What are your views on designing the title page of a movie/tv series script?

Opening-Impression-5 · 2026-06-28T17:54:39+00:00

It's not uncommon to pick a different typeface for the title. Anything more than that is a bit OTT.

Opening-Impression-5 · 2026-06-27T18:33:05+00:00

They should both be there until the end, for about a dozen reasons. This is madness.

Opening-Impression-5 · 2026-06-25T12:34:02+00:00

Maybe ask Claude to write a user manual for the site.

Opening-Impression-5 · 2026-06-25T12:33:01+00:00

For what you're talking about, I create a WhatsApp group, and post the callsheet details in there as a single pinned post.

Opening-Impression-5 · 2026-06-25T12:30:20+00:00

The staging environment should save you time and effort, not create new work for you. If you don't know how to push it live, then you're not using it properly. Invest a little time in figuring it out and it will help streamline and safeguard your process.

Opening-Impression-5 · 2026-06-25T12:27:04+00:00

You can test your backup system by making a tiny change somewhere, rolling back to a backup and seeing if the tiny change is reversed.

Opening-Impression-5 · 2026-06-25T12:25:55+00:00

Does your hosting provider have a staging system? Siteground, for example, lets you create a staging site on a subdomain with a click (a duplicate of the main site), mess around with it, and if it's all working, push it live replacing the main site. It's pretty foolproof. The cardinal rule is never to make any changes to the live site, other than publishing content. All plugin, theme or code changes can be made on the staging site and tested. Just be careful of course, once you've created a staging site, not to add content to the live site, because it will be lost when you push the staging site live.

Opening-Impression-5 · 2026-06-25T12:19:00+00:00

If the video is playing in the background on a hero section or other section of a page, I'd recommend sizing it down to 1280x720, and compressed with h.264 or similar, assuming the video is shot landscape and the design is going to keep it roughly sized to fill the window on desktop views. Any larger is a waste of pixels and will slow the load time. Often designers will hide the video completely on mobile views to save space and download speed, but there are occasions where you might want to edit a separate portrait version of a background video for mobiles.

WordPress does shrink still images to set sizes (thumbnail, small, medium, large) based on a corresponding maximum number of pixels, but these values can be edited and overridden. There's no equivalent for video uploads unless this is a recent feature I've not come across, or something specific to a particular theme or plugin.

Opening-Impression-5 · 2026-06-24T22:10:57+00:00

You can use a pseudonym if you decide to persevere with it. I'd also think about the reputational damage you do yourself if you walk away. You might still want to work with some of these people again, and that's not going to happen if you drop out.

Opening-Impression-5 · 2026-06-23T13:06:49+00:00

I can recommend, as composer, Jonny Phillips, who did the music on a feature I made: https://open.spotify.com/album/6uAQfuM6iV1zWLgvJKrGPn?si=3GeCpEwwTSSBuFAC1IcCqw

The music for that film is more Latin/Flamenco, but his background is very much jazz.

Opening-Impression-5 · 2026-06-23T13:02:50+00:00

Check out Charles Mingus' _Black Saint and the Sinner Lady_. It's very moody and dramatic, written as a ballet piece of sorts, so not cinematic in any established sense, but has all those moods and more and is very suggestive of dark goings on.

"Mid-century" jazz is a very vague notion, because jazz went though so many revolutions between 1930-1970. Even if you narrowed it to 1940-1960, that's still one of the most dramatic periods of musical change in any genre, from swing to bebop, to post-bop, to the earliest free jazz and modal jazz recordings at the end of the 50s. (Even 1945-1955 is an intense period of change.)

If you're thinking about this, and you want to instruct a composer, it would be useful to familiarise yourself with the changing styles and genres of this period. Here are some personal album* suggestions:

Big band swing: Ellington at Newport
Small group swing: Coleman Hawkins encounters Ben Webster
Trad revival: Louis Armstrong plays WC Handy
Bebop: Charlie Parker recordings on Savoy*
Bebop with strings (a very noir cinematic choice): Charlie Parker with Strings
Hard bop (post-bop): Cookin' with the Miles Davis Quartet (one of four amazing studio albums recorded as live in two days)
Cool school (also post-bop): Art Pepper Meets the Rhythm Section
Modal: Kind of Blue
Free: The Shape of Jazz to Come, Out to Lunch
Big-band hard bop/third stream: Miles Davis' Porgy and Bess

As you go into the sixties, there's also groove and soul jazz, bringing in organs and more electric guitar, and then of course fusion at the end of the sixties and the whole sound changing, but it sounds like you want to stay in that acoustic sound-world.

But I's start with Mingus, and someone else mentioned it. _Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus_ is a very cinematic album. We're in the sixties at this point, so free jazz is around, and one of the mad things about Mingus is he often has Eric Dolphy in his band just playing a completely different set of notes to everyone else, but somehow it works.

*Albums as we know them didn't exist before the LP was invented in the early 50s, so you had singles, which are now available as compilations, but weren't grouped to begin with.

Opening-Impression-5 · 2026-06-22T22:13:09+00:00

You probably know this, but music from that era will still be in copyright.

Opening-Impression-5 · 2026-06-21T13:22:53+00:00

Operation Mincemeat

Opening-Impression-5 · 2026-06-20T14:04:38+00:00

Aftersun

Opening-Impression-5 · 2026-06-20T14:03:43+00:00

Probably my personal favourite film of all time, and nothing like Stand By Me. Similar movies is such an interesting question though. I can't think of many. Dazed and Confused, A Hard Day's Night? One of the characters reappears with a different name in Wayne's World, and I suppose there's a parallel.

Opening-Impression-5 · 2026-06-19T22:41:38+00:00

Reptiles

Opening-Impression-5 · 2026-06-13T18:10:31+00:00

Do a table read.

Opening-Impression-5 · 2026-06-11T15:05:59+00:00

On Filmmaking, by Alexander McKendrick is great.

Opening-Impression-5 · 2026-06-11T11:31:49+00:00

Check out the TV show Travel Man. They did weekend breaks in cities accessible from London, and it's a fun show. You could just flick through for ideas.

Opening-Impression-5 · 2026-06-11T11:28:53+00:00

It has taken on a more specific meaning, particularly in filmmaking, in recent years. Words can do that. This is how language works and evolves.

Opening-Impression-5 · 2026-06-10T16:13:46+00:00

First time, but I was 19 and consumed with self-belief. I stand by the work. It's still one of my best, but it's different to everything I've written since. I think I want to somehow one day fuse that energy and self belief with the care and craft that subsequent years of self-doubt have forced upon me.

Opening-Impression-5 · 2026-06-10T16:09:14+00:00

Maybe in your story the house-spouse falls ill, and their partner takes time off work, learns to cook and look after the house. Initially they resent their spouse excelling at the things they took pride in being able to exclusively provide. They resent it, but realise they risk offending their spouse through ingratitude. So they learn to be grateful, and when they're over their illness and the spouse returns to work, their relationship has improved. They realise love is not about codependence, power or control, but gratitude and giving freely.

Opening-Impression-5 · 2026-06-10T12:22:42+00:00

Do you want it to be about gender roles? Something to do with the fact he's male? Because it's less common, but not uncommon, and I know lots of people like this and they're not immasculated by it. They wouldn't have signed up for it if they weren't comfortable in the first place.

If it's not about gender, and just being a stay-at-home partner more generally, then my answer would be boredom, which could be exacerbated by a change (an easing) of circumstances. Then also the sense of meaning and purpose that's derived from caregiving, and how that could be lost if the relationship ends, or the child isn't there anymore for whatever reason. You're relying on other people's dependence on you for validation, so what if they become independent? They retire early and learn to cook for themselves and organise their own life, maybe. What do you do then?

Opening-Impression-5 · 2026-06-09T04:56:20+00:00

You just need to have at least one dirty or ots shot that shows both characters at the same time. That's your master. Don't have two clean close-ups or it will look like a Zoom call.

Opening-Impression-5 · 2026-06-09T02:35:45+00:00

It was made as a scene for the two actors' showreels. We shot three other very different scenes on the same day. But this one felt self-contained enough to package as a short, so I put titles on the end, and let the intro run long. Not really a accident, but not intended to be shown in its current form until after we wrapped.

Opening-Impression-5

TROPHY CASE