Planning & Construction.

I am in a group of two for the coursework, i need to start planning certain sections in order for me to complete this task. the task is to create the titles and opening of a new film, to last a maximum of two minutes.

We decided to give our film opening a classification of 12A, this is because we believed that our film opening implied death but it did not show it. A quote from the BBFC guidelines for a 12A film is 'Moderate violence is allowed but should not dwell on detail.'

In order to create our film opening. The following Equipment & Software were needed;

-Panasonic NV GS500

-Tripod
-Sticky Tape
-Pen
-Kodak Camera
-Photo Paper
-Printer
-ScrapBook


To start off the planning we discussed the what genre of film we would like to produce, we discussed doing a horror, comedy and romance films. we came to the final decision of a romance film, we decided this because we believed this to be too 'obvious' and also many students in the past have done horror films. We then discussed comedy we thought this may be too difficult to do as we only have 2 minutes to do it in, we believed that we needed more time to give the comedy a chance at success. We then got onto the genre romance we decided on this genre because we thought it would make a very good film, we had some inspiration from the film 'Time Travelers Wife'



We decided that we did not want to make a typical film opening where the couple are constantly kissing and expressing their love for on another, so we decided that we would put a twist on it. The idea of doing a twist to our film opening came from the film 'Dear John'



And also 'The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud'



We both decided on a twist, that twist being that the boyfriend of the relationship was in fact dead, and that she was struggling to come to terms with it. We both agreed that our film opening had to be different and not too obvious, we have chosen to do the film opening using a scrap book and photos of a couple. The girlfriend in the couple is going to be creating the scrap book as the film goes along.

This photograph shows you the first few shots of our film, it involves the scrap book, the girl turning the page, a manual focus on the tape, a close up side shot of her writing in the notebook, a close up of what she has just wrote, her turning the page again, another manual focus on the pen, and a zoom from the full page into the photograph, this will them go to a white out to give the effect of her remembering what could have been, if he were still alive. We thought that this would give a very good idea about what was going to happen in the film. After the white out we see a piece of footage of the boyfriend walking a dog down a track. then he falls and we go back to her sat at the desk putting the scrap book together.

This next photograph shows you the next couple of steps into our film opening. This part comes after the white out, we see a close up of the dog walking across the shot from right to left and then we get a wide shot of the dog and his owner. Next we see the owner crouching down to stroke the dog, then an extreme close up of the dogs lead, another wide shot this time of the dog running away, from right to left. Another wide shot of the ground and the dog's tail leaving the shot. We then go to wide shot of the boyfriend laid on the floor, there is then another white out and we see the photo of the boyfriend walking the dog.

We then go back to the room scene, firstly we see a wide shot of the door, then a side view of the girlfriend sat at the desk fixing the book together, then we have a close up of the girl looking down at the scrap book, with a tear rolling down her face. There is then a rear view of the girlfriend sat at the desk. then her closing up the book, her getting up out of the chair, a wide shot of her walking away from the side, and her walking out of the door. This helps to portray that the film is going to carry on, and that it will not stop there.

For audio we have decided that we are going to be using a piece or music from the web page http://www.freeplaymusic.com/ called 'Stardance' this music seems to go extremely well with our film opening sequence ideas.

Stardance

We chose this music because we thought that it would go really well with the footage that we have. Also it kind of reminds you of time, and traveling back and for through time and it also had that thoughtful feel to it.

The characters we have chosen to use are a boy and a girl in a relationship. We thought about using these two in our film opening because they are already together and they would be able to understand the emotions the we need them to portray in the film. we have chosen, Jamie Richardson and Jessica Beecham, we are also using a dog in the film opening, the dog we are using is my dog called Charlie.

The location of the film opening is going to be in Normanby - By - Spital, down a lane called Mill Lane and also in my house, Tretower Cottage. We chose this location because we thought it would be a good place for filming, as it is a regular dog walking site and also there is hardly any traffic on the road.

Props that we will be using are the following;

• A pen
• A scrapbook 
• Some sticky tape
• A lamp
• A dog lead 

We have chosen to use these props as they are necessary for our film.

The weather

Issues that we had.

We had a few issues with

 We chose to film on Friday night and Saturday daytime. We thought this was a good time to film because it was the time that we could get our actors, my partner and myself together, we then decided after we had filmed our media that the music we had chosen Stardance was no good, that it didn't go with what we had got, it originally went with our ideas but not with the real thing. We have looked a few other options for music. Path finder,      Counting Sand,       End scene,         Morning after the storm.

my personal favourite and the one i think will go with our film opening most is Morning after the storm.

 We have edited our film opening, we have chosen to use the music Morning after the storm.

We thought that this would be the best music to use as it goes really well with the footage we have got.

 Another issue we had was the off-screen dialogue, this did not go with the footage we had, we hoped that it would but it just didn't work, so we decided to cut it. This gave us chance to extend the music to go along with the footage.

 When we filmed our film opening, we didn't film enough cut away, this created a problem, as when we developed our film opening, it did not "flow", we then decided to resolve the situation by adding some titles with quotes which said; 

'We will open the book.../...It's pages are blank.'

'When one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book.'

'We are going to put the words on them ourselves.../...but translate it into a better language.'

'What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments.../...but what is woven into the lives of others.'

 We decided that this would guide the audience into the story a bit more. We then discovered that it has gone more towards watching a film trailer rather than a film opening.

To make it look less like a trailer we have chosen to film a dialogue scene between 'Natalie's' parents, this will help it to create the sense of it carrying on. This will be the first dialogue scene we have in our film opening. 

The script for this dialogue scene will be as follows; 

mum; We have to do something about her, she won't put the book down.

dad; Well what are we meant to do, we can't lock her up or anything like that can we?

mum; No i am not saying do that at all, i think she needs to go and see someone, she has a problem.

dad; I can see where you are coming from but we can't force her to do anything.

mum; Yes, but sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind. 

dad; But this is our little girl.

 Another issue we had was with the titles for the actors. We originally had 'Jamie Richardson' on the screen for 3 seconds, but 'Jessica Beecham' on screen for about 8 seconds, also, 'Jamie Richardson' was situated in the wrong place, it was originally next to him laid on the floor, this didn't go well because it looked like it was next to his corpse. 

 We have changed this so that there is equal billing for both actors. This is much better now, they are both on for the same amount of time, this is approximately 5 seconds. 

 We created a questionnaire to give to members of our class, we decided to give them to our class because they were the right age group for our target audience.

 Here are the Results for our questionnaire.

1. The first question we asked was there gender, we gave out questionnaires to 5 females and 5 males, this gave us an equal opinion of the following questions. 

2.   We asked them their age this gave us a rough idea of who our target audience was going to be 

3. We then asked what type of genres they enjoy watching, this gave us an insight of what type of film opening we should do.

4. The question of what they look for in a film opening was asked, we thought it would be appropriate to ask this question as we needed to have a good understanding of what we should contain in our film opening.

5. We also asked them if music was important in a film opening, this helped us to decide whether we needed to include any in our sequence. 

 Along with question 5, we asked them why this was, the responses to this question were things such as;

• 'Because it sets the scene for the following scenes' 
• 'If not the opening will become very boring, it should be able to interest me in the opening.'
• 'It sets the scene and makes you feel involved.'
• 'Sets the tone of the movie.'
• 'Because the opening of a film is the part that draws the attention of the audience into the film.'
• 'Music helps to create mood. The mood at the opening of the film is vital as it encourages the audience  to stick with the movie or not.'
• 'Helps set the scene, and adds tone and depth.'
• 'Because the music tells us the theme and emotion into the film.' 

Post production.

 We went into our post production room, this helped us to develop our film opening using the programme called Adobe after effects suite, this is not accessible in the classroom so we had to go through to the technicians room. We changed a few things in here, we changed the titles. The titles were changed in order to create a more visual effect on the titles. The titles we changed were, 'Starring Jamie Richardson' we decided to animate the title by it coming in by a foggy animation staying on for 4 seconds and then it exiting the shot by an evaporation effect. We did exactly the same for the title 'Jessica Beecham' this works well on both occasions. 

 We also moved the title 'Stages Productions'  to the front of the film opening. We moved this to here because it made the opening flow more than it did before the dialogue scene, also where it was before, you would have expected the title to be there instead of a production title.

 We changed the order of the text, this works a lot better, in order for it to work we also had to rearrange the order of the shots. When we moved all of the text and shots we re watched it and it made much more sense. 

 The music was changed in the beginning of the opening in order to make the opening flow. We start the music when the title 'We will open the book' with the music starting here, this is because we thought that it helped the film opening flow a lot better and it didn't sound out of place. 

More Research

The research this time is on movie title sequences.



This is a tittle sequence to a movie called Cold Mountain. There are many features to this title sequence, i have listed them below:

A voice over is used in this title sequence right at the beginning, this voice over is from a character in the film, a woman, who is setting the scene to the audience by reading out a letter to her loved one. This also is introducing a character and the following scene.

Text on screen is also used at the beginning, this helps the audience to understand where and when the film is set and also what the film includes.

The colour used in the film is very significant. Underground where the soldiers are planting gun powder, the colours are reds, oranges and browns. These symbolise death, it also suggests to the audience that there may be death about to happen in the scene. It gives a sense of hell too.

The colour used in the scene of the soldiers that are above ground are blues and greens, this symbolises peace and joy and also happiness in the current scene, although this does not last there is a definite contrast in the two sets.

Sound is used in the title sequence in many different ways, it is used for the theme song to the film, this is very appropriate to the American nation it is a kind of southern blues tune. This is then interrupted by an impact sound, the impact sound is when the gunpowder blows up and it interrupts the theme song to the film. It makes the audience aware of what has just happened by the sudden change in sound.

The use of props in this title sequence varies from coats to wheel barrows and even notebooks. The notebook is the prop that i am going to talk about, you can tell that he has been at war for a time that he thinks is too long, this is shown by the state of the notebook he has in his ruck sack. The state that the notebook is in, is very grotty and tattered, he has also been twisting it in his hands for a while as it is in the shape that you would expect to find a telescope in. He keeps a photograph of his lover in this notebook, this represents his affection to her and also that he is missing her. He twists the notebook into a round 'telescope' shape for a bit of comfort, he misses home a lot.

Make up has been used in this title sequence to make the actors hands look very grubby and dirty, this is to show that he often twists the notebook in his ruck sack for comfort.

The animation of the titles is very slight, the titles are shown at the beginning of the sequence, whilst the voice over is being played. They are placed onto a background of water, this ripples, as this ripples the titles move very slightly, this appeals to the audience more than the titles would if they are plain and stationary. The use of water at the beginning suggests the separation of the two lovers and also the distance in which they are apart.

A rabbit is used in the title sequence to link the two opposition forces together, because it is seen in the tunnel where one force is and also in the defence trench is. The rabbit it also used in the sequence as a decoy, it is there to lure the soldiers into the trap of the opposition.

Another title sequence we have looked at is, Donnie Darko. This title sequence is very unusual in many different ways, this is carried on throughout the film.



At the beginning of the sequence we see a man lying down in the middle of the road,with his bicycle next to him, it is staged that way as if to say he has fallen off it. This is a very unusual start to a sequence it is not something you see everyday.

There is then a landscape image whilst the man, (Donnie) gets to his feet. When he is getting to his feet he stands up with his back to the camera, emerging from the bottom of the frame and then slowly turns around to face the camera with a sly looking smile. This is a very odd introduction to a shot as it is very rarely done.

The costume in this opening is also very strange, at the beginning Donnie is wearing his pyjamas, this suggests to the audience that he sleep walks and ended up in the middle of the road.

The time in which the film is set is in the autumn we are told this by many various hints in the  sequence. E.g. the father is blowing the leaves which have fallen off the trees into a pile to be swept up, another hint is the big orange poster advertising a Halloween Carnival, this shows that it is autumn.

Time in this sequence has been messed with as it has been slowed down and also sped up. E.g. is when the mother is walking across the grass and the father points the leaf blower at her, when this happens, the time is sped up as she runs away from the leaf blower. Another example is when the younger sister is jumping on the trampoline, the time is slowed down and then sped up. This is an unusual thing to do as nothing in reality is ever sped up or slowed down.

Another strange feature in the sequence is when Donnie goes to the fridge and opens it to look for something to eat, we can see what i son the door of the fridge, this is intended for us to read the sign which states 'Where is Donnie?' This is unusual  because normal families would have notes like, 'buy butter' or dates of important upcoming events not notes asking where a member of their family is.

The titles in the 'Donnie Darko' title sequence are seen at the beginning. The main title of the movie is, 'Donnie Darko' this title is animated, the way in which it is animated is that it expands to fit the screen, then it disappears when the light from the dot  on top of the i, it then proceeds to cover the whole text and then there is a cut away from the title.

Sound is used in many different ways throughout this title sequence. E.g. At the very beginning there is sound used from a thunderstorm, this makes the film seem very eery and scary. but as the sequence goes on, the music changes. the thunderstorm is used to blend in with the chirping of the birds. We then hear non diegetic sound, this is a song being played over the top of the images used in the sequence. There is foregrounded sound of the leaf blower over the top of the song and also the springs on the trampoline is foregrounded. The sound of the song being played is carried on whilst Donnie is walking to the refrigerator, it then suddenly cuts when the scene is cut, this is an unusual process to have with regards to sound, the audience usually expects the music to fade out slowly.

Another opening sequence to a film we have watched is City of God.


The beginning of this film sequence is very strange as it starts with the titles appearing in silence, this goes on for a while then all of a sudden there is a foregrounded sound of somebody sharpening a knife on a rock. this suggests to the audience that there may be some killing is about to happen, for either recreational purposes or food purposes.

We then get the other sound that is happening around the knife.

Research

In early research for our coursework, we looked at the title sequence for a TV show, we know that it is a TV show but this has taught me a lot about title sequences.



The first TV show title sequence we watched was Six Feet Under, below are some of the features included in the prgoramme are listed below.

Close - ups are used in title sequences to draw the audiences attention to what the programme is about. E.g In Six Feet Under, we see a close - up of some feet, which have a tag on, this suggests to the audience that it is a human body.

Titles are displayed in the programme in various ways, on grave stones, on the embalming fluid, the seperation of the hands at the beginning leave a title, these all symbolise death.

A shot of somebody disinfecting their hands suggests to the audience some kind of hospital, and that they may have just been dealing with somebody who has passed on.

Impact music has been used, a good example of this is when the wheel on the trolley moves rapidly, this draws the audiences attention to the fact that the programme is going to take place in a hospital and also that something has happened.

A crow has been used in the programmes opening title sequence, this symbolises death this is because crow's are associated with death as they are scavengers.

The name of the programme has been shown to the audience in a very clever way, a shot of the tree has been used, with roots coming down witht he name in a box made by the roots. This represents the cycle of life and also the roots represent the title, they are going down six feet.


Dexter, is another TV programme we have watched and picked up tips off.




This has used similiar features to Six Feet Under, Close - ups have been used, in this TV programme the use of close - ups is also representative to death. E.g. the close - up of Dexter swatting the mosquito, this gives the audience a insight into what type of person he is, and that he likes to kill things.

Natural diegetic sound has been used in this TV programme, the sounds go well with the images used, as they represent two things, the exact thing they are meant to and also people's body parts and blood. E.g. the ham that is sizzling in the frying pan. This represents the reality to the imnage, of some ham being fried but also the horrible thoughts of an animal gorging on a piece of meat.

The use of image in this title sequence has been used to represent body parts being torn, broken, mushed and squeezed. E.g. the coffee beans being grinded in the coffee machine, this makes the audience think of bones being crushed, another example is when Dexter is putting his t-shirt on, the image given to the audience represents a body bag. All these images symbolise death.

Non  - diegetic sound is used throughout this title sequence. The use of a theme tune for the TV programme, is that it reminds the viewer of what they are watching, if it is catchy enough then people are more likely to remember it and also it lets the TV programme have its own unique feel to it. Another use of non - diegetic music is the use of a triangle when the blood droplet lands in the sink. This draws the audiences attention to the blood droplet, and how it is significant to the programme.

A different title sequence we have watched and learnt from was one from a former De Aston student. El Hombre Angelico is a title sequence involving murders.



The features used in this Movie Title Sequence were again, close - ups, there were close - ups of the dead people's hands, the blood droplets on the plate, the beef, the mouth chewing on the food, the eye of the murderer. These made the film seem very intense and at the same time 'moreish' in an odd way, that you want to see what happens next.

The music used in the title sequence was very intense, it made it very gripping, this causes tension and also grabs the viewers attention, so that they want to watch it. The constant beat and rhythm of the music is disturbed by the stabbing of the piece of meat, this creates a sense of uncertainty and death.

The titles in this TV programme have been very carefully thought about, sometimes hard to read but very clever in the way it has been laid out. E.g. the names of the actors were written on a letter contained in an envelope, the magnifying glass, this is a very clever one as it creates the mood of mystery so does the name written on the piece of paper which is being burnt.

We viewed To Kill A Mocking Bird to observe the features used in that title sequence.

To Kill a Mocking Bird

The features used in this TV programme are similiar to the previous programmes above.

Close - ups are used again, in this programme theyare used for a reason other than death. The movement of the toys in the box represent.........

The background in this title seqeunce is black, this draws more attention to the foregrounded images, this is done for a reason.

Titles used in this programme are the same for everybody, but different fonts and styles are used to show the certain jobs, the crew have done. E.g. Set Decorations Oliver Emert, these help to seperate the jobs from the people who perform these jobs.

Downton Abbey

This is another TV programme we have watched to pick up on features used in the title sequence.

Titles used in this sequence are all the same style, font, size, this suggests to the audience that no one is better than another person and that they all do the same job. Also at the end of the title sequence the name of the programme is shown on a black and white background, these colours contrast, this suggests to the audience the contrast in the house of thge servants and the residents, that the residents are better and it also implies the contrast of the current house and the house that they will be moving into if they can't find a way to keep their house.

there is use of close - ups in this title sequence, a close up of the plate and the cutlery being perfectly aligned suggests the wealth of the residents. there is also a close up of the bell, this bell is used to call the servants, to a certain room, this suggests the staus and class of the residents as they have servants.

Brief

Video
Main Task: the titles and opening of a new fiction film, to last a maximum of two minutes.