In this task, I have made a mind-map which expresses my analyses of the films, and the way in which the social group of young people are represented within them.
Learning Comment:
The social group I have tried to identify the representation of in the films I have looked at is young people. I have found that the use of sound, mise en scene, editing and camera angles all affects how the youth are represented in these films, therefore in these two analyses, young people are represented in two totally different ways. For example in 21 Jump Street, teenagers are represented as being reckless and immature, giving way to the stereotypes that society has of them and connoting the unpredictability and chaos that goes on in their lives. Whereas in the Submarine opening title sequence, teenagers are presented as being calm, peaceful and sophisticated. This is through the use of high camera angle shots and wide establishing shots of peaceful open spaces. Young people are also shown to be quite isolated in this sequence because the protagonist is the only person we meet, and through the use of mise en scene, the positioning of this character from a low angle looking up at large mountain ranges and oceans makes the area look desolate, and connotes to the audience that he feels quite insignificant and unnoticeable compared to everything else around him.
I have learnt from this task that the use of codes and conventions throughout the opening title sequence is vital when it comes to how you want to represent your protagonist and their social group. My title sequence will involve quite a few slower transitions and editing effects because I have found that this is one of the techniques used to show the insecurity of teenagers. These representations also help the primary audience of demographic E to identify with the characters, whereby engaging in the film from the beginning.
Thursday, 29 October 2015
Saturday, 17 October 2015
Narrative Structure
For this task, I have made a mind-map on Spiderscribe that showed my analysis of three opening sequences of coming of age films, and how these used different aspects of media theories to entice an audience into watching the film.
I have used two films I have watched before, Wild Child and Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and then I have analysed a further film of which I haven't seen apart from the opening sequence, Stand By Me.
Here is the mind-map I have created to express my ideas:
Learning comment:
In this task, I have learned that I need to include:
- A clear protagonist with a villain and helper to help establish a clear equilibrium. By showing these characters already in the opening sequence, it allows the audience to see clearer narrative elements and help to set up the narrative. (Propp)
- After the establishment of the equilibrium, the disruption of the equilibrium is often shown or at least implied after the first few minutes of the film. This is because the film still needs to be fast-paced and give the audience something to look at, and put some sort of chaos in the storyline. (Todorov)
- Showing binary opposites within my plot will help to expose the narrative to the audience because it will establish a clear opposition between the hero and the villain, plus it helps to contrast between good and evil, whereby engaging the audience's attention. (Levi-Strauss)
- The use of action & enigma codes help to engage an audience in an opening sequence because they make the audience question the direction of the narrative, helps them to establish links between characters and also makes them question upcoming events through the use of enigma codes.
Monday, 5 October 2015
Title Research
For this piece of research I have taken three opening sequences to coming of age films, and have individually analysed each section of typography. I have taken screenshots each time text appears and written about how they help to engage a target audience throughout the credits. The films I have chosen to look at are 10 Things I Hate About You, Austin Powers and Home Alone, and the videos I have created to show my analyses can be seen below: -
On top of this title research, I have chosen to look into an opening title sequence for a film I've seen that has credits different to any other sequence I have looked at. The opening title sequence for Trainspotting that was distributed by Channel 4 Films in 1996 has a different take on opening titles, so by clicking on the video below you can see my analysis of why they have done titles so differently:
Learning comment:
Through looking at a wide range of opening film sequences, I have learned how crucial the typography is to the overall presentation of the film. It can help in constructing the narrative and establishing the genre to the audience, and this influences their thoughts of the entire film, right from the opening two minutes. I feel like now I have analysed the use of colours, fonts and text placement in four very well regarded opening sequences, I now have a much more in depth understanding of what key aspects of typography I should use to make my opening sequence.
The titles that are the most common in opening sequences are the ones that I think are vital to include when making my own, and these are:
Institutional information
Film title
Protagonist
Other major cast
Other minor cast
Casting director
Costume designer
Music producer
Editor(s)
Producer & co-producers
Director's name - presented last
On top of this title research, I have chosen to look into an opening title sequence for a film I've seen that has credits different to any other sequence I have looked at. The opening title sequence for Trainspotting that was distributed by Channel 4 Films in 1996 has a different take on opening titles, so by clicking on the video below you can see my analysis of why they have done titles so differently:
Learning comment:
Through looking at a wide range of opening film sequences, I have learned how crucial the typography is to the overall presentation of the film. It can help in constructing the narrative and establishing the genre to the audience, and this influences their thoughts of the entire film, right from the opening two minutes. I feel like now I have analysed the use of colours, fonts and text placement in four very well regarded opening sequences, I now have a much more in depth understanding of what key aspects of typography I should use to make my opening sequence.
The titles that are the most common in opening sequences are the ones that I think are vital to include when making my own, and these are:
Institutional information
Film title
Protagonist
Other major cast
Other minor cast
Casting director
Costume designer
Music producer
Editor(s)
Producer & co-producers
Director's name - presented last
Friday, 2 October 2015
Audience Research
As part of this assignment, we did a few different types of research in order to get a really good sense of what our target audience are looking for in terms of creating a coming of age opening sequence.
The first thing we did was create a survey, which I then went to put online, so that we could have as many people as possible answering it.
If you click on where my video below, you should be able to see what results we were able to collect from our survey:
From this qualitative data collected by Freya Vincent and I from the target audience of our coming of age film, we have found that roughly 70% of teenagers are familiar with what the coming of age film genre is and that generally these people are female. This is helping to establish who the audience of our film is going to be, along with what we have found out about teens' favourite film genres. The clear favourite film genre of people in audience demographic E is the comedy genre, with others such as romance, drama and action proving to be popular. As this is our set task, whichever opening sequence type we make will be based around the coming of age genre, but for our opening sequence we will include other aspects of the aforementioned genres in our construction of the narrative in order to engage not only the primary, but also the secondary audience, as much as possible. This survey, along with the findings from our focus group interviews, will be a major influence to our opening sequence, and has already given us a few ideas as to what we would eventually like to create as a group.
Me and Freya then went on to do an audience research focus group with a group of AS Media students and gathered some responses as to what our target audience thought about film opening sequences and coming of age films:
As a group we also did some quantitative data analysis to find out which famous coming of age films have been the most successful upon their release. We used websites such as IMDB and other online sources to look at numbers such as DVD sales and cinema numbers, and you can see that beneath, Ella Henley has made a presentation to show the figures and research that she came across: -
And here are the finding's of Becky Moffat's audience research: -
Learning Comment:
Our audience research has brought me to many conclusions as to how my group and I should construct the narrative of our opening sequence, and the key conventions and techniques we should use to help in actively engaging the audience. For example from carrying out the focus group, I have discovered that the primary target audience of our film prefer having the protagonist and or/main characters established within the first few minutes of the film and so having them in the opening sequence is a good way to help to introduce characters to the audience and help them to understand where they stand with the characters.
A style that I found to be successful when creating opening sequences is where you create the film sequence with a flow of music over the top, because this idea seemed to be very popular with our target audience and makes sure that the audience can link the audio to the visuals on screen. However, from my own research I think that there isn't enough use of other non-diegetic sound and that in order to create an opening that stands out from the others of this genre, I should use more of these to help engage my audience. This is also a convention used in a lot of Jason Reitman's well-known films, who has been very successful in creating films of the coming of age genre.
The first thing we did was create a survey, which I then went to put online, so that we could have as many people as possible answering it.
If you click on where my video below, you should be able to see what results we were able to collect from our survey:
From this qualitative data collected by Freya Vincent and I from the target audience of our coming of age film, we have found that roughly 70% of teenagers are familiar with what the coming of age film genre is and that generally these people are female. This is helping to establish who the audience of our film is going to be, along with what we have found out about teens' favourite film genres. The clear favourite film genre of people in audience demographic E is the comedy genre, with others such as romance, drama and action proving to be popular. As this is our set task, whichever opening sequence type we make will be based around the coming of age genre, but for our opening sequence we will include other aspects of the aforementioned genres in our construction of the narrative in order to engage not only the primary, but also the secondary audience, as much as possible. This survey, along with the findings from our focus group interviews, will be a major influence to our opening sequence, and has already given us a few ideas as to what we would eventually like to create as a group.
Me and Freya then went on to do an audience research focus group with a group of AS Media students and gathered some responses as to what our target audience thought about film opening sequences and coming of age films:
As a group we also did some quantitative data analysis to find out which famous coming of age films have been the most successful upon their release. We used websites such as IMDB and other online sources to look at numbers such as DVD sales and cinema numbers, and you can see that beneath, Ella Henley has made a presentation to show the figures and research that she came across: -
And here are the finding's of Becky Moffat's audience research: -
Learning Comment:
Our audience research has brought me to many conclusions as to how my group and I should construct the narrative of our opening sequence, and the key conventions and techniques we should use to help in actively engaging the audience. For example from carrying out the focus group, I have discovered that the primary target audience of our film prefer having the protagonist and or/main characters established within the first few minutes of the film and so having them in the opening sequence is a good way to help to introduce characters to the audience and help them to understand where they stand with the characters.
A style that I found to be successful when creating opening sequences is where you create the film sequence with a flow of music over the top, because this idea seemed to be very popular with our target audience and makes sure that the audience can link the audio to the visuals on screen. However, from my own research I think that there isn't enough use of other non-diegetic sound and that in order to create an opening that stands out from the others of this genre, I should use more of these to help engage my audience. This is also a convention used in a lot of Jason Reitman's well-known films, who has been very successful in creating films of the coming of age genre.
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