MAIN: Post 6

It didn't take long after the advent of motion picture technology in the late 19th century for filmmakers to dabble in the horror genre, as witnessed by FrenchGermany and Nosferatu influencing the next generation of American cinema. Actor Lon Chaney, meanwhile, almost singlehandedly kept American horror afloat, with The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Phantom of the Opera and The Monster, which set the stage for the Universal dominance of the '30s.

Kong. Building upon the success of The Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Phantom of the Opera, Universal Studios entered a Golden Age of monster movies in the '30s, releasing a string of hit horror movies beginning with Dracula and Frankenstein in 1931 and including the controversial Freaks and a Spanish version of Dracula that is often thought to be superior to the English-language version. Germany continued its artistic streak in the early '30s, with Vampyr and the Fritz Lang thriller M, but Nazi rule forced much of the filmmaking talent to emigrate. The '30s also witnessed the first American werewolf film (The Werewolf of London), the first zombie movie (White Zombie) and the landmark special effects blockbuster King
Despite the success of The Wolf Man early in the decade, by the 1940s, Universal's monster movie formula was growing stale, as evidenced by sequels lik The Picture of
Dorian Graye The Ghost of Frankenstein and desperate ensemble films with multiple monsters, beginning with Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man. Eventually the studio even resorted to comedy-horror pairings, like Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, which met with some success. Other studios stepped in to fill the horror void with more serious-minded fare, including RKO's brooding Val Lewton productions, most notably Cat People and I Walked with a Zombie. MGM, meanwhile A picture of dorian grey, contributed , which won an Academy Award for cinematography, and a remake of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, while Paramount released the highly regarded haunted house picture The Uninvited.
Various cultural forces helped shape horror movies in the '50s. The Cold War fed fears of invasion (Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Thing from Another World, The Blob), nuclear proliferation fed visions of rampaging mutants (Them!, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, Godzilla) and scientific breakthroughs led to mad scientist plots (The Fly).This i have also used within my film as i will use moders fears such as isolation and lonely ness and a fear of falure in everyday life. 
Competition for increasingly jaded audiences led filmmakers to resort to either gimmicks like 3-D (House of Wax, The Creature from the Black Lagoon) and the various stunts of William Castle productions (House on Haunted Hill, The Tingler) or, in the case of Great Britain's Hammer Films, explicit, vividly colored violence. Perhaps no decade had more seminal, acclaimed horror films than the '60s. Reflecting the social revolution of the era, the movies were more edgy, featuring controversial levels of violence (Blood Feast, Witchfinder General) and sexuality (Repulsion). Films like Peeping Tom and Psycho were precursors to the slasher movies of the coming decades, while George Romeros Night of the Living Dead changed the face of zombie movies forever.
The '70s pushed the envelope even further than the '60s, reflecting a nihilism born of the Vietnam era. Social issues of the day were tackled, from sexism (The Stepford Wives) to consumerism (Dawn of the Dead) to religion (The Wicker Man) and war (Deathdream). Exploitation movies hit their stride in the decade, boldly flouting moral conventions with graphic sex (I Spit on Your Grave, Vampyros Lesbos) and violence (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Hills Have Eyes)
Horror in the the first half of the '80s was defined by slashers like Friday the 13th, Prom Night and A Nightmare on Elm Street, while the latter half tended to take a more lighthearted look at the genre, mixing in comic elements in films like The Return of the Living Dead, Evil Dead 2, Re-Animator and House. Throughout the '80s, Stephen King's fingerprints were felt, as adaptations of his books littered the decade, from The Shining to Pet Sematary. Film that are based on books are what originaly sparked my intrest in the idea of having a film that is a psycological horror that also uses a book.
The early '90s brought unrivaled critical acclaim for the horror genre, with sweeping the major Academy awards in 1992, a year after Kathy Bates won the Oscar for Best Lead Actress for Misery and Whoopi Goldberg won for Best Supporting Actress for Ghost. Such success seemed to spur studios into funding large-scale horror-themed projects, such as Interview with the Vampire, Bram Stoker's Dracula and Wolf. In 1996, Scream's runaway success reignited the slasher flame, spawning similar films, such as I Know What You Did Last Summer and Urban Legend. At the end of the decade, Blade foreshadowed the coming flood of comic book adaptations, and Asian horror movies like Ringu and Audition signaled a new influence on American fright flicks. Meanwhile, 1999 witnessed two of the biggest surprise hits of the decade, regardless of genre, in The Sixth Sense and The Blair Witch Project.
Twenty-first century horror in the US has been identified with remakes of both American (Friday the 13th, Halloween, Dawn of the Dead) and foreign films (The Ring, The Grudge), but there have been innovations within American horror -- most notably the "torture porn" of Saw and Hostel fame. Outside of the US, there is as great a variety of edgy and innovative material as there has ever been in the genre. In addition to this Horror has become more and more famous through psycological horror and also the idea of being haunted has begun to re-terrify current generations films such as the Paranormal Activity series have done this verry well and i hope to do the same by using the sucsess of current horror films to make mine more popular.

MAIN: Post 5a

Silent Hill - Horror

 Silent Hill is a horror film about a young girl called Sharon Who the 'cult' are after because they believe that she will serve as the incubator for their God who will rid their lands of ash and darkness.

 

In this shot, there is a Women being killed or fighting and getting thrown around showing even though the camera is shooting at a low angle to show power she is clearly powerless she is reaching for her butchers knife or she has just dropped it both show powerlessness. It is in black and white which shows that its is a horror.



In this shot it shows you a medium close up of one of the monsters in the film this helps you see the incite of the film and what problems the main characters face.

 

This shows that in the film people are going to die because it is setting you up for the future events.

 

Shows a sneak peak of the main monster and their main adversary, They also have a had names going in and out of the motion picture of director and producers ect...

 The representation of people vs monsters is that monsters are bigger and more powerful, The non-diagetic music in the background is very sinister and mysterious and fritening to give the viewer a sence of the atmosphere in the film. There is not much of Mise-en-scene in this opening sequence but we re show that it is an asylum and that they do experiments there because there were x-ray results on one of the walls and all of the corridors and rooms reselmbeled that of a hospital but darker and more sinister. The editing in this opening sequence would of been wuite hard seeing as most of it is special effects and animated characters but all of the names where weaved in inbetween the fighting and mystery to not take the attenyion of the viewer away from the events.

Se7en - Thriller

  

This shot shows us the name of the film that the opening sequence is about and to remind us. Also that way it is writen and presented in the actual opening sequence is very jumpy and it looks like it was filmed by an oldfashioned camera and this is sterotypical when scary proffesers on sycopaths made a home film of what they were doing.

  

This image shows us that he was making his own film or getting some pictures from the film This gives us some incite to the film it's self but not much because at this piont in time you don't know who the person is or why he is doing this so it makes you want to keep on watching.

 

This screen shot shows us that they blanked out the whole screen to put the names in as if they were seperate to what was going on so we would notice them more and not just ignore them and watch the film.

 

This Screen grab shows the viewer that he was conducting some king of experiments on people (children in this case) he/she is putting hair into a bag the viewer would presume that this is a stand of hair from the boy in the picture.



The representation of the person in this opening sequence is that he is very smart to be conducting this experiments on people at his own home or an abondoned house or somewhere completely different but you can tell it is not in a labratory because of the Mise-en-scene and all of the equimpent is not the same and he was use the proper equipment if he was in a labratory. Sound is very mystreous and the fact that it is non-diagetic helps with that. The editing for this opening sequence is very jagged and jumpy one because it is made to look like it was filmed from home and from an hold caera with film tape not a digital camera also the were no special effects in this opening sequence it was all done just by a camera man and an actor, the editing was very good when the names come up and the whole screen goes black the effect really helps the atmosphere of the film be set.

  

MAIN: Post 4b

The storyline is based on the famous writer of Alice in wonderland, Lewis Carroll, who is struggling with his life whilst beginning to write the well known 'Alice in wonderland'turns to drugs and alcohol, resulting in him losing his wife and children, he continues to become more obsessed with the character, Alice, and thinks that she is stalking him.The character, alice was simply a product of imagination from a Carroll. I have since researched about our storyline and potential behaviours of the actors involved. Iresearched, how stalkers conventionally behave, so that my group members are aware of how to scribe the stalker into the film.http://www.uic.edu/depts/owa/stalking_profiles.html is a website which talks about the behaviour of stalkers, as we have researched this, it is not only easier to include a stalker within our production,but it is easier for them not to just appear, but to be a realistic reinactment of what a stalker does. We also reaearched about psychological issues seeing as Carroll's stalker is meerely a figure of his imagination, so to ensure we were aware of the extent of the seriousness of the thing i which we were portraying, we invested time in finding out about psychological issues, we did this on the website: http://psychologyinfo.com/problems/. this helps us to embrace the idea that Carroll is struggling through, meaning we can make it as realistic as possible in our production.

MAIN: Post 4a

Main idea was Natasha Chandler from her a film she thought of when she was younger and them me and Joe Murphy helped develop parts of it and give out initial opinion of the whole plot and opening sequence and this was our final write up of our results and overall finished idea.

Alice

Tag line:

A man is stalked by a character created by his own imagination. Should he embrace the madness of Alice, or the isolation of the real world?

Story Line:

The righter of the famous Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carrol is launched into modern times where he is a struggling writer who believes his next series shall be his big break. Due to the fact that he has yet to achieve his dream Lewis turned to drugs and alcohol in order to cure his depression but this just resulted in his isolation as his wife and child leaving him.

As he begins to write Alice in Wonderland, Lewis begins to feel like he is being haunted by the quirky character within his story, but then things get a little darker as Lewis becomes more and more obsessed by the idea of Alice she becomes more and more alive and things become serious as Alice seams to be killing all of the people who have helped to make Lewis the ex-drug addict that he is today. She also repeatedly appears in his dreams and then in his everyday life as Lewis becomes more and more involved in Alice and her murderous ways Lewis becomes insane and is locked away after being convicted for all the murders that Alice has committed but there in his cell instead of fighting Alice he embraces her and joins her in her wonderland.

Genre:

 Horror/ Thriller

Audience:

16+ (Male or Female)

Opening Sequence:

A point of view shot (from Alice’s view) of walking up a pair of old creaky apartment stairs. She knocks on a door, a man appears and in a stern voice says “What do you want?”. The camera turns to an over the shoulder shot to show Alice smile and thrust her arm forward, a close up shot then will show the expression on the landlords face as he begins to bleed out after being stabbed by Alice, as he falls to the floor the mirror behind the man captures the image of Alice with a knife in her hand and covered in blood. The camera then switched to show a glimpse of the man bleeding out on the floor and then switches back to the view of the mirror were Alice has vanished.

The whole scene the cuts to a close up shot of are main character Lewis Carrol's face as he awakes from a nightmare the camera then shows the audience and establishing shot of the apartment wish is in a complete mess, we then are shown a drawing of Alice with the her name at the top of the page the camera focuses in this in order to show that it is the title of the film. It then follows Lewis into the bathroom and an over the shoulder shot shows him splash water onto his face and then it cuts to black.  

Time line:

MAIN: Post 3a

Further look at opening sequence:

 

Thoughts on James Bond and the genre:

The James Bond films are a sub-genre of the larger genre of spy films, a genre from which it largely differs.  The spy genre is characterised by the ideals of the classical period of Hollywood.  Spy films feature a protagonist, who represents good and who exhibits the values associated with it, the character is brave, god-fearing, and sworn to protect Western culture from outside forces. The spy is the defender of, and thus a believer in, the things Western society places importance on, particularly social institutions, democratic government, and the family.   The spy is always pitted against an evil character seeking to destroy one or all of these things, and it is up to the spy to stop him.  To do so, the spy must act like an archetypical hero, using his superior courage, cleverness, wit, and skill to prevail.   Good triumphs over evil, and government and society are preserved.  However, the James Bond sub-genre is better described as Post-Classical, both in terms of chronology and substance.

Screen Shots:

This Screen shot shows that it has the basic things that an opening sequence needs for example the name of the film to tell you what it is and also i thought the scorpions in the background a bit weird at the start but in my other screen shots I will pursue this more.

Similarly in this screen shot there are titles which show that this has the basic makings of an opening sequence, and again this image there is a scorpion and a women so my instant thought is that they are linked in some way.



In this shot a scorpion and James Bond are shown through a diamond effect, I personally thing that this is a good idea because i have seen the film so i know that it is all about diamonds and the effect shows this as it is repeated throughout the sequence. the scorpion is also shown as a way of torturing someone and inflicting pain and since this is linked to women in this film you assume that women are devious and a will make life harder for the spy James Bond.



 In this Screen shot there is a man or women it is not that clear, dressed in army uniform heating up a sword/knife again it is not clear in a burning fire, within the fire they have edited in using computer editing a woman that is moving with the flames as if she is them, the person in the back ground is obviously not important but the action is, it is obviously somebody being tortured this shows that it is in real time while they are doing it, furthermore we know that they are torturing James Bond from the begining of the clip (which i will put a link to at the bottom of this section) the scorpion and the spy also show that it is in real time aswell.

 

This Screen grab shows that while the sequence is going on the toture continues for James so shows the real time conection between the two events the opening sequence and the film which hasnt stopped. He is being tortured by a women which links to my other points above.




This Shot shows a Women of fire and ice (water) both of them are opposites so this shows the viewer that their are good women as well as bad (deceiving and poisonous) ones



The Conventions of 'Die Another Day':

Director

Actors

Name of film

Non diagetic music
Events that occur in the film

 



MAIN: Post 3

Interview Notes and How It Influences My Sequence.

In watching the interview of Kyle Cooper the first thing i noticed is that the title scene of any film is meant to set an initial expectation for the film and so the flow seamlessly into each other this could be because it has normally has an introduction to a main part of the film or it focuses on the protagonist of the film and an obsession or interests that link into the film, I also learnt that it can also set a background for the film and show a clear metaphor. Secondly, he said that a great opening sequence or any type of sequence uses fluent dynamics and has clear originality of the designer/ maker of the sequence. He also personally likes to use his own hand made effects when he is filming because it adds that originality and because he finds that it looks better in the sequence but accidents can happen while you try to make your own effects. But he also said that you should not rule out editing because sometimes it is cheaper and accidents that are harmful to the actors can be easily avoided. This will influence my sequence because there are a lot of useful ideas and tips in his interview and some of his title sequences are one of my favourites and well known to me as well.

MAIN: Post 2

My Secondary Research On Popular Genres:

Comedy films have been named as the UK's favourite cinema genre, a poll (from the Telegraph) has found, as the public choose to laugh their way through the tough times.

Simon Peggs Films 'Hot Fuzz' and 'Shaun of the dead' were voted by fans are their favourite comedy film of all times.

Police spoof Hot Fuzz, starring Simon Pegg, was voted by fans are their favourite comedy film of all time. 

More than one in five cinema-goers chose to attend a comedy flick, the poll of more than 5,000 UK cinema-goers found.

Action/adventure films were next with 15 per cent of the vote while romantic "romcom" comedies secured 12 per cent in the survey for the cinema chain Odeon.

Nearly a quarter of those who took part in the poll overall (24 per cent) named police spoof Hot Fuzz, starring Simon Pegg, as their favourite comedy film of all time.

The survey also found regional variations, with the action adventure genre particularly popular in Oxford, Bollywood in Brighton, comedy in Cardiff, gangster in Norwich, sci-fi in Coventry, horror in Wolverhampton, musical in Worcester and rom com in York.

(http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/film-news/6664716/Comedy-films-Britains-most-popular-genre.html#) 

Also someone has anticipated the next to 20 films for the end of this year here is the list as follows (furthermore more information on this list at this link http://www.rantingdragon.com/twenty-anticipated-genre-films-in-2012/)

1.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

2.

The Dark Knight Rises

3.

The Avengers

 

 

4.

John Carter

 

5.

The Hunger Games

Those are the top five Films the rest are on the website.

This research helped my understand that everyone wants a good entertaining film no matter what the genre as long as it is entertaining.

My Questionnaire and  Analysed Results:

This is my questionnaire for my main task, it is mainly focused on the different genres of films and what they prefer such as comedy, thriller, action etc.. these results will have some influence on what genre my group pick for the opening sequence but it will not all rely on this questionnaire. (Some questions could not be turned into pie charts but i will still talk about them) I have asked 10 friends out side of class and 5 family member, boys and girls and they were also all between the age of 15 and 19 so this is an un-biased questionnaire.

Question 1:

In Question one i asked 'What’s your favourite genre of film?' this entitles us to find out the favourite genres of people aged 15 to 19 (our target audience) comedy is clearly favoured within this age group, the second favourite is Rom-coms which at 27% run quite close behind to comedy's 30% this shows us that people like to watch films just to have a good laugh and relax not go and see a thriller (which got 0%) and obviously don't like the thrill and adrenaline.

Question 2:

In Question two I asked 'What type of film do you watch more of?' I asked this question because i know even if you have a favourite genre you don't always get to watch it because of the times of film tat come out. Although I think this comedy is clearly the most watched with 57% of people who i asked to do the questionnaire favoured and watched more of. Horror is the next most watched genre at 15% followed by a mix of Rom-coms, Sci-fi and action all at 7%.

Question 3:

in Question three of my questionnaire i asked 'Why?' this why was related to the previous question of why they go and watch comedy or horror most of the answers related to 'Because it's funny' or 'I like the thrill' this showed us that they just liked it for the pure comedy or the pure Thriller/Horror aspect of the films not to do with the plot or characters.

Question 4:

For Question four I asked 'What do you expect to see in an opening sequence?' most people made comments along the lines of 'An interesting fell' and 'A song that suits the film and genre' these comments help me to decide what to put in to my opening sequence and how to construct and structure it.

Question 5:

In Question five I asked 'When do you go to the cinema?' I asked this to find out how reliable their comments are and whether they have much experience of seeing opening sequence.

Question 6:

For Question six I asked 'If you go to the cinema who do you go with?' I asked this question because I wanted to find out the sort of people that I would be doing this opening sequence for.

This has helped me realise that people watch a lot of the mainstream films and the films that they produce and don't go out of their way to watch something they like so it wouldn't matter what genre my opening sequence is because there will always be people that watch it and will like it not depending on the genre but depending on the quality and entertainment factor of the opening sequence.