Final Film Opening

Development of Institutional Logos

When designing our institutional logo, we wanted it to fit with the theme of our film whilst also incorporating a slowloris to help people remember the name of our company.
A slowloris isn't a very sinister animal so we decided that the best thing would be to use just the eyes in our logo. We tried a number of different logo designs before deciding on our final one which uses the slowloris' eyes and dark colours and shadows to give a sinister feel.
The logos were all drawn by hand and then once we had make the final decision, we used photoshop to create the final version.

Timeline of film openings from chosen genre.

Timeline of opening titles from Stephen King's 'IT'

Timeline of opening titles from The Sixth Sense

Research into chosen genre.

Supernatural Thrillers often have an element of mystery as the film is based on the seemingly unknown.
They involve the dead, or undead, and the story-line generally revolves around this theme.

Linked to the dead, and unknown creatures, they are generally evil and are out to hurt whoever it is that has disturbed them in the film.

The most effective and most frightening supernatural thrillers, are the ones that are based on a true story. This gives them an element of reality which other supernatural thrillers don't have.

The stereotypical audience for a supernatural thriller would most likely be alternative teenagers and young adults. They are stereotypically more drawn towards dark, mysterious things and would find a film like this very interesting.
The characters in a supernatural thriller are mostly teenagers and young adults. This means that this audience will find them more relatable and understand their feelings in a situation.










Pathetic fallacy is also used a lot in supernatural thrillers. An example of that is in Stephen King's 'IT'. The rain is used to create a low, mysterious atmosphere. In addition to this, the lightening is used as a metaphor for childhood fears, as lightening is a stereotypical thing to be afraid of at a young age. This foreshadows the themes of the film that revolve around childhood fears.

Analyse openings from your chosen genre

Drag Me To Hell
Editing: Continuous editing with smooth transitions.
Sound: The non-diegetic sound used is relevent and fits well with the theme of the film.
Shot type: The clip is visually interesting and keeps the audience engaged.
Mise: The colours used were very gloomy and mysterious with flashes of bright lights. This helped to convery the themes of suspence and shock.
Titles: The transitions between titles were very effective. The fonts used in the opening titles works well with the genre and don't draw too much attention away from the rest of the clip.
Characters:



The Ring
Editing: Continuous editing used to create a realistic feel.
Sound:The diegetic sound of the girls talking, the phone ringing and the white noise make it seem like you are actually there with them rather than the use of backing music.
Shot type: The different shot types keep it interesting whilst keeping a slow and mysterious pace.
Mise:Dark lighting. The two girls are wearing white shirts to connotate innocence.
Titles: There are no titles at the beginning of 'The Ring' to give it a more realistic feel so that it doesn't feel like you are watching a film and more like real life events.
Characters: The characters all seem like normal people which makes it much more relatable for the audience.

Film Opening Remake - Why we're doing it

We are doing a remake of a film opening to help us to understand the importance of timing and when each of the different titles need to appear. The order of appearing titles are very different in a film opening to that in a film trailer.
For our film opening remake, we decided to do 'Superbad'. We chose this because we were planning on doing a thriller for our film opening so wanted to make sure we got a feel of different genres rather than just sticking to the one.

The Differences Between Independant and Mainstream Companies

There are some major differeces between independant and mainstream film companies. The main one being that mainstream institutions have a much larger budget meaning that they can afford more famous and well known actors to be in their film. This also means that they can afford to use better camera and sound equipment, and also can have bigger and better special effects. Independant films have a much different quality and feel to a mainstream film which would have a hollywood feel, whereas independant films are much less bright and glossy, and more rough and simple. An independant film would be much more likely to rely on the storyline over the special effects and actors.

How film openings attract audiences and audience theories used in them

Film openings have to give away as little of the story-line as possible, whilst still drawing in the audience and making them want to know what happens in the rest of the film.





In the opening of 'Reservoir Dogs' you can straight away tell that it is a gangster, crime movie judging by the mise used, especially in the costume choice. This would stereotypically be a seen as aimed at a male audience as it involves masculine themes such as smoking. This may also involve the hypodermic needle theory as the characters smoking are seen as cool.





The opening of 'The Chronicles of Narnia' portray it to be a gender neutral film. It shows themes of violence and war. But because the film is based on a book, the audience will most likely already know that there is a theme of magic and fantasy throughout, bringing this back to a gender neutral, family film. The fact that the main characters have been separated from their parents makes you feel sorry for them, and this bond carries out through the rest of the film.

Creating film opening using jelly babies

We created a film opening story board using jelly babies to help us understand the ordering of the titles. We decided to make an action film opening using the generic conventions such as a chase scene, damsel in distress and a gun hold up.

 Chase scene.

 Damsel in distress.

Gun hold up.

Saving the damsel in distress.

Different Genres and Their Generic Conventions.

Action

• Car chases
• Violence
• Special Effects
• Explosions
• Male Audience
• Laura Mulvey's Male Gaze Theory

Romantic Comedy

• Female Audience
• Relationship Based Storyline
• Love Triangle
• Happy Ending
• Stereotypes

Horror

• Blood
• Death
• Violence
• Weapons
• Gore
• Teen - Adult Audience

Thriller

• Psychological
• Paranormal
• Supernatural
• Unusual to have a happy ending
• Implications rather than Visuals

Comedy

• Slapstick
• Stereotypes
• Crude/Innuendo

Drama

• Plot Twists
• Older Female Audience
• Hyperbolic
• Life Events
• Period Dramas

Film Opening Timelines

Above is a timeline for the opening of the film 'Shaun of the Dead'

This was the easiest way I found of making a timeline, to write out what happens in order and then to put this information onto a timeline. As shown below.

The video clip for 'Amityville Horror 2: The Possession' wasn't able to be embeded.