Opening Title Sequences- Analysis & How They Inspired Me

For research of my initial idea, I wanted to look at related films, and films in the opposite style to see what the convention was, and how I can follow this somewhat when creating my own OTS.
For this analysis, I decided to take a look at 3 opening title sequences that interested me regarding the style in which they were created. The title seqeunces will be as follows: 127 Hours (Danny Boyle), Poltergeist (Tobe Hooper) and Final Destination 5 (Steven Quale).

127 Hours

[Unfortunately I could not find a clip of this OTS]

127 Hours uses multiple footage to create the visual feel of a busy scene. There are usually 3 video tracks played simultaneously to create this feel, this shows the rule of thirds. The footage presents itself in a fresh, original way incorporating various thriller conventions including the style of soundtrack, the colour filter and so on.
From the start, the title sequence uses the screen and splits it three ways to show video, and text for the titles. These segments interchange with eachother at different intervals to show something different on the screen, and they match up to display a single scene to put emphasis on the specific scene. By using three different sections, the footage is paid less attention to consciously and therefore transmits subconsciously, making the audience think back to it later in the film. This is taken advantage of by showing scenes like the tap still dripping after the main character leaves, the bottle overfolowing, the reaching inside the cupboard for the knife and so on. This is all dramatic irony as it lets the audience see later on that the problem of him being trapped could have been minimalised.
The audio is also an essential part of making this title sequence successful, from the diegetic and the non diegetic audio. For example, the main character receives a phone call but it goes to voicemail as he does not answer it, and it turns out to be his relative asking him where he is going. This again is dramatic irony. And as for non-diegetic sound, the backing track makes many reference to hallucinogenic drugs, which later on in the film he is seen to have hallucinations.
The title of the film is displayed at the end of the title sequence, whereas the title credits are displayed during the titling scenes. I liked how this was executed and decided to use this idea in my own film. The music also stops when the OTS is over, I also used this to show the demarcation of the OTS and the actual film in my OTS production.

Poltergeist

[Unfortunately I could not find a clip of this OTS]

Poltergeist is a spiritual horror that incorporates the theme of children being vulnerable and plays on this to make the audience connect with the infant characters. This title sequence is much shorter than that of 127 hours, but I would still say it makes a successful OTS and it inspired the creation of my own. It puts all of the title text on a plain black background which is typical for horror of the time it was made.
The producers clip is played at the beginning of the OTS, and I rather liked this idea also, so I put "A Craig Gambell Production" at the beginning of my footage. The only way you can tell that the OTS is over is when the music stops playing, which isn't very conventional for modern day horror, but was a big thing back in the time that Poltergeist was made (1982). It's only scene that is composed of non-textual footage is that of a man (the father) asleep on an armchair with the TV playing something with loud music, and then it cuts and all that is shown on the TV is white noise, this is what demarcates it from the actual film.
I have incorporated the style of text into my production (black and white text in a regular font) and the production part has also been placed at the beginning. Although rather than placing my text on a black background, I have placed it on top of the footage.

Final Destination 5

Final Destination was created in 2011, and is a modern horror following the concept of the previous quadrilogy. At the end of the film you find out that it is actually a prequel to the first of the Pentalogy which is a smart twist for the franchise. Because this is a recent film, you can expect the OTS to be CGI (conputer generated imagery) with explosions etc which is stereotypical of modern hollywood movies, and this lives up to the expectations of the media. This specific OTS was created by Prolugue http://prologue.com/. With this film actually being mainly sold as a 3d movie, they have used multiple 3d elements such as glass 'flying at the audience' and this is done in a 3d animation software usually.
There are a lot of explosive elements to make up this OTS, and it uses many other modern conventions used in hollywood editing such as time remapping (the slowing down/speeding up of footage of various points). This footage was all created on a computer in post production.
Demarcation of the OTS and main film is apparant when the music changes and when the actual camera footage starts, which was a convention used back in the days of Poltergeist.
Because of the style that this film is in (modern horror), my OTS didn't use any of the conventions introduced in this modern OTS, although I have still used music stopping at the end of my OTS to demarcate it, just like Final Destination 5 did.

Representation Of Age

Thanks for Elisha and Tim acting.

During this lesson, we were discussing the representation of age in the media, and how we could use an older and a younger actor/actress to go against typical media conventions and create an atypical piece. So we came up with this, giving Tim the stereotype of a teenager in the sense of drug abuse, but gave the assumption to the audience that they did indeed belong to Elisha. The audience would think this straight away because of how teenagers are portrayed in modern day media eg. mainstream news.
The last scene was the confrontation, with both Elisha and Tim addressing the audience directly.
The planning, directing and filming of this short piece took that of a lesson (50 minutes).

The Eleventh Testament- Analysis

The Eleventh Testament- Analysis

From the beginning of this project, I had high expectations primarily with the special effects side of post-production, and after storyboarding each scene I went and gathered all necessary resources making for a prompt and well-organized time to plan schedules for  planning, filming, any refilming, and editing.
For my film to work, I figured that I would need to use correct mise en scene, which would have to include the church as the location due to the style in which I filmed in. Also, the costume was rather important; I needed to use a clerical costume for the priest else it would of looked unbelievable. This was a problem at first because I didn't have the funds to purchase costume so using the resources that my acting staff had, we created a costume that looked belivable.

The establishing scene was planned to be prolonged, but due to weather conditions I had to keep this to a minimum so I wouldn't damage the recording equipment. I originally was going to film using my Logitech HD webcam, as I don't have a good camcorder and my webcam records in 1080p (High Definition) but on the day, I borrowed a friends camera in the hope that the quality would be better. Alas it was worse, and the zoom was terrible, this is why in my OTS the zooming is sharp and 'jumpy'.

In the second shot, I wanted to get a shot from the balcony of the church to show the priest entering his church. I had to make changes to the original storyboarding of this scene again due to limitations of the recording equipment.

Then, the third scene was of the priest walking towards the Altar with the camera panning left to right in order to make the audience aware that only one of the characters (Nick) was in a conscious state. This wasn't as obvious as I had hoped due to the poor quality of acting.

Following on from the third scene, the priest arrives at the altar, puts down his bible and takes a moment to read from the page, then picks it up again and walks towards to stairs to address the people in the church, but this was also to give the audience involvement and to make the audience feel like they are also being addressed. While the priest walks towards the steps, the camera blurs. This is intentional and is to show that he is 'morphing' and that he can barely be seen as human. This is accompanied by a POV (point of view) shot from the priest looking at the subjects of the church, and focusing his view when he gets to the boy (Nick). While editing, I applied colour correction to make this scene have a red tint. I did this to show that the priest was not human, and also because red is a semiotic for danger, so in essence this is dramatic irony and subconsciously notifies the audience that danger is approaching.

I did have a shot of the boy getting up from the pew and walking to the front, but I decided not to use it because I wanted to break the continuity and make the audience question how the boy got to the front so fast. This is to give a sense of the paranormal, and to show that the church is being controlled by the demonic priest, as he forced the boy to get up instantly.

Next, I wished to use a POV shot from the boy's point of view, looking at the priest (Ashley) and showing him turn into a demon, like I had demonstrated on a previous example posted on my blog. But due to camera quality, I was not able to apply this effect. The reason is as follows: For the effect to work, the footage needs to be tracked, which cannot be done with bad quality footage as it is hard for the editing facility to distinguish successful track points. So I had to decide that the priest was scary enough, and had more of an organic human 'demon' inside him.

Later in the OTS, there is a POV shot from the priest, with him extending his right arm and tensing his hand. The boy is then meant to looks worried and give a full body shaking motion. This wasn't accomplished again because of the poor acting on his behalf. I still used special effects on this scene while editing to show that his soul is being extracted. This was done using Adobe After Effects, and was fairly hard to do.

The next shot was meant to be the most emotional and I think it was rather successful, but of course could have been made better with sound effects and other such features. in this shot, the boy collapses, and essentially dies. I applied a fade to the end of this scene to show that the boy has collapsed and has been rendered unconscious. This follows with a fade in effect and the camera moving from the corpse of the boy's POV, moving up and focusing again on the priest, whom is looking down on the soulless body of the boy. I applied a blue tint to this shot while editing to show innocence, and peace. But also because blue is associated with the soul in conventional horror.

Finally, the title appears in the top left of the screen with a black outline, and sustains after the footage has faded along with the non-diegetic sound, and then the title cuts. The reason I kept the title on a couple of seconds prior to the faded footage/sound was to show demarkation of the OTS, and to signify to the audience that the main film was about to start and that the OTS has finished.

I had edited each scene in post-production with colour correction and colour curves to bring down the darkness, and to make the light brighter. This made it appear to be more horrific, and seemed to be a convention that I had noticed in many other horror films of this sub-genre, including Poltergeist, The Exorcism Of Emily Rose and other films alike.

For compositing the clips and applying special effects, I used Adobe After Effects. And for rendering the footage I used Sony Vegas Pro 11. I rendered at 8mbps to assure that there was no quality loss.
You will notice that most of the footage is shaky, and this is because I shot it hand held intentionally because I wanted it to symbolize confusion, and fear. However I did use a tripod on the majority of POV shots to give a smooth and natural flow to the movement.


If I could film this again, I would make many things different. I would first of all get a higher resolution camcorder so that I could apply the effects that I predominantly thought were essential for the OTS to be successful. Secondly, I would use a better actor for the boy, as he didn't manage to stay in character very well. Overall I would say that my OTS was successful, the theme was true throughout the scenes and for the most part, it was believable thanks to the acting of the priest (Ashley). The soundtrack also made it more believable and was used in place of the diegetic audio because of the microphone quality and the extensive echo that the church seemed to create. The soundtrack was royalty free. I wish that I could have found some royalty free sound effects also, or even if I could of created my own, but unfortunately I was unable to.

Another thing to mention would be two problems in continuity that were in fact unwanted: The first was the crucifix necklace worn by the priest hanging from his neck to the left in one scene, and then jumping to the right in the next scene. The second was that I noticed that my laptop was visible on one of the pews. Unfortunately by the time I had noticed these errors, I didn't have the time to go and refilm these parts.

Adjustment Due To Audience Feedback

Well, while watching back my 2 minute OTS, it was pointed out in class that my actor that played the male victim didn't stick to his part very well, and that I should try and 'hide' this, while sticking to normal conventional horror. And with the genre being demonic-of-horror, I purchased a horror movie similar to this genre (ghost horror) called 'Poltergeist'. I saw a point in the movie, where streaks on light shot out from the television to represent a paranormal being entering the house via this energy. So using Adobe After Effects, I loaded up the shot with the bad acting, and tried to recreate this effect. Due to the fact that I am not familiar with this kind of effect, it didn't turn out as I hoped, but I think it looks alright and stays true to the genre. Below I have included a screencap of the scene from Poltergeist that inspired me, and the effect I had tried to do on my own footage.

Note: Because I am editing using sony vegas, when I imported the footage into After Effects, and then reimported back to Sony Vegas, I had some quality loss of the footage. Unfortunately I am unable to fix this due to limitations of the software.

Character Roles

I just found this on my laptop in my AS Media folder, and thought it'd be good to show you what was presented to my acting staff before filming, so they could understand the characters a bit better.

Extra's

Your role is to give the church an intense feel for it. I want you to show no emotion, because I want you to appear as if your souls have been taken from you, and that you are trapped in the church by the evil Priest, although you have no idea due to the lack of soul. You are just a shell, and must not react to anything.

Priest

You are the main character, so your acting skills are key for each scene to work, You will be dressed as a Priest using the available costume. Although I don't want you to appear as a stereotypical Priest (humble, friendly, kind) because you have a demonic being living inside you, of which you have no control over. So in your 'normal' state, you need to look fairly calm, and in your demonic state, you are a demon (of course) and for the demon effect to work * you need to pull a stretched out scary face so that when the demon edit is applied, it will look far better.

Victim Boy

You are conscious of your surroundings, and are confused because your friends are no longer 'awake' so to speak. So you are focusing your awareness on the Priest. When the Priest looks at you, you look scared and upset. In the scene after this, you will be standing and from the Priest POV your soul will be taken, so you will need to look scared and in pain. You also need to edge forwards. Then you will need to lay on the ground (the camera will create the illusion of you falling and dying because it will be from your point of view and will fade out to show that your soul has left your body). In the following shot, you will be laying on the ground posing as a corpse.

Remaining Tasks- Completed [STARTED]

Location Shots:

I have applied colour correction to this image to make it look authentic to the demonic-of-horror sub-genre.
This picture is of the church that features in my main task, and was taken by myself.

Health & Safety:

When thinking about health and safety, I had to consider many potential hazards that could occur and how I could prevent them. These hazards were things such as the concrete floor: in one of my shots I wanted to include one of my actors falling to the ground, but due to the risk that he could of injured himself, I decided to change this and have a POV shot from his point of view, so that it gave the illusion that he was falling.
Other risks were falling from the balcony that I recorded the second scene on: I could have fallen from it which would of injured myself and damaged the camera, so for this i just made sure that I didn't stand too close to the edge of the balcony.
Other than those potential issues, it was safe and I could progress with the recording stages.

Time Management:

I had scheduled the church and my actors for the 28th and 29th December 2011, for 1pm-4pm on each day. This allowed enough time to practice, record, and make changes where necessary.

Notes On Permissions:

I contacted Keith Crocker (Reverend of Christ Church) via email regarding my assignment, and the requirements of using a church for my main task, of which we discussed what my main task was all about, and what I would need to proceed. Thankfully, he agreed to allow us to use the Church and film the interior/exterior on the 28th and 29th for the hours stated above. When I had booked the church, I informed my acting staff of the dates/times I would need them.

Script Ideas/Development/Final:

I didn't want to use dialogue, mainly because I thought that my ideas would be more effective without the use of a script, and also because I did not have a high quality microphone, and I felt that this would downgrade my piece.

Synopsis:

The 11th Testament: After a ceremonial disaster involving a Catholic Priest and two of his followers, Satan bounds himself to them, unleashing terror among the local community. The Satanic Priest captures the souls of innocent Catholic children: their purity providing power to Satan, making him stronger! Will the community be able to stop him in time?

Research On Non-Diegetic Sound:

Due to my main task being in the demonic-of-horror sub-genre, and the added fact that it is based around a church, I found that I should use something slow, scary, and involving an organ. So I found a royalty-free soundtrack on Youtube called 'Horror music  haunted woods (Gothic IV  Arcania)' And I have featured this in my video. It is slow, includes an organ, and builds up the tension rather well in my opinion.

Audience Theory:

Successful horror works on the psychological fears that we have as a child. For example, we were all afraid of the dark, of monsters, small spaces, isolation and so on. My main task uses elements of these fears to play on the audiences mind. The lighting in the church is limited to the natural light of the windows (due to my colour correction editing) making it fairly dark. I have also included a demon transformation on the Priest, primarily because it is a key feature of the demonic-of-horror sub-genre, but also because I know that this is usually the thing that scares me the most in films.

Audience Research- Defining My Audience:

My main task has conformed from conventions of the genre I have stylized it around, but it has also turned out to appear in the style of 80's horror (due to lighting/pace/style etc). Because of the 80's horror element, my main target audience would be for the middle aged people (30-50 years old).

Research Of Exhibition & Distribution:

If I was to distribute this as a full length film, I would have it as a 15 Certificate due to explicit scenes/language/blood. Due to the language used, it would have to be aired on TV after the watershed, and I would distribute it on Channel 5, because they regularly air horror films targeted at the older generation. As well as Channel 5, I would also distribute it on The Horror Channel, because they also air content targeted at the older generation.

Representation & Stereotypes:

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Casting:

I only needed two main characters, and a few 'extras' to make the Church look used moreso than having a couple of people. Due to limited availability of acting staff, I could only have 2 extras (Chelsie Brociek & Christie Attah). For the Priest role, I decided to use Ashley Canham, and for the boy, I used Nicholas Pulford-Cutting.

Character Development:

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Job Allocation:

I had to adapt and plan how to assign jobs for the different parts, and being limited to having just myself other than the acting staff, I took the role of Director, Cameraman, Producer, Editor and Special FX. If I had extra staff, I could of done things better and more organized.

Decision Making:

Throughout the filming process, many executive decisions had to be made due to limitations of the hardware and acting capability. I didn't have access to a tripod, so all of my shots are handheld. Due to health and safety, I had to change a scene of which the boy (Nicholas) fell to the ground: Instead we came up with the plan to use a POV shot to give the illusion of falling.

Continuity:

For continuity, I had to make sure that the pace of each shot was equal. For example, in shot 2 (Ashley walks down the isle) it cut at the end and resumed in shot 3 from a different camera angle. I had to make sure that this was at the same pace. Also, I had to monitor other details such as facial expressions, adjustments to clothing, timing and lighting. Because I used colour correction and colour curve editing, it was harder to sustain the same light levels in each shot.

Location Information!

So it is clear, I have been allowed access to Chirst Church for my filming thanks to Vicar Keith Crocker. I have posted a picture of the church (Not very recent but it was all I could find) and thought I should research the history of it, so here we go.

"Christ Church has stood for 167 years as the place of worship in New Catton. Between 1816 and 1821 there was a sudden influx of agricultural workers into Norwich. New Catton was established outside the city walls to the north as a distinct settlement of about 1100 people, many of whom became weavers.
Christian work among the new settlers began in 1818 with the establishment of a nonconformist Sunday school.
By the 1830s the settlement was expanding and on 23rd June 1840 the foundation stone of Christ Church New Catton was laid. Christ Church was the first church to be built outside the city walls and was designed in the Gothic Lancet style using flint and gault brick dressing – both locally sourced materials, characteristic of the region. The entire cost of the work was £2400. The Bishop of Norwich consecrated the church on 16th November 1841, the occasion being marked by a procession and demonstration by the Chartists.
Christ Church is a grade II listed building and is in regular use for worship, marriages, baptisms and funerals. It is an important part of the heritage of Norwich." -Taken From Here.

I am yet to arrange specific filming times with my acting crew, so I will keep my blog updated when I have arranged time slots!