2. I worked in a group of three with Bethanie Cundy and
Alicia Hatfield.
We made a thriller film opening entitled Unauthorised16.
The genre of the film is a thriller.
We split the film making into 3, allowing each of us to
take charge of directing and camerawork in turn.
We edited jointly. Bethanie made the ident; Alicia, the
title; I designed the credits.
We used a variety of programs: iMovie, Premier Pro,
Adobe After Effects, Audacity
I took specific responsibility for filming the third scene
and editing the third scene, also for putting the music
onto the film.
3. My genre research included studying many film & TV drama openings:
Knight And Day (James Mangold, 2010)
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (David Fincher, 2011)
Don’t Look Now (Nicolas Roeg, 1973)
Zen (John Alexander, 2011)
We watched these for inspiration. These film openings gave us a variety of
approaches: Don’t Look Now used symbols like red, a metaphor for death,
with match cuts linking the daughter’s death to blood on the slide.
We saw how different camera angles worked, such as in Dragon Tattoo
the opening ECU shot of a man’s hand unwrapping a parcel; later, Lisbet is
first seen from behind walking away from the camera: this creates enigma.
We learned how film lighting must be really good to convey quality drama.
•From these I’ve learnt that a thriller must have enigma & suspense, that
timing is essential and that music is key to creating tension.
4. I studied how film opening title sequences work at
http://www.artofthetitle.com/?s thriller the website Art Of The Title.
On this site I studied the title sequence of ‘Buried’(Rodrigo Cortés 2005),
which is very origional.
I also looked at the title of the film The Pacific (Van Pattern 2010 TV series,
HBO) and how it was unusual, in that it realtes images to moving picture, but it
worked well with the film.
The third title sequence we analysed was Dexter (John Dahl 2006): the
camera angles add eeriness and suspense whilst at the same time showing the
smallest of things.
Zen (John Alexander 2011 BBC), the detective mystery, conjured up a
Roman atmosphere through Italian colours, iconic buildings and Fiat cars. Its
CUs of the Questura, guns and keys established its detective genre. Haunting
music made it enigmatic.
I noticed that the different fonts have different connotations, such as big
bold red font connotes to blood
5. Audience profile: our target audience is likely to be both genders aged
15+
They are likely to have seen these films recently:
Halloween (dir. 2007)
Zombieland (dir. Fleischer, 2009),
Shutter Island (dir. Scorcese, 2010)
Inception (2010, Nolan),
London Boulevard (dir. Monahan, 2011),
Anuvahood (dir. Deacon, 2011),
Sanctum (dir. Cameron, 2011)
They are likely to go to the cinema once or twice a month as well as see
recent films of different genres on DVD and downloads on their computers.
Audience figures show how popular the thriller genre is. Box office returns
for films similar to mine show the following figures (source Box Office Mojo):
Shutter Island ($294,803,014); Inception £ 292,576,19;
On the next slide you will see my viewer/audience profile which I made
by taking into consideration what my audience would like.
6. I made a viewer profile based on the things I believe that the viewer who watches our
film opening would like. I included various restaurants, programmes and devices that I
feel the viewer would like.
7. We chose Twisted Pictures as distributor: this is a real company distributing films like:
Saw
Callous Productions was our production company we made. We originally got the idea
from the word callous meaning unfeeling - insensitive – heartless.
Film openings have to have clear titles and be well presented. Titles have to go with
what you have filmed, and fit in with the project as a whole.
Our title is very original and went well with the thriller theme. Our film Unauthorised16
because the girl hosting the party is 16 and initially not allowed to host it.
The Mise-en-scene created the atmosphere of the whole film. The film wouldn’t look
good If the mise-en-scene was bad, you wouldn’t get the desired effect from the
audience, The location is a main part in filming. The mise-en-scene we chose is a very
realistic scene, making the beginning look like a pent house. We also went to great
lengths to make sure that the cellar location actually looked like a cellar location.
The costumes add to the atmosphere of the film. Adding costumes to the film it adds
to the realness of the film.
8. Sound throughout the opening creates excitement making the film
interesting. Breathing and background sounds inevitably make the
film better as the sound makes the film attention-grabbing.
Music is what adds suspension and drama, it sets the scene. The
music sets our party scene really well by using Concrete Jungle, when
it suddenly cuts to very eerie tension filled music by Wolf Suite, the
audience instantly knows that something bad is going to happen.
Atmosphere is created by both the music, film shots and camera
angles such as the party atmosphere and the drunken haze created
by the blurred effects to make the camera blink.
Suspense is created by the music that is played in the background of
the film, it is also formed from the camera angles we shot in such as
point of view shots.
Enigma is produced by the camera angles that withhold
information, they are made in a film to create questioning from the
audience.
9.
10. I think that out film was very successful as a film opening as it revealed the
genre of the film without giving to much away. The film contained things that
you associate with a film opening such as who directed it, who edited it and
who produced it. It also came up with the names of our main characters.
We were able to capture the audience, making a good film opening by
grabbing their attention, I feel our film opening does this very well because it’s
a thriller.
The audience have to identify what genre the film is, we achieved this with
the use of music and footage, our film opening also tells you one of the
storylines in the film, to try and give the audience a taster of the narrative.
We have also used a variety of different techniques from fast paced editing
signifying a flashback to catchy music.
The element of suspense is also very high. We used a variety of
cinematography by using a variety of different shot types, angle and heights
to add to the effect of our film opening.
11. The whole project answered the brief very well which is ‘opening sequence from
a new thriller with storyboard’ we created the thriller opening and even used
different software such as Premier Pro, where we where able to create a better
effect by overlapping some of our sequences for an eerie effect.
We made our storyboard on sticky notes but scanned them onto the computer
to make a video transaction between all the different pictures.
We answered the brief very well, by having all the things a movie introduction
needed to consist of such as a title, directed by, filmed by, produced by and
edited by. We also put in the names of our main characters.
Younger audiences will also be able to relate to our film opening because of
the party scenes, whereas older adults might not like the film as a result of this.
