4. RESEARCH - Watching Films for the Main Task

RESEARCH FOR MAIN TASK

During our lessons on the 10/02/09 and 12/02/09 As we had finished our preliminary task, and shown it to our teacher who decided that it was good enough, we started the first phase of our main task - the research and planning. As we have not yet decided on any part of our film opening, to get some ideas about the genre that we would like to pursue as a class we all watched different genres of film openings, which would help us in deciding what genre our group were going to choose. We decided that some of the things that we should be looking for in these film openings are; how they fit to the stereotype of their genre, the camera shots, editing, mise-en-scene, the music/sounds that are used, how the mood/tone is established, how the characters are established and their use of the title and credits.
Here are some of the films & genres that we looked at:

HORROR - SAW
The music was typical horror film music (like low notes) that added to the mood, which made it more intense.
We saw that this film went straight to the action, and quickly established location, which was a mysterious room, characters, 2 men, which could have been seen to break a stereotype that it's usually women who are weaker and more likely to fall victims in horror movies.
At the beginning of this opening, the title appeared on a black background, which was quite good in establishing the mood as it cut quickly into the film.
The mood/tone is easily established by the dark setting at the beginning, when the lighting is introduced it's artificial lighting. A dead body was seen right at the beginning of the film also, which is typical of a horror. Typical things like blood were also seen. The question that this film opening was imposing was how the people got in this location, and why they were there.

COMEDY - EVAN ALMIGHTY
The music in this film opening was very upbeat, and very happy music which helped set the mood. The credits were appearing on the screen during the beginning of the film and as the music was playing and the location was being shown. This way of showing the credits was very effective for this genre, however we decided that this would not fit very well with other genres such as horror. There was very bright colors in this film opening which also helps set the mood. A family were introduced which were like a typical happy family, which are usually used in upbeat happy films such as comedies and are stereotypical. Also the camera shots were quite smooth and the editing wasn't too noticeable as this was not meant to be the focus, it was focusing more on the location and characters. Usually in comedies it starts off with a state of equilibrium, which is what this film opening was showing. Overall this film opening was very upbeat and all aspects, such as music and characters showed this.

THRILLER/ACTION - THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM
In this film, it started with very quick editing together of a dream like sequence. These shots were very disorientated, and set up a mood of panic and chaos. The main character of this was introduced, and it was a very muscly man, which is a stereotypical hero of action/thriller films. The location of the place appeared like it was being typed up on the screen, which shows this it must be very important for the story that we must know the location. All of these elements came together to give this scene a very mysterious feel and that some sort of action would take place soon in the film. It was good at creating the mood.