1. A retired assassin and single dad settles down with his son, but when his past catches up with him, he must take up his old line of work to protect the thing he loves most.
2. Twins separated from birth, who took up similar lines of work, are asked to assassinate the same person, but when their paths cross they face off against each other without knowing their true relation.
3. America's most wanted is a fugitive on the run for a crime he didn't commit, but when an elite team of operatives are hired to catch him, he must go to extreme lengths to prove his innocence.
During my time at the BFI in London we were introduced to Pete Frazer, he told us a few ways on how we could improve our blogs, what to include in our opening sequences and also what not to do during them. We did this by being shown multiple opening sequences from previous students and then analysing them through what they could do better and what they did right. Before this however Pete "interviewed" two people who were in the media industry asking them questions which we would want to know; and afterwards we were allowed to ask any questions which were unanswered. Following this we looked at 5 aspects which should be included in our opening sequence, these were Genre, Narrative (Enigma), Setting, Atmosphere and Character. The Three films we looked at were as follows..
Napoleon Dynamite
Dawn of the Dead
Catch Me If You Can
The one aspect which was the most important during these opening sequences was the atmosphere. We were told to add as many as 22 credits to our films to express all the different areas that went into making the opening sequence - people often miss the open credits which is why we were told this was important to note down. Another thing which we talked about was 'Foley', this is when sound is added post production, for example footsteps are always added afterwards. Pete also said how getting a mixture of actors/ages would be beneficial in our opening sequences, instead of using just sixth formers because it will differentiate our opening sequences from previous ones. We were told how our opening sequences should be at most 2 minutes long as a lot of people go over the limit, or sometimes don't even manage to reach the 2 minute limit. One last thing we were told is that we should always include appropriate music as sound is 50% of any opening sequence - having music which isn't appropriate for the opening sequence would not be beneficial.
We were asked to take an existing Opening Title Sequence and recreate it within a lesson. We filmed during the first hour of the lesson and then edited for an extra 3 hours throughout the week. We tried to recreate the scene as best as possible using Adobe After Effects and Adobe Premiere Pro which are the school's media editing software.
Actual Reservoir Dogs Opening Title Sequence:
Remake Reservoir Dogs Opening Title Sequence:
Personally, I feel as if we addressed the task very well but as with most things there are some things we could have perhaps done better. Perhaps getting similar scenery seen in the actual Reservoir Dogs Opening Sequence, so outside in some alleyway. Also keeping mise-en-scene similar with clothes and props - we were not wearing the same clothes nor were we holding the same props, we sort of improvised to what was available to us, and this let down the mise-en-scene. In conclusion, I feel that with the limited time we had on this task, we done very well but we could have focused a lot more on the mise-en-scene as that is what let us down. I think from now until we start production of our actual Opening Sequence, we would have perfected our mise-en-scene and it will be a lot better than seen within our recreation of the Reservoir Dogs Opening Sequence remake.
In a lesson we learnt about Log Lines. Log Lines are essentially a sentence which describes the entirety of a particular film. For example, "a man picked up by a fishing boat, bullet-riddles and without memory, then races to elude assassins and recover from amnesia." This 'log line' describes the film The Bourne Identity. A log line/logline is a brief summary of a television program, film, or motion picture often providing both a synopsis of the program's plot, and an emotional "hook" to stimulate interest.
Another example is "With the help of a mysterious pill that enables the user to access 100 percent of his brain abilities, a struggling writer becomes a financial wizard, but it also puts him in a new world with lots of dangers." This is an example log line of Limitless.
The above video's go through the History of Opening Sequences, with the first video giving examples of the people who changed the way Opening Sequences were presented. The second video however delves more into the history side of the people mentioned in the first video.
Up until the 1970s, closing credits for films usually only showed a little clip featuring the cast members and their individual roles, or even simply just said "The End". The end credits did not contain the amount of detail they do today, and therefore a lot of films required the opening credits to contain all these details. For example, thetitle sequenceof the 1968 filmOliver! takes up about three-and-a-half minutes, and while not listing the complete cast, it lists nearly all of its "technical" credits at the beginning of the film, all set against a background of what appear to be, but in fact are not, authentic nineteenth-century engravings of typical London life.
From the two above videos I have learned that even the simplest of Opening Sequences can still be powerful as seen in the embedded vimeo video 'A History of the Title Sequence' through the likes of Maurice Binder and Saul Bass. Also looking at the 'THE FILM before THE FILM' embedded video it shows multiple Opening Sequences, and one which caught my eye was the Catch Me If You Can one and in particular the titles used. When it comes to making my Opening Sequence I am going to need to put in titles of Director, Producers, Actors and the other usual titles which appear throughout the beginning of a film, so if I feel as if I am missing a certain title I can resort to the Catch Me If You Can Opening Sequence so that I can see if I have missed any. Not only that though, the video allows me to explore different ways in which a film can start and it teaches me that a film does not have to start in a specific way, it can start almost however you would like it to.
