Details of previous films in your chosen genre

In my group we have chosen the genre Horror, we looked at different films that relate to the genre we chose such as Hitman, Saw, Omen, Scream and many more, for our own film opening sequence we planned to have an antagonist and protagonist as the same charcter, this is because the bad guy is the main charcter, as the story revovles around him and we see the film from his point of view.


Futhermore in our group we did a mood board containing all the films under the same genre, we researched using this method to give us more ideas, also we were able to see how some special effects and techniques that could be used for our opening sequence, additionally we based our ideas around 'Hitman' this movie inspired our group to get some ideas, for example the costume, storyline is quite similiar with what we have decided to do. We also looked at 'The Dark Knight' for some ideas on our character, the antagonist as we have decided to have him as a mentally disturbed actor who is a loner and he also had a bad childhood. Therfore we combined different ideas from different films to create a short opening scene for our film.

 The genre conventions we listed were:

• Structure (the sequnce of the ideas)
• Form (shape and layout )
• Style
• Content

The genre conventions we looked at were that many audience become rather highly conditioned to expect certain things within a particular genre, such that we can be highly critical of or even reject or distrust something that does not follow what we expect to find in the certain genre. This is the same for horror genres, many people expect to see a bad guy killing a vulnerable victim. 

Looking at previous student’s work

What worked well?


Looking at previous students work i thought that students who updated their blog regulary had the best blogs with deatiled amount of information regarding their work and what they did, how they did it and also providing evidence for it, such as uploading thier presenation, video, pictures and their research. Additionally students who updated their blog often had a better advantage of their work to be detailed and we could clearly see how they had worked up to their final assignement.


What did not work well?


From many students blogs we could tell who had actually put an effort into it, as what dosent work well is when they have carefully detailed and structred their work and yet do not have any videos or pictures to show examples of what they did, also it would give us a better understanding of they planned their way through to the final work .

Looking at professional opening sequences

We loooked at different professional opening scenes, and we analysed these key features:


Content
Structure
Genre
Introduction to characters
Number of shots
Titles
What we liked


The opening scenes we looked at had different genres from eachother, for example some were action, comic, teen movie's, drama and horror. What i found out from these opening scenes that sometimes the genre of the film would be given away in the titles, as the design and layout of the titles would be designed to show what genre the movie is.


Many Characters in the opening scenes are very relaxed however in comic and action movies it usally starts of with chaos at the begining, i believe this maybe used to catch the attention of the audience immediatley. In contrast horror opening secnes usually start of with a relaxed and calmer scene, and many scenes are taken place in big house's that are usually isolated from the main cities, this is used to build up suspense for the audience.


What i liked about most of these scenes was that they all had a variety of contents and they all introduced their main characters first, this maybe done because the movie will be dominant around them.

One Hour Photo

'How do the following elements create suspense and help the audience understand'

For our essay we had to answer this question, also we had to analyse these key elememts:

 

•  Shot types,
•  Composition
•  Movement
•  Editing
•  Sound
•  Mise En Scene

 

Firstly we had to briefly summarise the narrative of the film, and give some examples of the still images and use them to analyse the different shot types and why they have been used. I analysed that these shots were used to create suspense for the audience and also maybe to create some sympathy for the main character, also the sound effetcs used in the film was non-digetic therefore they used effects for the sound to make it sound very serious and maybe depressing to show the connection of how the character may be feeling.

Preliminary Task

In my preliminary task we created a short opening scene, we worked in a group of three to create a video using different camera angles and different shots, in our peliminary task we used the 180 degree rule to make the conversation look realistic, this rule cosists of two people, and we had to make sure the camera was directly behind the shoulders of the person, we had to imagine there was a identical straight line cutting through the scene.


Additionally i learned how to use editing skills to create a more smooth run of the scene, i also learnt how to use different angle shots, such as low angle, high angle, medium shot and close up shot. In our video we have used low angle shots and medium shots to experiment the techniques of a person walking, we also used high angle shots to look down on the person's hand when opening the door, as this will give a more realistic view in the scene. Also we made sure to keep the camera steady, this is becuase the steadiness of the camera depends upon how smoothly the scene has been filmed.  

Romantic-Drama-War Genre Presentation

In this presentation I analysed a film called 'Dear John' i also analysed the genre Romance and Drama. From this i found out that these genres mostly started of with portraying realistic characters, settings and life situation.



Romantic genres is mostly based around the love stories and affairs of the heart, drama is mostly based around the mixture of the tensions in every day to day life. I created a presentation on the two genres and i found out that not all romantic films are like fairy tales or happy endings, they either have a tragic ending or leave their film ending in sorrrow between the two love couples.



Conventions of the genres will be that there is different realistic journeys portrayed, that many people will overcome in their own lives, additionally the lead role is mainly taken by a male and female. However in many love stories the plot revolves around the main cahracters as they are seen as the protagonist, additionally the antagonist in this film is 'a cause' that creates difficulties for the two lovers, different situations and tragic obstacles are faced and the pain of losing a loved one brings the film to an unhappy ending. I also found out that to make a film romantic the film must consist of realistic emotions and feelings and the characters performance and movie scenes must relate to the genre.


Also i learnt that romantic genres started of portraying realistic characters real life stituation, for example a very popular romantic film would be william shakespeares Romeo and Juliet, he portrayed the conflict of social classes and how they could lead the love couples to death, another example wil be titanic however the reason for the tragic ending in this film was the cause and stituation they were in, as you can see many romantic genres differ from each other .