Opening Shots- Independent work.

Opening Shot research

Information on Opening shots:

• Not the most memorable/intricate shot
• First thing we see (create first impression)
• One of the most crucial part of the film
• Usually forgotten about.

The opening shot shows the audience:

• Premises
• Character arcs
• Films main ideas
• ITs the intro into the movie

 Examples:

TOUCH OF EVIL (1958)

The film Touch of evil (1958) opens with an extreme close of on a figure holding a bomb. The shot shown from the left of the frame. The bomb takes up the majority of the frame with little negative space around it. This helps build up an anxious atmosphere for the audience. The shot is in black and white, which adds dramatic effect as the bomb is shown as the dominant. Lots of low key lighting is used around the highlighted bomb; this helps is stand out as sharp contrasts and deep shadows are produced.  Tension increases as a high amount of focus is on the bomb. The shot shows a big hand reaching for the bomb and turning it on. This is effective as the figure isn’t revealed which builds a sense of mystery. In the opening shot lots of loud diegetic sounds has been used for example, sounds of heavy beating and the bomb being turned on. Then non diegetic music is added and gets louder as the shot continues. This helps create a tense of thriller for the audience.

Paul (2011)

The Opening shot from Paul shows a close up of an alien. The angle is slightly tiled upwards (low angle) with high focus and contrast lighting on the alien creating it as a dominant figure as the audience is looking straight on at it, which suggests it could be a significant character in the film. There is lots of negative space around the alien which is effective as it draws the audience’s attention to it. The alien as high placement in the frame which shows authority. This could lead the audience to think “Paul” is the alien. High key lighting is used on “Paul” and in the room around him. This is effective as it makes the situation seem more realistic and natural to have an alien in a caravan. When an audience sees an alien they instantly think of sci-fi however the setting and its smirking facial expression helps manipulate the audience to the comedy genre.


Fault in our Stars (2014)

The opening shot from fault in our stars shows us an extreme close up of a girl. This shot is extremely effective because it shows what looks like a normal girl, where little does the audience know she's dying of cancer. The extreme close fills up the whole frame, and up allows the audience to see/feel her emotions though her eyes. The contrast of tones and caught in her eyes reflects on her looking rather emotional in this shot. Her eyes also symbolises where memories are held, the girls looks like she is reflecting on the past. The extreme close up helps the audience to connect and try understand the character. She appears to be an important dominant character just from the opening shot.

Reasearch into conventions of film openings and titles.

Purpose:

• Show action and begin the viewers interest so they are instantly hooked to the film.
• Show a clear state of genre of the film.
• Introduce the main character; Show either the protagonist or antagonist.
• Introduce pre plot/ beginning of narrative.

Establishing shots can do the following:

• Set a location for the opening scene.
• Show us key characters of a film

Titles:

• Gives the audience idea of genre.
• Fonts and writing style can reflect genre/feel of the film.
• Introduces us to; actors, directors, producers, writers etc.

Genre's established by:

• Setting
• Iconography
• Actors
• Titles

Enigma:

• Grasping the audiences attention.
• Encorage engagement with the film

• Attract different audiences

e.g1 rom-coms tend to use high lighting (hearted enigma) e.g. Just my luck.7

e.g2. Action/thriller tend to use more depth in there enigma. E.g. Dark night rises.

HISTORY OF HORROR

Audience expectations of the genre Horror.

BFI Trip!

Trip to the BFI!

For part of my research for our Media AS, I had the experience to go to two separate showings in London. They helped me engage and better my understanding on how to create a perfect film opening for my chosen genre; Horror.  

Trip 1

The first trip was really helpful for our coursework. We got to ask questions and meet Dexter Fletcher! On this day we watched 3 of his film openings, "Eddie the Eagle", "Wild Bill", and "Sunshine on Leith", and looked at different ways of creating opening of a film, to show off our skills. 

We had the opportunity to listen to a talk on the curriculum of our coursework, by Tom Woodcock. We were given helpful tips to ensure we have a successful film opening. For example;

• Controlling shooting space/area.
• Planning well in advance, so we have planned and chosen alternatives for the following; cost, costumes, technology, locations etc, encase something goes wrong.
• Think ahead
• Build up skills
• Story board
• Be constant with lighting
• Keep it Simple and accurate
• Be flexible with props, actors, location

• Include as many known skills
• Stick to a constant colour palette.
• Don't make credit fonts to big

DAY 2

During this talk we learnt about; power Social groups, The Dominant Social group we learnt to look out for ;

- Males

- White Citizens

- Middle Class Citizens

- Middle aged Citizens

- Heterosexual Citizens

- Abled Bodied

We then looked at how the media promotes Black achievements.

We watched the following music video;

-BEYONCE, Formation

From this video I noticed the following;

• Black children & black American are shown as powerful.
• Mixed Races shown
• Some scenes linked to 'Male Gaze'.
• The following lyrics; "Negro", "Afro", Alabama".
• Beyoncé contradicts herself from slutty to smart and formally dressed. 
• Different classes shown; Rich and poor.
• BEYONCE's VIDEO WAS ICONIC IT CONTAINED THE MESSAGE "I'm over being a pop star, I don't want to be a hot girl, I want to be iconic".

I took notes on important REPRESENTATION& REPETION& NATURALISATION factors;

• Repetition of images, stories, media events, make them seem familiar.
• Idealised women & male body images are used in media
• Representation is an important concept for 'realism'.
• Stereotypes of view points are viewed as normal
• Producers manipulate the audience.

Iconic Directors of Horror

JAMES WAN

"What makes horror movies work is the idea that "oh my God, what would I do if I were in that situation? How would I get out of that alive? What would I do if I saw the door to my closet creaking open in the middle of the night and a doll on a tricycle comes riding out?"- James Wan
Known for;

• Saw (2004)
• The Conjuring (2013)
• Insidious (2010)
• Dead Silence
• Death Sentence (2007)
• Furious 7

James Wan born on February 27, 1977. He is a Malaysian - born Australian producer, screenwriter, and film director of Chinese heritage.

TOBE HOOPER

"If one sees the American Nightmare first and the Chainsaw after that, you'll see it in a different kind of light".

Known for;

• The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1986)
• Poltergeist (1982)
• Life-force (1985)
• Spontaneous Combustion (1990)
• The Mangler (1995)
  

Tobe Hooper is a Director and screenwriter who is best known for his work on horror films. Before he became famous he worked as a college professor and cameraman in the 1960's. He also co-produced a remake of the original Texas Chain Saw Massacre in 2003. He was married to Carin Berger from 1983 to 1990. He has two sons, William Hooper and Tony Hooper. His 1979 film Salem's Lot was an adaptation of the novel by Stephen King. It received three Emmy nominations.

John Carpenter

"Evil hiding among us is an ancient theme." - John Carpenter

Known for;

• Halloween (1968)
• Big Trouble in Little China (1986)
• The Princess of Darkness (1987)
• Escape from New York
• Starman

John carpenter made short horror films on 8mm before high school. He was enrolled at the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts. His film Halloween was selected for preservation in the National Film Library in 2006 by the United States Library of Congress. He was greatly influenced by the works of director Alfred Hitchcock.

David Cronenberg

He is the king of bio-horror, a man who makes the nastiness of nature and its various scientific schisms the stuff of pure nightmares. This style of filmmaking explores people's fears of bodily transformation and infection. In his films, the psychological is typically intertwined with the physical.

Known for;

• Shivers
• Rabid
• The Brood
• Scanners
• The Fly

Dario Argento

"Every writer, to some extent, writes about himself."  - Dario Argento. Dario Argento is an Italian film director, producer and screenwriter. He is best known for his influence on modern horror movies.

Known For;

• Suspiria (1977)
• Deep Red (1975)
• Inferno (1980)

Research into the Production logos

·   A production logo, is a logo used by movie studios and television production companies to brand what they produce and to determine the production company and the distributor of a television show or film.

·   Production logos are usually seen at the beginning of a movie or video game, or at the end of a television program or TV movie.

·   Many production logos have become famous over the years, such as; the 20th Century Fox's monument, searchlights, Paramount Pictures' mountain, Universal Pictures', Warner Bros.’, Columbia Pictures' etc. Unlike logos for most other media, production logos can take advantage of motion and synchronized sound, and almost always do

·   Production logos and brands used to be simple, appearing on title cards and in the opening credits.

·   For example, The Paramount Pictures mountain came from this era and originally featured no special effects. As the studios grew, more effort was put into their identities, and motion and sound began to be used. Twentieth Century Pictures introduced their futuristic "tower" logo, which had moving searchlights; it was carried over when they merged with Fox Film Corporation and became 20th Century Fox.

·    The advent of television in the 1950s also opened the door to ‘Cel animation’ in production logos. Most studios had used cels for their animation departments' logos, so the demand for animation on TV made more effects available for less money. TV itself started using logos on its programming: Desilu, Mark VII Productions and Revue Studios all had distinctive logotypes by the end of the decade (Desilu's and Revue's were animated). By 1976, all the major studios except Universal had switched their logos over to cel animation.

·    In the 1980s a return to the older style of logos came around. Warner Bros, one of the first studios to switch to a cel-animated abstract logo, brought back their WB shield logo as a matte painting in 1984. TV logos began switching from cels and 2D computer graphics to 3D computer graphics.

·   By 2007, almost all production logos become produced/ edited on computers.

Example of how Walt Disney Pictures introduction logo has changed over time:

Collage of the iconography of horror:

CONVENTIONS OF A FILM OPENINGS!

CONVENTIONS OF A FILM OPENING

In the lesson today, I watched a variety of film openings and drew up 4 tension and sound trackers. I created 2 visual time lines for each film opening, one showing the drama and tension, and the other showing the sound. Below in the line graphs, When the lines peak high it shows the drama/sound has increased, the dip in a peak shows the drama/sounds decreased. I looked at the following film openings;  Halloween, Trainspotting, Amelie, and legally blonde.

Perliminary Storyboard

Storyboard review for Preliminary task:

The aim of this preliminary task was to create a short clip using the 180 degree rule, match on action, and including a shot-reverse-shot. For our storyboard we wanted to show the camera angle/techniques, sounds and durations of the shots we wanted to film. To demonstrate the 180 degree rule, we wanted to film 2 people having a conversation across a table, filmed from one side of the table, to ensure we don't break the rule. For match on action we wanted to film someone walking up to a door, then a shot of them in the next room with the victim of our storyline.  Finally we wanted to show shot-reverse-shot by filming a conversation from a close up of one person, to the other, then back again to the first. The story line we wanted to show was a heated discussion between two friends, where one is in the wrong.  We wanted to use lots of short clips around 1-4 seconds each, using mid, and close up shots.  We divided up 2 pages of A3 paper so we had 12 clear boxes to plan shots in. One critic of our story bored was that we weren't very adventurous when planning camera angles we could film. However Our storyboard worked well as we added annotations and clear coloured diagrams to make it easier to look at when filming our preliminary.

The Preliminary

 Preliminary Task: Review

In our preliminary task, our shots were taken from our planned storyboard, therefore it included the 180 degree rule, Shot-reverse-shot, and Match on action shots.

We included close-up shots, a birds-eye view shot and mid shots. We used close-up shots to increase drama and tension, and mid shots  to build up atmosphere.

WEAKNESSES;

We could have included a lot more camera angle techniques, to demonstrate a wider range of our media skills, e.g. pam shots. The actors didn't maintain a serious face throughout shot, e.g. at one point the 2 characters were meant to be having a serious conversation, but you could see them smirking. The actors didn't sound loud enough in our preliminary video, we edited them as loud as we could, in further we need to make sure before filming each shot we remind our actors to speak loudly and clearly. We almost have a constant colour scheme of blue, we should have made sure if was throughout the whole video!

STRENGTHS;

We ensured we didn't break 180 degree rule, match on action and shot-reverse-shots, by doing this we demonstrate our basic use of media skills. The birds eye shot, and close up shots were filmed really clearly, and flowed nicely in the video. Our shots maintained focused throughout.

We had a lot of negative space around our characters in the background , which makes you focus on the characters more.