Blood Farmers Opening Sequence Evaluation

Pillow Talk & Fringe

Having analysed the two sequences taken from Pillow Talk which is from the 1950’s and 1960’s also another from the much more modern TV show Fringe I have begun to find that the techniques used differ to each other and this is expected as of the difference in the times they were produced. These techniques which I have recognised are things such as the camera movement in the clip taken from Fringe, there is a Tracking Shot used which gets closer to the two characters in the scene whereas in Pillow Talk it is much more simple as between each edit this is no movement of the camera used.

In Pillow Talk most of the edit’s which are used are just straight cuts but at one point in the clip there is a dissolve edit used and this is to show that from the previous scene to the next scene some time has passed but in the much more modern series Fringe they have a different technique to show that time has passed and this is done by having a scene set inside an office with two characters in and then straight cutting to an outdoor scene looking up into the sky and then it again straight cuts into another scene with another two characters in an office. Using the outdoor scene with none of the characters from the series and no key things in it gives us as an audience an idea that time has passed, the reasons being it is almost as this is a gap or a break between the scenes showing a gap in time between the scenes.  So a modern approach to editing simply from this is to try and use different techniques of style of editing to surprise the audience in the way the have done something or just to simply make a change in editing to prevent the same edits being used over and over.

In the clip of Pillow Talk there is an edit used which is not very common in movies and this is a wipe edit and particularly this wipe edit is even more uncommon as it only wipes over half of the screen which then makes it appear as a split screen. In the time in which Pillow Talk was being produced this style of edit would have been very new and a surprise to the audience as it show technology has become a little more advanced. In modern times this style of edit is used a little more but still remains rarely used as it does not always suit a film or a situation as this edit would only be used to show a phone call of both characters at each end of the line. Also a modern audience would find this edit a little boring especially the one in Pillow Talk as this scene is a whole 69 Seconds and there is not much change in edit or camera angles or positioning, so to most audiences now would see this scene to have been dragging on a little too much as we are now used to many edits being used throughout a video which gives a little excitement to the viewer and a bit of a change.

Looking at the lengths of a scene or shot I noticed that Pillow Talk has much less edits than Fringe, Pillow Talk having 19 different edits over the space of 4:12 minutes and 24 different edits over a time of 1:44 in the clip of Fringe. So overall Fringe has many more edits than in Pillow Talk and this is simply down to Fringe being much more modern than Pillow Talk so they would have used a lot of edits to prevent in each scene to seem to drag on which then would put a bad look over the show overall as the audience would see the show as being very boring as they are always being held in a scene for a long while before they see something different.

  In Pillow Talk most of the edits used are straight cut edits and in Fringe all of the edits are straight cut edits and the reason for the use of these style of edits is because they are used to show a change of place or just a change of angle in the same place but it is showing something happening at the same time or straight after the scene before the last edit. The reason why they editors of both of these shows has decided to use straight cut edits was because they wanted to show that no time has passed between each cut whereas if they were to try and use a dissolve edit this could be totally unsuitable as the audience would believe some time has passed where it hasn’t done and this would confuse the viewers.

 In Fringe the duration of the scenes between edits are very small starting from 2 Seconds between edits but as the video plays on the time between each edit gets slightly longer and longer up to 12 Seconds between two of the edits in the clip then the duration decreases again towards the end but then between the last edit and the end of the clip it jumps back up to a gap of 8 Seconds. The reason for this maybe that the storyline becomes a little more important and interesting at this point so they want the audience to focus on it and listen in rather than catching all of the editing so they do this by reducing the amount of edits used.

Then in Pillow Talk the duration of time between edits at the beginning are very long the longest being at 69 Seconds and then as it goes on from there, the duration decreases and more edits are being used and the reason I believe this is because there is a long scene of a man and woman in a bar together and there is a need of different edits to prevent the audience finding this long scene very tiresome staring at a long still video shot of a couple in a bar so there is a need of editing to stop there and to keep changes flowing so the audience stay focused.          

Editors for any type of film need to be very careful when editing to match it exactly to the video for example by getting the amount of edits used to match to the speed of the video or the to use a lot of edits in areas which are situated in one place where a change is needed. Also the editors need to get the style of edit right to give the audience a clear understanding of the video.

Harry Potter Promotion

Harry Potter Promotion

View more documents from Sam Baksh.
Here are several methods of promotion for the Harry Potter 7, the first one is a poster which can be seen around shops, shopping centres, cinemas etc. they can be a good way of promoting the film as it would have been cheap but it is less effective as it is not very eye catching due to the dark colours. The second is a billboard in which would be seen around towns and on buildings. They are good methods of promotion as they are very large which therefore is easier to grab your attention. The next method of promotion is a picture and title on the front of the Empire magazine which is a magazine based on films mainly new and upcoming movies. This is a great way of advertising as it instantly hits their target audience who are real   film lovers who in which buy these magazines. The next advert is a small bar which runs across the top of Youtube.com which is giving a link to the trailer for the movie and the reason for this being a great mthod of advertising is becasue it is on the homepage of a website which is viewed thousands of times per day. Also it gives you an instant link to the trailer which gets you involved in the movie. The last advert I found was again on the homepage of Youtube.com but this is a larger advert, similar to an online poster which also supplies an automatically playing trailer on the homepage of Youtube.

Filming the Opening Sequence

When beginning to film our Opening Sequence before half term, we managed to film half of our planned opening sequence on our storyboards. When we had did this part of our filming we was already delayed as our "Director" Arron Mallory was away due to being ill. Yet when we had done half of our filmimg as a group we then came across another problem which was that Ruba Khan our original actress was ill and by this time we was getting short of time therefore resulting in having to get another actress. After doing so it took us around two weeks to complete our filming, soon after we began to edit our footage which is what we have been working on for the last week.

Harry Potter Opening

This short clip is taken from the opening sequence of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. The clip originally has music added to the video  except we used a blank version of the clip with only some narrative. The reasons for this is it allowed me to add and create my own music which I had made using GarageBand. To do so I imported the clip into GarageBand and looked over the clip and looked out what type of music and sounds would suit best to the theme of the sequence. As the opening was mostly very dark and gloomy scenes I chose to use Diegetic music otherwise it would appear comical if i was to use very upbeat music which would be non-Diegetic which is not what I wanted. Parts of the clip had characters appearing very suddenly which could seem quite scary and jumpy but without the music it did not hold this affect. Therefore in these parts of the clip and inserted loud and thumping music to emphasize the affect. 

This task was very useful as it allowed me to practice for when myself and my groups opening sequence had been filmed and edited in which I could import my opening sequence and create music to add to the 2 minute clip.

The Shining Opening Sequence

This opening sequence is taken from the film The Shining which is a very famous horror movie which was made in 1980, which now means it is over 30 years old. The movie still it achieves it main aim which is to frighten people by using it's horror codes and conventions. In the opening sequence all we see is an aerial shot of a car driving across a mountainous area which appears to be quite a picturesque area. Yet the music used is very creepy and echoey creating a scary feeling to the whole opening sequence which is strange due to the beautiful scenery shown.
Also the area in the scene is very deserted which adds to the affect of being very eerie as this is a typical convention in a horror movie for someone to be alone and scared.

Lord of War Opening Sequence

LORD OF WAR: The Life of a Bullet. Watch more top selected videos about: Entertainment, Bridget Moynahan

This opening sequence is taken from the film Lord of War which is about a man who sells and supplies guns and ammunition to people mainly in Africa. The opening is shot as a first person perspective but in fact it is taken from a bulletes perspective during it process of being manufactured and this opening is commonly know as "the life of a bullet". The music in this sequence is a non-diagetic sound as it shows hundreds of bullets being manufactured and then put into guns and fired which is a serious issue and appears to be quite gruesome in the end of the sequence whereas the song is quite upbeat and peaceful. Yet if you focus on the lyrics they tell a story about a man with a gun and it involves kids in which matches exactly to this opening so the sound of the music seems to be non-diagetic whereas the lyrics match the situation in the sequence.

The Dark Knight Opening Sequence

This opening sequence is taken from the last Batman movie released The Dark Knight. The opening is a cliche action movie scene which involves a bank robbery with a large group of men. During the heist someone tries to defend the bank which is being robbed and he represents the hero in the film and this is a convention of action movies. In the sequence there are characters who have masks on and these are usual mise-en-scene from a horror film to appear to be scary. Yet this is an action film but they use these masks as robbers often use them but also to give a frightening look to them to emphasise their scary and cruel behaviour.

How effectively does the opening sequence from 'Children of Men' (2006) use the forms and conventions of film openings? What is your personal response as a member of the audience?

Having analysed the opening sequence of the 2006 movie Children of Men I have found many key requirements of an effective opening of a film used in this very film opening. The first convention we experience from the film is a voice over which is used and from this we can tell as an audience it is a news report by the professionalism and the formal voice and language used and therefore it is a digetic sound. Also the man and woman on the voice over are providing us with information, which gives us a stronger idea that it is a news report preferably from the TV.  The narrative of the voice is quite shocking as we know nothing of the film yet and suddenly we are introduced from the news report about what is going on in the world and as an audience we are taken away from this as it is very different from the world in which we currently know. By using a black screen with the voice over at the very beginning can make the audience slightly impatient as they are forced to listen to the narrative and they therefore are hearing this news which is quite opposite from the news of today so the audience then want to see the visual part of the film to see how everything looks as we know in the film it is not set in the present.

When we hear the news that the world is stunned today from the death of the youngest person alive, we are cut straight into a scene, which is set in a café with a crowd of people in the staring up towards a television. The use of having a cut after that part if the news is to show the audience that this part is what we were waiting to hear so once we are given the information that’s all we need to know so it cuts into the first scene. Also from this cut it tells us as an audience, that was the key piece of information therefore this is what the movie is about.

As the film cuts into its first scene we see a crowd of people compact together in a small café staring at the TV where the news report is given. This shows that people really are stunned at the news of the death of the youngest person on the planet. Even police officers are standing in the coffee shop watching the news, which shows they have been distracted from the death of the youngest person. From hearing that the worlds youngest person has recently died shows us that we must be set in the future as there are thousands of people born every minute so something must have happened to the world. From the news report the year of the death of the boy is given which is 2027 which therefore sets us in the future which gives us a reason why things have changed so much from today. Except as far as we can see the people’s clothing in the café are not at all different to people’s fashion of today also the design of the shop is not at all futuristic but the TV in both corners are very futuristic.

In the coffee shop scene there is a non-digetic sound used which is mournful music which is used to help the audience feel the same way the characters in the scene are feeling and the music is made to seem as if it is coming from the television but it would be very rare for music to be played on a news report unless because this is such big news to everyone they make the music an exception.

The film then introduces us to the main character Theo played by Clive Owen who comes into the café and squeezes through the crowd while they stand silently glued to the TV in shock whereas our main character walks in and buys a coffee as if everything is normal giving the TV only a glance as he is not bothered by it. As Theo enters casually walks in it begins to get us thinking why does he not seem affected from the death. When he leaves the shop the camera follows him as a handheld camera shot and this makes it seem as if we were walking right behind him following him outside.

As our character steps outside we can instantly see large red double decker buses, which is a recognised icon of London therefore it instantly sets the place where our character is, also from the busy and dirty streets we can relate it to today. Except hear everything is extremely dirty and there is very low natural lighting outside so it puts a very gloomy and dark look to the city unlike its current well lit streets and buildings and this can resemble the film being quite horrid as of the similar appearance.                                                                                                                                       

Outside we can see a some aspects have also changed such as there are very large TV screens on the side of buildings which are also showing the news report and the push bikes are engine powered therefore we can see that some kinds of technology have developed but from the looks of the streets and the contents of the news report things appear as if they haven’t changed and in fact become far worse. Finally we see a bus drive past the frame which says “Instant Cash” they may have used this tech code to show possibly that people may not have much money so this advert is showing hope to people to be able get money to live as unemployment may high risen to a very high percentage by 2027.

As our character Theo begins to walk down the street we then get a better image of him as he puts his coffee to the side and sneakily pulls out a small bottle of alcohol from his pocket and pours it into his coffee. This shows that he may be an alcoholic and this could explain why he is not as taken away by the news or it could be down to him having experienced something similar to the death of the youngest person alive and is getting over it by drinking so therefore he tries not to pay much attention to the news report.

The final thing we then see is an explosion from the coffee shop, which Theo then reacts to, and jumps out of the way, an alarm then rings to show danger and a woman comes walking out of a cloud of smoke screaming with her very own arm in her hand. From this iconic horror image we believe that the film may become a lot more serious than we thought as an audience. Whereas from the previous scenes I believe  the genre of the film it would have appeared to be a Drama  but when we see this clip we build a sense that it may become a Disaster or Thriller movie.