Just like heaven opening

The DreamWorks logo is seen at the start of the film. When the DreamWorks logo is visible the traditional DreamWork's tune is not used, so the music heard is a soundtrack which signifies love which will be present in the film.
The camera proceeds to be falling through the clouds of the DreamWorks logo which could be falling in love, falling in heaven, falling from the sky, angels falling?
The titles dissolve in and out.
Woman standing in rose garden represents love. The mistiness in the garden could represent things that are unclear. Looks like heaven. It was a dream, stereotype of a woman always dreaming of love. Career is a nurse or a nurse, shows she’s intelligent.
Handheld shot in the staff room. Reverse track. High angle/low angle of the doctors. The camera pans.  Jump cuts to show momentum of the passage of time. Good with all people and drinks lots of coffee. Friends say she is lucky for not having the problems of being in a relationship, but she looks unhappy.
Her sister is match making. The sister has a family, house and husband. The sister is happy and the other isn’t. Motherly stereotype of multi-tasking. “Beggars can’t be choosers”. Connotations, bright white light, clouds.

Halloween Opening Analysis

Halloween is a 1978 American Independent horror film set in the fictional suburban town of Haddonfield, Illinois, USA on Halloween.

A psychotic murderer institutionalised since childhood escapes on a mindless rampage while his doctor chases him through the streets.

Halloween was produced in a budget of $320,000 and grossed $47 million at the box office in the United States, equivalent to over $150 million as of 2008, becoming one of the most profitable independent films of all time.

Many critics credit the film as the first in a long line of slasher films inspired by Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960). The movie originated many clichés found in low – budget horror films of the 1980s and 1990s. However, the film contains little graphic violence and gore.

The films opening titles has a theme tune of a very icon thriller sound; which was John Carpenters own creation. John Carpenter was director of the film and also created the Screen play.



The titles are going from yellow to red to represent fire, which is also the connotation of danger. The black back screen used on the title sequence shows the audience that it is a horror or thriller because black represents the murderer and the unknowingness. In the title sequence there is also a picture of a pumpkin with a candle inside, which is constantly zoomed in on whilst the sequence is played out. The ideology of a pumpkin is that it scares people away.  The face of the pumpkin is suggestive to the genre of the film as the shape of the nose on the pumpkin is the shape of a knife, and the right eye of the pumpkin is in the shape of a head. The following frame is a connotation screen which sets the location of the film, "Haddonfield, Illinois." Whilst the connotation screen is played out there is a sound bridge of children reciting a poem about Halloween. The poem is about what is scary about haloween "You may think they're scary, you're probably right, black cats and gargoyles on halloween night, trick or treat." The poem is a reflection of what the middle class part of the world presumed was scary about halloween, but now a new fear would be upon them as they would fear Michael Myers would be out to get them. The sound of the poem slowly fades out. A new caption screen appears which reads "Halloween night 1963." 

The first scene begins with a pan to a white house of an urban middle class estate; this establishing shot gives the image to the audience that it is set in the average persons estate. There is a handheld submissive point of view shot walking towards the house. The pumpkin that is on the porch gives evidence to the audience that it is Halloween, and could also represent that they are trying to ward of evil from the house. When the submissve point of view shot is filmed the camera man doesn’t give the sense that it’s a young boy as the camera is raised to a level that could be seen as adult height. The shot used gives the audience a sense that they are walking towards the window and are witnessing the start of a sexual act between two teenagers. This shows there is a deviation from the classic horror film as it is not a white virgin girl that has been killed, but instead a non virgin teenager.  There  is a sound of the clock when walking up the stairs which builds the tension of the scene. The sister is singing whilst naked which shows that she is happy and that she has possibly just commited a sexual act. The ruffled bed sheets also give evidence that the two teenagers have been up to sexual acts in the bedroom. When the killer gets to the bedroom he kills the girl with a knife as a punishment to not being a virgin anymore. The knife represents the one being seen on the cover picture of the film. The end of the opening scene is a zoom out by a crane shot of the young Michael Myers. Working class area and parents are working class, as they have a car and are wearing formal clothes.

Task 2 Research into existing products

The Textual Analysis within the opening of Se7en.
     Within the pre-title the of the film "Se7en" 1995 it sets "The calm before the storm" (Shakespeare).   The film starts within Detective William Somerset's flat. William Sometset is in the kitchen. Just from this we can get an idea of the type of man he is, the background of him and whether or not he is a socially adaptable person; all this information is gained from just the first ten seconds of the film. The clothes he is wearing suggests to the audience that he is in a high paid job as he is in a white shirt and trousers. There are also ornements of exotic animals that are present in the room, which suggests that he is a well travelled man. The old fashioned farmers green milk jug which is also visible in the kitchen gives the impression that Detective Somerset has an old fashioned way of doing things. Outside of the kitchen there is a chess board. A chess board usually represents someone who is very intellegent and it is also a strategic game to play, foreshadowing the film as it is a thriller which involves strategy.

The Preliminary Task

     The 180 degree rule is one of the main techniques that should be mastered, whilst making a film. The 180 degree rule is an imaginary line that is set across the posistion of the camera and the set itself. The camera must never cross the the line. If there were two characters partaking in a convorsation, and the camera was set on the left hand side of the characters, the camera must never cross the line and go onto the right hand side of them. The reason for this is because the characters would seemingly switch places. The way my group incorparted this into our film was to keep the camera on the one side of the set. This made sure that everything in the surrounding, as well as characters, did not appear to be on a different side when they wasn't.
     The match on action effect is the effect of having two different cameras at different posistions to film the same piece. My group incorprated this effect into our film when myself opened a door. We posistioned the camera first by placing it in the corner of the office and it would follow me to where I opened the door. We then placed the camera outside of the office we used as our set facing the door. The match on action worked well because we could see from two different angles, which transpired into a seemless edit of me opening the door.
     The eye line match is when the eyes of the characters who, for  example are in convorsation, match each others eye line. This gives the effect that the characters are looking into each others eyes. This helps to create the mood of the scene, for example if the film was of a romantic genre, and the two characters were not looking into each others eyes then it wouldn't have the romantic feeling the scene was trying to create. The group unified this into the film twice. The first time was when Claudia was looking through the window at me. The second ime was when I walked back into the office and caught Claudia in the act. Both eye line matches created tension for what was going to happen next.
    

     The film making process in terms of filming shots in the storyboard went quite well in my opinion. The shots we used were easy to shoot in the set we decided upon. We also found keeping to the storyboard easy and helpful. The way in which we decided to shoot the film was by filming, what we classed as the hard shots first. In my opinion this went well and we managed to create the film quickly and effectively.
     The film making process in terms of filming around the college also went quite well. However, at first we did struggle to find a location that would suit our film. We did eventually find a room and that was meeting room four. Although, it was small we were still able to film the shots in the way we had scripted them to be filmed. The shots in the corridor was key to our master shot of the office and enviroment around it.

     Adobe premiere was a very simple working programme. In terms of editing, we were able to create seemless cuts and a match on action. The cuts created were vital to our film, but also made the camera posistioning creative. This was because we managed to film in numerous different posistions in a compact room. In terms of sound, we were able to not only make our voices louder, but also cut out unwanted noise. This helped to add more effect because you could clearly hear what we were saying. Another way of in which sound was effective to our film was the use of incidental music. The music created tension and mystery that was key to our film. In terms of transistions we used a scene dissolve and also slow motion. The scene in which we used dissolve made the cut not so obvious to the audience eye. The slow motion we used was when the card was dropped, this made the end of the film very effective in terms of drama because it showed that the card had extreme importance connected to it.