Initial Ideas...

Our first thought for the genre of our opening sequence was social realism, firstly because it is appealing and something we enjoy but also because it does not require the kind of special effects that we would not be able to produce in a class and without a million pound budget!

As for the sequence itself, we had a few first ideas, all focused around one central female character (now named Lex, although we did not know that at the time).
The initial ideas were as follows:

• Originally, we wanted the scene to include a girl at a party, getting drunk, taking drugs and generally misbehaving, but we realised that it would be impractical to try and stage a party like this. 
• Girl wakes up in her room. It's night time when she opens the curtains, but despite this, she starts getting ready to go out. The room is cluttered with clothes, makeup, alcohol bottles, cigarettes, drugs, food wrappers etc - this look of the bedroom is something that is repeated in almost all the ideas. She goes out in the dark, basically goes to a train station and leaves. We decided however, that this is too much to put into an opening sequence. 
• The second variation of this was a similar idea but involved a dream sequence where we would see something that may, or may not be real, happening inside her head. This would involve two male characters having a fight, (one of whom is Lex's on-off boyfriend.) and the other boy getting seriously hurt. Then Lex seeing her 'boyfriend' outside her window when she wakes, and going out the back door to avoid him. However, we realised we couldn't put a dream sequence into a film on social realism!
• So, then we though of just showing the same idea but as flashbacks. However, again we realised that we might be trying to pack too much into an opening sequence. 
• The idea which we seem to have, for now at least, settled on, is similar to the idea above but cutting out the flashback sequence entirely. In this case, we are more focused on the our main character and her bedroom (which is important as it gives us an early insight into her character and we will not see it again). Also, we see more of her in this environment, smoking and doing things she usually would, until we do see the boy outside her house who she seems to run away from. Although this is in most ways the same as the other idea, it does not waste time with flashbacks which can easily be explained further into the film.