Main Post 12.7 Question 7

Post Title - Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

I feel that I have made massive progress since my preliminary task. I have developed a strong confidence and under stance in the media world. I have always learnt new skills and developed my prior skills. When comparing the two together our prelim was very boring with not many shots used and a dull story. However in our main task we used lots of different shots. As a group we learnt from the preliminary task that we can show a lot of emotion through close up shots. So we added in lots of them into our Carlson section.

One thing I am very happy is with our editing and our spilt screen effect as it was one of the ideas I threw out in our group meeting. This was influenced from the hit show 24. It’s fitted in very well with the conventions of a thriller as it kept a fast paced story line going throughout. We experimented with a lot of different ideas to keep up the pace and stick to the thriller genre. Secondly I feel that in our preliminary task did not target an audience nor did it stick out in a crowd, in hind sight we used that knowledge and used it for inspiration into our main task, and we highlighted our audience early on in the process and made our opening stick out very effectivly.

Secondly I developed more confidence into my main production as I knew more about different shots, I also was not worried about continuity as I was in my preliminary task. I was not worried because it became like a second nature and I just knew subconsciously when and when not to remove things out of shot.
Overall I am happy with my main task however I was not happy with my preliminary task which shows I have developed through out the year and developed my knowledge in media

Main post 12.6 Question 6

Post Title - What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

 Camcorder/Flip Cam - We used  UltraHD  flip video camcorder to record all of our opening sequence, I use this camcorder at home to upload videos onto you tube as a hobby, however it was experience in filming on a different type of media to as what I do at home.

 Google –  I used Google to find all my images. Google is an everyday part of my life therefore again I did not learn anything new about it however it was very helpful, when looking for my research.

You Tube – I used you tube to undergo research into other thriller films and there opening sequences, further more our final edit has been uploaded onto you tube. As link in a previous post.

Computer – the computer was the most vital piece to this course. As everything we have done is threw the computer. Whether it was editing or Blogger, or just research. The computer is the same as Google in that it is a part of everyday life so I was very comfortable in using it.

Scanner – I have never used a scanner before so again I learnt a lot, but with most things the technology is very easy to use and I picked up how to upload my hand written drawing onto a computer very easily.

Adobe Premier – this was the software we used to edit. I have prior knowledge of Sony Vegas so using adobe was a new experience. However it came to me fairly easy and it was not to much different. So the editing phase went very smoothly

Blogger -   I have never used Blogger before so it took some time to get used to. When I final got used to it the whole interface changed again. Which was annoying however I am up to date with it now and now how to create and post Blogger very easily.

Main Post 12.5 Question 5

Post title - How did you attract/address your audience?
Our unique selling points was a character  such as Carlson that an audience can feel closer to. every boy in there life have wanted a life style of money,cars and gadgets such as a MI6 agent, we tried to tone this down with Carlson as we want to let the audience relate with Carlson.  
we also set up our opening with a lot of mystery  around the story, which will hopefully led the audience wanted more, furthermore the load burst of non-Dietetic music which sets the pace perfectly. we tried to build up mise-en-scene as a clever selling point for the film as well, as we have Carlson very well dressed compared to the thugs/ terrorist, Carlson will be able to relate with the audience in his appearance as his clothes are  very modern, also having the actor who played Carlson being young will attract a much younger audience to the film as well/

Main post 12.4 Question 4

Post title - Who would be the audience for your media product

Ideally we want our audience to be fragmented so we can reach the maximum audience, while still staying within the conventions of a thriller. The harder audience we found was the women side. We reached out to them by using the love story between Carlson and the struggle to find his daughter. However the dominance of the audience will be males, as it throws our audience threw an adrenalin fuelled rollercoaster. With the male dominance we expect our film to do well in the box office however the film may be damaged by the lack of women dominance. However out film can be successful threw a dating subculture. As our film is targeted at teenagers. Which statistic we can see that mostly only people between 16 and 24 go to the cinema, and threw that age teenage go to dates and socialize a lot more.

Young male teenagers tend to be into gaming as well, which well feeds into our high adrenaline thriller. Modern day gamers just as Call of Duty and Battlefield send the gamer on a massive thrill ride. Which we emulate in our film so we will appeal to the gamer audience. If our film went into production we would also market it our film threw social networking such as twitter and Face Book. As we develop in technology our generation follows social networking like a second child and it is a great why to connect to the younger audience

To conclude our film is target at the male audience however we want to use the males to pull in the women audience. However we want to dominate threw the male side

Main post 12.3 Question 3

Post Title - What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why

if this film would be distributed  I would present this film  to Sony Pictures Entertainment as it incorporates itself with Columbia Pictures and tri star pictures.  Each being massive movie companies. Secondly Sony is a self distributor meaning it would fund the company to make sure the film gets global coverage.  Furthermore Sony has not made many thriller moves, however they have made massive global hits such as Spider man and the karate kid. As a result I would want our film to be a leading thriller under the Sony label.

Sony would only take this film innless it was a massive hit so I would have to approach Destination films with deals with the smaller “B” movies or movies that are followed to a specific niche audience. As a British film the funding to the movie would not be massive making it hard to make a big blockbuster. So we will have to go after big conglomerate such as Sony.

Furthermore Sony could go and market to the gamer audience threw Sony play station. Which would be one of our original target audience, the high adrenaline fuelled ride, which would harness more money for Sony threw cross conversion. However realistically I would have to go to open movie nights and hope my film gets picked up my distributor, as I have no credentials in the media world.

The only way our film will get distributed by Sony entertainment is if, we had a lot of funding or if our film was expertly good. With a main goal of being distributed by Sony entertainment, Destination films or even FEARnet, which specialises in horror and thriller films.

FEARnet are co-owners of the giant company Lions gate which have made films such as SAW, which shocked the world with its story line and ended up making 6 more films in its franchise, which we aim to be like for sony entertainment

Main Post 12.2 Question 2

Post Title - How does your media product represent particular social groups

When we came around to dressing our characters we wanted to take a risk and make Carlson look fairly normal and break away from the conventions of thriller of the spy dressed in a tuxedo and tie such as James bond, however we still wanted them to stay fairly well dressed but more everyday, We done this by making sure Carlson was wearing a tie and a smart shirt, in one shot we even see him doing up his tie.

Our spy agent looked similar to already existing spy/agents but we put our own twist on it so it still would appeal same target audience being mostly teenage males. 

As for the terrorist, in our opening who we see is not actually one of the main terrorists use thugs who are used to do other peoples business. However dressing those up was a lot easier then Carlson. Our thugs where dressed in black clothing with hoodies and one man wears a balaclava. Around the set we had guns and magazines to suit the thugs which added to there costume. The thugs we wanted to keep fairly more stereotypical. To make Carlson stand out more as a different character

Main Post 12.1- Question 1

Post Title- in what way does your media product use , develop or challenge form and conventions of real media products

In this video we made a commterary of what we think went well in our production.

We talked about what went well and what did not go so well, also what we learnt and how we could generate a better film 

http://youtu.be/UuzDH7aYoEs

Post 11 Final Opening Sequence

http://youtu.be/yUhyqbyCt1M

Post 10 : Post-Production

Once the process of filming had been done all we had to do was edit. The software we used was adobe premier, which I have never used before as I have Sony Vegas on my computer. However the process was fairly similar. Our first stage was to capture the footage off the camera and put it onto one of the editing computers. This was very problematic and the wires in our school where very old and where breaking very easily, secondly the computers we were using where very old therefore slow which made the whole process very long and stressful.  As a result as a group we chose to go against using a logging rush to capture our footage off the camera. Instead we just filmed all the footage on camera, therefore giving us a lot to play around with when it came to editing, as we wanted out opening titles to stick out we had to be very clever in how we edited.

Secondly we had to spilt our footage into individual shots so we could have a linear approach, also so we made sure we got the pacing right. This is where it the software differs from mine at home, to do this I had to use the razor tool and spilt them into two different channels. As a result this means if I placed a shot over other shot it would not cut one another down.

The next challenge we faced was creating the 24 styled split effect. To get this effect Hugo layered the footage of the selected the right footage. From there we needed to set the right speed for both the shots. So we slowed the motion down 50% and we repeated this step in the other corner. The other two corners we fitted in text boxes which fitted in very well as they where very easy to put in yet very effective.

The only major problem we encounter as a group as the lighting in the garage, however not a problem in editing but filming. And editing covered up the bad location. The lighting in the garage was very dark and could hardly see the actors in certain shots, which pulled down the quality of the whole video. To change the brightness was very straight forward, we just went into effects and change a few numbers and before we knew it the video was looking crisp once again. If we where to do this task again we would have taken artificial lighting or  a reflector to get more natural light in the garage which would make the editing process a much easier process.
 After that all that was left was to process and render the file so we could make an AVI file so we could put in on You Tube, so overall the process was very problem free.

Post 9 Production

Our filming as whole went very well as the people we picked to act our scenes realised what this was for. Consequently meaning we did not need to retake hardly at all. Apart from a few scenes a gun was dropped but nothing to problematic

To start our production we decided to film the fairly easier scenes of Carlson leaving for work. The first problem we encountered was that whilst filming Carlson in the mirror the camera and tripod kept on sneaking into shot. So we had to be clever about how the camera man positioned himself around the room. Secondly the Suitcase we where meant to use went missing on the day of shooting. As a group we decided that we would just use a fairly bulky laptop case instead, which unfortunately not produces the desired affected as a regular metal briefcase. In hind sight we should have made sure all props where accounted for rather then just presuming someone just had a briefcase.

We then went onto filming the terrorist scenes with the biggest problem were that was no source of power; therefore we could use lighting other then natural resource. Most of the shots where okay as we filmed towards the mouth of the garage however a few shots had to be at the back of the garage and it was very dark towards the back, however we lighted up our shots threw editing, therefore giving our video a more user friendly feel with a good video quality.

Secondly as we approached our scripted part it turns out that we had lost our script.
 This meant that we weren't able to shoot the dialogue scenes that day and we had to wrap filming for the day with was a pain as we wanted to get filming done quick as possible so we could start we the editing process.  A week had passed and we organised the same location and actors with the new script, However this time the van we had before had broken down earlier in the week and we had no other way of getting a van. We again we had to modify our script and leave out the last few scenes of our story board, however the shots still connected very well with out damaging our mise-en-scene.
 To conclude I feel our filming good have gone better, we should have been more organised and prepared to film. When we started filming we flew threw it all. A lot of the problems we had where not to major and we dealt with them very well to leave us with a good quality opening to a thriller film

MAIN Post 8: Pre-production documenatation

Risk assessment

Full Plot Synopsis: Agent Carlson is getting ready for an interrogation into a recent mission uncovering the true intent of a higher up member of MI6; agent Darwin. At the same time a squad of terrorists are getting ready to kidnap Carlson and his daughter.

They get them away successfully and take them to a secure location.

Months earlier, Carlson was on an assassination mission in Iran were he was ordered to kill a high valued target. Through a misunderstanding with his head agent, Darwin, he killed the wrong pony without knowing and got home to find out that he had been punished for failing the mission, although he thought he carried it out successfully. This led to him getting demoted to a desk job.

In the terrorist’s captivity, Carlson starts planning his escape whilst the terrorists confirm that they have captured him and his daughter, they then realise that they have been double crossed by not being paid for kidnapping Carlson so that he couldn’t get to the interrogation. This makes the terrorists feel a vendetta towards the agent that hired them, Darwin. Instead of keeping Carlson in their captivity they choose to get onto MI6 and get a ransom for agent Carlson. Carlson escapes and frees his daughter leaving on his way to MI6.

While the terrorists start coming to terms with MI6 one of them realise that they have escaped, leading the terrorists to panic and choosing to go after them. On his way Carlson finds a payphone and he contacts Darwin asking to meet in a private area, Darwin agrees and then Carlson and his daughter turn up at MI6, rushing up to the head office, knowing that Darwin isn’t in the building.

Carlson gets up to the head office and sees the Director looking confused about why he is in such a rush. Carlson tells him about the whole affair, telling him about Iran and what has just happened to him and about how Darwin is working against the MI6. After some thought the Director believes him and they send out a task force to track him down.

Darwin arrives at the private location, confused that Carlson isn’t already there, shortly after the terrorist group also arrives, confused as well because they were expecting to find Carlson after following him on the run. During a confrontation the terrorists find out that it is Darwin that’s in front of them and they kill him in revenge for double crossing them. As they escape the task force that was set out to track down Darwin sees them escaping and manages to arrest them.

Opening Sequence Outline: Agent Carlson is getting ready for work at his job in MI6, feeling sad that he cant be with his daughter, at the same time a group of freelance terrorists are getting ready to kidnap him because they have been hired to by an anoymous source. The 2 scenes cut between eachother at different paces, with the terrorists having a fast and intence feeling, against Carlson who is relaxed and lethargic.

Crew List:
Hugo King-Irwin: Camera Operator, Terrorist and Director
John Brookes: Camera Operator, Terrorist and Assistant Director
Max Halcomb: Camera Operator, Agent Carlson and Writer
Conor Westlake: Camera Operator, Producer and Co-Writer


Storyboard











 Pre-Production Report

Our main idea was to create a Action/ Thriller that will be aimed towards a target audience of young adult males. Our main problem with this was creating an engaging fast pace script, which would hopefully leave the audience wanting more. Therefore we played around with many ideas and lots of drafts. A second problem we encountered was that we had a younger cast then we initially decided, we solved this problem by casting people who looked a lot older then they atucally are. furthermore threw editing we played around with lighting to make there appearance look a lot more older.

Through our research into thrillers we found that a convention of thrillers is to use lots of different shots, as this will give it a good up beat pace which is guided along with fast upbeat music. Our shots are listing in our story board and shot list, as we caqn refer to them as we film.

MAIN Post 7 - Focus Group

http://youtu.be/teCDFdWjW3w
 For our focus group as a group we selected 4 teenagers who age varied between 17 and 18.  who we have selected as our target audience. The group of teenagers overall seemed fairly excited about the idea, and most importantly would pay to see this movie.  To conclude it seems that the idea of a thriller seems to be a very possitive one.

MAIN Post 6: History of your chosen genre.

Our chosen film genre is a fast pace thriller film. Thriller is a vast genre that is seen in everyday media, from TV and films all the way to books and all across the internet in forms of advertisements. The main conventions of thrillers are to stimulate the mind of the viewer’s and sending them in to vast mood swings with ultimately having the viewer on the each of their seat. Christopher Nolan’s film “The Dark Knight” has been labeled one of the best thriller openings in years. The opening scene lasts 4.55 which are fairly short which follows the convention of thriller’s. Secondly it has lots of plots twists with bank robbers killing each other, with climaxes with the main villain left as the last man standing

Looking through thrillers we decided to make our thriller based around Crime thriller rout. They are developed around a lead mysterious character in our case it will be the terrorist. Typically the main villain will be operating outside of the law. Quentin Tarantino’s film Reservoir Dogs is one of the most famous criminal films of all time. Tarantino made it clear that the film would be very simplistic feel towards it. However Tarantino worked his brilliance with clever song choice and camera angles to make it work magnificently, which inspired me to create a thriller.

Thrillers have adopted the persona of being horror films when in fact thrillers are not. The definition of a thriller is Thriller is broad genres in films the main elements include High level of anticipation uncertainty and surprise also often throw a lot of plot twists into the mix.in every thriller the protagonist is faced with death. In our case a thriller is villain-driven plot, whereby he or she presents obstacles that the hero must overcome.  The earliest ever recorded thriller was called safety last! And involved a dare devil preforming stunts of off a sky scraper. However Harold Lloyd’s movie never got noticed as the first ever thriller, instead we see Alfred Hitchcock starting off the modern day depiction thrillers being horrors.

Thrillers often spill out to television as well. American series 24 does this very well.  24 is a fast-paced television series with involving the war on terror on American soil. Each season or series takes place over a course of 24 hours. With each episode consisting of one hour, each series also starts starting off with the line “the events that happen in real time”.  The editing of the program brings in a split screen feature which feeds us multiple  story’s at once each building up the tension, and to climax each part of action is a ticking clock alongside a very powerful heart beat  to keep the view focused on the race against time. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ko89hiGLUS8

MAIN Post 5a: Macro/Micro analysis of an opening NOT FINsequence from your genre.

I  looked at  the 2010 hit inception as it is claimed to be the one of the most successful thriller film ever as proved my results earlier.

To start it bursts into non-dietetic music very powerful on every beat, which builds up the tension right away. Which suits the thriller conventions very well. The music stays dominant the whole way threw the opening.

Along side the music runs constant images puzzles and mazes to add to the mise-en-scene of the movie.

the colour plate is very negative which again adds to the effect of the film.

when the actor name come in and it is spread in big white font. Which focuses onto the character name  to highlight the biog names in the movie. Before at the end a massive burst of song similar to a horn with the title "INCEPTION"

MAIN Post 5 - Title Timeline

For my time line i watched an opening to a thriller film. ( Se7en) and whenever a title or audio sound came up i noted it down onto my time line. (below). I pick se7en as it is very influential to my opening sequence ideas secondly it is a thriller.

This exercise was very helpful as it showed me when to put my credits and sounds in, so my opening will follow conventions of the thriller genre.

MAIN Post 4a - Plot Development

Dispatch

Genre: Spy Thriller

Target Audience: Males aged 15 to 40 who enjoy spy thrillers such as the Bourne films and James Bond
Logline: MI6 agent and his daughter are betrayed and kidnapped; he sets out on a journey to seek redemption

Full Plot Synopsis: Agent Carlson is getting ready for an interrogation into a recent mission uncovering the true intent of a higher up member of MI6; agent Darwin. At the same time a squad of terrorists are getting ready to kidnap Carlson and his daughter.

They get them away successfully and take them to a secure location.

Months earlier, Carlson was on an assassination mission in Iran were he was ordered to kill a high valued target. Through a misunderstanding with his head agent, Darwin, he killed the wrong pony without knowing and got home to find out that he had been punished for failing the mission, although he thought he carried it out successfully. This led to him getting demoted to a desk job.

In the terrorist’s captivity, Carlson starts planning his escape whilst the terrorists confirm that they have captured him and his daughter, they then realise that they have been double crossed by not being paid for kidnapping Carlson so that he couldn’t get to the interrogation. This makes the terrorists feel a vendetta towards the agent that hired them, Darwin. Instead of keeping Carlson in their captivity they choose to get onto MI6 and get a ransom for agent Carlson. Carlson escapes and frees his daughter leaving on his way to MI6.

While the terrorists start coming to terms with MI6 one of them realise that they have escaped, leading the terrorists to panic and choosing to go after them. On his way Carlson finds a payphone and he contacts Darwin asking to meet in a private area, Darwin agrees and then Carlson and his daughter turn up at MI6, rushing up to the head office, knowing that Darwin isn’t in the building.

Carlson gets up to the head office and sees the Director looking confused about why he is in such a rush. Carlson tells him about the whole affair, telling him about Iran and what has just happened to him and about how Darwin is working against the MI6. After some thought the Director believes him and they send out a task force to track him down.

Darwin arrives at the private location, confused that Carlson isn’t already there, shortly after the terrorist group also arrives, confused as well because they were expecting to find Carlson after following him on the run. During a confrontation the terrorists find out that it is Darwin that’s in front of them and they kill him in revenge for double crossing them. As they escape the task force that was set out to track down Darwin sees them escaping and manages to arrest them.

Opening Sequence Outline: Agent Carlson is getting ready for work at his job in MI6, feeling sad that he cant be with his daughter, at the same time a group of freelance terrorists are getting ready to kidnap him because they have been hired to by an anoymous source. The 2 scenes cut between eachother at different paces, with the terrorists having a fast and intence feeling, against Carlson who is relaxed and lethargic.

MAIN Post 4b - Narrative / Character Research

Dispatch – Carlson character research.

Carlson is a Mi6 agent as I researching mi6 agents threw the internet I was confronted with page upon page of mi6 agents following the James bond look. A very clean cut man with a suit and tie. Also very well built. Seeing as there is so much information on mi6 agents looking like this it will be hard to create something different.  However seeing that Carlson is more of a darker character therefore depicts him having a bit of a shadier look.

Life as a MI6 agent is obviously a very hard and lonely job. In October 2007 Alexander Litvinenko ( a ex Russian spy) was poisoned and died 3 weeks later.  Litvinenko was rumoured to have been trying to persuade ex Russian spy’s to sell secrets to mi6. The whole event was publicised massively however nobody knows fully what went on even 5 years later. This story has made me think about how we want our story to develop rather then Carlson being taking by force they will have to do something cleverer then just using guns in the day light.

Of what I can find on the internet a typical mi6 agent will be making at least 16k a year at the low end of the scale. Therefore I want to depict Carlson to have an image of a typical everyday worker. But of course we know that he is a mi6 agent.

As we know Carlson has served over 4 years in the English army in Afghanistan.  In a risk assessment taken 3 months ago Mi6 and SiS are still in a tier one risk in a national security risk assessment.  With Al Qaeda still marinating the main threat, meaning it would be hard for them to operate in England; therefore our terrorist group will most likely not be Al Qaeda or the Taliban.  However Carlson would have gained experience from fighting in Afghanistan near Helmand province.
 

Carlson would have learnt this from an early stage.

•  Prevent- to stop people becoming terrorist or supporting violent extremism
•  Pursue- to stop terrorist attacks
• Protect- strengthen our protection against terrorist attack
• Prepare- where an attack cannot be stopped

Post 4 Group meeting

To start our meeting we formed around a table as a group and threw some ideas out there.There was a lot of ideas to make films such as comedys and horrors. as a group we decied that the conventions of those types of films where to hard to follow and create maxium effect. After a while it was clear that we all wanted to tackle the idea of a thriller, its conventions are hard to follow however we feel like we will be able to tackle them well as we each have a passion for the genre.

Our next step was to look into thrillers and its main themes and we came to the desion that we add in the addition of a MI6 agent. this decion was an easier one to decied as we each had the same idea therefore we did not exclude anyone from our group.

 Choosing our plot was another key stage to this meeting and it also proved one ofthe harder stages. we came up with many different senarios our MI6 agent could get involved with, however each tended to move away from the convention of a "thriller film". the idea of someone thinking up an idea alone did not work, so we back to the drawing board and each said ideas we wanted to involve in our opening sequence. and ideas where thrown out that really suited our genre and others suited it but seemed some what un-realsitic. Such as fast paced car scenes from the famous thriller films such as james bond.

As i created the idea of the MI6 agent and from there  our plot began to take shape. However at its core ,we wanted to stay to a simple structure so we would know what we need what would be needed for our film and the story line for our film

Blog post 3 Research Into Opening Sequence Designs

As a group we watched both of the Kyle copper interviews, linked below. This helped us develop some of our primary ideas into our opening sequence

·         Kyle Cooper Interview (Part 1)

·         Kyle Cooper Interview (Part 2)

The first thing I noticed about this interview was that the Primary  objective of an opening sequence to any type of film is to attract and grasp  the viewers into the film  and keep them in their seats. Secondly as the interview went on I noticed that it Was that Kyle cooper has been behind some of my favorite films so it instantly made me want to use his ideas into my opening.

 Furthermore He gave names to techniques that I had noticed before but did not know what they were called.  Kyle cooper made the opening to the 1995 hit “Seven” which was a suspenseful thriller, which is the type of the film we want to explore. We decided that we wanted our film to Start with an effective high paced scene, which will climax on a cliffhanger. In the interview cooper states “it is important to get the opening sequence right as it can set expectations for the rest of the film”. We aim to seize this in our end product.

Some of Kyle Cooper’s most famous work was the animation opening to Spider Man. However he says when trying to build pace for the film it is sometimes not best to use thousands of pounds on a complicated opening. Cooper showed this by his 2004 hit Dawn of the dead which used a series of simple Shots flashing on the screen. Very affective yet simple yet still gaining the same effect. After a group discussion we are aiming for an opening like dawn of the dead. Simple yet affective.  We want to create a piece of thugs and business men jump cutting from one to another, inspired by Kyle cooper

Main post 2- Choosing my Genre

Primary Research- Questionnaire.


My first stage of research was as a group we developed and sent out a questionnaire , which asked people their favourite films. we asked 10 people from different age groups 5 simple questions and there results are as above.
Question 1- What is your favourite film
Question 2- What is your second favourite film
Question 3 - what do you look for in a movie
Question 4 - how often do you go to the cinema
Question 5- What do you wish to see more of in the Cinema

Secondary Research- Internet
I found choosing a genre very hard as there are so many different genres, further more i need to find out which type of film is most profitable. Furthermore i want to find out what type of films do not do so well.

I started my research by looking at the top 10 films throughout the US all time  box office. Films from the US tend to make more money then films in the UK Providing they have the right distributor and marketing campaign.
Avatar - Action, Adventure, Fantasy & Sci-Fi
Titanic - Adventure, Drama, History & Romance
The Dark Knight- Crime, Action & Drama
StarWars - Action,Sci-Fi & Adventure
Shrek - Adventure,Animation,Comedy

As you can see from the Top 5 films most of them have action adventures elements in them, and i noticed that hardly any of them have thriller elements in them apart from arguably the dark knight. So i decided to look into the most successful thrillers

As you can see some of the worlds most icconic films are infact thrillers, or have elements of thriller threw out them. however apart from the Dark Knight (2008) and Inception(2010) not many films have been thrillers therefore leaving a big gap in the market.

Post 1: Conventions of Opening Sequence

Our main task is to create an opening title sequence for a film. In doing this we will need to research the conventions of an opening titles in order to see what I should use and what i shouldn't.

 I started my research by looking into the film Smokin Aces. Which log line is “When a Las Veg as performer-turned-snitch named Buddy Israel decides to turn state's evidence and testify against the mob; it seems that a whole lot of people would like to make sure he's no longer breathing?”

The film uses a non-dietetic music which is very face and up pace which is fitting towards its crime thriller feel. Mise-en-scene is very limiting through the opening sequence however it uses very dull negative colours such as browns and dark yellows, which gives us an indication of what is to come. AS for the content in the opening sequence it is an introduction to all the characters so we know who they are when they come on set.

In my opinion smoking aces is a good opening sequence as it is very simple yet affective. As the audience we find out very minimal information about the film yet still want to see more. The graphics work hand in hand with the tone of the film with a dramatic blood splatter over Smokin Aces, and I want to take this feel over onto my opening sequence

The second film I looked at was DreamWorks Kung F panda. Kung Fu panda is a fully animated family film which is about a panda that learns Kung Fu by mistake. Logline-In the Valley of Peace, Po the Panda finds himself chosen as the Dragon Warrior despite the fact that he is obese and a complete novice at martial arts.

Again I found that in my research this film uses a non-dietetic sound track. So I will take this information and emulate it into my opening sequence. Furthermore the feel to this film is much more positive and is clear it is targeted to a younger audience the Smokin Aces. It does by use of colours again however this time they are very bright and warm colours, until what only can be imagined as the bad characters come on screen then the colours go dull and dark. Ku Fu Panda is a action film and the music sets it off in an emphatic fashion.

Threw my research it is clear that I need to be clear in my opening sequence, I need to utilise the pace and colour to set the mood of my film. Secondly I want it to be clear whop my target audience is from the first few second of my opening sequence

All my research of titles i found of http://www.artofthetitle.com/