Titles and Napoleon dynamite titles

When we first decided to put integrated titles into our fil we tried to think of similar films that also had integrated titles. We couldn't really think of any thriller films that had integrated titles, most have animated but subtle titles such as the film Se7en which has small white titles in the opening. These titles fit well with the music and feeling of the opening due to the scratchy font they are in. The white colour of them make them stand out but they do not distract from the content of the opening.


We had made the decision to use integrated titles to add to the sinister nature of the film, we looked at some other films that had integrated titles that weren't in the thriller genre, the one that we found that interested us the most was Napoleon Dynamite. This film opening uses integrated titles as its whole opening so they aren't really in the action of the opening but we thought we would look at it to try and decide how we wanted to do our titles and to take some ideas.
http://www.artofthetitle.com/?s=napoleon+dynamite
The titles in this film were inspiration for the titles of ours. They are integrated into the action of the scene in natural settings. They are integrated within meals a lot of the time. These plates of food give an idea of the context, setting and themes of the film. The titles in the film aren't fully integrated as there is nothing else going on in the frame. We decided to do fully integrated titles that would be within the framing and action of our film.

Film opening remake

We did another preliminary task of re making a film opening. At this point we still weren't sure what what genre we were going to do but it didn't really matter as this task was all about gaining a better insight as to what we have to do to make a film opening and how much work would go into it.

We decided to remake the opening to the comedy film Super bad. Everyone in our group knew the film and the opening well so we had some idea of what we would have to do. The film opening is basically just two people dancing which would be quite easy for us to film, the hardest bit of it would be the editing as each shot has a different coloured back ground. We would have to add this in post production. We were confident that it wouldn't take us long to film as we would only need a static camera and all Robert and I would have to do is learn the dance. Even though we thought it wouldn't take us long we still created a shot list as we would have to do an extensive on for our actual film opening so this was good practise. We also made a storyboard which had our titles and transitions on, I thought that this would be more helpful when it came to editing as we could see what transitions we would have to use and what times the titles would have to come in.

I think this task was really helpful. It gave me an insight of how much work we will have to put into making our opening and also what compromises we will have to make. For example when it came to editing we didn't have the same star transition that they used in the original so we had to find a similar one we could use.

Above is the original opening for Super bad. We tried to make it as similar as possible but there were some things we had to compromise on. First of all we couldn't access a star transition for the end of our opening so we used the closest thing we had which was a circle one, this wasn't really a problem it just gave us an idea of how we should time transitions. We couldn't use the same music as they did in the original opening because it is copy writed When we make our opening we wont be ale to use copy writed music so this was a good insight into the type of music available to us.

Thriller audience expectations

As a group we all decided to look at a different genre and then ask people of different ages and backgrounds what they expect from said genre, I am looking at the thriller genre. I came up with a few questions to ask people to get a general over veiw of what people expect from the genre and a film from that genre. Once we had the idea of what people expect from the genre we can decide if this genre is one we would be able to achieve.

1. What genre of film areyou most likely to go and see?
2. Would you go and see a thriller film?
3. Name 5 things you expect to see in a thriller film
4. What certification would you expect to see from a thriller film?

These are the questions I asked 6 people to get an idea of what people expect from their films.

Maxine Saltmarsh- 49

1. Drama
2. Yes
3. violence, relationships, tension, chase, fear
4. 18

Kevin Saltmarsh- 49

1. Thriller
2. Yes
3. Car chase, guns, suspense, female interest, darkness
4. 15

Grace Gillard- 6

1. fairy/children
2. No
3. running, scary men, scared, dark, acreaming
4. N/A

Amber Polley- 17

1. Horror
2. Yes
3. Creepy themes, death, isolation, suspense, darkness
4. 15

Natalie Saltmarsh- 21

1. Rom-Com
2. Maybe
3. Fear, Running, Isolation, Darkness, Death
4. 15

Del Toogood- 56

1. Action
2. Yes
3. Chase, Male Villian, Suspense, Relationships, Fights
4. 15

From all of the answers given I can see that thriller isn't commonly the film that people would automatically go to see but most would be willing to see one. It is obvious that thriller films are aimed at older audiences as everyone said that a thriller film would be at least a 15 and when I asked the young person she didn't really have an idea what a thriller film was. From this I can see that usual conventions people think of when it comes to thriller films are, low key lighting (signified as darkness) a sense of suspense and some form of chase, be it a car chase or having a chase as an ongoing thematic convention. I think the opening of a thriller would be a good thing for us to do as it will be quite easy to build up suspense through editing and location and low key lighting is something we can easilly achieve. I don't think we would be able to create a successful chase but as we are only creating the first two minutes its unlikely that there would be a chase in there so we wouldn't have to worry about that.

Psychological thrillers

Psychological Thrillers

Target audience

http://scorpiocvhsmedia.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/our-target-audience.html
Above is a post I have created about consideration of target audiences.

Initial film ideas

http://scorpiocvhsmedia.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/initial-ideas-mind-map-and-genre-ideas.html
Above is a post I have done about our inital ideas for our film and our ideas about genres.

actor considerations

http://scorpiocvhsmedia.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/common-comedy-film-actors.html

http://scorpiocvhsmedia.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/common-action-film-actors.html

Above are links to a posts I have made about common comedy, action and thriller actors, I did this as further research into genre and popular actors from the different genres. there is also a link to a post I have made that has our final actors we would use in an ideal situation.

http://scorpiocvhsmedia.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/common-thriller-film-actors.html

http://scorpiocvhsmedia.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/final-actors.html