The main genres that I would like to explore and their conventions are:
- Action
- Thriller
Action is a film genre in which the protagonist ends up in a series of challenges that typically include violence, close combat, physical feats and frantic chases. Some action movie examples are:
Die Hard starts off with typical long shots of New York City but then a sudden explosion happens. Diegetic sounds such as car crashes, windows breaking, sirens going off, and people screaming. As this explosion happens the non diegetic background music stops to create thrill and suspense. Die Hard is an action packed film where and ex cop tries to stop a threatening terroist from detonating another bomb. Typically the type of film matchs the type of font therefore the font used in the opening credits of Die Hard is very bold and striking to portray what is to come next in the film, a cinematic boom is also played the same time the text comes on to emphasise how serious the events are.
Thriller is a broad genre of literature, film, television, haivng numerous subgenres. Thrillers are characterized and defined by the moods they elicit, giving viewers heightened feelings of suspense, excitement, surprise, anticipation and exiety. Some thriller movie examples are:
Psycho begins with a black screen and grey lines swipe across, within the lines are the opening credits, this animation is an old style where writing is done before any of the film starts.This greyscale colour scheme matchs the rest of the black and white film. The horizontal and vertical lines also transition well into the next clip of the skyline. Right from the start the sound begins with a fast paced high pitched violin and ends abrubtly when the picture starts. The music fades into a more calm and quiter sound track yet with an aeiry feel to it, text also swipes across the screen whilst the camera is panning round the city to let the audience know where it is, along with the day, date and time. Already we understand why the film is called psycho from the opening as the camera moves as if it is a telescope stalking someone with an exact record of where and when as it zooms into a window.
Above I have explored some basic genres and analyzed a few opening scenes so I could see similiar conventions, below I am going to show some of my favourite specific styles that we could integrate throughout an opening regardless of the genre.
Specific StylesCasey Neistat is a famous youtuber with over 5 million subscribers and a well known filmaker, with a HBO series. This is because of his signature style, in which he most commonly uses stop motion with his over head rig, timelapses, and homemade animation throughout his short films. We could use some of these ideas in our opening credits as the text may be scratched into something or something written the rubbed out in reverse. All of these quirky ideas keep the audience paying attention and actively looking for what type of writing will come up next.
A similar sort of style to this would be Napoleon Dynamites opening scene which we saw at BFI. The over head shooting style proves very effective with homemade props coming in very cheap. The different types of text also adds character and can be changed depending on what type of film it is to suit that specific genre.
As well as that I would also like to incorporate the following filming techniques such as a drone shots, GoPro POV shots, or stedicam moving shots. These are often used in high intensity action based events which fit well into action and thriller films. In particular this idea comes from Devin Supertramp who is also a youtuber, he typically makes sports based adventure type videos to inspire people to get outside. This technique works well to create a cinematic sequence and provides various different shots to raise excitement for the viewer.
A favourite photography technique of mine is bokeh, this also works excellent in video. To do this you make the aperture as low as possible, ideally f/1.8 which creates a shallow depth of feel as you pull focus on the main object to blurs the background. Within film it helps the audience to focus greatly on what is actually in focus on screen and also gives of a deep and calm atmosphere.My Overall Thoughts:
Even though I have analysed 2 films from an action and thriller genre I am still unsure about actually making something along these lines. I feel that this horror/thriller idea is very typical and although they are well made and get a high grade I am not so keen on very common ideas such as flashbacks, or someone running through a forest etc.
However if we leave out horror/thriller we are left with comedy, romcom, or social realism which most find challenging to make as comedy is very hard to get right because there are so many aspects that could go wrong such as getting good enough actors, or creating funny dialogue which is why lots of people are too scared to even attempt this genre.
Another possibility I am interested in is action/parkour/chase which I have researched above, along with this also comes many problems like who will actually do the acting with the parkour moves, how will we film a high speed chase, what locations will we use with good obstacles.
Although I have shown some of my concerns above about action and comedy I am still open to the idea because I think it is doable if we have the right idea, but creating the perfect idea seems quite unlikely at this point because it is hard to just think about the opening scenes without knowing what the rest of the film will entail.
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