The document summarizes the filmmakers' process in developing the opening of their action film. They aimed to subvert stereotypes by casting an Asian actor as the superhero rather than a white actor. They included a flashback to establish the superhero's backstory and origin of powers. However, the transitions between the flashback and present were confusing. They also included many unanswered questions and enigmas that could not be resolved within the short two-minute opening. The filmmakers worked on sound design, music, and titles that followed conventions of action films like Hulk.

1. In what ways does your film opening
use, develop or challenge forms of real
media products?
Nasima Begum

2. From our research we found that the superhero in action
films tend to always be a male. This is because men are
stereotyped to be strong, brave and a source of support for
the vulnerable women. This is why they are always the one
to save the damsel in distress. Research also showed that
the superhero is always of a white background such as Tony
McGuire, Edward Norton and Christian Bale. When we came
to casting we first thought of people who would suit the role
best and have the potential to act.

3. White male superhero's
Our Superhero

4. Deciding who to cast as the superhero was the most difficult task. As we could not have a white actor, we
thought that we should subvert the stereotype and instead cast a superhero who is of an Asian ethnicity.
This is something very different and luckily a lot of Asian people were willing to take part. However we
thought of people who would suit the role best not only in the way they act but also appearance wise. We
also found that people tend to enjoy something more when they have an actor who is of similar
background to theirs. Despite not following the conventions this turned out to be something positive as
we were able to subvert the stereotypes of only having a white superhero and instead casted someone
Asian - Sadiqur Rahman.
From our research we found that theorist Strauss talked about ‘Binary opposites’ in films. We found that
this is very commonly used for example in Harry Potter, Harry is portrayed as the hero and Voldemort as
the villain. This idea was something we wanted to implement in our opening sequence leading us to
decide that we will have a hero and villain.

5. Considering that we can only produce a two minute opening we
found that it would be very difficult to have a lot of action at the
beginning. As a result of this we decided we would have binary
opposites such as a hero and villain so that it would be easier to
portray our genre. This is why we specifically focused on who to
cast as our hero. To save time we decided that we would not have
to show who the villain is as this is only just the beginning of a film.
This saved time as we did not have to go through the process of
choosing who to cast instead someone from our group took on this
role.

6. Our location develops forms of film openings because from our research we
found that Action films are based in the city. We were inspired by Batman’s film
opening as it shows two children playing in the garden. We wanted to take this
idea but make it a little different so we decided our flashback location with the
children will be in Regents Park. Before deciding on Regents Park we had a look at
other parks however we found that they get really busy and local parks were not
clean, and it was just a field. Regents Park had a lot of middle class people with
their family, it was clean and the flowers and bushes were shaped nicely. This
would be very appropriate for us as we want to show the children’s wealthy
background.

7. From our research we were very clear of the codes and convention that would be found in
a Action genre film. We thought of many different ways in which we could present our
narrative without giving too much away. Unfortunately, the first few drafts were too vague
and did not establish any kind of narrative whatsoever. After some audience feedback from
our class we chose the third narrative. Our narrative develops film openings as Action film
openings only show insight to the past. This is shown by the flashback which links to our
superhero’s present situation. Flashbacks are often used to recount events that happened
before the story's primary sequence of events to fill in crucial backstory. Without this
backstory our audience would not have known how our superhero becomes a hero. This
idea of showing the audience how our character posses superpowers was inspired by
Spiderman who possess powers from a bite from a radioactive spider on a school field trip
causing a variety of changes in the body of Peter Parker and gives him superpowers.

8. The external analepsis is supposed to link to the present. However our group
really struggled to show this as our flashback scene ends with the little boys
arms shaking as he touches the arrow which gives him the superpower and
then the transition to the present is a shot of Sadiqur’s arm. This is confusing
as usually you see flashbacks and then the transition to the present is of
something completely different. Usually Action films contain enigmas
throughout the film however because we only produced a two minute
opening sequence we put in far to many enigmas which resulted in too many
unanswered questions causing confusion. If I filmed again, I would make sure
there is less enigmas.

9. • Why he is in hospital?
• What is the link between
the picture and the
flashback?
• What is the link between
the arrow in the past and
what was the impact?
• Scar

10. Sound was something very challenging for us. We worked with our music teacher using the
programme Logic Pro. We left the music as the last thing we will work on as it is easier to
add sound when the opening sequence has been edited. We researched on Action sounds
we want to use and manipulate it.
We had to dub in the sound of our characters speaking as there was external noises that
made the dialogue unclear. We found this very challenging as it is difficult to make the
speech match the speech on the recording.
Our final soundtrack we used

11. Our film opening followed a number of conventions shown by some of the film we analysed.
The film titles that we were inspired by were HULK. We tried to make our titles similar to this
as much as possible working with a motion pro to help us achieve this. However we found this
to be very difficult as the titles in HULK come out of the screen, zooming in fast. We
attempted this many times, using the titles from Hulk as a guide.

12. We also followed the convention of all films not just of our genre
to show main character name first shown in our credits. We also
found that in Hulk the main characters name appears first. This
led to us deciding that we will only have our main character
name SADIQUR RAHMAN as part of our titles.

13. In addition we included our film distribution company similar to other films
following and conventions of titles. Initially our Production name title
developed from marvel title which is another Action/superhero production.
However it did not look as good as the Marvel title so I used After Effects to
create our titles keeping the style similar to Marvel’s production title.