This slideshow summarises the choice of actors, costumes, locations and props used in our film opening sequence for our media studies coursework.

2. Actors
• The only actor we needed for the opening sequence of our film was Niyi. His
character was of a boy who had been in the wrong place in the wrong time and
is now worried that he will be accused of murdering his ex girlfriend’s boyfriend.
• We did, initially, plan to have the murdered boyfriend in the scene at the
beginning however we decided not to, in the end, as we wanted to keep the
opening suspenseful and keep the audience raising questions as to what has
happened for the boy to be saying ‘It wasn’t me’ and ‘I hope he saw what really
happened’ in the narration, spoken by Niyi himself.
• We aimed for three emotions for Niyi to portray and they are; anxiety, anger and
frustration.
Anxiety- Where Niyi is worried about everyone thinking that he killed the boy. Also,
he portrays this emotion in the opening when he hears the sound of police sirens
coming his way provoking him to run.
Anger- When Niyi throws the knife in the grass. He is angry because all of the
anxiety is building up and he doesn’t know what to do.
Frustration- Leading on from the anger emotion, he does not know what to do
therefore this is the reason why he can be seen putting his hands behind his head
often in the opening. The jump cuts at the end are also intended to represent his
frustration.

3. Costumes
• As mentioned in the previous post about costumes, we
intended to use casual clothes for the accused murderer (Niyi)
as the opening scene actually shows him after a party. It
wouldn’t feel as realistic if he still remained in his school
clothes.
• The idea of a hoodie helped to create a ‘thug’ or a ‘gangster’
impression as some of the audience are bound to rely on the
stereotypes of gangsters in order to presume that Niyi was the
boy who killed someone.
• We made a re-creation of the outfit on polyvore since it may
not look as clear in the final cut of the opening to the film
since it was filmed at night.

5. Locations
• We never really considered an idea of a location to film which
would have a lot of meaning behind it and instead thought of which
was the most convenient place to film out considering some of us
live further way.
• We then decided to film at Sophie’s house since she lived closest to
the school which made it easier for us to go straight to there after
school to film.
• Although we were mainly looking for the most convenient place to
film, we did like the idea of the scenery shots used at the beginning
of the area to portray a normal day atmosphere. This allowed us to
foreshadow Niyi’s situation which was completely opposite to a
normal day.
• Since it was only a short film opening, we did not need any more
than one location although we did film in different parts of the area
such as when Niyi is running round the corner.

6. Props
• We required a knife in the film opening as it was the prop we needed to
hint to the audience that Niyi may of killed someone.
• Obviously, we needed to put knife on the blood to make it look a little
more realistic that someone was perhaps killed. We used ketchup as fake
blood since we are filming at night therefore people would not be able to
see that clearly of what it is.
• We also used Niyi’s phone as a prop during the film opening as it helps to
portray a variety of jump cuts during the end. This is what contributes to
the portrayal of Niyi’s frustration as he feels that he has to call someone to
let it all out and to hope that someone might actually believe it wasn’t him
that killed the boy.