ARLINGTON ROAD

WHAT DO I THINK?

Kung Fu Panda film openings

 Kung Fu Panda

• The distribution companies logo is shown at the start of the movie which is one of the conventions of a film opening. we clearly see that the film had been distributed by Dreamworks Animation through the logo this also gives us an idea of what the audience of the movie is and what genre it is.

• We then see the name of the movie which is quite unconventional for the order of a film opening. normally the title of the film comes much later into the film opening.

• We then meet the main character but we don't see who's voice the Panda has which is quite unconventional for a normal film opening.

• We then get the end credits of the animation where we see the rest of the things that are conventionally in the opening title sequence of the film

• At the start of the end credits we first see the very famous people that stared in the movie which we would conventionally see in the opening title sequence of the movie.

• It then states who the director is which again is conventionally at the end of a opening title sequence. This is usually at the end of an opening title sequence because it goes in order of most important at the beginning and the end of the title sequence.

• After this we see who the movie was produced and co-produced by which again conventionally comes before who the movie was directed by in a title sequence.

• We then eventually meat the story writers and the editor of the movie which yet again isn't conventional for a movie. These pieces of information are usually found in the start of a movie so this animation is very unconventional.

ARLINGTON ROAD

FINAL VERSION (WITHOUT SOUND)

ARLINGTON ROAD

EDITING PROCESS 

Here are the clips we used to put together for our opening sequence of Arlington Road.

This is the layout of the time line put together, we included fades in our text inorder to create tension and keep everything flowing whilst have a gradual build to the film title. 

EXAMPLE OF A FADE

This is what it looks like on the timeline

Here i was making sure that the text appeared at the right time

ARLINGTON ROAD
UNEDITED (WITHOUT TEXT)

Phone Booth

Phone Booth

Psychological Thriller

I came across this film during my quest to watch as many sub-genre thrillers. This is a great example of a Psychological thriller. "A slick New York publicist who picks up a ringing receiver in a phone booth is told that if he hangs up, he'll be killed... and the little red light from a laser rifle sight is proof that the caller isn't kidding." This film had me on the edge of my seat at all times. As being the audience, i was constantly thinking what will happen next. For the fact that the man trapped inside of the phone booth trying to battle with another mind, shows exactly what psychological thrillers are all about. Hopefully when making my thriller, I am able to create the same type of suspense. 

MIRRORS

MIRRORS

Supernatural Thriller

Although im not really a big fan of supernatural thrillers, watching this WASN'T A JOKE. Seriously this film had me turning away constantly. "An ex-cop and his family are the target of an evil force that is using mirrors as a gateway into their home."

When talking about suspense... this film has it all, the intensity this film creates is something else

THRILLERS...

  :)

WHAT IS A THRILLER?
IN THEIR OWN WORDS!

Audiences

THRILLER AUDIENCES

These are types of films known to promote intense excitement, suspense, a high level of anticipation, ultra-heightened expectation, uncertainty, anxiety, and nerve-wracking tension. Thriller and suspense films are virtually synonymous and interchangeable categorizations, with similar characteristics and features.
As a result to these sub genre's, different audience are attracted. For example Romance thrillers are more than likely to attract female audience whereas action thrillers are more likely to attract a male audience. Overall thrillers movies have a 45% male scew & 55% female scew. As you get older people tend to like thrillers more  because thriller have more depth into their story line and consider much more concentration than a comedy film.

GENRES 

A category of artistic composition, as in music or literature, characterized by similarities in form, style, or subject matter.

SUB-GENRES 

Sub-Genre is a sub category within a particular Genre. Similar to Genre there are different types of categories within the group, an example of Sub-Genres in the film category; Romantic Comedy (Rom-Com), Action Thriller, Action Adventure, Musical Horror etc. 

Sub-Genres are effective as it could make films more effective as they cross Genres together and to also extend the ending of the film as they 'entertain' two different Genres.

Psychological Thriller

Romance Thriller

Research On Intertextuality

KEY TERM
INTERTEXTUALITY 

"Inetertextuality is used a term to describe the visual referencing between films. Quite literally, films 'borrow' from each other, and you, the audience, may recognise certain camera angles, aspect of mise en scene, snippets of sound or method of editing in some films that you have seen in others."

EXAMPLES

PSYCHO

Here is the famous 'shower scene' from Psycho. A number of films have borrowed/copied from this famous scene. 

Now here are some other films that has used the famous scene from Psycho.

FATAL ATTRACTION

WHAT LIES BENEATH

SIMILARITIES

Psycho

Fatal Attraction

FDA Year Book Q&A

FDA Year Book Q&A

1) How many suspense films were released in 2010? 

38

2) In total, how much did suspense films take, gross, to the nearest million?

Gross of £42 million

3) Which genre of film had the highest gross in 2010? 

Action & Adventure

4) What was the most popular family genre in 2010?

Action & Adventure

Intertextuality - "Relating to or deriving meaning from the interdependent ways in which texts stand in relation to each other"


Intertextuality is when aspects of certain films are borrowed and re-used. Films borrow scenes and ideas from other films.

The most famous scene that is "borrowed" from comes from the notorious 1960 thriller 'Psycho'. Although now the scene seems very fake and unprofessional, during the period it came out it seemed fantastic.

Examples:

What Lies Beneath

There is a scene in What Lies Beneath that resembles the shower scene in Psycho very strongly. The white bathtub, the shower head, the white tiles. Everything seems to be the same. However, the fact that he does not kill her and there is no knife involved makes it differ.

Fatal Attraction
There is also a scene in Fatal Attraction that borrows ideas from Psycho. There bathtub, curtain, tiles, shower head and even knife are almost identical. The shot when the woman slides down is also taken from Psycho.

Genre & Sub-Genre


Genre is a french word which means 'type' when translated into English. There are many different genre's when film is concerned. These genre's are used to categorise movies so you know what type each film is and so you vaguely know what to expect.

Sub-Genre are different categories that fall under a single type of Genre. For example, one of the sub-genre's of Comedy is a rom-com (romantic comedy).





The most inspirational thriller sub-genre for me is psychological-thriller. My favourite psychological-thriller is Donnie Darko (2002). Following is the opening scene.

It starts off at dawn, with eerie music suggesting that it is a thriller. It is not until a quarter of the way through the film that you notice that it is a psychological thriller. I could follow this opening as a guide, but it heavily depends on whether or not my group decide to film a psychological-thriller opening.

Timeline of a Film Opening

FILM OPENING BROKEN DOWN

Conventional Order

• Ident/ logo of prodcution and disturbion companies

• Production company title

• Name

• Cast

• Casting by

• Costume designer

• Music by

• Editor

• Production designer

• Director of photography

• Executive producers

• Writers

• Director

Hierarchy  Title sequences are all about who is more important than who & who earns the most money. Ideally you would expect the name of the film to be last however it is always the director last & the production company title first. Think of it as 2 triangles put on top of each other with the top one upside down, it starts of wide (most important) down to narrow (least important) then from narrow again back to wide. Something like this...

THRILLERS

Audiences

Thriller Audiences -


Thrillers are fast becoming more and more popular everyday. Film makers are pushing them out thick and fast because they attract a lot of cinema goers, with the majority of viewers 51% are male and 49% female. This means that the genre attracts a lot more of audiences than had it attracted if it was only appealing to male audiences.

This Graph shows that the audiences Thriller films have, have a slight male skew.

Popular thrillers that have been released with recent years.

Different Film Openings

They are many different types of Film Openings. The film openings all reflect the film has a whole.
There is the Collage Opening, which consists of Multi layered images, Layered pics/scenes, sometimes a narrated opening scene, etc...

Mother of Tears show's this well

The Montage Opening

This is a popular one, it consists of a lot of layering. A lot of layers can create tension in the opening. 

Other Types of Film Openings
Voice Over Opening (Run Lola Run)
Classic Openings (The Covenant)
Music Video Openings (Cyper)
Title Overlay (Panic Room)
Non-linear (Memento)
Direct Address (Kill Bill 2)
Animation (Run Lola Run)

Intertextuality

Intertextuality -  "Relating to or deriving meaning from the interdependent ways in which texts stand in relation to each other"
To put it simply, films incorporate scenes and use ideas that have been used before. One of the most famous examples is the shower scene in the 1960s film Psycho



Many other films have used aspects that they have borrowed from this scene. Such films as: 


Fatal Attraction -
This scene has incorporated the ripping of the shower curtain from Psycho and they have also used a knife near enough identical to the one used in Psycho. 

What Lies Beneath -

This movie has used setting that is very much like the setting used in Psycho, everything is very similar even down to the shower head.

Ideas

We haven’t really sat down in a group to discuss potential ideas of our Film Openings, but I have a few ideas in mind.

• A suburban thriller
• Something involving children
• A rapist amongst families
• A psychotic mother

Something along them lines however nothing has been finalised yet.

GENRE
A category of artistic composition, as in music or literature, characterized by 
similarities in form, style, or subject matter


SUB-GENRES
Sub genre, sub genre is somewhat a mixture of more than one genre. Sub genre have started becoming more popular with film makers and audiences because they audiences can relate to them more and for the film makers they attract bigger audiences resulting in more money made.
The following films were released recently and are good examples of films that are in the Sub Genre category.

Fantasy/Drama

Drama/Thriller

Romance/Comedy

Thriller/Drama

Research in Sub Generes

How many suspense films were released in 2010?
38 Films

In total, how much did these suspense films take, gross, to the nearest million?
£42,441,123

Which genre of film had the highest gross in 2010?
The highest grossing genre in 2010 was Action/Adventure grossing in an amount of £265,784,158

What was the most popular family genre in 2010?
Animated



The genre 'Suspense' is one of the lower earners in the film industry. This is because 'Suspense' is a very specific genre and attracts a very specific audience which is significantly smaller than audiences attracted by other genres, especially popular ones such as Action/Adventure which attract much bigger audiences.

Research in Sub-Genres

'How many suspense films were released in 2010?'


               There were a total of 38 suspense films released in 2010.



'In total, how much did these suspense films take, gross, to the nearest million?'


               These suspense altogether grossed a total £42,000,000 to the nearest million.






'Which genre of film had the highest gross in 2010?'


               Action/Adventure was the highest grossing genre in 2010, pulling in a total of £265,784,158






'What was the most popular family genre in 2010?'


             In 2010 fantasy/animated was the most popular family sub-genre in 2010 as is suggested by the top 3 films. Which are 'Toy Story 3', 'Shrek Forever After' and 'Despicable Me' which are all animated.




The film genre 'Suspense' did fairly well in 2010 compared to other film genres. It matched up to Horror and almost romantic comedies in terms of grossing figures. It only done poorly against Action/Adventure and Animation, which is understandable since the two genres are, and always have been, very popular.

Fast Five 

Released: 2011

Genre: Action/Thriller

Main Characters -

DWAYNE JOHNSON

PAUL WALKER

VIN DIESEL 

TYRESE GIBSON

JORDANA BREWSTER

CHRIS "LUDACRIS" BRIDGES

Camera Shots

Establishing Shot, this shot instantly lets the audience know where the movie is located.

Rio De Janeiro - Brazil

Wide shot from the back, taking in the scenery also

causing audience to anticipate what's next.







Fast Five - Opening Scene

The opening scene to Fast Five uses simple but very effective camera shots. The first show you see is a brief zoom in on Vin Diesel, letting the audience know that he is or might be relevant to the story. You then see a wide shot of the area, an establishing shot, a rural area which contrasts with the cars that are then introduced into the wide shot. Close up shots are used on the characters and also the cars that contrast with the surrounding area. A birds eye view shot is also used to show the audience everything going on in the scene at once. As the scene continues on the camera shots become faster so they are in sync with what's going on in the scene, the camera shots keep getting faster until we reach the climax of bus rolling over.