Research of Film Opening Credits

As part of my film research I have viewed two film openings, Se7en and Silent Hill Revelation. I recorded on a time line what time credit was shown an what each credit said.I recorded the music type and thewhat the text looks like as well.

Music- Dark, Gothic, Rock Song
Text- White, Blocky, Slightly Distressed Look.

The is a link to both Opening sequences...
Silent Hill- Here
Se7en- Here


Thank you for reading,

Tom

DayBreakers Opening Sequence Review

The follow is a step by step review of the opening to the movie 'Ginger Snaps'. I watched the opening and chose these 8 stills to talk about.
You can find a video for the opening sequences here.

1. The establishing shot is a pan shot of dusk in which a bat swoops across the screen. Obviously a bat is a classic connotation of vampiric things. i think that the combination of dawn coming and a bat flying fast away from it is an effective way of setting the genre straight away. It almost does create a sense of mystery as the audience want to know what kind of world this is happening in.
2. Here we have an over the shoulder shot of a little girl who we know nothing about (except that she is writing something), the character is looking at a collage of pictures of herself and friends, with little flower lights all over the wall.. A slightly depressing tone is created, this comes around as the lighting in the room is very dark and gloomy and the lighting on the wall of collages is very bright with all the colours standing out. I feel that this makes it seem as though the girl is reflecting on happier times (the collage being these happier times).
3. This is a still medium shot of the girl placing the sheet of paper we saw her writing on nearer the beginning  This makes the audience curious of what this note is and what it symbolizes.  The note is made to seem important, as the lighting is very brightly directed towards it makes it seem like its something important. Also the audience don't know why she is leaving a note in the first place.
4. This long shot, down a dark mysterious corridor, shows the girl opening a door to a to a very bright exterior place. This image connotes many things, i believe that the most important connotation that comes from this is as follows; i seems as though that the place outside the building is in someway alien to the little girl. This comes as a result of the contrast lighting between indoor and outdoor, also the acting style of the girl is very slow and nervous, almost fear of what might happen.
5. This shot is a medium shot of the girl sitting slumped in the middle of what appears to be a driveway, the audience is drawn into look at the girl, because all the plants and foliage is being blown into the middle of the screen, also the focusing of the camera draws the eyes of the audience into the center as the the camera is focused on the girl and is bluring the surrounding slightly. The design of the set, what with having most things starting or ending down the center, which is obscured by the girl.
6. This shot is a close up shot of the girls face, this is the first time we actually see face in the flesh, one thing you could say is that she looks a lot older here than in the collage in the 2nd pic. This shot is made a bit creepy and eerie, this feeling is made by the complexion of the girl, who is very pale (more so than in the collage), also her eyes, they are a slightly golden colour, what makes this creepy is how they are the most colourful part of the whole frame, also the way she has a very wide eyed stare is rather odd and as such connotes some sort of paranormal thing going on.
7. This extreme close up of the sheet of paper comes in a montage of shots, showing different words. The words are very depressing, and connote the idea that the girl (who we know wrote it because we saw her do so), is unhappy with things.The words never 'grow up' are rather suspicious, by now the audiences suspects that the girl is a vampire, what  with the tone created, the girls eyes and complexion, the sighting of the bat and the lighting. I think that this just boosts the idea. Also at this point the music is starting to swell up and build, possibly a pointer to a big thing/ event coming up.
8. This is a medium shot of the girl being burned by the sunlight. This is the strongest indicator yet that the girl is a vampire, for starters she is burning in the sunlight (a commonly conceived weakness of vampires), and secondly because we can see her teeth, which are fang like. This shot is made disguising, through the graphic visual death of the girl, and the piercing scream that echos around.

Overall this scene uses many little hinters as to the genre the whole way through the scene, i feel this pays off every effectively. There is little to no information given away as to the plot or to any characters (The little girl has no role in  the main film). The tone of the clip is very depressing and reflective, caused by the screen play and the camera angles and lighting. The audience will be confused for most of it and not really understand what is going on throughout the sequence.

Audience Research

Today I created a survey on www.surveymonkey.com a superb website that allows anyone to create a survey, such as myself.

By creating the survey I hope to further develop my understanding of what kind of genre we will aim for and to which demographic we will be targeting...

Click me to go to the survey! - You need to have a Survey Monkey account to access this.

Here are some screen grabs of the responses...

Despite a couple silly answers here is what I have learned from this:

• That the main demographic will be Males and will be split between 16-34. This I feel means that there will be some younger people for watching it for the horror aspect and some older ones watching it for the setting etc.
• That Having it set in an Rural area seems to be better, I feel this is because there is a lot more you can work with in rural areas.
• I have learned that people feel having video FX is a good Idea, as it can help to indicate time and it also allows for lighting to be used more effectively for creating shadows etc.
• The Second last comment on question 8 i feel is very helpful, it says 'It needs to stay with you after the credits have rolled'. This has made me think about how we will end our opening scene, we need to do so in a way that will scare the audience and leave them deep in thought.

As well as this I personally went around Orchard (the house i'm in at school) and asked several of my friends some similar questions. I got responses as such as; 'I personally like to see classic style of horror films, ones that have a tricky plot and murders in'. also, 'I think that the idea of having it in the 1940's could work well, mainly because of the tensions of the time'. plus 'I like to see horror films that dont really show to much of the murders, but instead leave it to the imagination'. I also asked my Media studies teacher, Mr Milburn, who said 'The type of \Horror films I like to watch are those that dont really follow convention, its cool when the story is full of doubt and mystery'.

This I feel is very helpful indeed, as it has given me a lot of good ideas that i shall discuss with my group, that concern story line, screen play and editing.

Ginger Snaps Opening Sequence Review

The follow is a step by step review of the opening to the movie 'Ginger Snaps'. I watched the opening and chose these 8 stills to talk about.
You can find a video for the opening sequences here.

1. The establishing shot is a hand held camera, we get a medium shot of a girl with a person lain strew on a bed. Several sinister connotations are given, these are the facial expression of the girl which is almost miserable, next is the lighting which is very grimy and dull, also the dark patches around the person in the background seem to resemble blood. This leaves the audience confused as to what has happened to the person in the background and leaves them wanting to know what has happened to the girl in the foreground.
2. This one is more simple but just as effective. We have a medium shot of a girl killed by a garage door, the idea of her being dead comes from the massive pool of blood. A sense of mystery is created around this shot as well. The first mysterious thing is the camera angle, it as though someone with a hand held camera is kneeling in front of the girl, this creates mystery as the audience will want to know whats going on and why on earth these girls are being killed. Another mysterious thing is the piece of paper stuck to the garage door, the audience have know idea what it is, and this once again draws them in.
3.  Here we see a high angle medium/long shot of a girl in a full bath with all her clothes on. This camera angle gives the girl a weak brittle vibe and her slumped posture seem to connote fatality.We enter this shot with echoing laughter being played, laughter is commonly considered to show happiness, but it along with the shot and the music seem to connote sadness and as a result it feels creepy. At this point the audience will be very eager to gain some form of understanding as to what the purpose is for these girls deaths.
4. This shot is the most disturbing shot of them all in my opinion. it is a close up on a person that we do not know the gender of (but presume its a girl given the pattern up to that point) with a clown balloon secured of its face with a note. I feel this time the Mise-en-Scene plays an important role in telling the audience something definitely is astray from the ordinary. I feel that the contrasting happiness of the clown face and the miserableness of the situation is a very effective way of creating anxiety, fear and an unwelcome hostile aura is given off.
5. This shot is high angle shot of a girl with a pitch fork stuck in her neck.The audio for this one creates a deadening realism about the situation.When there is a shot transition we here a sudden thump, this represents the pitch fork stabbing the girls neck. This sound makes the whole scene seem much more gruesome. Once again we get a mysterious camera angle that makes it look like someone is looking down on the action.
6. This is the darkest shot in terms of lighting and as a result is made to look the very disturbing. The shot we have is a low medium shot of a girl who is dead and has tape all over her. Before this shot we get coloured shots of a shoe a sign and a blooded knife, all in quick succession. The shot we see is almost satanic, there are many candles all around her which gives an ominous and disturbed feeling. other things like the way she is taped up and the blood Patterson all around the room add to this feeling. Once again something mysterious occurs, we see a different parts of here body with number tags ( the sort you find at a crime scene).
7. This shot is a medium shot of a girl who has a lawnmower plowing into her chest and ripping out her intestines. This shot is the most inventive of all of the ones so far, this could represent an increase in the methods of the murderer or who ever is causing the deaths of all the girls. It is also the most gruesome of the deaths so far as we can see the girls bowels. This death seems to be the most out of place, it is set in the middle of an ordinary well  kempt garden. This will confuse the audience as all the other deaths seemed so much more serious and threatening and this one seems almost comical.
8. This shot is a long shot of a girl who has hung herself in a bedroom. This one also seems to be vaguely satanic as we can once more see candles in the back ground that seem very dark and depressing. The dark, grimy lighting adds to this effect. This death stands out as one that seems to be more likely suicide, this is because she has hung herself and the chair lying in a position that indicates her pushing it away before falling.

Overall, this opening sequences uses many different scenes of fatality to really make its genre of horror evident. The information is given across in an odd way, it shows many pictures and gives nothingabout characters nor story, it adds a lot of mystery though. The tone of the clip is very depressing and scary, this is put over by the screen play and the music, which is slow paced instrumentals.

Se7en Opening Sequence Review

The follow is a step by step review of the opening to the movie 'Se7en'. I watched the opening and chose these 8 stills to talk about.
You can find a video for the opening sequences here.

1. This is the establishing shot to the opening to the sequence, it doesn't give much away although it does almost set the mood for the rest of the sequences. This idea comes from the music and the lighting. the music seems very sketchy and distorted, with a weirdly manipulated beat, which connotes bad things.
2. A These gnarled and chard hands draw the audience in, as they want to know who, what and why there are these pictures. This is reinforced with the camera angle as it makes it out as though someone is standing over looking down, also the flickering shadow that is moving around gives an eerie mysterious feel.
3. This kind of shot tells the audience that there is going to be some kind of mentally strange character in the film. There is good use of Mise-en-Scene and camera here with the extreme close-up increasing the intensity of the grimy hands cutting the skin off their fingers with a razor blade.
4. Here we see the movie title for the first time, along with it we see a hand with several band-aids collecting an old tattered book. I feel this is more transitional that meaningful, in that i mean the book is meant to represent this character reflecting back on things he has done.
5. This close up still comes after a montage of the character cutting pictures and primitively cutting tape, so its as though the character is creating a collage.  This again seems to be pointing to wards the character being a little psycho .
6. The close up on the boys face being drawn over certainly connotes bad intentions, from this point on the \sequences takes a more serious and dark turn. The first inclination of this comes with the sudden change in the musics beat.
7. This extreme close up shot of lots of fish hooks stuck to some tape comes soon after 6 and simply reinforces the idea of it becoming more serious.
8. The build up to this close up shows the character preparing equipment, and given the previous shots of gruesome pictures, the audience would have been led to believe that some bad thing was going to happen, but instead the character sews pieces of parchment. 

Overall, this opening sequence is done as a montage in order to show the 'villain' reflecting on this deeds and making a collage of his work. The information is quite easy to understand as it uses powerful images of repulsive things. The tone of the clip is very dark all the way through, the tone comes across in the music and the lighting and the actions on screen (Mise-en-Scene).

The Coming Week

Over this coming week i shall be post 5+ reviews of a variety of film opening sequences. The films i choose to review will be of similar genre to the genre I wish to create for my project. i have discussed with my group and we have decided on a horror (or similar) genre.

My Preliminary Task

Here is the preliminary task that we have been set. Below the video is a review which includes; info in the task, pres and cons, what i want to do next time.

I completed the task with my group, which includes myself and three others.
Tom (myself) - Director and Camera.
Ollie - Actor.
Ed - Main editor and actor
Jonny - Camera.
We all helped in the editing stage.

The Cons are as follows:

• The continuity error at  0:28 secs.
• The silly music.
• The addition of bloopers at the end.
• Poor video an audio quality.
• Lack of still shots.

The Pros are as follows:

• Good variation in shot type. ( i.e shot reverse shot etc)
• Good story board. ( this made it easy on set to get all the shots we needed without much fuss)
• Kept to the 90 degree rule.

What i am planing on doing next time.

• Make sure i have adequate equipment.
• Improve mise-en-scene. ( get better costumes etc, better location).
• Pick a location that has a decent amount of space to work the cameras ( the place we shot this was very restricting for the camera as it was so small).
• Make sure that when editing i continually am checking the continuity (by watching it over and over).
• Increase number f still shots that i am using
• Make sure i again have a good story board for when on set.
• Get more relevant music ( the editor decided to put titanic with out telling anyone).

Thanks for reading, follow this blog for updates on my AS media.

First Post!

Hello, welcome to my blog... My name is Tom and this Blog will be based solely on my AS Media course work!