Research on Film Openings

•  The key elements/features of film openings are establishing setting, mise-en-scene, character placement, representing genre, and cinematography. Establishing setting means to give the audience an insight on where the film is set and to draw them in. Establishing setting may sometimes give indications into the plot and the narrative in which the story is told. The setting could be determined with an establishing shot which can provide the audience context about the character along with more details about the film. Mise-en-scene is a French term that translates to "place on stage". This is very important because everything that is in frame for a scene is there for a reason and is used from representing emotion and setting the mood of the scene and/or film. From the audience's outlook, we get a genuine sense and feel for the film. The things caught in the frame, such as costumes and props, can tell what time period the film takes place or the beginning of things that are about to take place. Mise-en-scene is one of the most important factors of the film that tempt us to watch the films. Character placement is important because it helps in the development of the scene. The distance between two characters can help establish their relationship to one another. Do they stand shoulder to shoulder or do they stand on opposite sides of the room from each other? The placement can tell a lot about the characters without them even having to converse. Representing genre is simple but the execution can be complicated. You have to establish the genre in a way that won't reveal too much in the opening scene so the audience know what they are about to watch. With the use of genre conventions, there will be suggestions of the narrative and story line and get a perception of what will come further along in the film. As an audience, we decide what type of movie we want to watch, so if the opening isn't giving us what we need, we won't be interested in it anymore as as much as before. Cinematography is the way you present footage, it's just as important as the content. The visual appearance is important when creating the opening scene. When the opening is aesthetically pleasing, we as an audience will become influenced into the film due to the fact that it meets our needs. 

• The purpose and reasoning for film openings are to convey a powerful expression of motion graphics that serve the purpose to prelude to the movie. Opening sequences engage they audience by dropping hints about what is about to start whether it be a movie, TV show, or an animation. A primary function of a title sequence is to set the tone of what you are about to watch. The effectiveness of title sequences are engaging and exciting the audience by indicating some of the topics, themes, and in some cases, the challenges the characters may possibly be facing. The manifest is to build anticipation, suspense, while sometimes revealing some of the traits the main character has and potentially setting the stage with questions that will be answered later on in the plot and movie. 

• The similarities in the opening sequences (conventions) irrespective of the genre.

Compare/Contrast conventions by genre

Visual Elements: A common setting in horror, drama, and comedy films are haunted/abandoned house. Horror movies use low-key and dim lighting, dramas use side lighting. Dramas, comedies, and horror use medium shots, close up shots, establishing shots, and long shots in their opening scenes. 

Character development: Character times common in both horrors and dramas are the protagonist and the antagonist.

Plot Introduction: Plots for horror and dramas movies are typically introduced by flashbacks and flash forwards while comedies are opened by teasers. 

Representation: In both drama and horror, there are evident stereotypes that are sometimes displayed in the opening scene of these films.

3 Favorite Film Openings

Matilda

Summary

Matilda Wormwood is a gifted girl with crude and distant parents. Matilda loves to read and always wanted to go to school. Her father, Harry Wormwood, sells a car to a powerhouse woman, Agatha Trunchbull, who happens to be the principal of a school near by. They make some sort of deal. Harry informs the young girl that she is starting school soon and is ecstatic about it. Do to Matlida reading at the library so frequently before she started school, she knows a lot for her age. On her adventures, Matilda discovers she has telekinetic powers and puts them to good use. She scares away the principal. Ms. Honey Matilda's teacher, walks her home where they find out the Wormwoods are moving to Guam. Matilda takes adoption papers out her school bag so Ms.Honey could be her mother. Her mother and father, Harry and Zinina, sign and get in the car with their son Micheal and drive off. Matilda and her new mother live happily together.

Time stamp

7:16

Summary for opening to plot

The opening shows how from such a young age that Matilda can hold her own and take care of herself without the help of her parents or older brother. It also shows that as Matilda gets older, her love for books never faded.

Purpose

The purpose of this movie opening was to show how Matilda's parents never liked her since she wars born. It then travels to how Matilda would take care of herself. And it would also show how Matilda grew up loving books.

https://youtu.be/erKQ1afibKM

The Sound of Music

Summary

Maria is a postulant at an Austrian abbey who then becomes the governess for a widowed naval captain who has seven children. Maria and the von Trapp children form a bond, the governess teaches them how to sing, the von Trapp children's father, Captain von Trapp plans to marry Baroness Elsa Schraeder. The children do not wish have the baroness as their step mother. Maria realizes that she has feelings for the captain and the baroness notices quickly and scares away the governess back to the abbey. The captain finally realizes his love for the Fraulein but it was too late. The children go to the abbey but Maria has been locked into her room for days and not talking to anyone. With the help of the Reverend Mother, Maria decides to go back to the von Trapps. She goes back and marries the captain. The Nazis force Georg (Captain von Trapp) to join their naval service but he doesn't agree. He and the family prepare to run away to avoid this. They get caught and lie saying that they were trying to preform at the Salzburg Festival. After they preform, they sneak out and run to the abbey once they find out that the Nazis are searching for them. They hide out in the abbey and escape into the mountains where the coast is clear.

Time Stamp

5:00

Summary for opening to plot

The opening shows how Maria loves to sing and in the movie, she teaches the children how to sing and the family gains something off of it.

Purpose

The purpose of this movie opening was to show Maria's love for singing and to give an idea of the setting for the movie. It then ties into how Maria is late and always forgetful and gets in trouble at the abbey.

https://youtu.be/nhYL1ouQG-E

https://youtu.be/AePRD1Ud3Lw

Five Feet Apart

A 17 year old girl spent majority of her life in the hospital due to cystic fibrosis. In her time at the hospital, she meets this boy who also has the condition. They fall in love through strict restrictions and keep the required distance from each other.

Time stamp

0:34-1:33

Summary for opening to plot

In the opening scene, we see clips of numerous people living the lives they do and voice over from Stella discussing the importance of human touch. She talks about how you don't realize how important touch is until you can't have it. It connects to the plot because in the opening because the voice over she says that two people with cystic fibrosis can't come in close contact with each other. 

Purpose

The purpose of this film opening is to give the viewer an insight on Stella's life.

https://youtu.be/El4zdyBoXQw

Comparison/contrast of the films

Visual elements

In Matilda, The Sound of Music, and Five Feet Apart the cinematography used in the films are long shots, medium shots, close up shots, and extreme long shots. The Sound of Music and Matilda use a lot of natural light, panning, cutting on action, occasional low key lighting and a lot of scenes are outside. Five Feet Apart also uses high key lighting but more frequently and the setting is a hospital.

Auditory elements

Five Feet Apart and Matilda uses voice overs and dialogue but the dialogue in Matilda is from a person who isn't named in the film while in Five Feet Apart, Stella does the voice overs. The Sound of Music uses dialogue but no voice overs but instead has background noises like birds chirping, rain falling, the echo of the house, and the slamming of things. 

Character

In Matilda, character of importance are: Matilda, her parents, her teacher, and the principal. But in the Sound of Music and Five Feet Apart, there are many characters introduced and they all have significance in the stories but the characters with the most importance are Stella and her lover.

Representation

In Five Feet Apart, the sickness puts limits on thing Stella can do. But in Matilda, her powers allow her to do things you can only imagine.

Cinematography

Topic Introduction

Cinematography is defined as "the art of technique of motion picture" from Dictionary.com. It is the art and science of recording light electronically on an image sensor or chemically on physical film. Cinematography is the creation of the images you would see on a screen. It also composes each shot, where everything that's in frame draws attention. Elements of cinematography are lighting, shot size, camera focus, shot composition, camera placement, and camera movement. 

Background Research

"A cinematographer or director of photography (shortened to DP or DoP) is the crew chief that presides over the camera and light crews on a film or video production." studiobinder.com states. Camera placement has a great effect on how the audience would react to the shot and the rest of the scene. The position can have a significance on emotional impact or even convey character behavior. Camera moment can enhance the emotion and/or suspense in a scene. It's better to move the camera with the characters to gain perspective. Shot composition means the way that elements of a scene are organized in a camera's frame. It also refers to the set up's visual elements to display an intended message. Shot size is how much of a scene we can actually see. Focus is the product of what the cinematographer plays with to focus an emphasis on different aspects of the story. 

Content Application

For an assignment using cinematography, we were asked to find 

any subject (focus of the shot) you choose, record and/or capture as appropriate, each of the different shot types and angles on the attached and paste in the .jpg or .mp4 file. Me and my friends went into the hallways and started posing and angling out phones to match up with the type of shot we were getting ready to take. After taking the shots, we went back into class and started to upload the pictures we took and placed them in the document. We were also asked to google pictures with the shot types from the assignment and add them into the file. 

Reflection

In this lesson, I learned some of the components for cinematography and their purpose. I then got to do a hands on project, experimenting with the different shot types there is and how to execute them.

Sources

www.studiobinder.com

Types of Movies/Movie Genre

Topic Introduction

Genre is category or classification of music, art, literature, or film. With genre being made up of many different components, they help the viewers understand the kind or type of film they are watching. The components mentioned consist of story, plot, situations, locations, themes, values, and characters. Some different examples of genres are horror, young adult, comedy, and science fiction (sci-fi).

Background Research

Musicals is a genre where song are intertwined into a narrative and sometimes includes dancing. The songs in musicals usually advance the plot or develops the characters. In the 1960's, films based on stage musicals continued to be critical and box-office successes. Back then, musicals contained almost no recorded dialogue but they had several songs. Now, musicals have the power to have recorded dialogue with songs. Musicals make a large impact on society. 

Content Application

For a recent class project, we were asked to pick a genre, evaluate the genre we picked, and to place what we learned into a PowerPoint and summarize the information on a poster. The genre I chose to evaluate is horror. Horror is a genre of film or television whose purpose is to create feelings of fear, dread, disgust, and/or terror in the audience. The plot genre incorporates violence and gore; portrays the worst nightmares. Types of characters in this genre: the killer, the bad girl/boy, the blonde, the scholar, the cop, and skeptic. These characters play an important role in this genre because they build the plot. Some techniques used in this genre are jump scares, tight framing, mirroring & reflecting, spotlighting and lighting tech. Going into lighting tech, horror uses dark, underexposed lighting with lots of shadows. Movie posters and book covers usually have red, black, and white lighting with contrasts and shadows along with either the main character(s), the antagonist(may be in background art or shadow), or the setting of where the story will take place. 

  

Reflection

My reflection on types of movies/movie genres is that there are many components of genre. The components of genre help the audience understand what they are being shown. In horror, it has a lot of important parts to make it truly fit into the genre. 

References/Sources

www.vox.com

 Mise-en-Scene

Topic Introduction

Mise-en-scene is a French word that means the visual composition of the shot. This could also mean everything that is within the frame. Two major components are design and composition. Design is the look of the setting, props, lighting, and actors. Composition is the organization, distribution, balance and general relationship of actors and objects. Mise-en-scene effects how we think of the characters and stories.

Background Research

Nearly everything placed within a frame is done very intentionally. Objects don't always have individual significance. Rather, it's the combination of elements that creates meaning. Many films challenge us to read the mise-en-scene to understand their themes and concepts. They allow the viewer to experience a certain place and time. Design is the way the actors, setting, and decor in a movie look is the most powerful impression we take from a first viewing. Design helps express a movie's vision , creating a convincing sense of time, space, and moods. Lighting is the only fundamental to the recordings of images on films but also has many important functions in shaping the way the final production looks. Costume is the clothing worn by an actor in a movie, sometimes known as wardrobe. Costume contributes to the setting that can suggest specific character traits, such as social station, self-image, the image that the character is trying to project for the world, state of mind, etc. Mise-en-scene is the critical analysis of movie terms that refer to the overall look and feel of a movie the sum of everything, hears, and experiences while viewing it.

Content Application

I applied mise-en-scene on a project where i was asked to create an arrangement of items to stage an illusion photo using mise-en-scene elements and to write a paragraph explaining all components of mise-en-scene and how I used them to create meaning in my photo. Me and my partner, Dana, decided on a beach disaster theme for this project. We drew out how we wanted it to look and 2 days later we built our project. We used Kinetic Sand, Barbie dolls, hair gel, food coloring, tiny drink umbrellas, pieces of cloths for towels, cotton balls, and blue construction paper. We placed the construction paper in out shoe box and hot glued cotton balls on it to imitate clouds. Then, we laid out the sand and placed hair gel in the corner to make it look like a beach. After that, we placed the dolls, umbrellas, and towels where we wanted them to go. After that, we took red food gel and placed it strategically around the set to make it look like blood. Finally, we took out pictures and uploaded them. 

Reflection

I got from this lesson is what mise-en-scene is and how it affects the way we, the audience, view the film. The different components like props/decor, setting, costumes, lighting, etc. break down the visual composition of the shot. After learning the topic, I was assigned a project and really got a hands on experience on how to set the mood for a shot.

Source

Chapter 5- Mise-en-Scene.pdf

Unit 3- Mise-en-Scene Vocabulary.docx