American Psycho Film Opening

The film opening I have decided to analyze is of my favourite film, American Psycho.

The opening starts with a plain, white background with the company 'LIONS GATE FILMS PRESENTS' in the middle left corner, no sound.
A red drop appears with the sound of suspense as it lands.
'AN EDWARD R. PRESSMAN PRODUCTION' is next to the screen, with another drop and the music again.
'IN ASSOCIATION WITH MUSE PRODUCTIONS & CHRISTIAN HALSEY SOLOMON', two more drops fall.
As 'A MARY HARRON FILM' appears on the screen in the middle, the music starts, with more drops, the screen stays focused on the director's name for awhile.
more drops fall, we start to see them land in a wax stamp way, the title of the film 'AMERICAN PSYCHO' appears on screen, PSYCHO in bold, with the red splatter surrounding the wording. Another drop falls, the drops fade away and the title is left there alone.
Next shot is of pouring red liquid, with a happier tune, it fades away slowly, in the right corner another red liquid appears, in a zig zag pattern. Shot changes to someone holding up a knife, with the main actor's name in the middle 'CHRISTIAN BALE', again, the last word in bold. The knife goes off screen, it stays white with his name on for awhile, then a piece of meat appears, the knife swings heavily down on it, with the music going higher and the slice blending in.
'WILLEM DAFOE' appears on the screen, with raspberries falling behind on the right side, the shot goes off to a close up of some food, the piece of meat with
the sauce and raspberries by it's side, with more raspberries falling. The shot goes out and the food appears to be on a plate, with someone holding it by either side, the plate moves to the right and 'JARED LETO' appears on screen, middle bottom. The music changes completely as the food is placed on a table with knife and fork, 'JOSH LUCAS' appears, the same way as Jared Leto's name. The camera swiftly moves round the table to another well prepared meal and also big pink roses, 'SAMANTHA MATHIS' is the next name on screen, someone tucks in to one of the meals with their fork, the shot goes to some woman's head looking at a menu, the camera goes around the restaurant looking at all the different people there and their food. 'BILL SAGE' is the next on screen, with more well prepared food 'CHLOE SEVIGNY' appears. The camera moves over to the torso of a waiter in a white suit and a black bow tie, holding two plates infront of him 'CARA SEYMOUR' appears as the waiter walks towards the camera. The camera goes over to a woman cutting into her desert 'JUSTIN THEROUX' is next on screen, the camera moves over to a man picking up his cigarette from an ash tray.

The camera flashes quickly to someone with black gloves eating a raspberry coolie with a marange swan, the coolie making it look like a murder scene, the coolie obviously symbolizing blood, with the way it's splattered and how the swan is cut open. 'GUINEVERE TURNER' appears on the screen near the end of that shot, you can hear a waiter explaining what certain items on the menu are to another table, the camera tracks behind him viewing the guests he is explaining to, 'REESE WITHERSPOON' is the next name, the camera closes up on the waiter's face, as he explains more food, the camera goes over to another waiter doing the same. The camera tracks a waiter's profile moving towards a table, CASTING by BILLY HOPKINS SUZANNE SMITH & KERRY BARDEN' are the next names.
The camera moves over to the main table of the sequence, the one holding Patrick Bateman, the backview of one man, looking over the shoulder at the two main character's in shot. The rest of this sequence is showing what their character's are like, joking around, reacting in sarcasm, also showing they're not too sure who others surrounding them are. 'PRODUCTION DESIGNER GIDEON PONTE' appears, another member joins the table, referencing doing drugs in the bathroom, the group begin to discuss other employee's accounts. 'MUSIC SUPERVISORS BARRY COLE & CHRISTOPHER COVERT' are the next credits, whilst Patrick and another employee are having a discussion 'MUSIC by JOHN CALE' 'EDITOR ANDREW MARCUS' their jobs appear in a smaller font than their names, a female waitress dressed in black and a low cut top, drops off a bill on their table 'DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY ANDRZEJ SEKULA' appears, the next shot is of the characters dropping their credit cards into the provided bronze plate and commenting on how reasonable the meal was, when in actual fact to me and you it is quite expensive, this shows what type of life the men lead.
The music changes completely, to 80's rock, showing an extreme close-up of a man counting a lot of notes, 'CO PRODUCERS ERNIE BARBARASH CLIFFORD STREIT ROB WEISS' the camera moves up towards a man dressed like Adam Ant. 'EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS MICHAEL PASEORNEK JEFF SACKMAN JOSEPH DRAKE' appears whilst the camera is set behind the characters entering a nightclub, 'PRODUCED BY EDWARD R. PRESSMAN CHRIS HANLEY CHRISTIAN HALSEY SOLOMON' is on the screen as the camera long shots the entrance of the club and the character's walking in.
The scene changes to a dark, blue, UV-like setting, with three women dressed like Charlie's Angel's, moves over to a slight Birdseye view of the guests dancing to the music, a few being the character's around the table. 'BASED ON THE NOVEL BY BRET EASTON ELLIS' is the next credits, which is vital to the opening sequence, the camera moves shakily through the audience until it reaches a bar, 'SCREENPLAY BY MARY HARRON & GUINEVERE TURNER' The camera changes to a shot of Patrick Bateman on the other side of the bar, shouting over the music to the bar tender, holding a credit card in his hand, the bar tender explains the bar doesn't accept them anymore, he smiles as the woman asks for cash, he smiles sweetly and hands her the money, the camera stays on him smiling for awhile, then he suddenly gets an annoyed look on his face and says 'You're a fucking ugly bitch, I want to stab you to death and play around with your blood.' we see that he is talking to the mirror in front of him, and that the woman has her back to him, paying attention to the drinks, she hands them to him with change, the camera goes back to the mirror, where we can see Patrick smiling nicely at her again, as he turns back to the crowd 'DIRECTED BY MARY HARRON' are the last credits in the scene.
End sequence

I like the way how the opening blends in cleverly with the rest of the film, also pointing out main points about how the characters behave and act towards one another, it also gives a clear background of their social life and wealth. You get a clear idea who the main character is in a subtle way to start with.
The idea of moving to a complete different scene is clever aswell, the credits blend in with the film though, I've never noticed there was so many before I decided to analyze the whole thing.
I really enjoy this opening because the beginning is showing different objects which represent blood and violence, mostly food.
The bit where you see someone with the black gloves eating the coolie shows that the character must be the sadistic murderer in this story, however when it comes to finally seeing his face, he is not wearing any gloves.
I really like how the style of scene and music changes completely, starting off with soft, classical then going to heavy 80's music in the club scene. What Patrick says in the mirror is a main part of the sequence, it tells us what this man is about in just a few seconds.

The font used for the titles is effective too, it's simple yet classy, and the way they are presented on the screen is well done too. I find it effective how the director's name is after all the companies who helped and then at the end of the sequence it finally says directed by. I also like how the typical Lionsgate symbol isn't used, as this would ruin the effect of the titles and film, if it started off with a load of gears.
It's good how they included that story is based on a book and even gave the writer credit, also the credits seem to include all the actors in the film.



You can watch the opening sequence over at Youtube, there was no embed code.

Juno Title Sequence.

For the past week, our assessment at Coleridge has been to recreate the opening to the film Juno. For this task, we had to to shoot the task on site, therefore only being able to use the mise en scene surrounding us.

Our first task was to get in to our groups; mine consisting of Tom H, Yasmin and Louis, and had to watch the Juno sequence over and over to create a storyboard and write down what happens and when(we had practiced making a storyboard with the Shifty work, of course I already knew from last year's course as well)
We had a little while to get costume sorted, unfortunately, our entire class seemed to lack red hoodies! Luckily our group was able to get hold of one in time for filming.
The other props we need to get was a large carton/bottle of Sunny D or other orange drink, we also needed a chair, guitar and television, we decided to make these props out of cardboard and used a real chair- in the end it gives off the Juno feel.

The day of filming and our member of our team keeping hold of the storyboard was ill that day, so we had to do with only three members and no storyboard, luckily we had our sequence written down scene by scene.
Before shooting, I had a look around Coleridge site for ideal spots to film certain scenes, I think the places I chose were used well and also looked good on film.
I started off doing the camerawork, but I thought I was too shaky so Tom took over from me. I sorted out the mise en scene for each scene and directing the shots.
We improvised a few things, but if you watch our final piece you'll see that it's not too bad.

After we had finished filming, we went back to the classroom and started to edit our pieces together, in time with the music and original Juno sequence.
After the weekend, Louis was back in our group so the both us restarted the editing on another mac, from scratch.
Louis and I made sure each shot was perfect timing with the original sequence and cut down the music so it started at the exact same point, unfortunately since Louis had been away, we were not able to create titles for our video.
We started off by using the technique I know, razorblading each scene we don't want out of our video, but Pete showed us an easier and quicker way, in and out points on the original recording. This way was a lot quicker but I found it very confusing because I was used to the razorblade and also the keys on the mac keyboards in Coleridge are very confusing!
Me and Louis shared different scenes out, he'd do one then I would and so on, and I also showed him how to speed up and slow down sequences, we did this quite a lot because our scenes were either too short or too long to fit with the soundtrack.
We were also missing a part of the sequence(looking down at her feet) so me & my partner decided to add a bit of the unused footage of Yasmin's feet for the remaining time instead.

I like editing videos together, but I have always disliked doing it with other people, however I enjoyed working with Louis on our video.
However, I did not like the choice of film we were doing, if I was to do this task again I'd like each group to have a different film opening to re-create, not all the same one as it got very irritating with the soundtrack.

The original video can be found at Shadowplay.

The clip I chose to analyize from both the videos is the one of Juno walking head up, birds eye view. Obviously, this would've been difficult to re-create, so we came up with the idea of the actress to be on her knees, with shoes on them, looking up, wilst leaves were being thrown towards her to give a similar effect.
I really liked how it came out- it gave a unique effect to our piece and also a comical feel at the same time. We also repeated this idea later on, but instead of throwing fallen leaves, we held a branch and moved it across the camera to give the idea that she is walking under trees.

Our sweded version.

Original Juno sequence.

Student Film Opening

I decided to look at a student film closer to home, one of the Level 3's from last year's project. I have always been quite fond of the video, using a comic strip form. Like I posted in one of my earlier blogs, I would also like to do something with that idea.(Or using objects to represent blood and violence, like American Psycho's)



I really like the soundtrack to the film opening and also the lack of colouring gives a good effect to the video.
The font used gave the comic book feel and the way it was presented flowed well.
The only weakness I could mention about this video, is the slow pace of the spin, it would've looked better if it was faster, in my opinion, but the rest of the opening is good and it leaves the audience with a good setting for the rest of the film.

Postcard creation.

Today we were assigned to design and create a postcard for the Creative and Media course using photoshop.

My initial idea was to get a film reel base and just add pictures to it, but because my chosen base was a burnt out one, I decided to make the photos in the frame bright, and very high in contrast and also posterised the images.

The tools I used included; Scale, Rotate, Magic wand, Linear Dodge and Exposure.

My final piece is almost exactly how I imagined it to be, yes I spent ages on Flickr searching for the right images, but in the end I found what I wanted, the only problem was I wanted the film reel to look shaky, so I added another layer of the same background and attempted to make it transparent, unfortunately, I couldn't figure out how to do this, so I just left it as it is, but I am still proud of the way it has come out.

Film Openings.

The film openings I chose to look at included, Blade, Spiderman 2 and The Dark Knight.


This is the opening sequence for Spiderman 2, I really like the idea of using the comic book theme, after all, that is what the whole trilogy is based on. I decided a while back that I would really like to make my film opening like a comic book, in reference to Repo: The Genetic Opera's which is just explaining the setting before the film is based, in comic book form.

Another opening I looked at was The Dark Knight- yet another comic based movie. The opening sequence is very different to what Spiderman 2 represents, The Dark Knight(and Batman Begins) is meant to be a realistic view of The Batman, so therefore a comic strip opening sequence would not work for this.

(Sorry it's such poor quality)

The film opening titles which I haven't seen before was Blade's, unfortuantly, it did not make me want to see the film at all. I thought it was quite dull and the special effects were awful, I am a fan of the legend of Vampires but with Blade, I really didn't feel there was anything going for it- yes, it had excitement, but I just felt like it could've been placed anywhere within the film, middle/end/beginning.

Practise Film Opening

During our first lesson at Coleridge, we were all assigned to create a quick practice film opening for learning purposes with a partner using sequences and audio provided, I worked with Jahmal and here is our piece.

We created it using Final Cut, which is a program on our Apple Mac's, the effects we used included; fading, fish eye, added text,  motion key frames and cutting.

Moodboard

On friday, we all made a moodboard for the film, Shifty . Here is mine.
We were given part of the script to set a scene, we realised the story was gritty, and could be quite dark.
Our moodboard has hints of orange in it to represent a suitable setting- night time with the orange glow of the street lights shining on the two characters.
The dark areas represent it being a dark story, which wouldn't involve most colour, also the setting of the night time seemed suitable, obviously comparing to the final structure used in the film, we were wrong.

At the bottom of our moodboard is different everyday surfaces which you would commonly find in the street(Tarmac, Garage door, bricks etc).
In the middle we used various things, such as celebrity drug addicts, this is because the script gave the feel that the two character's were dodgy and seemed involved in the drug industry, we also used images of bottles(Alcohol) body parts(representing possible bodily harm or murder) or materials which look like illegal substances.

welcome