Question 1

The main character is the same age group from the primary audience (12-19), which is the same as many other coming of age films, such as 'Ferris Bueler's Day Off' and 'The Breakfast Club'. This is a very large demographic, and is easily accessible for a film maker, as most schools will allow filming within them when the students are on a school holiday. The use of schools implies that the primary audience would currently be attending a school. The only issue with my sequence in this regard is that Dylan going to a school is only implied, and at no point is it directly stated. The audience sees that Dylan is carrying a school bag, however because he is not wearing a uniform and there is no text or speech in the sequence it is possible the audience will be left in the dark. If the sequence led on to the full film, then the setting for the opening would be obvious, however this ambiguity challenges the obvious, in that, if you can't don't make the logical leap of a teenager running to school while crying a school bag; the film will not hold your hand
 

My sequence also uses aspects from 'The Breakfast Club' in that the camera doesn't do a close up on the main character's face in the beginning. This means the audience needs to associate this character with; what he wears, how he moves and what he does. I believe that this defines the character more, and people won't make assumptions of him from just how the actor looks, and what he's done in the past.


The soundtrack I have chosen to use is a 'feel good' indie song that should be relatable to the target audience, as it is sung and performed by members of the primary audience. This gives the sequence a feeling of youth and growth, that can be seen in films such as 'The Perks of Being a Wallflower', especially because the intro starts quiet but then explodes into sound and harmonising melodies. This develops the idea from 'The Perks of Being a Wallflower' however, because the protagonist is seen at the very beginning. This means that my audience should associate the music with the character, and not narration. By keeping the protagonist's voice silent at this point it makes him more isolated, and connotes the idea of him being in too much of a hurry to talk directly to the audience or to himself. I also haven't included narration, because it would clash with the vocals of the music and reduce the impact of blossoming that it has.

I was largely inspired by Juno's opening scene, in that it is just the protagonist walking down a street. The purity of this is why there is not much action in my sequence. However, because Juno's sequence was animated it makes it easier to break continuity, as it is less realistic. This means that my sequence challenges the convention of an opening scene only containing movement being animated, and instead makes it more real
for an audience.

Where most films titles just appear on the screen, ours slowly constructs its self out of lines and shapes that appear on the screen. This is symbolic of how the protagonist will be constructing himself in the film, and makes the act of titles appearing no screen more interesting to the audience. This is an attempt to make the audience engaged with my product at the very beginning of the sequence, and to stand out from the rest of the films that have been
released.