Institutional Research - Fight Club (Fincher, 1999) Shannon Tobin

Fight Club (Fincher, 1999)

What I have learnt from doing this task is that most opening title sequences usually contain around 15-20 titles within them. The title sequence usually gives and insight into the genre of the film and what the film may contain. For example, when I analysed the title sequence for Fight Club, there were 24 different titles and gave away the information of the director, producer, different actors etc. It also gave an insight into the genre of the film due to the music that is used and the last image of Brad Pitt's beaten face.

Institutional Research - Red Lights (2012)- Elona Doci

For this task we had to watch a film opening and then create a timeline of the titles we saw throughout the opening; the visual elements we saw and all the audio we heard. In the opening of 'Red Lights' there was 22 titles; these titles told us about who the actors were, who the director was, who wrote the film and the film title itself. The film title was shown at 20 seconds, this is very early on but this basically told us what the film was called and then we were able to make links from what we saw and heard. Through the visual elements in the opening we got a flavour of what sort of film it would be and the audio added to this. when watching the opening and listening to the audio i could tell that the film was a thriller and mystery as the music was quite dramatic and mysterious, as well as the imagery that included x-rays, skeletons and needles.

Institutional Research - Coraline (2009) - Jessica Fernando

For this task I had to watch any film opening, in which I chose 'Coraline' 2009. Once watching the opening I then had to create two timelines (above picture) one for visual for example what titles were there. In the opening there were a total of 23 titles listed in the 2 minutes and 24 seconds of the opening of the film. Some of the titles were the directors and producers, who the music throughout the film was and credits. The reason to why there is all these titles are for us to know who took part in what. For the visual I also had to write down what ever I saw other than titles, for example images that I had scene during the opening of the film. 

The second timeline that I did was on audio, everything in which i heard for example music. In total there were 11 things that I had heard during the 2.24 mins of the opening for the film. from the audio it gives me a taster on what the film will be like. In 'Coraline' i assume that the film is quite creepy and mysterious with the use of the music playing throughout the opening scene 

Preliminary Evaluation - Shannon Tobin

Our preliminary task was to make a video that consisted of many different camera angles, and to show off our continuity editing skills.

In this task I worked with Elona, Jessica and Felicity. 

Jessica and myself were in charge of all the filming, while Elona and Felicity set up the camera beforehand and took charge of changing the white balance each time we had to change location of the filming. They were also the stars of the video. 

Before any filming could be done, we had to make a plan so that everyone knew what they had to do and to make sure that we would have had enough time to do everything. As we were filming both inside and outside, this meant that we had to change the white balance each time, which took a lot of time and effort. However, the white balance was slightly off at the beginning of the video. 

We had to gather a lot of footage so that we were able to use the perfect clips and merge them all together during the editing. During the editing stage, we had to make sure that we edited it correctly so that all the different clips would flow really well from one to the other. However, we did have to add in some transitions as there was a bit of missing footage where Elona went and sat on the chair. 

Part of our task was to include match on action. This is when a piece of action is happening in a scene, and there is a cut to a different camera angle of the same action. This is a great example of our continuity editing skills, and it makes it easy for the audience to follow the action and understand what is happening. 

Next time we have to remember to correctly set the white balance every time we change our location before the filming begins, and make sure they we have all of our footage, and even some extra footage to make sure we cover everything we need to.