Storyboarding

This week we created a storyboard for our action and adventure film opener. After lots of brainstorming, my teammates and I thought we should open the film with a bit of action. What better way to do this than a crime scene. Our movie will start with a bank robbery and on of the members of the group robbing the bank will be our main character throughout the film. The main character has a mother who is very sick and needs money to find pay for a very rare and expensive medicine. In the opener the main character goes home to her mother to give her some money and tell her that everything will be okay, before changing her identity and fleeing the country so that she doesn't get caught for the bank robbery. the film will be about the young girl's adventure and obstacles she has to overcome in order to get the medicine for her mom. In the opener we do have some symbolism such as the zooming in on the money bag and then zooming our to see a backpack that the main character is holding. This goes to show that the girl does not want her mother to know how she got the money for her. Carson, one of our group members, did most of the drawings such as the bank robbery and the scene where the main character visits her mother and then flees the country. Kelsey, another group member, colored in all of Carson's pencil drawings. I wrote all of the captions for each image to describe what is going on in each scene. As a team, Carson, Kelsey, Sarah, and I all worked together on the brainstorming aspect of the film opener to come up with the best opening we could think of for our film.

Brainstorming

From the action and adventure film openings that I have watched, something big tends to happen in the opener of the film. Either something that jump starts the plot for the rest of the movie such as a death of an important character, or something that will affect a character for the rest of the movie making he or she who they are. For example, Spiderman getting bit by a spider changed his life because of the superpowers he possesses for the rest of the film. Another approach that is popular is flash forwards or flashbacks. These types of film openers give a little bit of context to the plot of the film as well as tend to entice the audience members a little bit more than bland introductions. The most obvious film opener for action movies, is action. A lot of James Bond movies start mid-action and then the context of it comes soon after. This gives the audience a taste of what they’re in for as well as shows who the protagonist and antagonists of a movie will most likely be. The last film opener I discovered while looking through past examples was the informational film opener. This type of opener is used in movies such as Divergent. The main character gives context and setting of what is going on. The information given at the beginning of the film tends to be the most important as it often has something to do with the plot. In Divergent, the opener explained all five factions and what they believed in, as well as sharing that the main character didn’t know where she belonged. Then at the end of the movie we discover the main character falls in multiple factions, and is forced to control her mind for the greater good. Then the five factions dissolve as there is a war between the people in Chicago and the outside. The action was centered around the factions, which the audience wouldn’t have known about if they missed the opening of the film. 

Opening Genre Inspiration

Quarter 3 Week 1 Assignment 

My group chose to do an action and adventure film because, when done right, they can be very enticing and interesting. The thing about action and adventure films is that there can always be something new around the corner that the audience is not expecting, and they can be for all ages and types of people. There is hardly any restrictions to classic action and adventure films which makes them extremely popular in modern day society. There are many similarities and differences between action and adventure films. Action is associated with a particular kind of scene such as one with explosions, high speed car chases, or combat. Examples of these films include Black Panther (2018) and Guardians of the Galaxy (2014). Adventure, on the other hand, implies a story such as a quest narrative and often located within a fantasy or exotic setting, for example, the search for mythical objects or treasure in such films as King Solomon's Mines (1950) and Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). However when put together, they can truly be great movies to watch, and each one is different from the last. 

Action and adventure movies can also have a variety of movie openers and there are many different ways to approach the film. While action films continued to flourish as the medium-budget genre movie, it also fused with tent pole pictures in other genres. For example, 2009's Star Trek had several science fiction tropes and concepts like time travel through a black hole. However, most of the film was structured around action sequences, many of them quite conventional (hand-to-hand, shooting). While the original Star Wars featured some of this kind of fighting, there was just as much emphasis on star-ship chases and dogfights in outer space. The newer films featured more lightsaber duels, sometimes more intense and acrobatic than the originals. Some fan films also have similar duel scenes like those the prequel trilogy. It was action with a science fiction twist. The trend with films such as The Matrix and The Dark Night series, is that hand-to-hand fighting and Asian martial-arts techniques are now widely used in science fiction and superhero movies. Action and adventure can also be split up into different genres within the action and adventure. Some action and adventures can have a bit of mystery tied into it.