Influences

The main inspiration of my opening is the horror trope of a helpless female victim, such as in halloween and the scream series, as both female leads are seen as fumbling and unable to handle themselves, particularly as this generalization tends to put off female viewers as the character is unrelatable.  One of the aspects that I carried over from these staple movies is the hidden and mysterious element of the antagonist as this was a key feature of the scare actor of the movie.

Another feature I adopted was the emphasis on suspenseful music, I decided to exaggerate this by having the track "In the basement" at a loud volume. To further add the element of suspense, I also used a heartbeat sound effect at the beginning titles, as it tends to be used overbearingly and negate from the element of suspense.

My initial idea was far more serious with more of an emphasis on a dangerous atmosphere and female independence, though I felt this would not clearly show the satirical aspects of horror conventions and could potentially alienate a male audience.

Elements of horror satire

One convention of satirical horror is using strong elements of popular movies and parodying them in order to make them funny, films that accomplish this is "Scary Movie', as the main antagonist, a parody of the Scream villain, who is revealed to be comical in childish mannerisms while killing off the main cast. Another character, Buffy, makes fun of the attack her killer is making on her as she purposefully breaks her own leg out of spite as she mocks the villain, even though he goes on to cut off her head.

This clearly makes fun of the stereotypical female victim trope by making her aware, though the comedy fails through the overuse of the joke, the shock factor also adds an element of surprise, the overuse of slapstick in subsequent jokes lessens the impact as it is expected, yet it does not get weighed down by emotional attachment to the characters as most are unlikable and underdeveloped, though this serves to make the comedic atmosphere lighter.

The comedy is generally very old fashioned as it heavily relies on slapstick over dialogue, although some of the physical comedy is more visual, with the villain hiding behind a couch, failing at being scary by destroying the expected element of surprise. Overall as the movie comes to a close it incorporates elements of action satire as they spoof a section of the matrix where the freeze frame occurs in the jump section. This is so different from the other parodied tropes as it does not fit into any horror aspect and somewhat takes the viewer out of the movie, although this is not a huge issue as the movie does not take itself seriously.

Order of titles

I have decided to use an annotated version of my storyboard to show where I plan on putting the titles.

Film opening Final idea

my final idea for my film opening follows a man, who reveals to be dangerous getting beaten up by the female, seemingly fragile protagonist. The genre is a parody of horror movies and I will be using the subversion of tropes for comedic element. The main trope that I am subverting from is that of the helpless female victim, as she acts in a brutal careless manner, heavily contrasting the expectations her appearance bestow upon her.

The mugger will be given the most screen time in this segment, however will not be developed as he has no speaking lines and his face will be shown for as little as possible. Though the woman will also have her face shown for a short amount of time, she will be clearly set as the protagonist through her speaking lines.

Though I want the protagonist to wear typically feminine clothing, in order to execute the act of kicking the man in the face, she will need to wear flat shoes for health and safely.

To lock on to the horror elements, I will overuse horror sound effects and have a high emphasise on foley in order to create suspense in the beginning. Though I want this to seem genuine to begin with in order to enforce the impact of the surprise ending. In order to show the parody elements, I will have the protagonist speak in a casual manner, with relaxed posture and have the background music become more relaxed. I will also need multiple shoots of the kick in order to get  different angles of impact so that I can edit the kick together to have a far stronger impact in order to create the sense of comedy.

Typography film opening analysis

Donnie  Darko opening

The Donnie Darko opening begins with the titles rolling with the sound of heavy wind playing in the background, the sound is similar to the falling plane sequence at the end. The heavy use of diegetic sound also hints at the open, flat area of the beginning shot. The lack of sound effects as the titles roll in helps to give an odd sense to the movie in its lack of a glamorous nature. This is also shown through the transitions in how they are slow, silent, helping to link in with the mysterious and otherworldly nature of the film.

The mysterious nature of the film is also latched onto through the use of the signature typography for the film, as opposed to the usually associated font, making the odd nature of the film seem to mask any relations to what we know to be true in the real world, as opposed to the alternate reality given to us through the movie, this seems to reflect the plot of alternate realities as seen in the movie.

 

 Overall there are no credits associated to a specific famous actor or infamous member of the production team, making the movie seem much more anonymous, this also reflects the low-budget aspect of the film in that there are no featured actors within the opening credits.  The only acceptation to this is Richard Kelly, the director (however this may only be in the directors cut).

The only credits shown are that of the producer studios and the associates, at a total of five. Excluding Richard Kelly.  The white font against the black background also helps to capture the unglamorous nature of the film, while significantly attracting the viewers’ attention, while the curved cursive also helps to maintain an old, somewhat spiritual nature to the film. The font is big enough to see, though all remain in the same size, leaving them to similar importance.

The darkness then fades into a panning shot, moving left across the screen at a wide shot of the landscape, showing a vast array of colours as the dawn breaks in, as this is happening, the thunderous sounds of the heavy wind is halted by the sound of thunder, leading into the chirping of birds.

Protagonist Donnie is viewed from a distance, crumpled on the floor as the low drone of the music begins, fading into a sad piano melody that describes Donnie’s dissatisfaction of his predicament, later revealed to be his schizophrenia that causes him many issues.

Kill Bill

Kill Bill begins with the signature opening stamps for the production companies involved with the movie, all in full colour, contrasting with the next segment of credits through the title sequence, as they, like the opening cinematic, are filtered in black and white.

The black and white titles are interrupted by the quote, “Revenge is a dish best served cold” perfectly hinting towards the drive of the plot from the movie.  This also shows the importance of the aspect of revenge in the film as it comes before the majority of the credits.

All of the production companies are then shown in a black and white text, flashing onto the screen with no sound effect as the diegetic sound of heavy, loud breathing is heard, emphasising on the element of desperation as no other sound is heard.

This then shifts to a slowly paced single shot of the bride, on the floor and injured, the hard cut gives an element of shock, though is kept in time with the breathing, making it transition more smoothly. Despite this it does not hold back from the shocking nature of the film and leaves many mysteries as to who is hurting this woman and why.

The second segment of credits begin with the sound of a gunshot echoing as the directors name appears first, Una Thurmans name appearing larger, secondly, signifying her importance and main role.

The title of the movie then pops up, much larger than the other typography, with more screen time to capture its importance.

The text of all those involved in the production is in a more domestic, smaller font and grouped occasionally, showing that these people are less important as certain names do not have separate screens for themselves.

The font then shifts back to the font similar to the title, showing the importance of these roles and to signify the movies sense of revenge is coming back in to play. That these are the last credits to roll also maximise the sense of importance to the plot.

Pulp fiction

The opening credits begin at a freeze frame of the two characters Honeybunny and Pumpkin staging a robbery, freezing with her mid shot with the gun pointed wildly. The loud opening music, labelled “pumpkin and honeybunny” on the soundtrack cuts quickly to the producers.

The typography in this opening is exactly the same as in Kill Bill, only yellow, from this it can be assumed as a signature of the director over a stylistic point relevant to the movie.  The only difference is that this is in yellow, perhaps reflecting the bold nature of the protagonists from the very start.

The directors font is no bigger than the producers at this point, though significantly bigger than those who were part of the production team.

 The title of the movie is in a different font, being much larger with a slower draw onto the screen giving it more screen time to focus on. This fades into the background as other credits roll over it in white to stand out.

This starts out with the key casting roles set to the most well-known actors in order, before shifting onto the co-starring roles that roll across the screen from the bottom in groups, this time reverting back to yellow.

As the credits for the production crew is on screen, the music shifts to another track.  The final credit is to the producer. 

Final pitch idea

Final Pitch

My final pitch for the 2 minute opening sequence is a parody of horror tropes in movies. It sets up the stereotypical female victim walking along a dark road all alone, with the protagonist assumed to be the mugger, the man following her. The opening takes itself very seriously with suspense being built along the stalking of this woman, where she suddenly turns to kick him in the face, turning the horror victim role on it's head and presenting her as the frustrated protagonist, as she phones up a friend, her voice is heard complaining to her friend.

Life on Mars editing exercise

Reflecting on the Life On Mars

While filming the recreation of Life on Mars, I discovered ways to recreate shots through movement and placement over similarity of the subject. I also learned how to steady the camera more and keep it even on an uneven filming location, such as the sloping wood area that we filmed in in order to get the greenery shots. I also learned it's valuable to view alternate filming locations beforehand in order to get a good sense of how the area will be lit when filming, as this can give you alternate locations to film should an area be too bright or too dark, such as the car park area that we decided against filming in as it was too dark.

I learned how to add certain special effects to my video clips while editing, such as speeding up and slowing down the clip and adding transitions, such as the dissolve and fade into color. I learned how to synchronies a sound track to a video clip, as I took the audio from the Life on Mars clip and added it to the video clips. 

One particular problem I encountered was trying to change the speeds of two two clips with the dissolve transition as an error message would pop up. To rectify this issue, I deleted the clips and changed the speeds prior to adding the transition. I also accidently moved sections of the audio file when moving my clips around, I used the undo tool to get rid of this mistake and made sure that I only selected the video segment of the file, as opposed to both the video and audio segments.

This was a useful task in that it helped me to become better at navigating the affects menu and ordering my clips to avoid having to go back and redo some areas, as I found this made it incredibly difficult to make the audio and the video match up in time.

Genre choice

I decided to do a parody of the horror genre as I have noticed that in recent years many horror movies have lost many elements of originality and rely on cheap jump scares with an overbearing level of suspense that usually fails to meet with the expectations of the audience, such as in the Paranormal activity series that use convoluted story points and mystery to overshadow the terrible writing and over reliance on suspense and jump scares to produce a movie that people will see as they know that they can rely on the mystery aspect to draw people in so they can make money.

These are the worst elements of modern horror movies though whilst the lack of special effects tend to make dated movies laughable, the creative effort seems much richer.

I decided to parody the convention of suspense as that is usually the more horrific element of today's movies over any villain or monster, by having the stereotypical defenceless woman as the one who fights back in a ridiculous manner to show how over hyped the villains are usually, though I wanted the casual aspects to reflect how modern audiences are becoming resilient to similar tactics in horror movies, which is why I intend to have a casual character who is unaffected by the overused tropes of horror.

Life on Mars filming experience

Life on Mars filming experience

I was mainly used throughout filming to mark off what shots had been completed and was also used as the girl in red throughout a shot of the recreation. Rachel was the camerawoman, getting all of the shots.  Harriet played the protagonist, also inputting her views on the shot order to prevent us missing any shots.

I found playing the woman in red attire difficult as the group found it hard to find a flat area to film on, despite finding a flat area, it was difficult to run fast as I was continuously stung by nettles when running.  The group generally discussed the shots as we filmed them in order to ensure we missed the least amount of material as possible, this also made it easy to share ideas about how to complete the next shot.

I helped to input what I thought about the lighting in some segments and also had to view the extract of life on Mars multiple times during the long shot at the end, where the protagonist is spinning, in order to get the pacing right. This was a particularly difficult segment of filming and took multiple attempts to get right, due to many interruptions on the part of others walking through the filming area. We also had to redo the shot due to difficulty in getting a smooth transition from a low angle to a mid-angle shot.   found it particularly hard to get out of the shot in the 360 spin segment as I had to walk around at the same pace as Rachel, whilst avoiding the edge of the stairs.

Analysis of Life on Mars

Over the course of the lesson, we watched life on mars analysing the shot duration, effects and transitions of a segment of life on mars. This is so that we could go off in our group and recreate the shots. To ensure accuracy, we tried to put the shots in chronological order and related camera angles in a nearby box. This would make it easier to match up with the timing after we re-created the segment in our groups.





For the remainder of the lesson, the class split into groups. We decided to shoot the section in front of the cars in the car park and the woodland section in the grounds behind the school. For health and safety reasons, we are not allowed to film behind a car, this is to avoid laying down in a crowded area with cars to avoid injury. I think we will shoot this segment outside the car park in order to maintain good lighting as the inside of the car park has less natural lighting. The area that we are shooting the woodland section in is spacious with lots of natural light.


Our group plans for Harriet to be the protagonist as she has had no screen time in the previous continuity exercise. I will be the woman running in the red dress, for a brief shot, Rachel will be the main camerawoman, though we may alternate filming segments.

Napoleon Dynamite analysis

Napoleon Dynamite has an interesting opening in that through it's micro-elements, it does not try to be glamorous, this is particularly shown through the food used in the opening, that appears to be not very high in quality. The objects in the opening all have the credits of the people who worked on the movie attached to them, such as food having key names in sauce and chap stick having the producers name put on the back through a fake label.
 

The music in the opening is very upbeat and cheerful, the lyrics being school related, foreshadowing the primary setting of the movie.
 

The main character is only alluded to through a short shot that lingers on an identity badge for his school, linking into the song through how much of a big part school plays in his life.
The camera shows more shots of the things Napoleon is interested in, such as drawing, reading and playing with ninja stars. This makes Napoleon seem very passionate about his hobbies and that they mean a lot to him.
 
Overall the hobbies seem rather childish and set the age for the target audience.
The changing backgrounds give a domestic sense to the opening as the settings are all indoors, this, coupled with the moor bookish hobbies make the character Napoleon seem somewhat inactive, not the stereotypical movie hero wit a key sense of purpose. The overall use of domestic objects leaves the plot of the movie ambiguous.

Continuity exercise

Continuity exercise



I found

 the continuity exercise to be easy for the most part, however, my group had to film a second time due to breaking the 180 degree rule when character A was walking into the room as the camera broke the 180 degree rule as they walked in to start the conversation with character B. I found editing to be much harder with this version due to putting all the clips in the timeline at once. After discovering the flaw during the walk on sequence,we re-shot the entire conversation in the room, using over the shoulder perspectives in order to maintain the 80 degree rule . The only footage carried forward was the close up of the door handle and opening of the door from the outside.

I found editing this section far easier as I went through each clip methodically, editing them down, then positioning them as needed, in a spaced out manner to avoid accidental cuts. This took much less time than the first attempt .

I will take forward the skills of zooming into the timetines in order to get a clear cut and cutting out unwanted parts of the clip.