deviate from the balanced color palette to refocus attention to specific details that would otherwise go unnoticed; there's also associative color schemes, a scheme in which color is specifically connected to a character or theme and builds an emotional reaction to said color; and finally, there are transitional color schemes in which the scheme shifts throughout the course of the story to represent transformation or growth.

After this research, I have some ideas of how Sofia and I could use color in our project to better convey the ideas of our film opening. We could use some warm colors—like yellow or orange—to portray the youth from the coming of age genre as well as innocence from a color like white, and, because we were playing around with the idea of summer, we could also use colors like green and blue to highlight nature and peace. Researching and learning about color so early in our production process is, I think, really helpful so that we can start thinking about factors like costume and set design so that we can implement color theories into it and make our project more visually interesting and symbolic. 

Sources:
Risk, M. (2024, November 27). How to use color in film: 50+ examples of movie color palettes. StudioBinder. https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/how-to-use-color-in-film-50-examples-of-movie-color-palettes/

Portfolio Time? Yeah!

 Hey Blog! and also hey Cambridge! 

From this point on, in class, we're focusing on our final project: our Film Opening Portfolio Project. This is going to be a 2 minute film opening in which we create a story that we introduce and work on the credits, editing, title screen, camera work, set and props, and, well, basically everything. Easy! Well not quite. Last week we reviewed the way many films handle their openings— establishing tone, introducing characters, establishing setting or background, sometimes they allude to future conflict or create mystery for the film. 

Stranger Than Fiction (2006) focuses on introducing the main character as the narrator walks the viewer through Harold's, the main character, daily routine. This allows us to understand who the character we will follow through the film is until, near the end of the opening when the narrator says that "on Wednesday [his] wristwatch changed everything," which alludes to a direction in which the rest of the movie will go. Attached is the film's opening.

EMMA (2020) follows Stranger Than Fiction's method and, from the beginning, shows us Emma. She is shown to be of an upper class in an early 19th century city, and, a text screen in the beginning also explains that she's lived a very simple life thus far. She has servants to attend her and lives in a grand house, but there's more to be known as she knocks on someone's door and the film's opening comes to an end.

Introducing the character in the opening is my favorite way to go about creating a film opening. I am someone who tends to get deeply attached to fictional characters so centering the beginning of the film around this is very fun and interesting to me. I think my partner Sofia is also very interested in this so establishing our character may be the path we take when creating our own opening.

On the other hand, I am a big fan of film openings that use a sort of montage method, and these are often used to portray the setting of a film. Focusing on the details by using costume design, props, or specific angles, film's can explain a lot of what is happening through the setting's details alone, which I find to be very interesting.

One of my favorite films, Lady Bird (2017), includes a small montage of a school day in Christine's, the main character, life. This includes many small glimpses into what a regular day looks like for her, but also begins to set up the way that she doesn't quite fit in into her environment.

Lady Bird (2017) Film Opening

Overall, I'm very excited to being working on this project, there are so many ways to approach it that it feels a little overwhelming but fun nonetheless. I'm thinking that my partner and I could do a mix of a character introduction and a setting montage focusing on a coming of age story as I spoke about in a previous blog in this portfolio project, but nothing is set in stone just yet. More to come in this blog regarding this project, very excited.

Portfolio Project Genre #2 Romance

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Often paired with the "coming of age" genre I discussed in my last blog post is the romance genre. My partner, Sofia, and I love the look of 90's and early 2000's teen movies that are very "rom-comm-y" and "coming of  age," so we wanted to research that style of genre when brainstorming ideas for our filming opening. 

The romance genre has changed a lot through the years, however. During the 30's and 40's romantic films had a more glamorous look from the golden age of Hollywood, but, in years like the 90's, there was a growth in comedy within the romance genre, creating many iconic rom-coms such as You've Got Mail (1998) and Notting Hill (1999).

Due to the genre's expansive nature, its target audience is quite different depending on the type of film. Young-adult romances/rom-coms often feature teenage or, well, young adult protagonists; they are often catered to a similar audience as the characters' relationships and issues are often relatable for them. More tragic romances are often catered less to teenagers and more towards adults or older audiences that understand that romance is not always as feel-good and happy as it is portrayed in rom-coms. 

The films tend to attract women, but are also popular among many other demographics as the genre continues to expand to cover newer, more "modernized" romantic stories.

Film institutions tend to "recycle" storylines, but this repetition of key plot points in a romance film is what attracts many viewers when watching these kinds of movies. There, of course, is the central romance in the story, then common tropes like meet-cutes or some sort of obstacle, and a resolution—happy in rom-coms or tragic in some dramas. Marketing a romantic film often centers around the idea of love, a partner, and high emotions; it is made up of posters or trailers that feature 2 people in happy, romantic moments.

Romance films focus on attraction and love between two people sometimes following the tropes of "love at first sight," "opposites attract," "forbidden love," or even "love triangles." Their setting is often varied from film to film, showcasing that love can happen anywhere and is not centralized to a specific location, though there is often mention of Paris as "the city of love" and other romanticized locations. There are always the 2, or sometimes 3, main characters that are in love and, depending on the type of film, contain other supporting characters like the best friend or close families. 

On a technical note, romantic movies contain many tight close ups and two-shots that highlight the attraction of these people falling in love as well as low-lighting scenes that set the mood for love.

La La Land (2016) features Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) and Mia (Emma Stone) drawn together by their common desire to do what they love. But as success mounts they are faced with decisions that begin to cause troubles in their relationship, and the dreams they worked so hard to achieve, threaten to rip them apart, ultimately leading to an unhappy ending.

How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days (2003) follows an advice columnist, Andie Anderson (Kate Hudson), who tries to push the boundaries of what she can write about in her new piece about how to get a man to leave you in 10 days. Executive Ben Berry (Matthew McConaughey), who is so confident in his romantic prowess that he thinks he can make any woman fall in love with him in 10 days is Andie's victim. When Andie and Ben meet, both of their individual plans backfire.

Sources:
Film Symphony SL. (2025, February 17). History, evolution and soundtracks of romantic cinema. FilmSymphony. https://filmsymphony.es/en/historia-evolucion-bandas-sonoras-cine-romantico/

Sarantinos, J. (2024, March 4). Writing the genre hybrid romance. International Screenwriters’ Association. https://www.networkisa.org/screenwriting_articles/view/writing-the-genre-hybrid-romance

Lizada, M. A. N., PhD. (n.d.). Understanding film: Genres [PDF]. The Hang Seng University of Hong Kong. Education Bureau. https://www.edb.gov.hk/attachment/en/curriculum-development/kla/eng-edu/professional-development-programmes/2324/SS_Lit%20Film%20Genres.pdf

Michelle Hui. (2016, February 27). Genre conventions: Romance. It Is Already Here. https://itisalreadyhere.wordpress.com/2016/02/27/genre-conventions-romance/

Portfolio Project Genre #1 Coming of Age

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Now that we are officially starting our Portfolio Project for Cambridge to grade, it's time to get serious. After getting together with my partner for this project, we came up with a couple of genres that we would be interested in creating within when making our film opening: drama, romance, rom-com, and coming of age—which I will be discussing in today's blog.

The coming of age genre in film was largely popularized in the 70s and 80s and features the struggles and wonders of adolescence, often highlighting identity crises, self-discovery, social taboos, first romances, and the "ugly slice of life." This genre often includes archetypal characters—the jock, the nerd, the popular kids—though more recent and/or indie films have strayed from such "universal" experiences to portray some other less common experiences, romantic plots and/or subplots, some type of humor dependent on the tone of the film, and a moral lesson or social commentary. 

Common plots in coming of age movies include:
- Identity Crises where these young characters are finding out who they are as they are first exposed to the "real world."

But I'm a Cheerleader (1999) discusses Megan's, the main character, sexuality as she is exposed to the different people, and their characters, in the boot camp her parents send her to.

- Self-discovery, where characters search to find their place in the world as they begin to transition into adulthood.

In Lady Bird (2017), Christine, a.k.a. Lady Bird, struggles to find her place in society as she attends a small private high school and wants to attend a fun college in the East coast, looking for independence from her family.

Because of these types of common themes, target audiences vary widely in age ranges, gender, and backgrounds. Growing up is something that everyone experiences and people tend to share many experiences that are portrayed in this genre of film. Though largely concentrated around the teenage audience due to our relatability to the characters, many adults and older audiences also enjoy films focusing on growing up as they can remember their own struggles and feelings during such era of their lives. One of the reasons I personally enjoy this genre so much is because of this relatability that I can feel to the characters as they struggle with growing up the same way that I am as I go onto graduate high school.

To focus on the "coming of age" experience, it is common to see many point of view shots that centralize the character and their perspective in their story, low and high angle shots that differentiate between the adults and teenagers in a story. Montages and costume design are often used to portray the growth a character and changes in their lives.

With such a varied target audience, film institutions target their teenage audience through marketing the relatability they might feel, but they focus on nostalgia and memory when marketing towards older audiences. Institutions will focus on the raw feeling that many young people experience as they begin to step out into a world that has such high and varied expectations for them and their struggles in succeeding and finding themselves. With deep themes, many film companies choose music whose lyrics and melodies reflect the intensity of the message the film is trying to project. 

One of my favorite movies within this genre I've already mentioned —Lady Bird—but here are other examples that are some great films reflecting the process of growing up, and are some of my favorites.

The Outsiders (1983) follows a group of young boys living in rural Oklahoma, and their struggles against a group of upper-class boys that teaches us about loyalty, loss, differences in social class and self-reliance.

Dead Poets Society (1989) takes place in a high-end, all-boys school where a new English teacher tries to reach his students through what is considered unorthodox methods. This film teaches us about rebellion against passion, education, and seizing the day. Carpe Diem.

Finally, Easy A (2010) follows Olive, a "clean-cut teen" who pretends to be promiscuous in order to improve her social standings in school. It teaches us to embrace honesty and self-respect over reputation or popularity.

Sources:
Maher, M. (2022, September 1). Coming-of-age films: Is the genre in decline? PremiumBeat. https://www.premiumbeat.com/blog/coming-of-age-films/
KnightWriters – Opinion: Coming of Age Can Make Anyone Feel 17 Again. (2022, November 22). Coming of age can make anyone feel “17 again.” https://knightwriters.org/perspectives/opinion/2022/11/22/coming-of-age-can-make-anyone-feel-17-again/
NoFilmSchool – What Is a Coming-of-Age Movie
Podder, S. (2025, May 20). What is a coming-of-age movie: Elements and examples. NoFilmSchool. https://nofilmschool.com/what-is-coming-of-age-movie
MasterClass – Coming-of-Age Movies. (2021, September 24). Coming-of-age movies: What is the coming-of-age genre? MasterClass. https://www.masterclass.com/articles/coming-of-age-movies
TheScreenAcademy – Teen Movies Genre (n.d.). Teen movies genre. https://www.thescreenacademy.com/knowledge/genre/teen-movies-genre