Opening Sequence: Critical Reflection

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Napoleon Dynamite is a film of the comedy genre. It represents reality and the life of an unpopular teenager.
Here is the original Napoleon Dynamite opening credits (dir. Hess, 2004)

The initial aim of my group's re-creation was to convey international students living in the Middle East; seen particularly from the perspective of a female. Our opening sequence includes some of the main elements seen in the original Napoleon Dynamite opening credits, such as the point of view shots, simple cut editing, as well as the titles being shown in or on objects the represent the protagonist of the film. To represent the Middle Eastern culture, we used a falcon glove as the falcon is the national animal of Qatar, karak (tea) and majlis cushions, which we used as a background. Furthermore, the diversity of cultures in the Middle East is represented in the shot which incorporates various books of countries, such as India, Qatar, Philippines and Indonesia.

 During our storyboarding stage, we discovered that modifying the shots shown in the original opening credits was quite difficult, as we always had to bear in mind that the group we chose to represent is completely different from what was seen in Napoleon Dynamite. Additionally, the groups all decided that we would only film ten shots rather that seventeen, as it would be more practical, especially for our first project, once we get to editing our opening.

1) Our first shot reveals: 'An ARALA film' as we wanted to included the names of all the members of our group, so we used the first letter of each of our names to create this acronym.
2) The production name of our opening sequence is called 'Abu Productions' because Abu Zarrin is the director of our team. 
3) This shot started by Lujane take the date out of the packet and reveal the title. However, this took too much time, so instead we told her to bring the date into the scene, open the date, then put it back into the packet.
4) The background of our fourth shot is a green and blue sheet paper that we placed diagonally. We used these colour to represent the world.
5) For the fifth shot invovling the karak (tea), we used a special effect that reverses the clip; so the tea goes back into the kettle, revealing the title Casting by: Holly.
6) This shot includes a vinyl being shown in front of a silver background. 
7) This shot involves Lujane and I taking the clothes out of the scene to uncover the Editor's title.
8) To reveal the Production Designer's title, we changed our initial shot by using a contour palette as it had a flat surface, and the black background made the titles appear and focus better.
9) This shot involves the money being swiped, exhibiting the Director of Photography's title.
10) The final shot uses a falcon glove to show the Director's title, as well as other traditional Arabian items shown in the background to represent the Middle East.
Storyboard by Adriana & Rica

Our product engages with teenagers as the opening credits centralise on international students, allowing the audience to see the mix of cultures. The music we have chosen, 'Marhaba' an Arabic song by Arwa, is a very light-hearted and catchy tune which allows the viewers to be engrossed. The beat of the song is very cheerful and the word "marhaba" literally translates to hello in Arabic, is repetitive. This captures their attention because it's as if the singer is a having direct communication or a connection with the viewer.

Before this project, I did not have any experience with filming a point of view shot, therefore this task enabled me to enhance and develop these skills. Using the camera angle cheat sheet I made earlier, I was able to have something to refer back to, and this helped me put my knowledge into practice. Throughout the production of this project, I not only developed my camera skills, but also learned how to work effectively with a group,  and communicate well with people, so they would understand any ideas I had. Since I was in charge of editing, the final stage of production, I was also able to help other members of my group with the props and design, and camera/filming. Editing was definitely the most intensive part of the project, as it was difficult to choose which shots were the most essential to create meaning.

 An advantage our group had over the other team was that our production did not require a large amount of technology. First of all, the equipment we used was already available in school. We used a camcorder, a wooden camera rig on science tripods (click here to view pictures), made by Mr. Fairbrother, for us to take a point of view shot. Secondly, I edited the film using an application on my iPad called iMovie, which I used in my Snapshot project. Our group did encounter minor challenges with the harware. For example, we had to make a few changes to certain shots. We decided to use a label-maker to show the relevant titles of an opening sequence. However, these are really small and the camera did not focus well on some of the titles. I also used another application called Reverse Cam to rewind the clip with the karak. We thought that this was suitable because in our first attempt at filming this shot, it did not focus so when we put the tea back into the kettle, we found that the plastic label inside the paper cup melted. This is one of the shots where we did not follow the conventions because the original was very simple and did not use special effects.

 An obstacle I faced whilst editing was importing the videos we recorded onto my iPad. To combat this, I had to download a third-party application to convert the video file from .mkv to .mp4 so that I could sync them from my iTunes library to my iPad. A reason why I did not edit the clips on my laptop was because no editing software was compatible with the model of my laptop. A consequence of this process that I discovered later, whilst editing, was that the quality of the videos reduced. Finally, after editing, our film opening is complete and uploaded onto YouTube for ease of access and viewing.

 Overall, I think my group's final product is successful because we were able to film each shot as a point of view shot and we also managed to follow what we initially planned in our storyboard, with exception to the shot that involved just the make-up brush being shown. Again, we had to change this as the label did not focus. To tackle this problem, we used a contour palette as the black background showed the titles much clearer.
Throughout this project, I have learnt a myriad of things about filming. For example, recording certain shots were much more time consuming than others, and it took various attempts before we became satisfied with the outcome. In particular, the shot with the dates was very tedious to film as the label, which we put inside the date, did not want to focus. As well as this, it is crucial to have the camera battery charged before filming, because during one of our lessons, we had to wait for it to charge and this resulted in our group losing time to film.
Finally, something I would do differently to improve our product would be to experiment with other materials, other than the label-maker. I think that if we tried different ways to show the credits, like writing it our on paper or writing the names out on the sand, it would show more variety with our opening, since our objective was to represent international students living in the Middle East. 

And here is the final product, enjoy!
Alternative link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjrUcsAbn2o, in case the video does not work.


About The Author

An ENFP who happens to be an aspiring globe-trotter with a love for art, music and iced coffee. Trying to be pretty alright at everything.

1 comment:

  1. Mrs Holly24 November 2015 at 00:44

    Your explanation of what you intended is clear and refers closely to the original, using appropriate terminology.

    Your storyboards images help show the planning of the group. In future, use actual frames of the storyboard - as I have said before, it is very difficult to see the details when the images are of the whole thing. I think it would be a good idea to take a screenshot of certain scenes from the finished film and put them side by side with the storyboard. This would allow you to focus on a discussion of what your intentions were and the changes and revisions you had to make. Equally, I think that embedding the images of the rig that you used in the actual post would enhance the story of your learning journey more clearly.

    Your post clearly shows how you have thought about the creation of the meaning you decided on and some of the revisions and decisions you made. Ensure that you focus on explaining the process with clear references to your actual film - more images would help.

    I really enjoyed watching you learn - some more detailed explanations and examples of the editing process would have been good to see too. Your final film is a great example and demonstrates the meaning you decided on as a group.

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