A study of a recent film

Friends with Benefits is a recent film that was released on the 9th September 2011, it is a romantic comedy about two charactors that meet (Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis) who had both just been dumped, they meet and decide to have 'no strings attatched' fun, subsequently, they fall inlove.

A successful actor

Will Smith is a successful and well known actor that has been a charactor in a wide range of genres such as: horror, sitcom, comedy, romance and action adventure. Will Smith is usually the main charactor in films or in lead supporting an actor. Will Smith is well known around Europe and the USA and therefore attracts the attention of people when his face is used on posters, front pages or cases, this is because he is important for publicity.

MOMENTO

MOMENTO: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cifPv4QWTH0&feature=fvst

Momento opening titles has a close up shot of a photograph in the background that a man flicks and it slowly fades to nothing, this is telling us that someone's memory is being erased using the photo to symbolize the memory, this means that the sequence is being placed in reverse. The soft, low toned, slow music creates an eary effect of emptiness and links with the loss of the memory.

Insomnia title scene

INSOMNIA: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m70eyk6xr3s


The opening titles of the film insomnia immediately suggest the film is about tiredness and sleeping. I think this because of the conventions used, these include several things. First of all, the colour of the background against the titles is dull and boring, this theme makes a person bored, tired and consequently, want to fall asleep. Secondly, the font used is very blurry but fades into a clear font, this is how a person views life before he or she falls asleep and gives the effect of a persons eyes closing, dozing off to sleep. 

Shutter Island Crew List

Shutter Island is a physchological thriller that is quite simular to a horror film and so I have written the people needed to produce the film, these are:

1. Director - Martin Scorsese

2. Producer- Bradley Fischer, Mike Medavoy

3. Cinematographer- Robert Richardson

4. Writer- Laeta Kalogridis 

5. Editor- Thelma Schoonmaker

a study of the first 1 minute of '28 Days Later' in comparison to 'An American Werewolf'

An American Werewolf is a film about a tourist that was bitten and becomes a werewolf. 28 Days Later is about chimps that got very angry when someone told someone else that a chimpanzee had bitten a woman. These two films have completely different plots, I will now evaluate the opening sequences of these horror films because it will be useful to explore the mise en scene used as my group have decided to record a horror film.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMGA3e0I-2c
An American Werewolf the horror conventions are immediately shown through a dark background against blue bold text in upper case writing which soon turns to night sky with blue outlining of clouds and the moon and lightening bolts striking through the sky, this is shown in a low angle shot also known as a worms eye view. This shot then fades into a long shot of the city of Paris in the night time, this sets the scene as the well known Eiffel Tower that instantly tells the audience that the scene is set in Paris. The sound of the wind whistling is added to scare the viewer along with low toned music. The camera moves backward to end up with a medium close up of a church which creates a spooky atmosphere and then moves on to a close up shot of a statue in the rain. The weather acts as a convention to show the genre of horror.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1VbxTx2uLQ
In comparison to this, 28 Days Later starts off with a very stressful scene of people fighting, the hand held camera gives off the impression that the veiwer is there in the crowd of people fighting and quick cuts add to the stressful atmosphere.The conventions used in the background are: police, fire, darkness. Long shots help to set the scene and close ups help the audience to feel a part of the scene, this is quite similar to An American Werewolf. The camera then fades out to show that the footage just viewed was actually being viewed by another character on a television set. A long shot then shows us that this character is a monkey being strapped down to a table and forced to view these horrible scenes, this immediately introduces the horror genre.

Evaluating the preliminary task

The preliminary task was to create an opening sequence to a film which involved the male protagonist walking across the screen to sit down next to the female protagonist to start a conversation. Our task was to include the match on action shot, which allows the audience to see the departure and arrival of a character from room to room, inside to outside, or basically one scene to another. We also had to include shot reverse shot while maintaining the 180 degree rule which is where the camera cannot spin around more than 180 degrees past a character, object or scene. My role was to edit the scenes after they have been films, this is called an editor.

This is a match on action shot taken from the recorded film.

This is a shot reverse shot, commonly used in conversation as seen to the left.

This is an extract from the opening sequence we recorded in our group, it is a shot reverse shot maintaining the 180 degree rule.

Characters involved in this podcast are Jade Coombes and Adam Meeham, Conor Taylor was filming and him and I then edited the film. I feel our recording was quite successful as we included all shots needed and the correct conventions within the sequence, conventions include a commonly used romantic setting and books to emphasize the point that it was filmed at a school. As I am in a group with people I am friends with, I feel that we work well as a group and feel comfortable sharing ideas, this is important so that everyone has a say in what is being done. The actors listened well to the director/filmer and I now feel slightly more comfortable editing. 

Famous Shower Scene From Psycho

This is a side view of the woman, in the background the walls and doors are white which signifies the purity and innocence of the woman, this is ironic because is could signify that she has not fully lived her life and is soon going to be taken away from her. She is checking that the door is closed to ensure privacy before she gets into the shower, this also emphasizes irony because a man will soon appear to disrupt her privacy and kill her.

This is a low angle shot of the water falling down on the woman's face, this shot allows us to see what she sees  in her perspective, this makes us feel the same emotions as the woman and will later on emphasize sympathy for the woman when she dies as we have seen life in her eyes or as her.

This shot emphasizes the 'bad guy' character as he is in dark shadowed colour, portrayed as mysterious but also negatively as he is a dark silhouette in a light atmosphere, this same technique is also used later on in the podcast when this man stabs her, her blood is the dark colour in the light atmosphere. The darkness in the light of the room shows evil to make us feel on edge as someone is coming, the man is holding a knife which immediately clocks 'danger'. However, the darkness and shadow of the person shows mystery.

This close up shot of a hand signifies the woman desperately gasping for help, this portrays the woman holding onto her last hope life, but when her hand drags along the wall and onto the floor, the audience knows that she has no hope left. The woman is weakening, she has no or little strength left and is desperate to live.

This is a high angle shot of the plug hole which portrays the woman's life being washed away, it is literally going down the plug hole.

Evaluation of 'The Hills Have Eyes' opening sequence (the making)

I have chosen to evaluate the opening sequence to 'The Hills Have Eyes', it is a horror film produced in 2006 as a remake of Wes Cravan's original film that was in 1977, the film is based on a of a group of people that struggle against murderous mutants that are attacking them after there car breaks down in the desert. I have chosen to evaluate this movie because it is based on the genre 'horror', and I need to look at this type of film genre to help me have an understanding of the conventions used within the mese en scene of this particular genre so that I can go on to make my own successful version of a horror film. 'The Hills Have Eyes' starts with a voice over, it is spoken by a male in low tone- it sounds like he is struggling to breath, this instantly creates tension as it is very likely that the audience will feel scared and worried as to who the voice over is and why he is speaking this way.

The first shot is a medium shot that uses mainly brown, green, grey and white dull and natural colours. In the background of this shot the scene is deserted with no nature growing around the swing set of which abandoned dummies have been left swinging on, this makes the audience feel alone. As the opening sequence went on, quick cuts were made and flashing images appeared on the screen mainly of close up shots of signs, photographs or news paper articles, this is to set the scene and give the audience an understanding of what the film is about to be about without actually telling them. From these close ups the audience can tell that the crops used are old due to the signs being on old wood and photographs captured in greyscale. The opening sequence also consists of longshots of the desert to set the scene and allow the audience to understand the setting, temperature and mood of the film.

Suddenly, an atomic bomb goes off, this is in a high angle shot to make the bomb look greater, the low high angle shot is usually used, however, to make something look imperial as apposed to superior, however, in this context, the high angle shot works as it also shows the surroundings which makes the atomic bomb look like it has destructed a large area. As the podcast goes on, the quick cuts get faster to emphasise the large amount of things and people that have been destroyed, this also includes newspaper articles on nuclear testing etc. The titles used at the end are written in upper case CAPS in write writing to go against the dark background of blood soaked walls.

The hills have eyes sourse: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIU4bPO7IMk