Conventions in Film Openings

Analysis of a Sequence - 9 Key Frames

Saul Bass Practical - Anatomy of a Murder

ANATOMY OF A MURDER

In our Media class we have been looking into designs and fonts that are usually seen in title sequences, we looked at the effect they give to the audience, layout, etc. We were exploring the text that is used pre-production (Added during recording or before) and those that are used post-production (added after recording) like this title sequence of 'Anatomy of a Murder'. This is my version of Saul Bass's title sequence 'Anatomy of a Murder':

My Version

Saul Bass's Version 

These videos had to be 20 seconds long so we had to get enough shots so that we could make up to 20 seconds. We used a camera to take the pictures and we had to cut out a few shapes from a piece of paper that was identical to the way that Saul Bass did it in his version. Every-time we took a new photo of the build up and isolation of the body, we had to take at least 6 pictures of the same image, by doing this allowed us to get the right amount to use per frame so that the video was long enough and the continuity work and flowed much smoother than it would have with just one photo and readjusting the duration of each frame. After we have taken the pictures, they were uploaded and ready to use in 'Final Cut Express'. From Final cut express we were abled to add text to the frames and music which is just like the original version by Saul Bass.

Saul Bass

My Favourite Title Sequence

This is a video of my presentation of my favourite title that we did in class:

Themes and Styles

What is a Theme?

The theme acts like the overall or underlying idea, it acts as the foundation of a piece of work or art or medium which makes everything within it link to it (Example: Christmas, the things that should be typically seen within the themes would be presents and Santa Clause).

  
The theme of 'Friends' is to show the friendship between the six characters within the show, this is express by the fact that the opening uses many different clips to create a montage of the characters from different episodes. In the scene one of the characters are usually seen with another character of the six, this really expresses the point that these characters are good friends as they are seen with each other a lot within the montage.

What is a Style?

Styles is the way that the production expresses the way things look under the influence of a theme. 

In this opening for 'Superbad', it uses a lot of visual style, i.e.: the silhouette of the character's dancing with the contrasting colours of their silhouette, the poor transition and very bright and colourful colours. These examples can be associated with the the theme of the 70's however this is a contrast of when the film is meant to be set in but by doing this create enigma codes as it keeps the audience guessing about the film.

Theme and Style Analysis: Dexter

This opening sequence from the TV drama 'Dexter' we are able to see or link what the show will be focusing around. There is many connotation of blood that is seen quite frequently within the sequence, although most of the time it is not blood. The first connotation of blood is seen when a bug (mosquito) is upon the arm of a character, this character hits it, this leaves behind a red substance upon his arm. This can only be associated with blood, the fact that the character does not seem to bothered about the blood on his arm suggest to use that he does not mind blood or enjoy the sight of blood. In another scene in the sequence, the character is seen shaving himself inside his room, after awhile, again another red substances (however this time it is more liquidise than before) starts dripping down his neck and into a sink. The large amount of the use of red connotes blood and death, it further denotes that the character may have a strange interest to blood as it is seen a lot in the sequence. It also helps to tell the the theme of the drama, this drama is about a serial killer who works as a blood analyst. 

This visual style of the red substance helps fit in with the theme of the show as this person is a serial killer and works with blood so is use to the sight of blood and that it is a big part of his life. Later, we see many objects that has the same look and properties of blood, i.e.: the ketchup being red however the way that they express the ketchup is unusual to how we would normally see it, they make it spit and gush out upon the plate, the colour of the ketchup is red and therefore links to the other red substances from previously and plus they don't show that it is ketchup because they do not show the bottle, creates enigma codes as the audience does not know exactly what it is and because they have been expose to the red substances that is most likely blood because of the source of where it comes from consist of blood, the audience will question the fact that if that is ketchup or is it blood. The style that they chose, uses a lot of connotation of blood due to the liquid red substance, to help link with the whole theme of the show and to help the audience understand the sort of things that they are expecting to see from this character.

Purpose of an Opening

Preliminary Task and Evaluation

In our As Media class, we were giving a preliminary task to complete. The preliminary task was to: Film a scene which involves a person walking into a room, siting down and having an exchange of dialogue with someone.

We had to plan our scenes on a storyboard with the shot types that will be used in every scene. After creating a storyboard, we then had to make a shot list which had all the different shots that would be used throughout the preliminary task. When we showed our teachers our plans and got their approval, we were allowed to go out and film our scene. We had to work in a group of three, one person who is working the camera and the 2 people who is involved in the exchange of words.

When we managed to get all the footage that we needed then we used Final Cut Express to use all the footage and put them together to create a final production. This is my final production of the preliminary task:

Evaluation:

Overall the whole production went very well, we have not had that much experience with a camera however with the use of the tripod (at times) we were able to record our clips and used Final Cut Express to produce a good video. We did well to use the camera shots that were needed to be seen in this task (Establish shot, Over the shoulder shot, Match on action and Shot, reverse shot) and we did well to obey the rules of the 180 degree rule, making sure that the person who is seen on the left, always stays on the left and never broke the 180 degree rule and moves to the right. We managed to keep a continuity with each scene so that nothing looked out of place and if there was an error then we tried to fix it using Final Cut Express so that it continued to look like a continuity footage. We managed to keep our film mysterious and giving out enigma codes to the audience, this made the film more exciting to watch and more intriguing to the audience.

I believe that the task went well however we did experience some problems while we were filming. The first time we filmed our preliminary task, we broke the 180 degree rule numerous of times which meant that we had to re-film the scenes where we broke the 180 degree rule. On the day of the re-film, one of the actors was not in; leaving only two people to do everything and at a result of the absent meant that the camera man had to become an actor and we had to re-film the whole preliminary task over again. This took up a lot of our editing time, but we managed to re-film and edit before deadline day. While we were recording the first run of the preliminary task, we kept rewinding the tape which caused problems for the uploading and took more time from our editing as we had to wait for the clips to come before we could edit.

Although we had problems with our productions, we managed to get everything done, sticking to our plans that we made, the shot types we said we were going to use and managed to get the re-film and editing on time. We have learnt how to keep inside the 180 degree and how to break it and we also learnt to not rewind the tapes in the camera as it cause problems when it came to uploading. Using what we have learnt will help us later in our As Media classes when we are faced with similar tasks.