Questionaire

To make sure we make the right product for the right audience, me and Seb set out to ask people what they expect from a Crime-thriller.

Sandy Lee

Sandy said that he expects a crime thriller to be "Exciting, tense, clever and the hero near death at some point". He also said that there should be "guns and a murder weapon" for props.









Joshua Vicary

Josh said he expects a crime thriller to be "Tense, good plot, death, hot ladies, mysterious". He said for props there should be "Guns, Gadgets and cars"









Jacob Stevenson

Jacob said he expects there to be "A girl crying in the woods, a male killer, a twisted and complicated plot, strangles, massive forest and a quiet forest."









Tom Thorp

Tom said that there should be "Humor, entertaining, action, back stories of characters, violence and drama".









Adam Low

Adam said that there should be "Fight scenes, action, violence, cars and chases".












From this we can see that the audience expects there to be violence, action, guns, cars, and chases. However we do not have access to a car but we can do all of the other things.

First day of filming

Our first day of filming took place on the 22/01/2011, we filmed quite a vast majority of the shots that we need.

Props for our film

For our two minute opening, the props we need is one gun for the agent. Apart from that, all we require is the costumes. For our protagonist, we use will put him in casual cloths, as he the narrative of the story tells he is trying to blend in with the crowds and look normal. For our antagonist, the agent, we will use a suit. The suit will be black and white with sunglasses to hide his identity and be anonymous.

Location

The location for mine and Seb's media 2 minute opening to a fiction film will be set in a field and an alley way in Clavering, 8 miles from Saffron Walden.

Narrative structure and synopsis

This is mine and Seb's narrative struture to our two minute opening to a fiction film.

Our film is about a middle age man, ex-government operative on the run from an anonymous agency. The agency have killed his family and are after him, chasing him wherever he roams until one day they get him where they want.

This is where our two minute opening starts, as he is being chased through a field in the middle of the country side.

Storyboard

This is mine and Seb's final draft of the storyboard for our two minute opening to a fiction film.

The Art of the Title

For further investigation into title sequences I looked at another crime thriller, Se7en(Fincher:1995) on the art of the title. This opening title sequence isn't very action packed but it plays on the senses of the audience. It scares people by showing small amounts of gore and displaying the motives and other reasoning behind the serial killer. The title scene on its own is an example of an exceptionally good title sequence but it would be extremely hard for we as media students to film and edit in such a small period of time. http://www.artofthetitle.com/2008/03/26/se7en/

Casino Royale title sequence

Me and Seb analysed the title sequence of Casino Royale to determine the timings of the titles and the order in which they appear. We only used the first two minutes and stopped there as our film is constrained to two minutes including titles where this title sequence lasts a whole three minutes.




0:05 - Production Company
0:08 - Actor - lead role
0:11 - Original Writer of the series
0:15 - Film title
0:19 - 0:54 - Actors and stuntmen
0:58 - Associate produce, Production Executive
1:02 - Camera Operator, Assistant Director, Script Supervisor, Publicity and Marketing, Promoting, Assistant Producer
1:10 - Sound Recorder, Electrical Supervisor, Stills Photographer, Makeup Supervisor, Hairdressing Supervisor, Wardrobe Supervisor
1:17 - Visual Effects, Supervising Art Director, Property, Construction Manager, Post Production Supervisor
1:24 - Unit Production Manager, Second Unit Production Manager, First Assistant Director
1:30 - Casting, Stunt Co-ordinator
1:33 - Special and Miniature Effects Supervisor, Main Title Designer
1:37 - Second Unit Director
1:41 - Costume Designer
1:55 - Editor

Doing this has helped us understand the importance of the titles and the order in which they are included. This has also shown us what to include and what not to include, for example including things such as the actors names earlier rather than later, the title being extremely close to the start but not the first thing seen with the production company being first.

Genre of our fiction film

Me and Seb have decided upon creating a crime-thriller for our two minute opening to a fiction film. We chose this because it's not as complicated as a science fiction but it still offers all of the action. We decided to do a crime-thriller, rather than a thriller because it allows us to include more down to earth characters and narrative, rather than a very complicated plot.

Three opening sequences to films.

The genre I chose was thriller/crime hybrid, with focus on a very fast paced action packed opening. The first film I chose was Batman: The Dark Knight(Nolan:2008). I chose this because this film utilizes every element of film making very well. The mise-en-scene consists of the masks on the characters, which create a very intimidating set of characters, there was a lot of ambient sound used to keep the momentum and the pace of the sequence up, it was edited to show how much was going on and how each of the clowns were being killed one by one and the cinematography never shows us the faces of the people behind the masks, which makes them even more intimidating.

The next film I chose was James Bond Casino Royale(Campbell:2006). This opening does not feature anything but animated scenes along with a song, sort of like a music video. The sequence shows no narrative but the cinematography shows off many different great shots for a crime/thriller, mainly the fighting and death shots. This scene also shows how music can be so effective at making everything seem so much faster paced and how it creates a narrative itself with the intro/verse/chorus/outro.

The last film I chose was Reservoir Dogs(Tarantino:1992). The opening scene from this film shows the characters walking together under the soundtrack. This sequence is a prime example of the use of cinematography to show the characters, their personalities and the relationships between each other by the use of close-ups of each of their faces and the group shots of all of them. Unfortunately I could not find a clip that I could embed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qBWc8FCEEM&feature=related