Cabin in the woods

Steve and I have started to watch phycological thrillers to get an idea of how we should make our opening sequence

The first one we have watched together so far is Cabin in the woods,
As you can see below this is my TV and I just took a picture of the title scene just to prove that we watched it

It is about a group of college students who go to a "Cabin in the woods" for a party/Holiday, in this cabin it is a government controlled organization that control this cabin and it is some sort of sick game to feed gods as sacrifices

It is a really odd film to be honest, Steve and I both thought that it was an odd film.
It just ended strangely a totally unforeseen ending

It was a good film though and I really enjoyed it, in the past i have not watched many phycological thrillers and watching these is interesting to me

Other films that we are considering to watch are:
- The Exorcist (1973)
- Se7en (1995)
- Red Lights (2012)

We have decided we are going to try and watch these because they are from different time periods and we can see how Phycological thrillers have developed over time

Psychological Thriller logo analysis:

Psychological Thriller logo analysis:

In this I will be looking through this site:

http://www.imdb.com/list/quPHa6B-Ehc/

This is the top 100 list of psychological thrillers from IMDB; I’m going to look at, at least the top 10 films and write down their production company names and then research these companies finding them and putting them into a mood board

From this I can then analyse the different logos of each company find any links between them and then create my own

Se7en:

Cecchi Gori Pictures

New Line cinema

The Machinist:

Filmax Group

Castelao Producciones

Canal+Espana

ICF

The Silence of the Lambs:

Strong Heart/Demme Production

Orion Pictures Corporation 

Jacobs Ladder:

Corolco Pictures

Pi:

Harvest Filmwork

Truth and soul pictures

Plantain Films

Protozoa Pictures

The game:

Polygram Filmed Entertainment

Propaganda Films

A&B Produceoes Lda

Tazi driver:

Columbia Pictures Corporation

Bill/Phillips

Italo/Judeo Producion

The Shining:

Warner Bros.

Hawk Films

Peregrine

Producers Circle

Duel:

Universal TV

Black Swan:

Fox Searchlight Pictures

Cross Creek Pictures

Protozoa Pictures

Phoenix Pictures

Dune Entertainment

Here is my mood board of logos:

Green Screen

Steve and I used a green screen to film the video linked below, it is the results to our survey on genres.

This is the first time I have used a green screen and this type of software so it has been a learning process and has taken some time but was worth the effort with the end result seen below

The script we had included Steve and I but we couldn't get the lighting right before filming and didn't want any light to interrupt the green screen edit so I did this one on my own and Steve will do the next one, this will show our individual editing skills and filming techniques

Steve filmed this on a Tripod, and we set it all up together, I edited this clip myself

Final Cut experimentation

At the moment I am experimenting with "Final Cut Express" software to edit the video that I have made analyzing the results to our first survey

As seen below you can see a print screen of where i am up to at the moment, this is the first time i have used this piece of software and the first time i have edited with a green screen so this is an experiment but should be finished soon and posted on the blog

Script for second survey

Below is the script for the second survey monkey survey, this is on general opening sequence information to help us in the filming of ours in the future

We are filming both of these news podcasts at the same time so will do these soon, they are to follow:

Script

Steve and I are going to post the results to our surveys via a filmed news podcast

This is the script that we have made and are going to be using in the podcast to show all the results, this is just a plan we may not stay exactly to the script:

Survey

I have created another survey for Steven Beck's and my coursework, this one is more on the general subjects of opening sequences:

Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey , the world's leading questionnaire tool.

Tweeting and Facebooking Survey link

Because i want as many people as i can to do my survey on Survey Monkey i have posted the links to them on two social Media sites; Twitter and Facebook so that as many of my friends and family as possible see this and hopefully fill it out

I will also be doing this with any other surveys that i do in the future

Survey

I have created the first of my Survey Monkey questionnaires to send to my friends and anyone else that will fill it in over social media links such a Facebook

Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey , the world's leading questionnaire tool.

Genre Analysis

Steve and I have created a summary of the different film genres that we are considering to use in our project. This includes the main categories such as; Comedy, Horror, Science Fiction, Fantasy and Action and Adventure. It also includes all of the sub categories with these categories.

Opening Sequence Prezi

This is our Prezi on the order of the credits in our opening sequence:

Steven Beck and I are going to be working together in the production of our opening sequence

Girl with the dragon tattoo

This is my analysis of The Girl with the dragon tattoo 2011:

Here is a dropbox link to the pictures below as well:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/aq8nfj26ya53m6t/girl%20with%20drag.xls

District 9

District 9 opening sequence mis en scene analysis:

The scene starts off with showing travel in a car and a big space ship showing that the film is based in the future because of the space ship but with the old cars on the streets instead of something like hover cars it isn’t too far in the future.

When they are flying around the buildings look very futuristic and if they are flying it is obviously based in the future because you do not generally fly round now

The aliens show that the film is based with aliens and the text that comes up shows us that they have been on earth for 28 years and want to go home and is obviously based far in the future

The bullet proof vests and guns show that there is going to be action or war against the aliens

The aliens and humans fight

James Bond

James Bond Skyfall soundtrack analysis:

In the opening sequence of James Bond Skyfall the soundtrack is the song ‘Skyfall’ which was sung by Adele an already big artist. This gave the film a massive amount of advertising because this song was released to the public before the film and people who may not have wanted to see the film or may not have known about it may have heard the song on the radio or on the YouTube video which has over 100 million views. This would have given the film a lot more business and it made a box office value of $1.1 billion.

The song is still often played in the media which would give the movie lots of advertising and help them to sell more copies of their movie. The movie won the best song Oscar for this song.

James Bond

James Bond Casino Royale Animation analysis:

From the start you can see that this opening sequence is a mixture of animation and real characters or actors, the animations are always linked to characters in the movie or real people for example the man in black fighting all of the “Bad Guys” in red has the same features (like the hair) of Daniel Craig the main character as Bond in the movie such as his hair, body structure and height

When guns fire it isn’t bullets its pieces from on a playing card, usually the spades and when people die they fall apart into diamonds or other card related shapes to poker or card games relating the film to the name Casino Royale

I don’t have much experience with animation software but I would think that this would take a lot of work to do because there is always items on the screen moving and different shapes being integrated into screen transitions

I really like at the end when two holes are shot into the number 7 playing card to form 007

James Bond

James Bond Casino Royale opening sequence analysis based on genre:

From the starting 5 seconds you can see that the genre isn’t going to be something like romance because Daniel Craig shoots at the camera and blood drips down the screen

Then you all the shapes related to cards, the clubs diamonds spades and hearts, this doesn’t really show a genre because cards or gambling isn’t really a genre but it can give you a hint into what the genre of the film is

Next it shows Daniel Craig holding a gun giving the viewer the thought of; Action, Thriller, Crime and other related genres to these but doesn’t explicitly tell you because you could have guns in a romance

Sweeney Todd

Sweeney Todd Opening Sequence:

I found this website that shows me the top thirty rated film opening sequences and through this site i decided to look at Sweeney Todd

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/12/19/30-unforgettable-movie-title-sequences/

I used this clip bellow and made a timeline on the first two minuets of it because this is what we will be doing when we film our own opening sequences

The Dark Night

My first post will be my overview of The Dark Nights opening sequence done in a video log