Main Project

The titles and opening of a new fiction film, to last a maximum of two minutes.

• The meaning: The meaning of a film opening is to show action and begin the viewers interest so they get immediately hooked into the film. The film opening will also clearly state the genre of the film, you will also most likely see either the protagonist or antagonist. in this example it is Nicholas Cage.

• Timing conventions: Most film openings are around 2 minutes long. However major blockbusters may be up to 5 minutes. seeing as this film has a well known, Hollywood class, actor starring in it. the intro is slightly longer than most films however, the intro to this film is gripping and leaves a lot of questions unanswered to the viewer which then grips them and hooks them into watching the movie.

• Set the scene (year of setting, location etc.)

• Introduce the key characters: Protagonist, Antagonist, sidekick etc. In this case, the actor would be Nicolas Cage as his name is shown first in the introduction and he begins narrating in the beginning of the intro.

• Introduce pre plot or beginning of the narrative. Establishes platform/ scene. as I have stated above, the main character in this movie, Nicholas Cage, begins to narrate at the start of the introduction to give the viewer a sense if what the film is about.

• Key credits: such as production company, logos and director. For this movie, as the life of the bullet plays out, the producers and directors names are spread throughout the bullets life. To bring attention the the director, his name was placed at the end as the bullets life came to an end.

Usually starts with equilibrium, A key event will occur

The purpose: An introduction is to give the viewer a gist of what the film will be about. Using Lord of War as an example, the introduction to begin with is of the main character Nicholas Cage giving facts about how many individuals in the world have weapons and finishes with a question which the viewers don't expect. From there, 'the 'life of a bullet' begins which furthermore informs the viewer about the genre of the film alongside what the movie is based on. 

Costume: As you can see in the opening of the clip, the main character Nicholas Cage is wearing a sharp black suit. This shows that he is very important. to back up this statement he is the main character in this scene due to the fact that he is narrating alone.

Props: The main prop used in this clip was the bullets due to the fact that the film is about war. As the camera pans up in the beginning of the clip, there are bullet casings littered all over the floor. this has underlying questions and suggestions. For example; What happened here? Is this what the film is about? 
Another prop is the cigar that Nicholas Cage is smoking. This is commonly associated with 'high rollers' which are known to own very large sums of money.


Lord Of War title sequence

• 0:55 - Nicholas Cage - Main actor
• 1:06 - Title of the film 'Lord Of War'
• 1:12 - Actor - Jared Leto
• 1:18 - Actress - Bridget Moynahan
• 1:21 - Actor - Ian Holm
• 1:28 - Actor - Eamonn Walker
• 1:31 - Actors - Sammi Rotibi / Eugene Lazarev
• 1:35 - Actors - Jean-Pierre Nshanian / Shake Toukhmanian
• 1:42 - Actor - Ethan Hawke
• 1:49 - Casting - Mindy Marin C.S.A
• 1:53 - Music - Antonio Pinto
• 2:00 - Costume Designer - Elisabetta Beraldo
• 2:07 - Edited by - Zach Staenberg, A.C.E
• 2:11 - Production Designer - Jean Vincent Puzos
• 2:26 - Director of photography - Amir Mokri
• 2:30 - Executive line producer - Ronaldo Vasconcellos
• 2:37 - Co producer - Douglas E. Hansen
• 2:43 - Executive producers - Fabrice Gianfermi / Bradley Cramp / Gary Hamilton
• 2:52 - Executive producers - Christopher Eberts / Andreas Schmid / Michael Mendelsohn / James D. Stern
• 3:01 - Producers - Nicholas Cage / Norm Golightly
• 3:08 - Producers - Andy Grosch / Chris Roberts
• 3:12 - Produces by - Philippe Rousselet / Andrew Niccol
• 3:27 - Written and directed by - Andrew Niccol 

                                                   Research and planning

Initial Ideas for filming

The group I am working with includes 4 members including myself. The remaining 3 are; Reuben, Oscar and Alexis.

For my first initial idea I was thinking along the lines of a documentary horror. This would involve a dark setting, very dim lighting, suspense with music, lead ups, Cuts and split screens. Example would be 'The Blair Witch Project' due to eerie feelings of suspense and build ups to plot twists etc.

This story could be about an individual that has woken up in captivity inside a house/hospital/room with no memory of how they got there, as they explore the house they find out more shocking truths about murders, robberies and heinous crimes until at the end of the story she discovers that they are bi-polar and have been taken captive by their own mind.

My second thought was an action based film – starting off with a scene that is possibly ahead of the story, for example; in an interrogation room, in a trapped position, possibly wounded. Then snapping back in time to the beginning of the story in an action packed chase sequence or shoot out sequence. The story could involve two rival brothers or rivals of any other nature that were once close but now worst enemies.

Typography is how to arrange text in such a way that it appeals to different audiences. for example, I would use bold, dark text if I were to make a title for a horror film. I could use typography to emphasise certain points that play a key role in the opening such as; Director, Actor, Music by, Costume design, etc. 

Initial ideas on effects

As a group we have put a lot of thought into how we could use filming effects top tell the story, add drama, add suspense and to try to capture all the emotion and tension that every good film has.

Our first thought was flashbacks

If we were to use flashbacks in my first initial idea - 

• By panning the artificial light in such a way that the camera pans underneath the artificial light in the interrogation room and then seamlessly fades out to white.
• From the fade out to white, in comes the fade in. The camera pans up in a reverse of the previous shot. This way it will seem to be that we have travelled back in time to a past time.

As an example of using flashbacks effectively to tell the story of Forrest Gump's life. The story begins with Tom Hanks sitting on a bench waiting for a bus kindly telling people his life story. As he talks through it the audience are sent back in time through the use of flashbacks to the time of his childhood. This is where his life began and from this moment, we are taken through his life moment by moment from the good times to the bad.

The use of lighting in this piece is interesting due to the fact that it is natural lighting. However, the position of the camera shows the sun in the background that seems to be moving closer. this may show that an enlightening moment maybe approaching towards him seeing as the sun is perceived to be a source of positive things.

Audience research: I have decided to aim this movie at a more senior audience. this is due to the fact that the genre that the opening is based around (crime) is usually more mature in its nature. For example, police questioning in an interrogation room is often hard hitting and rather brutal in its nature.

The following is a possible script that we used during an interrogation scene:

Day time in werrington centre (or afternoon). The detective (Reuben) is walking towards the store and notices a robbery/heist taking place and decides to intervene. Both of the robbers are inside, holding whoever at weapon point.

First shot in story board

Allard: This is detective Allard. I’ve chanced upon an amateur robbery at the local super store. Don’t bother sending any back up.

Reuben walks into the store and announces himself, from this the two criminals split. One of the criminals (Alexis) makes it out of the front entrance, without the loot whilst the other criminal (Oscar) runs for the back door.

Pre-interrogation

Criminal is sat in the chair with his head down. Allard walks in and sits in the opposite with a devilish stare.

Allard – im gonna make this easy on you, all you have to do is admit that you tried robbing the place and I’ll pull a few strings to make your life abit easier. What do you say?

Oscar – screw you pig! (spits in allards direction)

Allard – You do know im trying to be reas…. (Allard is cut off by cappuccino bursting into the room)

Cappuccino – (bouncing eye contact between allard and Oscar) Is this the scroungy little rat who tried that robbery!?

Allard – Yeah this is the guy, just calm it for a s…. (Allard is cut off yet again as Cappucciono slams Oscars face off of the table)

Cappuccino – Who do you think you are!? You wanna be a big man?! You think that you got your big boy pants on toda…. (Allard pulls Cappuccino off Oscar)

Allard – Get off him! That’ll get us nowhere…

(Cappuccino backs up and observes with the stare of a demon focussed onto Oscar with unbreakable tension)

Allard – Now lets start from the top shall we? You were at tesco at… ( Allards voice trails off as the camera pans to light and flashback begins).

Risk assessment 

•         Camera battery fail (bring another)
• ·         Broken camera (bring backup)
• ·         Private property signs
• ·         Injury to ourselves, others and wildlife
• ·         Look out for hazardous objects
• ·         Trip hazards
• ·         Asthmatic inhalers
• ·         Bring lunch and plenty of water
• ·         Costumes and props (two of each just in case)
• ·         Equipment checks conducted BEFORE we go to shooting site
• ·         Clean pair of clothes (hypothermia is common through wet clothes)
• ·         Umbrella / Tarp
• ·         First aid kit 

The following is my ideas for logos for a production company. My idea was to correlate the genres of both the opening and the production company.

This image was created on Microsoft powerpoint. What I have done to make this is the following:

I searched crusade templar cross into google search and found the following image. What i then did was edited the image to push the cross down to provide room for the writing.

To conclude I used font 'Script' to do the crusade lettering and added the productions in font 'arial'. I then added spaces to spread the lettering evenly below the crusade lettering.

Crusade productions correlate to our opening through genre. Our genre is crime due to the fact that in our opening, a crime is committed to have the criminal incarcerated. The way in which it correlates is due to the fact that crime has been around for centuries and the crusades were believed to be about purity against sin. From this we used the link to make a logo which includes the Knights Templar cross. This cross was a symbol of purity which is how we contrast and correlate it to the crime genre.

 To create this I used adobe fireworks, this is due to the fact that it has the feature to group words and images together to make it useful for merging the two (swords and lettering) together. Where the swords are concerned, the swords were taken from the internet by searching 'crossed swords' and from there I had to edit out the black background that it came in to successfully merge it into the lettering. For the lettering, I used the font 'Algerian regular' to give the effect of an historical feel to the logo.

Here is another example of Crusade productions that we came invented. We have decided that this is a good logo to relate to the crime genre due to the fact that the crossed swords are commonly associated to pirates. Pirates lived a life of crime during the 1500's and were rather ruthless. We decided to use this layout due to the fact that it related into our genre a lot more. In addition I have integrated the actual cross swords to be the A in crusade which shows that they are connected through the genre of crime, as I've just explained.

Q2

They both fit into the youth/ young offender style group for they both represent the hooligan look, the sorts of kids that grow up with failed parents or have suffered from loss at a young age that influences there actions towards society and the people of a higher status than them. The Criminal on the left show more of the criminal look trying not to be identified by wearing a  masked and is obviously out to cause trouble. Whereas Sam (from kid/adult hood) goes more for the respect in the young criminal offender look showing his face to make sure people know who he is and what he is capable of(trying to earn respect).

Running Criminal- When we brain stormed our ideas of a film we had a youth themed idea to make easy to distribute our casting of who we would play. So we had a hooligan themed idea where two youths (teenagers) would committee a crime in a local area (roughly a run down looking area) in order to get noticed and respected in gangs but it back fires in the process as a local off duty policeman spots them while the crime is in progress, The running criminal is ultimately the main criminal who diverted the police officer away from his friend in order for him to escape show no remorse in the way he is and will not stop in the name of the law for he believes what he did was not wrong but thinks society is unfair and is just trying to make a living to survive on a daily basis in the underworld (criminal world).

This criminal character is like the main protagonist in kiddulthood (Sam) for he is trying to earn his respect too but does his more involved  through gangs

1)  Discussion of your production company name and logo and the role of such companies

A) = Production company's consist on developing a animated opening of there company's name and iconic style. They tend to pay the coasts for production to take place with actor, set, props, technology funds and organisation of the film. Not only that it fits in with the theme of the film showing what type of  genre their films. e.g. Bad robot makes sci-fi and thriller films we know this due to the animated red robot on there logo along with the grass field back ground with dark stormy weather about to cast over the evening sun and a scratch font they use shows supernatural look.

They have made films such as the Mission Impossible series, Stark Trek (recent versions), Clover field (first person giant monster attack on New York) also have assisted in the new Star Wars 7 Force Awakens showing they are still in the new and invest not only in single chapter sci-fi thrillers but also  in mega blockbusters

2) What does a production company do?

A) = They handle all the budget and preparations for the filming to take place and make a big plan of how to execute the structure of their product e.g. The lead production crew will come together and invest into a major brand of film universe or hire those with ideas to a film, once they got there product they start getting in contact with a writer for scripts/story and a director plus assistants (which would be technicians and costume make up design and employees that contact places to use as film sights)  to make the template of  what to bring, where and  when to film then assign casting for this level of production employment place the responsibility of getting the film organised and kept to a schedule if done right.

Our target audience is of 15 to 25 year olds for our product shows a lot of resemblant to the young trends, there street smarts, and lot of the time links to consequences of anti social behaviour. Therefore on the positive side our audience and characters age in our product share a modern interest such as the shop would be, Top man, River Island, Superdry, primark, TK Maxx etc. And music would be pop songs and bands such as Maroon 5, Katy perry, Izzgy, Snow patrol, Ed sheeran etc.

We believed that this kind of taste would have a major impact on what kind of viewing these audiences would like. The fast paced and snappy structure of our opening seemed to tick all the boxes for this specific audience.

We went through the brainstorming process of thinking what audience it would appeal to the most and decided on teens to young adults. This was mainly due to the music and speedy snapping on shots. We didn't think that this would appeal to older viewers and younger viewers wouldn't be allowed to or want to watch a crime thriller.

To understand this better we had to gather contextual information by viewing other cop shows and thrillers. This allowed us to see how their shows were structured and if it was in any way similar to ours.

Then we had to do some research to see if we could find out what age group watched these shows the most. After a while through our research we found a recorded sheet on-line that had the figures of who watched some different genres of shows. This record wasn't fully professional but it was the one we used. This document stated that younger adults were the ones who watched thrillers and cop shows most.  ​​

Q5

The clip above is our opening for the project. The annotations on screen show the shots used and how we interpreted the genre of crime. Our use of the black and white effect was used to our advantage due to the fact that using colours to represent good and bad would be beneficial to clearly define who is good and who is bad. For example, Oscar (criminal) is dress in purely black. Black is the colour that is most associated with evil. On the other hand, Reuben is dressed in a white shirt to show he is the police officer (good guy). White is closely associated to purity and cleanliness. This is a good example to use due to the fact that black is evil and therefore related to crime whereas white is associated to purity and that could be used in the context of 'trying to clean the dirt off'. Put into perspective through the police officer and criminal.

the following is a moodboard which resembles our selected genre and how all of our examples merge together. this is due to the fact that there are multiple layers to the crime genre and its sub-genres that expand from there.