Current Inspirations

    I do not have my final idea yet, but this post will be dedicated to showing the inspirations I have and how I have been using them to generate an idea for my coming-of-age film. Yes, we're going with that genre.

Films

    The top three movies that have been a savior to me have been Clueless, Lady Bird, and Ferris Bueller's Day Off. I have been rewatching these three iconic coming-of-age movies hoping to gain a spark in my brain for a 10/10 idea.

 

    I've already talked about Clueless and Ferris Bueller in previous blog posts, so I will mainly be elaborating on Lady Bird. However, before I do, I want to mention that from watching countless popular coming-of-age film openings, I found that a lot of them use a voiceover to talk about what is going on or establish a setting or characters. For example, Spider-Man (2002), The Breakfast Club (1985), and Dirty Dancing (1987) all have voiceover narrations.

    Lady Bird is a film about a high school girl who is dealing with mother issues and wants to go to college to start a new life. This is immediately established when the film opening involves a car ride with Lady Bird and her mother, the two begin to argue and it pushes Lady Bird to literally jump out of the car. This film's opening is simple but does a good job at establishing relationships and setting. Watch the film opening below!

Music

    I am an avid music listener. From rap to bedroom pop, I listen to most genres of music. For my film opening, I want to end it on a happier note so it can give a sense of excitement for what will happen following the opening. 

    What I had envisioned was the music would be sad or neutral in the intro, then the character would change the song, which shows that the song is diegetic, and they would change the song to a more upbeat song to change the tone of the opening. 

    The first song that I had in mind for the "upbeat" idea was The Adults Are Talking by The Strokes. This song offers a good 20 seconds of instrumental music, which is perfect since I would just need it towards the end of the film opening. Unfortunately, the issue is licensing and copyright, so until I know my final idea I will hold off on this. Let's take a moment to appreciate the album cover art (pictured right)... it is SO cool! I will never get over it. It's not one of those cringe album covers of a wilting rose or something of the sort, this is actually a piece of artwork that is perfectly color schemed together and, somehow, describes the album's vibe in the most accurate way an album cover can.

What am I to do?

    With all of these inspirations, I have already figured out the vibe I want to go with, I just have to decide how I will execute this. Hopefully, by next post I will have my idea already set in stone!