Just Like Heaven Opening Sequence

Just like heaven by 'Dream Works'.

The film starts with a soundtrack named 'just like heaven' this is played over the iconic 'Dream Works' logo the song has a gentle romantic and dreamy tune enlightening the audience of the genre of film they are watching. The audience would pick up on the genre through the music as it fits that of a typical Rom-Com.
The camera tilts down through the Dream Works clouds into the film. As the camera travels through the sky pink, purple and yellow coloured titles fade in and fade out onto the screen, these colours are very typically 'girly' and resemble that of a Rom com film.

The view then comes to a fairy tale looking lady sitting on a chair in a place that resembles that of some peoples opinions of heaven with warm coloured flowers and areas of clouds. After the camera pans around the lady the song lyrics reflect the onscreen action when it says the word 'dream' a hand shakes the woman's shoulder to wake her from the dream. There is a jump cut which takes us from the 'heavenly' scene to the 'real world'.


The lady wakes up and we see her wearing a doctor/nurses uniform, she looks worn out with messy hair in a rough ponytail and with little effort made with her appearance, this could be because she doesn't have time to make an effort or she doesn't care about what the people at work think of her. After she wakes up her life goes from the artificial dream world her brain had created to reality-a rushed and hectic hospital. We hear later on in the scene a fellow doctor say that she'd been working for 23 hours and at 26 hours she was sent home this shows that she is a workaholic. In a scene at the hospital a conversation between the lady (Elizabeth) and some of her co-workers where we learn furthermore about her personality and that she doesn't have a great social life and that the 'workaholic' lifestyle takes its toll on her love life. We hear through the dialogue that she is single we then see her through an over the shoulder shot in the mirror putting lipstick on this could be because she feels like she needs to make more of an effort in order to get her social life back on track.

Halloween Opening Sequence

 Halloween was released in 1978 and directed by John Carpenter. It was set in the suburban town of ‘Haddonfield’, in the state of Illinois, USA.

The opening sequence starts with iconic horror music playing over the titles of the studio the film was made in, the colours of the title are red yellow and orange over a black background to give off the illusion of fire relating to the fire within the mans heart and also the fire within a pumpkin. A pumpkin then appears and is also in darkness, the camera then zooms in onto the face of the pumpkin to show the horror of the face in relation to what the film will entail.

Sound bridge of children singing, still with a blank black screen building the tension a caption saying ‘Halloween night 1963’.

                                                                                               

The scene starts with a forward tracking shot going towards a large white suburban house, white being a pure colour suggests that the house is pure. This is ironic as it is revealed that it clearly isn't as the film goes on. A handheld camera is used giving off an edgy feel and a sense of being watched. Only diegetic sounds are heard until a non-diegetic screech is added to add to the uprising tension and mystique, it is jumpy and makes the audience expect something scary to happen, the anticipation makes the scene feel more edgy. 

The whole scene is done in the way of a point of view shot and shows the persons process and vision as he proceeds to kill his sister who could be seen as immoral for going upstairs alone with a boy implying that they were going to have sex. As he draws nearer to committing the murder he picks up a mask and the screen changes to the shape of the mask to continue the sub POV shot. Through the mask we see the girl sitting brushing her messy hair naked and with her bed behind her that looks used, suggesting that the girl had just had sex. When the boy enters the room the girl turns and and around and addresses him as 'Micheal'  is stabbing the girl his vision takes us to the knife to see him thrusting the knife down towards her body, we don’t actually see him stabbing her clearly. 


We then see the murdered view as they leave the house, the opening sequence continues to be shot through a point of view right until the end when the shot reverse tracks away from the boy as he takes off his mask and we finally see that it is the little boy, he if wearing a clowns costume which could mean that he things its all a joke however the serious look on his face suggests otherwise.

The Dark Knight Rises Opening Sequence

The opening to The Dark Knight Rises starts with a very mysterious eerie feel built by the music and the very dark colours such as black, grey and dark blue this shows the gloom and dark atmosphere that covers Gotham due to the death of Harvey Dent. It could also resemble the dark gloom that covers Bruce Wayne as he is in a state of depression.















The shot then zooms into a close up of cracking ice and the cracks form into the shape of the iconic 'batman' symbol, this represents the rising of the dark knight from an almost hibernated state and the audience relate this to the title of the film 'The Dark Knight Rises'. However, the bat symbol is the only indication in the opening sequence of the films name. Christopher Nolan chooses to not follow the normal format of an opening sequence and to not include titles such as the actual films name or the starring cast members. This could be down to the directors choice to carry over the tradition after the past two films in the sequel have also not shown titles, due to the arrogance of the director as he knows that people know the film so don't need to see the title.


The first shots of human activity is a low angle shot of a CIA agent which shows his superiority and power in comparison to the other men around him, the agent is wearing normal clothes where as the other men are in military uniform suggesting he is more important as he doesn't have to wear a uniform, his body language suggests he's an arrogant man who thinks very highly of himself. Three men are brought to him with sacks covering there heads, obviously being transported by the plane they are in front of.

There is an aerial shot to establish the planes surroundings as its flying over a mountain range. Inside the plane the CIA agent hangs two of the hooded men out of the plane and  interrogate them for information about the main antagonist Bane. As the plane door is open the agents voice is quite quiet, this makes it obvious that the voice of Bane is entered after the filming and altered in post-production due to how clear and different it sounds in comparison to the agents. After we hear Banes voice and know the antagonist is in the plane the camera pans around to the final hooded man and starts to forward track towards the back of Bane putting him in a vulnerable position. The shot switches to outside the plane and we get an extreme long shot of another plane over the top of the CIA plane representing the change in power as the new larger plane is the dominant plane.


The scene speeds up as Banes men hijack the plane, lots of fast cuts helps to build a sense of the speed and a non diegetic beat building a sense of urgency. The hijacking was almost military like with an efficient well executed, well planned procedure showing a potential input from ex-military, the men go on to perform a transition of blood from a scientist into the body of a man who the men had brought with them, further suggesting the pre-planned nature of the scenario. Bane shows his power as an antagonist by openly telling one of his men to stay behind and die and they agree. The sequence ends with a high angle shot looking up at Bane dangling from a rope from the plane showing he's fearlessness.

Prelim task

The 180 degree rule is an imaginary line which cuts through the middle of a scene from side to side of the camera. It means things can only be filmed on one side of the line in a 180 degree field, if you cut to a shot from the other side of the line it changes the viewers perspective and causes confusion about the direction the actor/actress faces. If you need to shoot from the opposite side of the line you should ensure that you show the camera crossing the line in one shot this helps the audience make sense of it. In our prelim task we stuck to the rule by staying on Jack's left side for the majority of shots and if it changed then we showed the change and ensured we made it look smooth and the correct way to be filmed.

A match on action is when a shot switches from one view of something to another, using different positions and camera angle to give a sense of real time. We used the match on action in our task when handing over the box, we shot the hand over from one position and then moved the camera to another position to get another perspective, when we edited it we made it look like it was shot with two camera's by cutting and placing the shots next to each other.

An eye line match is when the shot is normally over the shoulder and shows two characters eyes at the same level, this shows a relationship between the two characters and is shot in a way that makes it look as if there the same height. We incorporated an eye line match in the scene where Phoebe and Jack exchange words, we tilted the camera over Jack's shoulder in a way that made their heights and eyes look on the same level. This was well executed as eye line matches with people of different heights can be hard to do.

The overall film making experience went well due to detailed planning and careful filming. As a group at the start of the process we discussed different ideas before agreeing on one final plot. We then went on to storyboard the idea shot by shot, when we had the shot by shot guide we started filming and stuck to the storyboard shooting all the planned shots. When doing the filming we made sure we filmed every shot various times to ensure we could avoid continuity errors when later reviewing the footage. This made the editing process a lot simpler by offering a wider choice of shots to minimize mistakes. We used the program Abode Premier in which we were able to tidy up the film, straightening, zooming and cutting to get the best possible results. To make the piece flow we used dissolves and transitions to avoid straight cuts.

Throughout the whole film we tried to maintain the idea of not showing too much of the main characters face to add a feel of mystique, the choice of shots often reflected the characters thoughts such as the extreme long shot at the start showing how far away he is from knowing what awaits, handheld showing his anticipation and shots from behind.