Opening titles

Vaccancy


I like the way the credits have been shown in this opening as it is a bit different to what we may expect. Instead of using titles over footage it is just bold letters making the credits into a feature. I like the way it all fits together with the stalks of the letters expanding etc and how it turns, however I would not use this for the credits of my opening sequence as the credits need to be shown over footage. The idea and colour etc could be taken into account for inspiration.


Seven


I think the opening title of Se7en is wondrous. It is really inspiring, the font, the size and the placement of the credits are all perfectly put together to create quite a spooky, intriguing, mysterious tone. I like the way that some of the credits are over the footage and some of the time it is against a black screen. I also like the way the credits don't stay still, they flicker making it more interesting. This opening is quite different I think, and as we have the idea of putting the credits against some sort of crime map it may be one that we take a lot of inspiration from.


Thank you for smoking


Although this open title is not one that I would consider doing similar to for my own opening sequence I just really like the idea behind it. The film is called 'Thank you for smoking', the song is about smoking and the credits are set out as if they are the name of the cigarette packet. I think it's bit different and clever how they've done it.



Rubicon

Rubicon is, when drawing my storyboard for my first idea, how I imagined the credits to be set out, but better. I think it is so clever and exciting to watch and how each part is linked together. It really sets up the film nicely introducing the genre. As my initial idea and part of the group idea is to use some sort of crime map type thing, this is a perfect example of inspiration for it. If we could take this idea and scale it down to fit our opening sequence, somehow over footage, it would be perfect and exactly the type of thing we would be hoping to produce.

Opening credits

The opening credits of a film are shown in the following order (although can be used in various orders):

1. The name of the studio, eg Universal, that is distributing the film 
2. Name of the production company who has made the film
3. Producer or directors name eg A Renny Harlin film, as in 'Cleaner'
4. Actors names - Principle actors
5. Film title
6. Featuring actors
7. Casting director
8. Music director
9. Production designer
10. Editor
11. Director of photography
12. Co-producer / executive producer etc 
13. Writer
14. Director

We will have to take this into account when adding the credits to the opening sequence of our film as there are more than I had previously realised and we may need to consider when we start them in order to fit everything in the sequence.

An example of the opening credits in this order...

Editing 3

We started working on the map this week, we chose the pictures and worked out where on the map they would fit with the shots that we have. On photoshop we imported a still frame of our film (from Final cut), and the pictures we were going to layer on top of the map. We did this four times, one for each of the locations. With the photo layered on top of the still frame we used the rubber tool to rub out parts of the picture. For example in one still the picture overlapped his thumb so we used the rubber tool to rub out the picture to be able to see him thumb in the layer beneath. This made it look more realistic.
This was very time consuming as we had to chose an image that was the same as the footage to come. Later in the week we decided to use an image, not the photo we had taken at the time, but a still of the footage. This was also time consuming.

We made the images black and white on photoshop before putting them onto the map. This made the map look more real and authentic. However I think that they should have stayed in colour as the footage that followed was in colour. As it runs at the moment it goes from a black and white image into colour footage, I think having a colour image as well would have enforced the sense of continuity and make it look more real.

Editing 2

With our footage we started putting it in order and editing it to create continuity. We still have quite a lot of footage coming to over half an hour, we need to cut little bits of the end and beginning on the shots to tidy them up and also cut down time.

Editing 1

First lesson back from shooting we uploaded our footage and sorted out some it putting clips we didn't need into a separate folder as apposed to deleting it incase we wanted it to use it later. However we uploaded the footage to the worng computer and spent time uploading and sorting our footage again on the new computer. We didnt feel this was too much of a problem to our timing as we had filmed quite early.

We continued throughout the week to get our footage in the right order and move unwanted clips. We had multiple shots of each scene and so sorted through them selecting the ones that looked the best.
With our selected footage all uploaded the film came close to an hour long so we continued throughout the week to cut down the footage to a manageable amount.
We also scanned in some of the paper work from shooting, for example the first storyboard and props lists, and updated our group blog.

Casting

Jack
Played the main character of the homeless man. We chose Jack because we knew he would be reliable and do as we asked of him. We briefed him before shooting and gave him a schedule so he knew what to do before the day.

Patrick
Played the character of a 'shifty man'. Although he doesn't look shifty we just needed someone reliable to act on the day as we we're going to keep him quite hidden anyway, no shots of his face etc.
Again we briefed him before the day and gave him a schedule.

Shooting

Our first location of the day was Waterloo station. We were set up at filming by 11 o'clock. We briefed our actor on what we wanted him to do and then waited for a large group of people to come out of the station at the same time. To make it look as though there were more people a few members of our group walked out of the station as well. I filmed this scene a few times at different angles, but when we came to edit it we realised that because there were different groups of people some people appeared and some disappeared.

We set up the tripod ready for when a group of people walked out of the station. This worked a few times but we could tell that some of the public were looking directly at the camera and some groups were walking past talking directly to the camera.

I did the majority of the filming throughout the day. The camera that we were working with was broken and so we couldn't see what we were filming. This made it hard to film low angle shots as we couldn't see on the screen whether the camera was in the right place. This proved very annoying throughout the day.















Filming at another location of Jack walking up the stairs. We did this a few times from different angles and is one of my favourite  continuity sequences of the opening.




     

By the time we got to our final out side location for shooting it was getting dark . We still filmed but when uploading it we felt that it was too dark compared to the rest of the shots and we didn't want it to look as though the character had been walking through London all day. Also we filmed Westminster last but it would not be the last part of our opening. Therefore we took it out of our film.

Week Two Possible actors

During this week we started thining about the casting for our film. Beneath are possible actors for our opening sequence.

Meg
This is the dog that we are going to use in our opening sequence. She is a trained dog and is capable of carrying our planned scenes.











Possible actors for our film

Possible villain for our film. 

Possible hero for our film.

Week TWO

Throughout the previous week we had been discussing the shed that we wanted to use. I personally didn't like the idea of a shed as I thought it wouldn't quite look right, especially as the only sheds we were able to find were garden sheds. Therefore when we decided to scrap the dog we also scrapped the idea of the shed. I was pleased with this decision. I suggested this crime map be marked out on the ground in chalk as another idea of having it stuck to a wall didn't seem like a good idea to me. The chalk idea was not overly liked and we continued to think. We came to the conclusion that this map would be on the back of a cardboard box on which the tramp would have been sitting.

This week it was suggested by a group member that we add some shots at the begging. The establishing shot that we already had planned was a tramp sitting on the group and the screen fading from black to this tramp sitting on the ground. The idea suggested was to add shots, in which we see the tramp walking to this place and sitting down, so that we could see where he had come from. I did not particularly like this idea as in real life you don't see where the tramp has come from and I didnt think it was important to the story. Also continuing on with the story the tramp would have to stand up again to start walking. We began drawing out these shots before it was decided that the rest of the group had the same view on this as myself and we decided not to include anymore shots at the beginning.  

We unanimously decided on the people we would ask to be our actors and luckily they were willing to act for us. Due to members of the group being away on a weekend that we were planning to film, we had to bring filming forward a week. I was slightly worried about getting everything ready before that weekend. Therefore we put in extra hours to get things sorted. We drew up a props list and allocated a few props to each member of the group. We also drew up a brief for each of the actors so they knew where to be, what time and what to bring. 

Original idea

Below is the beginning to my original storyboarded idea after hearing the brief.
The plot behind this storyboard is that there is a youngish (17ish) boy who has some sort of obsession with crime, how it happens, where who etc. He then finds himself in the middle of a crime scene where he sees the whole crime take place (a murder or something) but not who commited the crime. He has everything recorded on paper about it and finds the offender. In the meantime another person (maybe a family member of his) is wrongly convicted and he tries to convince the police etc who it really was.

Week ONE and response to the brief

This week after finding out our brief I was quite excited to start working with my group on our opening sequences. We started off by sharing our own ideas from our own storyboard, this was interesting and I found it a good way to start sparking ideas. We tried to combine bits of each others ideas as well as keeping in mind other student work that we had seen previously as we found things with previous groups which had worked well and others not so well. It felt like we got off to a slow start but during the first lesson we had decided on the genre of crime as the group liked my idea of having some sort of crime map kind of thing where the credits could possibly be. We had also decided that we wanted to film in London. I had the idea of someone having some sort of obsession with crime and was using this crime map to interfere with crime in some way. As a group we took this idea and changed it to using the crime map to maybe find something. I liked this idea but as I already had a simple story line in my head I found it hard to change it to the new idea, or understand what the other members of the group were trying to put across.

We started storyboarding quite quickly, we firstly did this on post-it notes so we were able to change the order etc. Someone mentioned the idea of having a tramp as the main character to make it different. We all agreed on this and started to think of people we could ask to play the part who wouldn't be offended by the role we were asking. We also decided to use a dog, which i really liked the idea of. This was to add to the character but also be used in the story line of finding this crime map in a shed. As we continued to story board we realised that quite a lot of the shots were of the dog and suddenly it looked as though this was film about a dog. We tried to mix it up with a few more shots of the tramp following the dog.

There were a few shots we couldn't decide on for the tramp therefore we drew out and filmed both deciding we would choose the best one during editing. We continued with our storyboard and also started about thinking about whether our idea was practical, for example a dog walking to a shed and opening the door. We really liked the idea of including a dog and we found a dog that would be able to 'act' as we had planned however we were not sure if it was practicle to take the dog up to London to film for the whole day.

Legally Blonde

• Again, like other opening sequences the first thing we see in this opening sequence is the makers of the film. 
• As soon as the music starts the credits appear as well. 
• The music is very upbeat and girly much the the rest of the opening sequence suggesting that this is quite a happy, uplifting, fun film. 
• The credits look as though they have been hand written in a white, swirly font with a pink outline. The credits really stand out in this opening sequence. 

This is something we can consider when making our opening sequence, wether we want to make the credits quite arty and make them a main part of the opening sequence or whether we want them quite simple and less likely to take the audiences attention off the motion. In this opening sequence it doesn’t matter so much where your attention is as there is quite a lot of action going on and if you look at something else for a moment you are not going to lose the story. Whereas in another opening sequence you may miss something important for the narrative. 

• After the production company etc, the title of the film is displayed in the same font and style as the credits. 
• As the title of the film is displayed the background comes into focus and you see a close up of the back of a girls head, brushing her hair. 
• At this moment the first and main actresses name (Reese Witherspoon) is shown.
• Seeing the actors and actresses names is a convention of opening sequences as it is what we would expect to see. 
• From this shot we can see that she is wearing an expensive looking bracelet and has perfectly painted nails, also the predominate colour is pink which has connotations of love and romance. Therefore we can already conclude that this is the main character and quite a ‘girly girl’. 
• The next shot is a close up an envelope with the name ‘Elle’ written on it in a bike basket. 
• The camera tracks the bike and establishes the location, a university. Between each shot of the location is another shot of the girl we first saw, although we never see her face. This suggests to the audience that someone is cycling to deliver this letter to her. 
• The next montage of shots shows people signing this card that was being delivered. This creates questions for the audience and create a narrative. 
• The props we can see in the shots of this girls room implies to the audience that it is a girly, romantic film. The lighting is also bright and sunny again adding to the feel that it is a cheerful film.

In the opening sequence we have seen the credits, been introduced to the main character, and the location has been set. These are all conventions that we would expect to see in the opening to a film. 

In this opening sequence similarly to ‘Cleaner’ and ‘Gone baby gone’, we do not see the main characters face, only parts of the body. This can be an effective way to open a film and could be something we could consider doing in our opening sequence. 

Cleaner 2007

Cleaners is another opening sequence which I really like, it interests me and makes me want to watch the rest of the film. 

• Film starts with a fade from black and we see ‘Millennium Film’s’ logo. 
• Fades to black again and the opening credits begin, ‘Millennium Films presents’ then over the first shot ‘An Anonymous Content production’. I like how this is against the first shot, establishing the location. 

Both an establishing shot and opening credits are conventions that you would expect to see in an opening sequence. 

• The camera then tracks along the street and as we see a woman walking towards the camera, from a long shot, with shopping and flowers we know that our attention is to be on her. 
• Durning these shots actors names are introduced to the opening credits, another convention we are used to seeing in opening sequences. 
• At this moment a voice over starts. It is a male voice so we know it is not the woman who we have just been introduced to. Instead he is narrating what she is doing as he is telling a story about ‘last week’. 

I really like it when voice overs are used in opening sequences, especially if we have not yet been introduced to the character. 

• As the woman enters the dark room, the title of the film ‘Cleaner’ appears in large white letters across the screen. 
• When the woman enters her mothers house, the voice over narrates what the woman is seeing. 
• A close up of her shopping being dropped shows that she is in shock. 
• As the camera tracks through the house the voice over becomes quite detailed in the information he is giving us about this woman. This can make the audience think that he has something to do with her in some way. 
• Through the next montage of shots, and as he says ‘business’ we can get the feeling that the voice over has something to do with working with dead bodies. 
• This is confirmed when he says ‘That’s where I come in.”
• “That’s where I come in” signifies that the next shot is of him as the voice over momentarily stops and the shots of him begin, although we do not yet see his face. 
• We see a range of angled shots to introduce his job but still do not see his face. 
• As he is speaking about his job, it then cuts to a close up of his face and we see that he was talking to someone. 

Through the first 3:18 of the film we have been introduced to the location, the main character, his job, the producers, the actors and an idea of the narrative. All conventions you would expect to see in the opening of a film. 

Children of men

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCTgUq6hzUk

• As we would expect to see in opening sequences of a film, we see the the production company and its logo (Universal). 
• The film begins with a sound bridge from darkness to motion. 
• For nearly 30 seconds we are literally left in the dark. During this time a voice over, much like a news readers voice begins ‘Day 1000 of the siege of Seattle’. As the voice over continues we realise that this is a news program as just before motion we hear ‘Good morning, our lead story.’ 
• Through the voice over, on the screen, are more opening credits. 
• Before the motion has even started we know that ‘the youngest boy on the planet’ has died. Immediately a narrative is beginning to form, and questions such as how old is this boy? And how has he died? start to arise. Already as an audience member I am gripped.  
• The first shot, is a mid shot of a group of people inside a cafe all trying to watch the tv. 
• On the other side of the room is another tv. 

I like how the voice over started of on a black screen and bridged over to the motion where you realise it is on the tv which everyone is watching. Also I like how there is another tv on the other side of the cafe, therefor you know what everyone is looking at yet you are still able to to see their facial expressions and see that they are listening intensely. 

• It then cuts to a close up of the screen everyone is looking at and we are able to see this boy that the news readers are talking about; ‘Baby Diago’. We also see the date 2009-2027. 

In this shot we have been introduced to a main character, the time, the setting and the genre of the film. 

• We know know that this film is set in the future. 
• The camera then tracks a man out of the cafe and pans the dirty street he has entered out on to. 

I like this shot as it is quite hand held and you feel as though you are following him out onto the street and seeing exactly what he would be. 

• As the camera continues to track around the man we see an explosion from the cafe and a woman emerges holding what appears to be her arm. 

This leaves questions for the audience and is quite gripping because you are left unsure why that just happened and whether it has anything to do with the death previously mentioned. The lighting of the mise-en-scene outside is very dull and grim, suggesting that 2027 is not a nice place and the world is coming to an end, also suggested by the fact that the youngest person in the universe was 18 years old. 

Similarly to other opening sequences I have mentioned, the production company etc is mentioned, however, the opening credits have not yet started before the motion or on top of the motion like ‘Cleaner’ where the director and actors are introduced.