Film Opening: Evalutation 1

I don’t think that this is a typical or very common introduction of characters within a movie opening. Usually characters are introduced gradually by the actions they participate in within the opening sequence. However, we immediately introduce the characters in a rather formal way. Technically there is only one character but two forms of the self from different periods of time. There is a younger version of the character and the present day character. They’re placed in the same position with a transition between the two shots to show one physically transitioning from one version to the other. We chose to introduce the characters like this because it highlighted this transition to the audience and we also wanted our opening to include crucial imagery instead of the audience being focussed on the characters and their actions throughout the entirety of the piece. This is because I felt that the audience could witness this throughout the rest of the movie and the opening was for important and mysterious detail like the symbolic religious imagery. The opening of movies are extremely important as they set a precedent for the rest of the movie. The recent Bond films such as Skyfall and Spectre perfectly exemplify that as they have such intricately placed imagery with no real action from the characters.

Approximately half of movies contain the title of the movie in the opening scene however the other half have the title at the end of the movie. Personally, if I were to make the entire movie, I would have the title at the end of the movie. That way, the title is that last thing people see on the screen, and not only is word of mouth great publicity which is what the movie would want and so the title being close to mind would aid that, but also I just purely love how it makes the movie feel complete by the end of it. We had the title appear on the screen while the action was still occurring, however, we had the screen fade to black to show the ending of the opening sequence and to make the red of the text stand out even more. The contrast of the title on the black background really makes it stand out and makes it much more visually appealing than if it were on a really busy background, or with similar colours in the background that would obscure it. We used the same font for our title as we did for the opening credits. This is repeated in the opening credit sequence for the thriller ‘Enemy of The State’ - https://youtu.be/7Qznsf0i1wQ.  The text font in this opening sequence related to that of code which related to the storyline. The font we used almost appears like it has been written in blood and looks almost medieval. The religious imagery and the ancient appearing font link well with each other as religion has existed from the very first recordings of intelligent human life.

Many films, instead of showing the specific place where opening is held, they show the general area. For example, in the opening credits sequences of ‘Taken 3’, ‘Enemy of The State’ or in the television drama ‘Gossip Girl’. All of these opening sequences show either birds eye view or high angle camera shots of cities. This is due to the fact that the storylines involve different characters from different places, despite it following a central protagonist and antagonist. However, ours does not comply with this as we showed in the beginning where the action is going to take place in the beginning alone. This not only reinforces the prominent religious imagery but also compensates for us not being able to follow a physical antagonist as our controversial antagonist is God. It also doesn’t reveal to much about where the film is heading which complies with what my audience research results displayed and also the conventions of the thriller genre.

This shot reveals the character’s costume. There isn’t particularly any shot where it clearly displays the character’s costume as a lot of the shots are either mid-shots or close up shots. These tend to display the top half of the costume but not the bottom. In many movies, costumes are used to portray character stereotypes to the audience. However, the use of costume for us was to display the contrast between black and white. This may appear to be rather trivial however, when the contrast is further looked into it reveals a deeper message. We didn’t expect the audience to pick up on the contrast and its deeper meaning while watching but we hoped it would leave subliminal messages for them to recognise later in the movie.

 This is an example of the camerawork technique: match on action. We learnt this technique, along with the 180-degree rule and shot reverse shot while filming our preliminary task. These camera techniques are predominately used for conveying a conversation to the audience However, we had no heard dialogue in our opening. Instead we used it to emphasis the closing of the Church door. This is effective as it allows the audience to see both sides of the door and so makes them feel as if they are entitled to the entire story. Almost every film would include these camera techniques at some point. If we were to create the entire movie, then these techniques would have definitely been included.

The opening immediately creates a sense of suspense for the audience as a tracking shot displays empty pew seats and then reveals a character that wasn’t there previously. Immediately making the audience feel suspense fulfils a convention of the thriller genre. The immediate suspense allows it to build up throughout the opening and subsequently builds anticipation for what’s to come. We used flashbacks of the character’s former self to reinforce the thriller conventions. We also used close up shots of the character’s faces, dark lighting and music connoting tension to replicate these conventions in order to create an accurate thriller movie opening. To improve this, I would include series of montage shots as these are popular with the thriller genre and I would also make the flashbacks more important to the piece.

Both of these shots both include special effects as we slowed the shots down to give them an eerie feeling. The slowing of the shot goes against the thriller genre conventions as a convention of thrillers are shots in quick succession. If the shots are slowed, this is not the case, but I loved the dreamy like effect it gave them which is juxtaposed against the tension the audience feels and what the content of the shots suggest. Despite this, the shot on the left does in fact coincide with the thriller genre due to the fact that you cannot see the character’s face. This complies with the convention of mysteriousness of the characters, however this is predominately with the antagonist, it can be used for the protagonist as well as we demonstrated.