37 year old Jason Reitman is a film director, born in Quebec, Canada, in 1977. He is the son of director Ivan Reitman and so he has always grown up surrounded by film sets and comedic actors like Bill Murray - even working as an extra in his films on occasion. After a failed attempt at a pre-med degree at the university of New York and an escape from living in his father's shadow, he then returned to Los Angeles and enrolled at Southern California's School of Cinema-television.
After years of turning down opportunities to direct big-budget films like Ghost Buster's 3, he finally released his first full-length feature film in 2006, called "Thank You for Smoking", which received amazing reviews and Reitman was being recognised as an original director. It was his second film however, Juno, which got him an Academy Award nomination for best director, and is regarded as one of the best coming of age films ever made.
He has a particular style when it comes to opening credits which is smooth and sharply edited. The camera movement on all of his titles is a slow pan across the screen, allowing you to take in the information given and have a look at the location shown in the background. A typical convention of Reitman's opening credits is his use of high key lighting and bright colours. This is used in many of his sequences to reflect the light-hearted nature of his films and to give the connotations of a movie that will be fun and entertaining to watch. The genre of his films are usually romantic comedy-dramas, which is a sub-genre that often captures the attention of those in audience demographic E.
A camera angle Reitman uses a lot in his opening sequences is the high-angle shot. This is clever because in a way, it tells us quite a lot about the narrative of the movie. A high angle shot connotes to the audience that something is going to happen to the protagonist in the film that they will have no control over. This, consequently, draws in the audience even more because they want to watch it to see what will be the disruption of the equilibrium.
More than the use of camera angles however, Reitman does a lot of tracking with the camera. This steady camera movement is used to connect shots together and helps the sequence to flow better.
Jason Reitman often doesn't show you the characters in the film during his opening two minutes. However, in Juno he used the protagonist walking across the screen to show the audience who the main character was, but also the camera tracking was cleverly used as a way to document time passing. In this sequence, he makes particular use of close-up angles, which is a good technique because it shows you a good view of the character's facial expressions. Through this use of mise en scene, you can tell a lot about the narrative and genre of the film; seeing Juno smiling in the opening sequence showed us that this film is going to be happy, maybe even funny. Moreover, even just by seeing her face you can tell she is young, which is a typical convention of coming of age films.
The music used in his opening sequences is often very upbeat and memorable. For example, in Juno he used the song "All I want is you" by Barry Louis Polisar. This song makes you pay attention to the screen, and Reitman ensures that each of his shots fits in perfectly with the beats of the song, which means that the whole sequence flows a lot smoother.
It is rare that he actually uses any added sounds in his opening sequences, however when he does they are non-diegetic sounds like the sound of an airplane taking off, which he uses when deemed necessary.
The narratives of his films are often quite similar. This is because most of his films start out with the protagonist landing themselves with a problem. The plot tells the story of the character trying to work their way out of the problem and often coming to a solution that doesn't solve the issue but gives the film a just and unexpected ending. This style of narrative is what keeps his films interesting and makes them original, because the equilibrium is always restored, but not in the way you would expect it to be.
Learning comment:
From this piece of research I have gathered a lot of information about the techniques directors use in their opening sequences, and how I can now go on to use these in my own work. For example, I now know that tracking the camera is a good way to link my shots together in order to create a well-flowing title sequence. A technique that I liked of which Reitman used is the use of music that is reflective of the narrative of the film. e.g he used Smoke, Smoke, Smoke that cigarette! by Tex Williams in his film Thank You for Smoking.
This is because it is a clever way to link the sound to the visuals and therefore made the titles relevant, and intriguing.
When constructing the narrative of my film, I am going to create a plot that is unpredictable, but still gives a sense of fulfillment at the end. This is because it is what's going to make my opening sequence individual and stand out from others in the same genre. However, when doing this I will still use conventions of coming-of-age films such as non-diegetic sound and high key lighting to appeal to the audience of demographic E and make the film recognisable.
