Independent Research on Film Openings

Independent Research on Film Openings

For my independent research on film openings I have to decided to find out why Deadpool did its opening credits the way it did

Deadpools credits are unusual because instead of writing the actual persons name with each job they did, they decided to write something that they thought described the job they were doing. For example for the people who wrote the film they put "The Real Heroes Here" as shown in the image to the left.


The reason why Deadpool did their credits the way they did was because each title including "a British villain" and "A CGI Character" all perfectly fit their place on the film opening and so the director of the film who was Tim Miller showed it to the writers and producers and they all decided to stick with it because they thought it would be hilarious.

This will help me when it comes to making my own film opening because it gives an alternate way to introduce all the people involved in the film.

In Depth Analysis of Casino Royale

In Depth Analysis of Casino Royale

As seen in the image to the right, at the start of the film the screen covers in red which could be used to represent blood being split, showing that during the film there could be blood and danger as the colour red usually represents danger and bloodshed in a film. This could also suggest that throughout the the whole film their will be the use of guns to stop the enemies getting what they want.

As seen in the image to the left, when the opening sequence introduces the name of the film all four suits of a card deck are all shown four times which could mean that the whole film could take place in and around a casino somewhere and also this part of the opening sequence could suggest that betting could be involved in the film.

During the film opening their is a lot of gun use in the film which could suggest that there will a lot of violence because of all this gun use. Also the use of these guns could suggest that the genre of this film is the action genre because of all the gun shooting. There could also be another genre included into this which is the thriller genre because you dont know what is going to happen and who is going to get shot or not

                                                                                                                                                                   
In the opening sequence their is a lot of fighting going on which could mean that James Bond may have to fight a whole criminal organisation and because some of them explode in to cards when they die this could mean that bond may have to fight them on a poker table. The fighting that goes on adds more to the genre of action.

 As seen in the image to the right there is a lot of poker tables shown in the film opening which could suggest that a poker game will almost definitely be played and this poker game will have huge influences on the film because a man is also being shot in the same scene as all the poker tables meaning that this poker game could be off huge importance.

This will help me when it comes to making my own film opening because this film opening tells me what order to put my titles in and for how long as well.

Class Film Opening Analysis

Class Film Opening Analysis

For are film opening analysis we did in class we did the film My Best Friends Wedding

• The titles in the film look posh and over the top and they made the titles look like they had been handwritten.
• Throughout the whole film opening there was always a pink background.
• Also in the film opening it only shows bridesmaids and the bride which could tell us that the film is going to take place at a wedding.

   

• In this film opening we can tell that the film is going to be a romantic comedy because as seen in the photo, she threw her bouquet and the caught her own bouquet that she bought.
• The atmosphere in this film opening is all happy and upbeat which could show that the film could be all upbeat and nice.
• Their are three themes in this film opening that are shown a lot and they are love, joy and pleasure. 

This will help me when it comes to making my own film opening because it shows me what works with this specific genre if we were to use this genre.

Similarities and Differences in Film Openings

Similarities and Differences in Film Openings

Film Name/Opening Sequence watched	Similarities	Differences
Spectre	All three of these films put the name of the director at the very end of the clip to show his importance. Both this film and Se7en show their institutional logos almost instantly.	Spectre shows the name of their director for a longer amount of time than the other two films.
Se7en	Both this film and Spectre introduce their main character quickly in their opening sequence	Se7en uses fast paced editing in most of their opening sequence
Lord of War	Lord of war and Spectre both use slow paced editing mainly throughout the entire opening sequence	Lord of War introduces their main character much slower than the other two films. Lord of War shows its institutional logo much later than the other two

Differences between film openings and trailers

Differences between film openings and trailers

The difference between a film opening and a trailer is that a trailer builds up tension and it does not reveal anything major about the plot, a trailer also uses fast paced editing and trailers also give the general gist of the film. Trailers usually end on cliffhanger to leave the audience thinking about what would happen to the characters and what would happen in the film. During trailers there is usually a lot of fade to blacks used because in a trailer it is a montage of clips. In a trailer the titles come at the end and institution logos come at the start.

The difference between a trailer and a film opening is that a film opening uses slow paced editing compared to the fast paced editing of trailers. A film opening usually sets the scene and it must have all the titles in it, including putting the directors name at the end of the opening scene. Film openings are supposed to immerse the audience into the film they are watching.      During a film opening there is information about the genre and the indication of the place shown in the opening sequence. 

G321 Preliminary Task Evaluation

Preliminary Task Evaluation

Do you believe your piece of film demonstrates continuity well?

I do believe that our film demonstrates continuity well because the film opening and the interrogation scene were filmed on different days.

As we can see from these two images we have demonstrated continuity well because the image of the interrogation scene on the top was filmed a week before the entrance was filmed so in order to have good continuity we needed to organise when we would then film the entrance scene and decide what day to come in and film with the same clothes on. It was important that we have good visual continuity because if we didn't have good continuity in our film, it would just be a series of events that are just jumbled up and this would make the audience feel disillusioned with the film.

Have you demonstrated match on action, shot reverse shot and the 180 degree rule? If so, why are these editing techniques useful?

We demonstrated all of these editing techniques and first of all in these first two images we show the match on action shot which is when the camera cuts between two different shots in a film for example, in our own film we filmed someone opening a door and then cut to the other side and filmed him coming through the door. The match on action editing technique is very useful because the two camera shots may have been filmed hours or weeks apart but the editing of the film makes it look like continuous time and that it was filmed all in one shot. This is useful because it avoids any disruption to the film by just letting the film flow. Match on action is very important in helping the audience continually know what is going on in a film. A match on action shot could show a false sense of continuity to the viewer who could think they did it in just one shot.

These next two images both show how we used the shot reverse shot and the 180 degree rule. The shot reverse shot is a film editing technique, for example in our film we show the  interrogator

looking at the other character which is the interrogatee and then the interrogatee is shown looking back at the interrogator and this establishes eye contact between the two characters and this creates the effect of the viewer actually thinking they are looking at each other and having a conversation. The shot reverse shot is useful for showing interactions during a conversation. 

The 180 degree rule is in film making and it is where the camera cannot cross the 180 degree axis because if the camera crosses the 180 degrees the film could become confusing and disorientating.



How do you feel your group worked together

I feel that me and my group worked well together because we all played a part in each process including making the script because we all discussed what the interrogator and the interrogatee should say and how they should say so we debated on whether the interrogator should be calm or be agitated when talking to the person that is being interrogated and for the interrogatee to be fearless or to be cowardly and shy while talking to the interrogator.We also worked together as a group well by making the shot list with all the shots we were gonna use from are storyboard we then consulted with each other about how long each shot would be and whether we would need to bring any props in for any of the shots we were filming that day. We also collaborated as a group with making the storyboard because everyone in the group discussed on each stage of the storyboard what was the best thing to do and this helped us when we came to actually filming our piece because we knew exactly where we were going to film our piece and this made the filming process easier because we knew what to do and where to do it so all we needed to do was actually film it. When it came to the editing process we helped each other by giving useful comments about the editing and advice to each other about how to do it. Also our working relationship with each other was good and at the start of this preliminary task we set up a group chat so that we could communicate about our media studies preliminary task outside of school and plan what we were going to do over the next few weeks and all agreeing what day to do certain things to do with the preliminary task.

If you were to film this piece again would there be anything you would improve upon

If we were to film our piece again there would be some things that we would improve upon for example in the image to the left while we were filming the interrogation scene there was actually someone standing to side in our film and we didn't notice this until we had finished the film, so one thing to improve is to make sure no one else is standing or indeed sitting in the film while we are actually filming. 

If we did do this piece again we would improve on this establishing shot by first zooming in to the character and then we has put his phone away we would zoom out to show the whole area and we would only go into the opening titles when the audience watching the film lose sight of the character as he has gone off screen because if we increased the establishing it would show a wider place and set the scene perfectly by showing completely were we are. 

Did you plan your film well?

I think that we did plan our film well because we talked over each stage of the storyboard and as we can see from this image, we decided what to do for each scene on a posting note and then we stuck these to a piece of paper and as you can see, we then annotated each posting note with what camera shot we should use when filming that specific scene and whether we needed any props for any of the scenes as well. On the posting notes we showed what we were going to do for each scene in the film and on these posting notes we drew the establishing shot we were going to do at the start and then the match on action shot in the next scene.

In the next image to the left is the piece of paper which we created the interview on because it shows how we do a shot of the first character and then shot of the second character and then a shot back to the first character and this demonstrates the shot reverse shot that we used in our film. We also annotated what the body language of the first character should be who is the interrogator so we put notes around him about how he should act. For the second character who is the person who is getting interrogated we also put notes around him on what his body language should be and how he should act. On this part of our planning we also started to make our script with a few lines coming off from each person about what they should say during the interrogation scene.

Did you transitions in your piece?

We did use transitions in our piece and in our very first shot which is an establishing shot when  the establishing shot is finishing we first pan out of the shot using the camera and the importance of the panning shot is that it gives the viewer a panoramic view of the setting that they are at and we used this after the establishing shot because we wanted to establish the scene fully by adding in the panning shot. The panning shot in our film is used to build the suspense because it stays with the character until it fades into the title sequence. As we can see from these two images after we had used a panning shot we decided to use a fade to gradually fade out to the title sequence and a bit more tension with the music. We used a fade which is where after a shot has taken place the screen gradually fades to black and leads into the next scene or a title sequence which happens in our own film. We also use a really quick fade to black shot at the end of the film and this gives it a mysterious feel to it because the film ends on a cliff hanger and you don't know what is actually going to happen or what he is about to do.

Have you learnt anything about the editing software whilst doing this exercise?

I have learnt a few things from the editing software we were using which was iMovie but I wasn't the main person in the editing I was just suggesting ideas and giving comments to the editing that was happening or that had happened and we were as group discussing the editing.

One of the few things I learnt was how to speed up the importing process so instead of going through all of our clips and importing one at a time, we could place all of the clips we wanted to use into a drop box and this made it easier when we were editing. Another thing I learnt from iMovie is how to stabilise our footage because we did not use a tripod in every scene and all we did was we went to the stabilisation button which is above the preview window  and we then enabled stabilise shaky video and this was useful to us because it stopped all the camera shake that was happening when we watched our film back.






What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this film?

I have learnt about the editing software we used which was iMovie and I now know the basics of how to edit a film or a single clip in iMovie. Before we started the task I didn't know how to make a cut or use transitions.
In the image to the left is the camera we used to film our piece and although I was acting in some parts of our movie, I still learnt a small bit of the camera and how to film scenes while using the camera on the tripod. Before we started this task I didn't know how to use one of these cameras and now I know the very basics of filming a scene.

Our Preliminary Task Film