Red october (Working title)

Below is the basic storyboard we came up with for our 2 minute opening. It begins with a suit up scene ( The character "suiting up" to go outside) before the character exits the tent and walks past a camp of refugees/soldiers before stopping at the top of hill and looking down on two bodies which is then followed by a camera pan up in to the sky

This is only our basic storyboard and more ideas have been added as time has gone by. We decided to add in some scenic shots of the forest which is then seperated by credits allowing the suit up scene to run smoothly and to also help establish the area the film will be set in. We may also decide to change and fiddle about with some shots as we film so this storyboard is not 100%

Film Opening - Title Sequence

We came up with the idea of combining the initial shots in our film of the general putting on his military uniform with the screens with the titles. By breaking up these shots with titles, we created a smoother looking transitions between the shots. We also added a unique touch to the title screens to keep things interesting and hold the veiwers attention, as in our opinion we believed that the title sequemces shouldn't be kept on the sidelines, but actually be an interesting part of our production. This was done using a typewriter effect of the text onto the background, accompanied by pictures of famous scenes and people from our era and location. The typewriter effect exagerrated the historic theme of the film opening and allowed us to keep our serious tone.

 Here is an example of one of the opening title slides. The typewriter effect will be animated in Flash CS4 and will be coupled with panning shots of the countryside whilst a slow, sad song will play over the top of them. We feel that this will keep in touch with the serious aesthetic of our movie which means that these credits will not jar the audience and look out of place with our film's historic feel. 

Film opening - Sound

In order to add atmosphere and realism to the film we considered adding enhanced sounds.

- Leather boot straps being tied.
- Sounds of crying
- Sound of the wind
- The sound of gunshots in the distance or shells falling. (this was the sound effect we ended up using)


We also ended up using two pieces of copyright free music we found on youtube. These were :

• Les Feuilles Mortes - Yves Montand. This song had a very calm, slow and sad atmosphere so we decided to use it on the credits and panning shots used in our opening at the start.
• Farwell to Slavianka - The Red army choir. This song has a more serious military theme to it and was used at the end of our opening for dramatic effect

Film Opening - Production company name and logo

We chose the name Red Star Productions. It sums up the genre of film opening we are producing, and is an exciting name that could become associated with producing both historic films, or those based on action and war, to produce titles similar to those found in our research:

• Hunt for Red October
• Saving Private Ryan
• Che

 We brainstormed for ideas for a logo. On paper, we made sketches of potential candidates, deciding we needed a logo that was bold, bright and represented the film we were producing. Eventually we combined two of our ideas coming up with the following logo.
Here is the logo produced to represent what our film company is about: It is simple yet very bold and straight to the point. The Red colour and hammer and sickle symbol were chosen as they provide a bold and recogniseable image when the logo appears in the opening titles of our film opening.

The logo was created using Adobe photoshop CS4 for the shapes, and Adobe flash CS4 for the filters and shading (flash was used as the filters can be changed in an animation, for example where the logo fades in the titles)