Starting Our Final Task

On Wednesday, our teacher announced the beginning of our final project. This one will be the opening two minutes of a film. The film will be a completely original one that I will have to come up with. I'm working by myself. This means that there will be more work for me to do on my own. However, it will also be easier for me to coordinate and plan out the different aspects of the project. This project will be more difficult than our previous ones. It will also be more important. This is because we have to come up with an entire movie, not just the two minutes we will be filming. This project will also be worth far more than anything else we've done, and will be part of our final Cambridge grade.

This year, I have grown and learned from both our teachers' lectures and hands-on experience. When we had our commercial project, the first project of the year, I was lost and unfamiliar with the filming and editing processes. Despite the difficulties I encountered, I would say that the tasks we have been given have helped me improve drastically. I've become better at choosing shots and angles, as well as filing in general. I have also gotten better at editing film. Although I absolutely still have plenty of room for improvement, as everyone does, I am proud of myself for how far I've come in just a few months.

For this project, we come up with 3-6 pitch ideas for a movie before planning what will be the opener (the part we shoot). I had a couple of ideas as soon as our teacher explained what we had to do, but after researching I realized that many of them were too similar to preexisting films or concepts, even if I had never heard of them before. Despite this, I managed to think of a few different ideas that I believe could work:

    1) When a single mother's only son is killed in what the media deems a "tragic accident", chaos ensues when she goes after his killer.

    This would be good for the project because it would include grief and conflict that would definitely be possible to show within the first two minutes of the film.

    2) A serial killer who uses victim's axes to kill leaves a note calling himself a demon, and warns that only jazz music could protect them.

    (Based on the true story of the Axeman of New Orleans.)
    This is a good option because it has the horror aspect that engages viewers and makes it easy to create a compelling introduction.

    3) Two estranged sisters trapped in an elevator together during a family vacation reveal secrets about their alienation that bring the siblings closer than ever before.

    This could be good because it has the right combination of tension and slight thriller that could make for a food opener.