Analysis of film openings

Love Actually (2003)

This romantic comedy is directed by Richard Curtis. It follows the lives of eight very different couples in dealing with their love lives, and is set during a frantic month before Christmas in London, England. The separate story lines all intertwine at some point or other.

The first 1:19 minutes sets the genre of the film without revealing the storyline at all. There is a sequence of montage shots, which focus on different people expressing their love for another in someway.  At 25 seconds the voice over begins which gives an outline if their views on love. We are made to believe that this character could potentially be the protagonist.
The background music has no words to it and has an airy, heavenly vibe to it which represent peace, hope and happiness. We can come to this conclusion due to it being played in a major key.

At 1:19 the title of the film appears, reading ' love actually' which is then joined by 'is all around us'. Some of the words are written in red which has connotations of love and passion and therefore this sticks tot he conventions of the romance genre.

Below is the opening sequence for love actually:

Inglorious Basterds

In class we analysed the film opening for Inglorious Basterds. This is an action film with an element of black comedy. It was made as a parody for WW2 movies made in the 50's. Inglorious Basterds was directed by Quentin Tarantino and was released in 2007.

 

This is a storyline plan for the opening of this film. On here I have written down when the different titles came on screen, actors, and the rest of the visuals. When context was introduced, parts that created enigma and anything to do with sound or soundtracks.

 

Here is a rough break down of the opening:

 

• In the opening of this film it begins with an old version of the Universal logo. The old version may have been used to create context and give us an insight to the time period it was set in and that it is based on a historical event. This lasts from 3-12 seconds and is placed on a black screen with no sound.
• The Weinstein logo then appeared from 12-20 seconds and has the same features.
• The soundtrack then begins to play at 20s and is a traditional piece of music for that time period and therefore it set the context.
• At 24s the production company titles begin and last for 12s
• At 36s the directors name appears
• At 40s the film title appears which is in a different type face and colour which informs us that this is the film
• The names of the actor then appear in the order that they appear most- starting with Brad Pitt. There are 8 starring actors followed by co-starring actors and then guest starring. Lasts for 1 minute.
• At 1:48 the soundtrack is still playing and the titles for chapters appear- forms context. 'Nazi occupied France' at 1:53 and '1941' at 2:03
• At 2 minutes the soundtrack fades and then stops.
• At 2:03 the characters are introduced through a wide shot of a man- this also sets the scene.
• A chopping sound is then heard
• The woman character comes into shot at 2:14
• At 2:17 the sound of an unseen vehicle comes in which creates enigma

We stopped watching the clip at this point.

 

In this opening I liked the way that they introduced context from the very beginning in the Universal logo and continued it to the point that we stopped watching.

 

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Editing...

Cinematic/ Real time, Expanding time and Shrinking time

Cinematic time/Real time: whether what is happening on the screen takes the same time as it would in real life, this can be completed through editing. In film time can be compressed or expressed.

Expanding time: This is when the event that is happening on the screen takes longer than it would in real life. This can be done by including less cuts, slow motion and including extra relevant shots. This is usually used in horror or thriller films.

Shrinking time: This is when what is occurring on the screen happens quicker than it would in real life. This can be achieved by including more cuts and by speeding up time. This is usually used in action films.

The first thing we had to do was to watch two clips, one from Slumdog millionaire and the other from The Bourne Ultimatum and write down some notes about how they made us feel. I felt as though the Slumdog millionaire clip made me feel sad and empathise for the characters however there was also a sense of urgency and even hope towards the end. In The Bourne Ultimatum clip there was an obvious sense of urgency, it was also intense and made me feel on the edge. Below is the notes I made in class:

 

Here is part of The Bourne Ultimatum clip that we watched:



 

 

Here is part of the Slumdog millionaire clip that we watched: (Watch from 16:10 - 21:50)

 



 

 

We then were split into two groups and given some questions which we had to answer on one of the clip each. My group  was given the Slumdog Millionaire clip. The two questions that I answered were:

 

 

The first question I chose to answer was 'Are there any examples of expanding time? How does this contribute to mood?'.

 

In the clip there were examples of expanding time. An example of this is when the camera sequence cuts from the boys in the water, to the woman washing clothes, back to the boys and then to the mother. By including these extra shots, time has been expanded to show not only the normality of the day but the setting and characters as well.

 

Another example of expanding time in the clip is when the boys see the god, the shot has been put into slow motion. This is to show the importance of the god. Firstly as the god is from the opposing religion and also for the relevance of the question on the quiz show.

 

The second question I had to answer was: 'How does he narrative create mood?'.

 

The narrative creates mood as it is telling us exactly what is going on in the storyline, therefore we are enabled to feel empathy for the characters through our understanding of what is happening.

 

 

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Next we had to use either expanding or shrinking time in our preliminary task to create a given mood. We were given panic!

• Our initial ideas were to include more cuts in the sequence as this would make it jumpy and feel as though time was going faster as you wouldn't see everything the characters were doing.
• We also decided to speed up the pace of the characters' feet walking so that it look as though they were in a hurry for what they were doing.
• Another thing we did to shrink time was to not include all of the dialogue between the two characters as this would make the audience feel more relaxed and be ale to follow the storyline perfectly. We decided to leave out some of the dialogue to also create a mysterious side to the storyline as the audience wouldn't know exactly what was occurring between the two characters.
• We also created a black out half way through the clip, when you can hear the sounds but not see anything which makes it more panicky.
• Towards he end when we watched the clip back we felt as though it still wasn't creating the right mood even though we had included all of these shrinking time techniques. Mr Lucas hinted that a soundtrack may help to create mood. We went online and found a tense, and fast paced piece of music that we could use.

Here is the clip that we edited to create the mood of panic!:

 





Sound

In class we learnt about the different types of sound in television programmes/film and why it is used in media. Sound is important in films and television as it sets the mood for the audience and allows them to understand what they are watching. Music/ sound during film/TV may also allow us to follow the narrative and whether I is leading into something positive or negative.

We started the lesson off by listening to 5 different theme tunes from film/TV. We then had to work out what programme or film it was, how it made us feel and what type of programme we were expecting to watch.

The first piece we listened to was from 'The Fresh Prince of Bel Air'. I watch this programme quite a lot and so I was familiar with it's theme music. The theme music made me feel happy/ it put me in a good mood, upbeat and ready to boogie! If I hadn't of watched this programme before I would expect it to be based in America and be about young back people. As you can tell I have pretty much described the programme itself, therefore this is a good representation of the programme and incites us as to what it is about.

Here is the theme music for 'The Fresh Prince of Bel Air'-

 

The next theme music we listened to was from the film 'The A-team'. When this was being played I was unsure of the music as I had only watched this filmed once before, this meant that there was no chance of me writing down what I knew. This piece of music made me feel intrigued, happy and excited. I was unsure of the type of film that it came from and thought that it might be from a superhero movie or one about the army as there was a deep drums playing in the background. However I knew that it was from an action movie from the pace of it and the instruments used.

Here is the theme music from 'The A-team'-

The third one we listened to was from 'Dr Who'. This made me feel sleepy, intrigued and sort of unsure as to whether I liked it or not. The synthesised sound made me realise that it was sci-fi , and was to do with aliens of some form.

Below is the theme music for the 1963 Dr Who:

 

The next theme tune we listened to was from the well-known soap opera 'EastEnders'. This is a programme that I watch everyday and so I knew what it was represented. This music made me feel relaxed, happy and even tense. This was well suited to the genre as it was dramatic and therefore I was expecting to watch a soap opera.

 

The Theme music for EastEnders is:

 

The final piece we listened to was from 'Hollyoaks'. The theme music for this made me feel happy but also slightly annoyed me.  The instruments in the music and the fact that it was the same part repeated throughout it made me think that it was going to be another soap opera. However the instruments used and the key in which is was played made me suspect that it would be mainly focused on young people.

 

Here is the theme music for 'Hollyoaks'-

 



 

We then learnt about the key terminology to do with sound. Below is the work that I did for this. In orange are the diegetic sounds and in green are the non diegetic sounds. This will be useful to use in my final piece.



 





Shot aspects

There are four shot aspects that we have learnt about. These are composition, framing, depth and focus.

 

Framing is what the director chooses to be shown in shot and what they choose to exclude from it.

 

Composition is way that the shots constituents/the way in which it is made up.

• The rule of thirds is a guideline which applies to the process of composing visual images. The guideline proposes that an image should be imagined as divided into nine equal parts and that important compositional elements should be placed along the separating lines or their intersections.

Depth is the space between the character/ object at the front and the back of the shot.

Focus is whether an image is sharp or soft. This allows the audience to see what they are expected to look at and what they aren't.

Once we had learnt about the four shot aspects, we did a practical lesson containing what we had learnt. The task we were set was to take the 4 still images from famous films that we were given and recreate them capturing the same depth, focus, composition and framing.
 



 

The first was a still from 'Indiana Jones- raiders of the lost ark'. As well as trying to capture the shot aspects, we also used mise-en-scene to create the same context of the image. Here is our recreation of this still image.

 

As you can see the focus of our still is pretty much perfect compared with the original, however there isn't as much depth between our Indiana and the idol. As well as this we could have brought the camera forwards so that we didn't capture as much of the background so that it was the same as in the original.

 

 

The next image we recreated was from 'Shaw shank redemption'. Below is the original still that we were to recreate.

 

As you can see the still is captured from a high angle, almost a birds eye view shot. It contains a lot of depth between the subject and background.

 

 

In our recreation of this still we didn't capture the subject at the right angle and so the depth that we needed to create we didn't. However again like before we have captured the focus on the subject like in 'Shaw shank redemption'. The framing is as close as we could get it. We chose to exclude only the subject and the ground as in 'Shaw shank redemption' it is capturing only this as he is expressing his freedom.

 

The third still we had to recreate was from 'Pulp Fiction' when the two men are in the elevator.

 

 

The depth between the two men and the back wall is large. Here is our recreation of this still:

 

 

The depth in this image between the subject and the background isn't deep enough and so it does not create the same effect and therefore makes it feel more 2D and unreal. The framing is well done along with the focus. The framing is well done as we have included the two shot and just the background with no other objects or mise-en-scene.

 

The final shot we recreated is my favourite and comes from 'Taxi driver'.

 

 

The camera is focused sharp on the man and soft on the gun. We did this by twisting the lens until it was sharp or soft on the part of the still that we wanted. There is not much in this still and so it was easy to recreate when it came to framing.

 













We managed to make the gun soft and the focus is sharp on the subjects face. In the framing we decided to include only the person and the gun as we couldn't find a setting that was similar.

I found this process useful and fun to complete. It was useful as we were putting what we had learnt into practise and so learning through any mistakes that we may make and if not, through what we did well. It also allowed me to get some more experience when using the camera.

Shot types

The type of shot used can have a profound effect upon the audience.

The following are the types of shots that we learnt about in class:

Wide:
This shot is taken from a long distance and aims to capture both surroundings and action. It is often used as an establishing shot at the start of a film but also be used to show loneliness/isolation. Here is an example from 'Cowboys and Aliens' of a wide shot.

Long:
This shot is taken from a long distance capturing the whole setting or character. It is used to show the relation between the character and the setting. This is an example of a long shot from the film 'from the front row'.

Mid:
A mid shot is taken closer in than a long shot, only capturing half a character or setting. This is to focus on the image in frame and is related to the narrative. Below is an example from '17 again'.

Medium close-up
A medium close up shot captures a quarter of a person or setting. This is so the audience focuses on a certain aspect of what is in shot. An example of a film this is used in is 'Indiana Jones- raiders of the lost ark'.

Close Up
A close up shot is taken to capture just the head of a character. This let the audience see the characters emotion and empathise with them. Here is an example from 'Thor'.

Extreme Close Up
An extreme close up is of just the eyes and top of head, or of an equivalent body part. This build suspense as it shows the extreme emotions of a character. Here is an example from 'The grey'.

Over the shoulder
An over the shoulder shot is taken to capture one person over another's shoulder usually used during dialogue or to watch one persons reaction. Here is an example from 'The hangover'.

 

 

Point of view

This is a shot from a persons point of view, so what that person sees. This is used so that the audience feels/sees something from the characters perspective and so can empathise with them.

 

 

Two shot

This is a shot taken to capture two people in the frame together. This allows the audience to see both the people in the same room at the same time.

 

Weather



A shot taken to capture the weather outside to set atmosphere and mood.

 

 

By using a range of these shots in a film the audience can relate to it and it can build a range of emotions. It also helps to make the narrative easier to follow. These have an large affect on the audience.

 

We used some of these shots in all of the practical work that we have done so far. For example in our 'Pulp Fiction' recreation we used an over the shoulder shot and a couple of mid shots.



 



 

 



Starting again...

'Back to the drawing board'

We decided to restart our preliminary task from the beginning and use this as a learning curve. Starting the process again we began with storyboarding. The sequence we chose was simple so that we could manage to do it all in time for the deadline, but still included all the essential skills- match on action, shot reverse shot.

Scripting and the shot list was easier to complete this time as we had previously filled one in and so knew what we were doing. This meant that we could get it done in half of the time.

That afternoon we went out and got all the footage that we needed plus more so that we knew we would definitely have enough to make the film work and include the essential ingredients. We decided to film in the sixth form block as the table set up and room structure was perfect for what we were trying to create.

We then went back to the media suite to encode our clips using MPEG Streamclip so that we could then get on with putting the clips together and edit it.

We were able to slot the clips together using Final cut pro and cut in parts of clips to create the shot, reverse shot. To create the match on action we just had to make sure that when we cut to another clip that everything in the frame was the same as in the last shot.

After we had finished putting the preliminary task together we created some rolling credits saying which of us did what parts in the film making process. We worked out how to do this using trial and error, which helped us to remember how to do it in future.

Below is our final preliminary task:

  
I enjoyed completing this preliminary task as it allowed me to work things out on my own, which will help me to remember them and not make the same mistakes in the final piece. It also helped me work on time management and see how much time i would need to input. I am pleased with the preliminary task as it includes the key skills that we needed.