Sub-genres which inspire me and why?

Juno
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20PQBtyfNZY

The style of the titles are hand written and uneven. It fits in with the cartoon-like theme and works well with the appearance of the young character, as if the credits were sketched by her.

The titles say: who it presents, production company, A Jason Reitman Film, Juno (the main character), followed by names of other characters, casting, costume designer, music, music supervisors, co producers, film editor, production designer, director of photography, executive producers, producers, writer and lastly the director. It is as if the character is aware of the credits appearing because she sometimes looks at them, attracting more attention. This gives them more importants.

The titles are combined in things that are in the settiing and change positions each time they appear. For example, whether it be in the sky, on a wall or floating in mid air, there is no consistancy. This could be seen as reflection of the characters personality. As for the shots used, there is a complete mixture. It ranges from tracking shots of bruno walking, to an Arial shot of her starring up at the sky and more.

What i like about this title sequence is that it is as-if the words are alive. I say this because they move as if they are fidgiting, which i thought was brilliant. Each title had a different characteristic, for example some flashed onto the screen or others jumped on one word after the other.

Smokin' Aces

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9arqyWRx1X8

The style of the titles are simple but effective. They combine well with the backround and do not hog all the attention, neither do they hide away from the viewers eye. I like the way the titles appear on a black background, followed by the backdrop. I thought this was a clever way of giving the credits meaning and relevents to the movey.


MirrorMask

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XX7ZLvLw9mU

The title sequence is edgy and unique. The words are interesting to look at due to their crooked, abstract style. The titles are the first thing that catches my attention which gives them extra importants. The Font is random and the words appear in random places and angles. I interpret this as mirroring the girls odd way of life, far away from mainstreem lifestyle.

The titles are made up of the ussual, director, distributer, writer, sound editors etc. But the most 'important' names are at the start, appearing in a twinkle of light infront of a black backround, these are, 'Destination films present' and 'a Jim Henson production'.

Arlington Road

To watch Arlington Road, click on the link below http://www.veoh.com/browse/videos/category/activism_non_profit/watch/v629517042cy2pJC

In class we watched five film openings: Arlington Road, Dead Calm, Marathon Man, Seven and the Shining. All had contrasting styles, some more effective than others. I learnt that the opening sequence of a film is an extremely important section of a film as it sets the feel/mood and genre . A good Thriller opening sequence should not give away too much or too little about the plot of the story. This grabs their attention and maintains their full concentration, making them want to continue watching.

Arlington road stood out from the other five clips because it had a unique and abstract style. It didn't give me a clean cut idea of what the film was about. However, it gave me plenty of random, scattered clues and hints. The eerie, spooky musical score instantly set the mood. There were constant tracking shots of a fence around a house, as if someone or something was pacing up and down, watching the house. It was filmed with what seemed like a hand held camera, adding to the overall jagged and uncertain atmosphere. The negative, red and rustic, sometimes black and white, lighting complimented the music creating a chilling feeling. Flashes of children playing followed by a flash of empty swings moving back and forth in the wind, suggested murder or kidnapping of some sort. Likewise, there was a close up of a dog biting and trying to eat something, perhaps meat, again suggesting death and blood. A sound of a moving train was combined with the music, as the camera zoomed into the dark window of the ghostly house. Again images of a child in a cot showed innocents, followed by a vicious bark of a dog as the child seemed to become evil or possessed. Black dresses hung from a washing line, and an oldish looking man is seen walking away down a street, without being shown his face. Again, this makes the viewer wander who this strange looking man is. The editing seems to speed up creating a sense of urgency and panic. The sound effects included whispers, haunting screeching noises, distant and drained screams and faded out train sounds. Lastly, the Titles were combined in the images and they didn't dominate the screen. There was a combination of moving and static titles and they appeared randomly on screen.

All these indications of the films contents were pieced together to create a fantastic mysterious opening. It managed to not give away too much or too little, keeping the viewers questions un answered. This persuades them to keep watching in order to find out what is going on.

Match cut preliminary exercise

preliminary match cut film. Nora

This is my preliminary match cut film. I wasn't in on the day it was introduced to my class so I had to do it with another group of people.

Our story

is about a student who gets the news from her teacher that she has been excluded from college due to her constant lateness.

The main task

our main task was to make sure we had a match cut as well as a shot reverse shot. A match cut is basically having two sequences that flow together. The match cut in this film was of the girl's hand opening the door, this was matched to inside of the room when the door actually opened.

The shot reverse shot which was of the teacher and student talking. the initial idea was to have an over the shoulder shot but we chose to continuously switch the shots from face to face.

Analysis of Shots From The Art of The Title Sequence

Dexter

At first sight of this you can't easily make out what is in the background. This is what i like about it because you confuse it for something disgusting but really its a fruit. This contrasts to what dexter is all about and you don't get the link between the fruit and the program till you see the opening sequence. the style of the text suits the program. it seems manly


True Blood

I don't know what to make out of this background for a program thats to do with vampires. I do know that vampires don't like sun or day light though. The opening sequence as a whole doesn't really feel like its got anything to do with vampires. I get the scense that it was made for a totaly different program. This is because it isn't filled with bloody, scary and moody backgrounds. The title true blood definately suits the program.

KUNG FU PANDA

I believe this title tells us alot about the cartoon. its a panda that knows kung fu! i also believe that the style of the text definitely suits cartoon too. its big and bold just like the panda who is the main character.

300

The background, title and text definitely go with what the film is about. its quite obvious a war is going on in the background. The name 300 is a weired name for a film but once you watch it you understand why its called 300. red is a good colour that was used fro the text. it signifies danger and blood which is what the movie is packed full with.

Coraline

In the background theres a close up shot of the main character coraline. the film has been used as a background for the title sequence. which i think was a great idea for this sort of film, because its an animation and it engages the kids straight away.

Sherlock holmes

The font is a perfect one for this sort of period movie. It looks just like a persons writting from british acient times. There has been a use of medium close up in shots1&7, this has been used to introduce the main characters. I like shot 6 (the woman) in particular because it stands out. this might have been done unpurpose to let us know she plays a significant role in the movie.

Blade

Once you look at the font you Immediately of sharp knives and swords and therefore think of action. Each letter looks like a weapon of sum sort because they are filled with sharp edges and look shiny. This tells you alot about the movie.

Coraline

These are 9 sequence shots from the movie coraline. the shots consist of a doll being made. there has been a use of extreme close ups and medium close up to introduce the character coraline. the font that has been used is well suited to the movie.

Technical Audit of Bait Tutorial and live type

Technical Audit of Bait Tutorial

On the 28th of January we were taught on how to edit using final cut pro. My group was assigned to a hard drive that We had to save every work that we do on.we were taught how to disconnect the hard drive safely without loosing our work. we learnt how to use some of the basic tools to cut,paste,delete and add clips.
At the start of our next lesson we were taught how to use the camera sefely and what to do and not to do. We then had to go out and shoot a video of two people exchanging bags undercover just like in the movie Collateral. We were giving an hour and thirty minutes to finish the video then we had to edit it using the tools we had learnt in technical audit of bait tutorial. These are pictures of final cut pro and the tools we used.

To make things less complicated we could see what we did across two different screens. we could drag a clip from the right screen to the left screen.

The editing was carried out on the left screen. We started off by dragging the clip we wanted from the right screen into the left screen. The clip then appeared in both sections of the left screen. The left section is where we manipulated the clip and our final product was gotten on the right section. No editing can be carried out in the right section because this is where the final edit appears. The blue and green bars below the two sections are all the clips we had edited and put ogether to make a final video. To the mid left of the screen is a vertical bar where all the tools are. below is a zoomed in picture tool bar.

I haven’t experimented with all of of the tools apart from the first and sixth. The first tool is the cursor which is used to select an object on the screen .The next tool is the razor tool which is used to cut away part of a clip you don’t like the yellow envelope on the right underneath the second section is used to add a new clip in between two clips in the section below.

we then moved on to live type this is where we involved text into our video.

We experimented with the different effects and fonts and tried to make sure that the font we chose matched our video and didn't look out of place. Rather than putting the text on a plain background we set our video as a background for the text

Here is am image of what the text looked like.

Arlington Road Analysis

ARLINGTON ROAD

In media class we have been analysing thriller movies and last week we watched five different thriller clips which were; Arlington road, Dead Calm, Marathon Man, Seven and The shining. i have analysed Arlington Road wider to see how it uses conventions of a thriller film.

We watched a clip in class about how thriller films should be and they said that one of the most important is making sure that the audience doesn't know too much or too little about the film and also audience should think "i don't understand everything", this all helps the film to build up more tension and makes audience watch the film being more exited about what will happen next as they are not exactly sure. Arlington Road follows this rule as in the clip we watched in class we don't exactly understand everything as it does tell a detailed story but instead shows death, animals, children and negatives which all give a clue to the audience about the theme of the film.

By looking at the camera work from the clip we see the convention of a thriller film as it is held from a high angle to show the object or person as powerless and naive. Also i realised that its hand held camera which causes the image to shake which gives a effect of suspense. In the mise-en-scene we notice things that belong to children for example swings which are somehow made to feel creepy in thrillers as it creates a scene of death or children, also noticed dogs and babies which give a clue of the theme as it may be a story to do with kidnapping or children getting killed.

The sound in the clip is very creepy, we hear no dialogue except from whispers of children and breathing effects which is very suspenseful as it makes the audience think that the sounds are from near as if their in the film.

The editing is fast with negatives which we don't really see in films that often so it adds a texture to the theme of the film, fast editing makes the audience miss out some parts of the story so that the audience is confused so that they can pay more attention to understand.

The Art of the title sequence

Cheri tells the story of the end of a six-year affair between an aging retired courtesan, Léa, and aflamboyantyoung man, Fred, nicknamed "Chéri".

From the style of the titles you could that its an old english film as there are a number of pictures of women in dresses. In each image there is always a women which shows that they are the main focus of the movie. There is a lose up on a photo of a women and there is also a long shot of a women standing naked.

This title sequence appealed to me as its interesting because there seems to be no titles on the images just pictures.

Thriller

What is a Thriller and the sub-genres?

A suspenseful adventure movie. Thriller is a

British television series, originally broadcast

in the UK from 1973 to 1976. It is an anthology series: each episode has a self-contained story

and its own cast. Thrillers are characterized by fast pacing, frequent action, and resourceful

heroes who must thwart the plans of more

powerful and better equipped villains.

There are many sub genres of thriller films which include Pschyological, Crime, Disaster, Legal, Action, Drama, Spy, Religious thrillers and etc. Examples of thriller films are Godfather, Psycho, Fight club, The dark night, Rest Stop and etc.

Suspenseful moments in Collateral 04

Collateral is a crime Thriller made in 2004. It stars Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx and was directed by Michael Mann and written by Stuart Beattie. This film is filled with suspense which i will demonstrate through two detailed examples...

Click on the link below to watch the Collateral 04 Movie Trailer...
http://www.veoh.com/browse/videos/category/activism_non_profit/watch/v629517042cy2pJC


1) Cab driver Max durosher (Jamie Fox) gets pulled over by the police

By this time Max has found out that Vincent ( Tom Cruise) is a hit man and is out to kill 5 people before leaving Los Angelis in the morning. Max is being forced to drive Vincent to all his destinations but then gets pulled over by the police. Suspense kicks in because the audience are aware that their is a dead body of one of Vincents target in the boot. The taxi window is shattered and splattered with blood. The police officer asks Max why he is driving in unsafe conditions. Vincent nervously thinks of a lie to say, to be then asked to open the boot of his Taxi. This is the height of the suspense because the audience no that if the police officer opens the boot and finds the body, Max is going to be instantly arrested, even though the he is guilty. Thankfully, the police officer does not open the boot which instantly eases the intense suspense felt in the build up to a potential, significant event.

2) Max finds out that the fifth intended victim is Annie!
Vincent was hired by Felix, a club owner, to kill all witnesses of a case against him the next day. After Vincents fourth killing at the night club, Max is forced to drive to the next location. By this time Max has experienced an overload of traumatic killings and drives faster and faster, as suspense builds up as the audience feel something big is going to happen. Out of anger and distress Max deliberately crashes the Taxi and the car flips and overturns leaving the audience in shock horror. Vincent flees, to leave Max to struggle out of the taxi. A police officer approaches him and walks to the boot to find the dead body. Again this creates suspense because the audience knows that he is innocent. Max was about to comply with the arrest until he finds out that Annie, his earlier cab fair, was to be the fifth victim on Vincent's list. Max broke free from the police officer and ran towards Annie's building block. This creates uncomfortable anxiety because the audience want him to get their in time to save his 'Lady' from a fatal death. He reaches Annie on a stolen mobile phone but the battery is low. This keeps the audience at the edge of their seat, as it could run out any second, which it did. Max did not manage to tell Annie to 'run' from Vincent therefore he starts to fiercely run towards the building. At this point, the audience are tense as Max is racing against Vincent and time to save her from being killed.