What have I learnt from mapping?

Mapping is something I have learnt during my AS Media course. Mappings are either at the beginning or end of a film and contain information such as; directors, producers, designer and photographers.

So far I have learnt that there is more work that goes into a film and a lot more people are involved than just the actors and director.  I have also discovered that when the credits are shown at the end, the cast of actors always come in a specific order and it is normally the actors who have a bigger role in the play appear first and all the actors who are less involved are at the bottom. The main actor’s names will always come up on their own before we have been shown the full cast list, and who did the casting. In all of my three films, there hasn’t only ben producers or directors there are always co-producers as well, who help contribute to the film.

Another few things I have learnt are that not only is there someone who comes up with all the music ideas, but there is also a separate person to edit the music and to supervise the music choices. There are designated people that design things like costume and production. I have found out that there is such thing as director of photography and I didn’t know that before.

From the Mappings of each film it has shown me that each piece of text on the screen should be there no longer than on average 7 seconds, unless it is the title of the film or the director’s name. I also noticed that most of the films I mapped where based on a book but the book was normally written by someone else, these pieces of text will stay in the shot for a little longer than the other pieces of text excluding the name of the Director and the title of the film.

Mappings have taught me that every film should have a minimum of 22 and a maximum of 26 titles that are in the sequence, for my film this may differ as I am unaware of how many actors I will have.