Point 10 - Full Textual Analysis of Film Opening Sequence

Little Miss Sunshine

The opening sequence of Little Miss Sunshine starts with a fully coloured yellow screen representing the colour of sunshine with the music starting straight away. Next, an extreme close up shot of a young girl with big rounded glasses is staring straight into the camera lense with the reflection of a TV screen being reflected into her glasses of a women. This is straight away telling the audience that this is a main character, it then cuts back to a cartoon animation of a yellow bus driving along a road with the name of the actress playing the part. We then see a low angle shot of the girl wearing a red jumper with sporting bands round her wrist with her hands to her face acting surprised with then a quick cut to the TV where the women is doing the exact same gesture when winning a beauty pageant. This is showing that the young girl seems to think of nothing else but winning a pageant and you realise it must be her passion. With another quick shot of the yellow bus moving along you then get introduced to an older man wearing a blue shirt and tie with a close up shot of him talking to an audience of which you don't see but he uses a firm hand gesture when speaking which suggests he's possibly talking in a lecture about a serious topic, suggesting he's a hard worker and quite a serious person. A backwash colour of yellow is shown again with the title of the actors name appearing and then the shot of the yellow bus moving along the road. A bird's eye view shot introduces us to a young male who is doing weights with a simple white t-shirt on and black fingerless gloves, his facial expression is very serious and concentrative giving the feeling that he has determination, which makes sense once you learn about his character in the film. The actors name then appears on the screen with the yellow backwash of colour again and the bus moving. A close up shot of somone sniffing cannabis up their nose is shown next with the camera tiliting upwards after to reveal a much older male with a leather waistcoat and a colourful hawaiian shirt on, suggesting to the audience he doesn't have a care in the world and enjoys life by his care-free dress sense. You then see a shot of him facing away from the camera but you see his face through the reflection of him staring into a dressing table mirror, the same sequence then appears with the actors title and the yellow bus. An older female is introduced next with a still camera shot of her driving in the car while on the phone to someone and smoking out the window, this is creating the idea that she is stressed out and leads a very busy life style as she is using smoking to calm herself down, the animation bus appears again but this time starts to disappear off the right hand side of the screen while the actresses name appears. This is suggesting the opening sequence is coming to an end before one last side shot is shown of a older man in a wheelchair staring directly out of the window in a hospital and a close up shot of his facial expression is shown afterwards as he looks very serious and deep in thought, suggesting he has been through some sort of trauma. His name appears while you see the last inch of the bus move off screen and then the main film title is shown behind the yellow backwash of colour with each word getting slightly bigger leaving the word 'Sunshine' in big capital letters along with 'Miss', before the director's name appears. Then the film begins.

I find this opening sequence works very well through a number of different elements. It is very simple and repetitive and doesn't include any special effects or features. It simply states each main character to the audience and gives them a little background on each one. It also gives you an insight into how these characters all seem very different to each other and with this it urges you to watch more in order to find out what happens next and what their story is. The track played behind the opening title is called "The Winner Is" by Mychael Danna and DeVotchKa and is a nice calming piece of music to compliment the simplicity of what's happening on screen.

Point 9 - Breakdown of Film Title (21 Jump Street)

I decided to use the drama comedy film '21 Jump Street' for my graphic breakdown of an opening title. This is a recent film that tells the story of two cops who became friends when at police camp, having been sworn enemies in high school. They go undercover in a local high school and try to blend in while bringing down a youth drug group. This is the opening title:



And this is my graphic breakdown of the opening title:

Point 8 - Research of Genre

Drama comedy films usually convey a well thought out story that has meaning to it that the audience can think about afterwards but for them to enjoy it more a touch of comedy is added to make it more light-hearted. With the drama side of the genre the storyline is usually a serious, plot-driven narrative that shows realistic characters, settings, life situations and involves intense character interaction. It mostly never focuses on special-effects comedy or action but focus on telling a realistic and emotional storyline. With the way the narrative is structured most start by showing you the ending of the film and then works it's way back, allowing the audience to be very confused at the start of the film and then all is revealed if you keep watching it, another is having a voice over at the beginning and one character introducing themselves while shots are shown on screen. The comedy side usually provides the humour by the characters doing silly embarssing things that the audience can either find hilarious because it's so unreal or something that they can relate to as they've done it themselves. Examples of these films are:

A women who gets divorced and goes on a round-the-world trip to "find herself".

A story of man and following his life.

Telling the tale of a group of teenagers in DT.

Shows a family determind to get their young daughter into the finals of a beauty pageant.

 

Most of these films have a light-hearted story to it which a range of audience members can enjoy from young to old. Other conventions of this genre is having upbeat and modern music and providing a rollercoaster of emotions, making you laugh in hysterics at one moment and then in floods of tears the next.

 

So for our film opening we need to include:

 

• A voice-over
• Modern music
• Main character introducing himself to the audience
• A silly embarassing moment (which the audience can relate to)



 

 

Our remake video

This is our remake task of 'The Breakfast Club'. Having looked at it more closely since editing it we've discovered that we should have taken more time over filming as some of the shots are in poor lighting conditions and are quite dark and when holding the camera our hands seems to shake and the shot isn't quite steady. We used the original voice-over and soundtrack from 'The Breakfast Club' in order for the remake to seem as close to the orginial as possible. So making this video was definitely a learning curve for the group and hopefully our videos from now on will be more accurately shot taking into consideration lighting, stillness etc. 

The Breakfast Club (1985) - Our Inspiration

This opening scene from Breakfast club is what we used to help inspire us for our opening of our Comedy/Drama coursework and also what our remake video is based on. We liked how the opening is just a voice over with a series of montage shots, so we felt the audience were being grasped into the story straight away by the narrator speaking and the main location being set within the first minute.

Our Film Brief

For our main coursework task we've decided to pick a Comedy/Drama as our film brief. As a group we think that this is a genre that we know a lot about, as this type of film appeals to our age group and the three of us have watched many of these films in our free time. Our storyline is as follows, a guy who used to be bullied at primary school and high school and the film starts with him in the present day, age 30, he is now a successful business man or tries to be and the film is about him being invited to a school reunion and meeting all of his past ghosts and bullies.

Our opening scene starts with a shot of little kids playing in the playground, we then rewind the scene and go back to it from the beginning and zoom in on a little boy sitting on a bench which the audience hadn't noticed before. A voice over is used during this with a man saying "Hi my names Gordon Twiginam , my life never seemed easy, I was always the odd one out but no one noticed, my Mum always used to say where's wally? whenever I brought a school photo home each year" The shot zooms in on the boy sitting on the bench and then it cuts to a shot of a young girl and she flicks her hair and starts laughing which will then be edited into slow motion while the voice over says "ahh Heather Clancy, she was the one, the love of my life, the popular girl, one problem I wasn't popular!" Then it cuts back to the boy on the bench and you hear boys shouting from off screen "Oi Twiggy " and then the boy gets hit by a rugby ball, while brushing himself off the voice over then says "But things have changed since then and I'm a whole new man". It cuts to some quirky, motown music and a shot of a guy in a suit walking down with a strut looking around and people are ignoring him and the voice over is saying things such as " I was the one, everyone knew me, you couldn't?" Then he trips up and everything from his briefcase opens and falls out (with a piece of paper naming the title of the film) and he lifts his head of the road and the camera stares straight at him and he says " Ok maybe I still did make some mistakes" he gets up and brushes himself off and walks into his office with a smile and the secretary says "Oh Mr Twiginam you've been invited to a school reunion next week" and then he turns to the camera and says "and this is where my story begins".

For this opening we would need:

Characters:

1 older adult (male)
A group of primary school children
A secretary (female)
A younger male character - primary school age
A younger female chacater - primary school age

Locations:

North Lawn
Drive from chapel to G-House
Zebra crossing for when Mr Twiginam falls
G-house office

Costumes:

Casual clothes from primary school children
Suit and briefcase for the male adult
Black pencil skirt and blouse for secretary

Props:

Briefcase (papers inside)
Bikes
Rubgy ball
Letter for invitation

Music:

Slow orchestral music possibly for the primary school scene
Upbeat, quircky, motown music for the present day

We thought the credits would be shown on the objects, for example the rugby ball after it's been thrown, when everything falls out of the briefcase the pieces of paper could have credits on them etc.

We pitched this idea to Mrs Black and she thought....

The Jellybaby Task - Film Brief 2.

For our second film brief we chose a thriller and decided on the narrative of two brothers arguing over the fact that one thinks the other has stolen their father's fortune, the argument ends badly and one ends up dead in a lake by the other shooting them.

The narrative theory is Todorov's Equilibrium theory as we thought this was an appropriate theory to choose for a thriller film, the part we shot was the disruption but the equilibrium at the start would have been that the brothers were close and got on well together followed by the shooting and then ending with another equilibrium section.

Shot 1

Shot 2

Shot 3



Shot 4

Shot 5

The Jellybaby Task - Film Brief 1.



The film brief my group chose for the first jellybaby task was a Drama/Comedy better known as a Dramedy. Our plot told the storyline of a Princess who was all alone and needed to find her true love, this then cut to a Prince's story about how he needed to find a Princess in order to be king. The prince got on his horse in order to go find a Princess but was then suddenly stopped by an evil villan in the woods who decided he wanted to be king instead but the Prince killed the villan and rode on to the castle to find the Princess waiting to find her true love and they lived happyily ever after. THE END.

Our narrative theory was based on  two main theories, the first being binary opposition with Good vs Evil with the Prince and Villan and Male vs Female with the Prince and Princess, this theory was created by Levi Strauss and we thought this was a typical narrative to include in a teenage audience film of Dramedy. Our second theory was produced by Vladamir Propp who believed that each narrative contained the same 8 common characters each time and in our shots we included the typical Princess, Prince, Villan and Doner.




Shot 1



Shot 2





Shot 3

Shot 4



Shot 5

Shot Library - The Reunion

This was my first task in my Media Studies coursework. Rebecca, Louise and I had to produce a short film with as many shots as we wanted about any topic we wanted, this was for us to experience first hand using a camera and to also start practicing our editing skills on the computer. The film tells the story of two best friends being reunited after a long period of time and towards the end of the film the other friend noticing and not being too happy about it. The shots we included were:

v     Close up shot – This was of the feet and we edited this to slow motion in order to capture the idea of a cheesy run towards each other

v     An establishing pan shot – For when the two friends run towards each other

v     Point of view shot - When they are both running

v     Long shot – Going in for a hug

v     Over the shoulder shot – For when they hug, with some dialogue being used

v     Pan shot – Of the two walking off together

v     A zoom – to capture the reaction of the friend on the bench

v     And finally a pan long shot – of the friends walking off together and turning back with a disgusted look on their face

We decided to use some sound to add to the atmosphere of the two friends reuniting again and we thought the Chariots of Fire theme tune was appropriate for this as its dramatic. Overall, the exercise was useful and started getting us into practice for our main coursework task.

Prelim Task - Concerned

My Prelim Task

Our task was to create a short film of dialogue between two people incorporating in this a shot reverse shot, match on action and the 180° degree rule. We decided that our topic should be something based around school life as this is something we can relate to easily, we agreed on the idea of a teacher being concerned for a student about her academic life as she seems to be concentrating on her relationship with her boyfriend more, hence the title ‘Concerned’. Our match on action is seen first with the headteacher writing out a letter to the student’s parents and then a close up of the letter is shown focusing in on the word ‘daughter!’ The 180° degree rule is used next with a 180° rotation being shown of the teacher and student staring directly at each other across the table. The shot, reverse shot is of the dialogue part of the film, the group and I found this the hardest task of all as we had to film each character saying the whole dialogue scene separately with the camera only focusing on one person each time and then when editing this we had to make sure it all ran smoothly together and didn’t look like they’d been filmed at different times. Other shots were built-in within the film, such as an over the shoulder shot when the student reaches the table and the teacher asks her to sit down and also a high angle shot when the student is walking up the stairs at the beginning of the film. We found these shots the easiest to add in as we’d already previously done them and we gained more experience by practicing and using them again.

We also decided to add in the element of sound, using an orchestral type sound track in order to add some tension into the film.

This is a picture of our storyboard for the film: