RESEARCH: THE ART OF THE TITLE

Today I started to research opening title sequences in more detail...
As I am doing the film brief, I started my detailed research into opening credits..
In class I investigated the very useful website The Art of the Title http://www.artofthetitle.com  
Delicatessen (directed by Jeunet and Caro, 1991) 
For my first piece of close analysis, I used my own observations, class discussion and the website's own commentary, including the thoughts of Karin Fong, creative director and designer at Imaginary Forces, whose title work Terminator: Salvation, Boardwalk Empire and Rubicon. I have intentionally included comments on what in particular inspired me and my thoughts on how I might use the inspiration in my own foundation production.

• The genre of this film is black comedy, so the title design is witty, in that it invites the viewer to take pleasure in the way that each credit is embedded in an appropriate visual clue: the director of photography engraved on a camera, the costume designer is embroidered on a clothes label and so on.
• The historical period is clearly established by the period quality of the artefacts: old technology, paper tags, folding wooden ruler and so on.
• Colour and lighting are key visual codes. The sepia tone lends a period air and the colour black predominates, underscoring the grim nature of the subject matter: the objects are all the dusty possessions abandoned by their owners who have been invited in, fattened up and butchered to feed the hungry inhabitants of the commune.
• The camera movement is part of the method: the camera pans in a slow glide over the series of abandoned possessions, stopping over each credit to allow the viewer to scrutinize and take in the cleverness of each device.
• Our class undertook a project based on this stylistic approach. We gathered together a group of objects that had a common theme - that of the Far East - and, using the same techniques, we made a short film opening. Each of us undertook some of the camera work, directing and editing, with the final results all slightly different, as we added in some live action, to develop the narrative.
• Our finished result can be seen below: my group called our version The Scarlett Lotus (Blood Lotus / Siagon Darling...)  From this project, I learned....

PRESENTATIONS ON YOUR BLOG

Present your work visually and inventively. Your blogs must demonstrate understanding of how to exploit the opportunities offered by new technologies and presentational tools.

You must give your sources: URLs, book titles, magazine articles.

To reach level 4 marks, OCR require you to use appropriate formats for each task. We have noted that while textual analysis of music videos must be detailed and deep, reporting research findings should be crisp, clear and concise.

You should use images, bullet points, sound and a variety of presentational tools:

• Soundcloud https://soundcloud.com/
• straight to camera : PhotoBooth on the Macs
• YuDu http://www.yudu.com/
• Slideshare http://www.slideshare.net
• Timeglider http://timeglider.com/
• Prezi http://prezi.com
• Museum Box http://museumbox.e2bn.org/
• Pinterest  https://www.pinterest.com/
• ScoopIt! http://www.scoop.it/

PREP:  

1. Complete your 'My Media World'
2. Post your Preliminary Exercise: see our class blog 26.09.13
3. Shift the position of your blog search engine to the top right.
4. Decide on a suitable presentational tool for  'My Media World' and format your post. You should keep the original draft as it is to show yous skills development in new technology.

FILM OPENINGS

Gladiator: flashback to memory of harvest in ECU

The English Patient: opening sequence ECU hand painting with brush

Today we look at film openings as preparation for our coursework module G321 Foundation Portfolio. The focus was on how some directors start with a close up in order to create enigma then build out to wider shots that develop suspense. Each film starts with an ECU of a hand. Enigma and suspense are two key codes in film opening convention.

• The English Patient
•  Gladiator
• The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

PREP Research student film openings, for example, from the Media Departments's  YouTube channel.

CONSUMING PASSIONS: THE STORY OF MILLS AND BOON

In the big grey file on the cabinet in front of you, under the white board, is the disc that we started watching yesterday: 'Consuming Passions, the story of Mills and Boon'. Please take it out and use one of the Macs at the back of the classroom to finish watching it. 

Then make written notes on how women are represented. PUT THE DISC BACK where you found it at the end of the session. You can start it again as you make notes.

Characters in Consuming Passions (written by Emma Frost, BBC4 2004)
Mary 1920s (marries Charles Boon, emotionally neglected by him)
Janet 1974 (dowdy typist, avid Mills and Boon fan, infatuated with the arrogant surgeon; becomes a full time writer as Raquel Pretty)
Kirstie 2008 (university lecturer, in passionless relationship with Nick, courted by Jake)

NOTES: as usual, on

• how the mise-en-scene constructs representations of women (their clothes, gesture, posture; where they live; their environments; props; their fantasy worlds; lighting)
• how the camerawork constructs representations of women (shot types, angles, camera movement)
• how the sound constructs representations of women (what they say, their accents, their silences; voice-overs; the soundtrack; ambient sounds; non-diegetic sounds)
• how the editing constructs representations of women (how the story is told by, for example, transitions from the real world to the fantasy world, how the writer projects herself into the persona of Violetta Kiss; match cuts between her reality and her fantasy; the intertwined stories of the three women delivered through transitions between their lives)

PRELIMINARY EXERCISE

On Wednesday and Thursday students doing the thriller brief plan, film, capture and edit their preliminary task.

Continuity task: filming and editing a character opening a door, crossing a room, sitting down in a chair opposite another character with whom she/he exchanges a couple of lines of dialogue. This task should demonstrate match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180% rule.

TEXTUAL: ANALYSIS: THE HISTORY BOYS

PREP: hand in on paper by Thursday 26th September

Answer the following question using BBCiPlayer to view the opening of a well-known film The History Boys: How does the camerawork, mise-en-scene, sound and editing construct representations of age? MAKE 15 POINTS including completing the sentences below.

THE DVD IS ALSO ON MY DESK for use ONLY IN THE MEDIA STUDIO! Help yourself during a free period.

Mark scheme:
Use of terminology /10
Use of examples /20
Explanation, analysis, argument /30

1. The long tracking shot of the opening cycle ride shows... and is used to...
2. The hymn sung inside the church is an example of diegetic sound that marks the prayer of one of the school boys and serves to... 
4. The wide shot inside the church allows the viewer to see a contrast in ages which underlines the fact that.....and the very low number of worshippers shows....
5. The mise-en-scene inside the Church of England and the grammar school creates an environment that is very Establishment: traditional, conformist and rigid. The boys are represented as individuals who....
6. In the scene in which the boys crowd around the notice board to discover their AL results, there is a series of rapid straight cuts. These are used to..

FILM INDUSTRY: TRENDS

Trends:
Breaking Bad wins its first Emmy award for best drama 24.0
Director David Fincher was named best director for House of Cards, Netflix's remake of the political drama. Mark Lawson interviews Netflix chief Ted Sarandos about current trends.

HERE ON BBC RADIO 4 FRONT ROW

"Last night (23.09.13) the Netflix drama House of Cards became the first internet streamed programme to win an Emmy Award, as its director David Fincher picked up Best Director of a Drama Series. And Breaking Bad, also available on Netflix, won Outstanding Drama Series. Mark talks to Ted Sarandos, head of content for the video on demand service, about the change in how we consume entertainment."

You also have a video of Kevin Spacey discussing House Of Cards below:

Ted Serandos- chief content officer for Netflix was interviewed by Mark Lawson on Front Row (BBC4 radio September 2013 after their success at the Emmys.

Says Sarandos: ‘Netflix - The beauty of this on demand model is that it is whenever you want to watch it, wherever you want to watch it and whatever device you want to watch it on.’ He claims it is good for these long form serialised story telling

Sarandos continues on production and  distribution: ‘We thought a lot about how people would behave in a world where most programming was delivered over the internet, maybe the eureka moment was the advent of YouTube and the idea that you would press play and video would just start. That possibly was the moment where we said this was going to work because if you had to download and manage files for everything you had to watch that didn't seem like a very mainstream behaviour but pushing play is as simple as turning on the television and at some point it would be cheaper to stream a movie then to put a post stick stamp on it and put it in the post, and that was the other kind of reality check moment of when we should be getting into this in a meaningful way.’

‘We can forecast a potential audience size better than anybody. You can take the element of a show, the massive amounts of data hat we have about viewing behaviour and say that if this show is executed well, this show with these elements, that the potential audience for this show is x, and therefore we should invest x against it, that we can be right more often then wrong.’

‘We had the viewing data and rating data from our subscribers and the original House of Cards, we had the viewings and ratings data of David Fincher’s entire body of work , Kevin Spacey entire body of work, the history of every political thriller ever produced and we crunched all of that data to determine that if the show is executed well then the audience potential justified a very large investment in that show. ‘

‘There’s no passive viewing on Netflix: you press play and you push stop and you watched everything.’