Ideas for my film opening

Ideas for my film opening - Narrative structure of the film

The genre of the film that I want to make will be horror.

Title of my film - Behind Closed Doors

Narrative Structure - Follows Todorov's theory
Equilibrium - A young boy is going to meet his friends when something strange happens.

Disequilibrium - When the young boy goes to meet his friends they go to explore that he was scared to look at by himself, during their time there they experience many strange things, that will scar them for life.

Equilibrium - After several horrifying hours of being stuck in this setting they realise half the people that they were with are now gone. The teenagers are so petrified and they proceed to find an escape route out of the horrifying place.

Continuity Editing Exercise

Continuity Editing Exercise 

For this exercise I had to film shots of Daisy walking through a door and then having a conversation with Lily. In this exercise I filmed various shots of Daisy and Lily. I filmed two mid shots and also a shot reverse shot. To do this exercise I had to follow the 180 degree rule and also do match on match editing. I had to do match on match editing when Daisy was opening the door as it made the shots look smooth and so there would not be a sharp cut. Also I made sure that I filmed it correct so it would not look as if the door was opening twice. I filmed a shot reverse shot to show the conversation between Daisy and Lily.

Title sequences

Title sequences – watchthetitles.com

Green Lantern

•     0.03 – Warner Bros. Animation Presents
•     0.08 – Christopher Meloni
•     0.14 – Victor Garber
•    0.20 – Tricia Helfer
•    0.26 – Green Lantern First Flight
•    0.40 -  Michael Madsen
•    0.45 – John Larroquette / Kurtwood Smith
•    0.53 – Larry Drake / William Scharllert / Malachi Throne
•    1.01 – Based on the DC Comics Characters
•    1.10 – Casting a voice direction Andrea Romano
•    1.15 – Editor Rob Desales
•    1.20 – Music by Robert Kral
•     1.28 – Executive Producer Sam Register
•     1.34 – Producers Bobbie Page / Bruce Timm
•     1.39 – Co Producers Alan Burnett / Linda Steiner
•     1.46 – Written by Alan Burnett
•     1.54 – Directed by Lauren Montgomery

Juno

•     0.00-0.11 – Juno walking with a bottle of drink in her hand.
•     0.11 – Fox Searchligh Pictures Presents
•     0.17 – A Mandate Pictures / MR.Mudd Production
•     0.22 – A Jason Reitman Film
•     0.25 – JUNO
•     0.36 – Ellen Page
•     0.39 – Michael Cera
•     0.45 – Jennifer Garner
•     0.54 – Jason Bateman
•     0.57 – Allison Janney
•     1.02 – J.K Simmons
•     1.08 – Olivia Thirlby
•     1.13 – Casting by Mindy Martin, C.S.A Kara Lipson
•     1.17 – Costume Designer Monique Prudhomme
•     1.23 – Music by Mateo Messina Songs by Kimya Dawson
•     1.29 – Music supervisors Peter Afterman and Margaret Yen
•     1.35 – Co-Producers Jim Millers, Kelli Konop, Bran Van Arragon
•     1.39 – Film Editor Dana E. Glauberman
•     1.45 – Production Designer Steve Sakland
•     1.55 – Executive Producers…
•     2.00 – Produced by…
•     2.06 – Written by…
•     2.14 – Directed by…
•     2.20 – Film starts going from a cartoon into real life (Juno walks into the shop, still with her drink

Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa

•    0.05 – Ben Stiller
•    0.09 – Chris Rock
•    0.13 – David Schwimmer
•    0.17 – Jada Pinkett Smith
•    0.21 – Sacha Baron Cohen
•    0.25 – Cedric The Entertainer
•    0.28 – Andy Richter
•    0.32 – Bernie Mac
•    0.36 – Alec Bladwin
•    0.40 – Sherri Shepherd
•    0.44 – Will.I.Am
•    0.49 – Directed by Eric Darnell / Tom McGrath
•    0.53 – Produced by Mireilla Soria / Mark Swift
•    0.57 – Written by Etan Choen and Eric Darnell & Tom McGrath
•    1.03 – Music and Songs by Hans Simmer and Will.I.Am
•    1.06 – Editor H.Lee Peterson, A.C.E
•    1.11 – Production Designer Kendal Cronkhite-Shaindlin
•     1.14 – Visual Effects Supervisor Philippe Gluckman
•     1.18 – Head of Character Animation Rex Grignon
•     1.22 – Head of Story Robert Koo
•     1.25 – Art Director Shannon Jeffries
•     1.29 – Head of Layout Nol Le Meyer
•     1.33 – Cinematography Consultant Guillermo Navarro, A.S.C.
•     1.37 – Production Managers Jennifer Dahlam / Claudia Southmartin
•     1.43 – Artistic Supervision Animation – Denis Couchon / Cassidy Curtis / John Hill / Anthony Hodgson / Sean Mohoney / Jason Schleifer / Jason Spencer-Galsworthy
•     1.48 – Artistic supervision Lighting – Laura Grieve / Susan Hayden / Annmarie Koeing / Jin Liou / Michael Necci / Vanitha Rangaraju-Ramanan / Milton E. Rodriguez-Rios / Dave Walvoord
•     1.53 – Artistic supervision Charcter Technical Direction – Milana Huang / Robert Vogt    Modeling - Jeff Hayes    Surfacing - Aaron Pandacat Florez
•     1.57 - Artistic Supervision – Character Effects Lee Graft    Final Layout David Murphy    Crowds Justin Onstine
•      2.02 – Artistic Supervision – Effects Scott Peterson    Matte Painting Michael Collery   Technical Direction Shawn Lewis
•      2.06 – Supervising Sound Editors Dennis Leonard / Will Files     Sound Mixing Andy Nelson / Jim Bolt
•     2.10 – Casting by Leslee Feldman, C.S.A

I took three film title sequences and analysed them to find out what titles each of them have.  I did this to find out what titles I would need to include in my title sequence. In the three films that I looked at they all had titles for the directors, the people who wrote the film, the producers and the people who made the music for the film. In The Green Lantern and Juno The title of the film is in the 5th title and in Madagascar they do not have a title of the film in the opening credits. These two films also have all the actors names coming in after the title of the film, whilst Madagascar starts off with the actors names. In Green Lantern there were 17 titles, in Juno there were 24 titles and in Madagascar there were 31 titles. All these films also has several titles for the actors and actresses. In Green lantern there are 9 actors and actresses in the main title sequence, in Juno there are 7 actors and actresses and lastly there are 11 actors and actresses in Madagascar. In Green Lantern the actors and actresses get around 6 seconds of titles for their names, in Juno they get around 9 seconds and in Madagascar each actor gets around 4 seconds in the title sequence.  The three title sequences last between 1:54 seconds to 2:20 seconds, the longest title sequence I looked at was Juno which was 2:20 seconds long. In Green Lantern the titles are interlinked with shots of space and different explosion, the titles are green and the explosions are also green. In Juno the titles are interlinked with a cartoon of Juno walking through a neighbourhood. In Madagascar the titles are interlinked with cartoon shots of the characters dancing. The background of that title sequence looks as if its done on a piece of wood.

Function of the opening of a film

Function of the opening of a film - London to Brighton


This film was produced in 2006, it is a Steel Mill pictures and Wellington pictures production. It has been made by Vertigo Films and UK Film Council.The director of this film is Paul Andrew Williams. The titles at the beginning of the film only last 36 seconds. The titles that are used are 'Vertigo Films', 'UK FILM|COUNCIL', 'UK film council presents', 'A Steel Mill pictures and Wellington films production', 'London 3:07am'. The last title sets the scene and it tells us what time and where the following scene is happening.  I found out that the opening of 'London to Brighton' makes the audience want to watch on and it catches their attention, they would want to watch on as they would want to know what happened to the mother and the child in the opening scene. They have done this by using a clip from further on in the film and they have placed it in the middle, the clip that is used is full of action. In the opening scene we see a mother and a child rushing into a cubicle, the child has makeup smudged all over her face and the mother looks like she has been beaten up. She is trying to comfort her daughter. You can see from the expressions on their faces that they are scared. She says that they aren't safe there, this makes us wonder what has happened to them that they are not safe where they are. The mother leaves again and proceeds to earn some money. In the next scene we then see them running through a train station and onto the train.

 Once the two characters are in the cubicle a medium shot is used of the little child to show how she is feeling, she is shaking and she looks really scared. An over the shoulder shot is used to see the woman looking at her self in the mirror. The same shot is also used when the mother is talking to the child. A long shot is used to show the mother in the fast food shop getting food for herself and the child. A shot reverse shot is used to show the conversation between the mother and the child talking about how they are going to get away from London.