Mrs Elliott, our media studies tutor, has informed us that our main task will be to create the opening/title sequence of a feature length film. Although we haven't been given a criteria for this task yet, I think it would better my odds of creating a decent film if i researched into the topic. In this post I will analyse the opening sequence of Narcos as well as
Narcos is an American crime thriller based around the life of Pablo Escobar, The show aired first on August 28, 2015 as a Netflix exclusive. I have chosen to analyse the opening of this particular show as it has a lot in common with what i am trying to achieve with my own opening sequence. Narcos is based on real events, it is about crime and shows both sides of the story (from the protagonist's view as well as the antagonists). the difference between my envision and Narcos is that I am trying to create a horror/thriller film while Narcos is a crime/political television show.
In the opening credits of Narcos, a spanish song is played from around the same era as the show is set. the images on screen are all either photographs or 2 second long film clips. All the photographs and film is real footage from the time depicting mostly Pablo Escobar and cocaine. There are also photographs of women, DEA agents and money. All of these things make up the show so having them in the opening informs the audience of what they're about to watch. the opening of Narcos shows both sides of the story, both from the the american DEA agents as well as Escobar and his cocaine smuggling army. This is important as it's what I want to do with my opening scene.
In my opening scene, I want to incorporate real photographs of the time period it's set in. I want these photographs to link directly to the film. Because my opening is for a horror/thriller, I want to use disturbing images such as victims bodies and bloodstained crime scenes. This will hopefully set the tone for the rest of the film. I don't want to use music in my opening scene as i feel silence would create tension and dramatic affect.
Our final piece for as media this year is to do the following; The titles and opening of a new fiction film, to last a maximum of two minutes. This brief is small and open to interpretation. In a sense, our film opening could be anything as long as we include title scenes. In our opening scene i will try and use as much of my research as possible to achieve the best possible film, this includes match on action, shot reverse shot as well as the compositional techniques i have learned. It is also vitally important that I research opening scenes for other films and make notes on when the titles come up on screen as well as how the genre is portrayed. I'm thinking about making a horror/thriller film opening so my research will focus on this genre of film.
Above is mine and Amy Chapman's finished preliminary task. I think it wasn't the best film we could've produced, we could've done with a lot more research and planning to be able to film it all smoothly instead of taking shots that now appear rushed. The shots are blurry as a result of my own poor camera work where i had accidentally used manual focus instead of automatic without realising. I also think the audio levels are poor, in some shots you can barely hear what the characters are saying. We did take out a microphone to help record audio however we didn't record any as we forgot to put batteries in it. We did write up a storyboard with details of shots to be used and we did stick to it, however some shots on the storyboard were not possible to capture. For example we originally wanted a birds eye view of the table the characters were sat on however it was physically impossible to film this shot without a drone of sorts. Another point i think let us down was the acting, using friends to act proved difficult as their attention was elsewhere. It was difficult to get them to portray emotion also, Alex Flinders was very wooden and stiff, we had to film the torture sequence 3 or 4 times as he wouldn't scream in pain.
The point of this exercise was to identify any weaknesses and doubt we had about filming. I will take all of these factors into account for my next task in order to make it much better. The key point for my next task i believe is careful planning so we know exactly what to do when we come to film it. After doing some further editing, our finished task is below.
For our first task of the course we are going to shoot a short 2 minute film that incorporates the shot reverse shot. The full brief is as follows; Continuity task involving filming and editing a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting down in a chair opposite another character, with whom he/she then exchanges a couple of lines of dialogue. This task should demonstrate match on action, shot reverse shot and the 180 degree rule.I like the sound of this task as i can think of many films that have been successful using the same demonstrations, for example the torture scene in Reservoir Dogs when Mr White tortures the policeman. I have had several ideas for my film including a torture scene set in a shipping container in which lighting would have a huge affect on the audience and the scene itself. Other ideas include a job interview, a man being interrogated by police, a child being told off by a teacher or possibly a relative visiting a man in an old people's home.
The overall point of a preliminary task is to eliminate any uncertainties with making a film. It is important that I make a good film demonstrating all the film techniques i have and will learn, however it does not need to be of the quality of my main piece later in the year. I hope that i lear a thing or two about creating films from this preliminary task that i can then use in my main task at a later date.
Shot, reverse shot is a camera shot type. It consists of usually a conversation/meeting between two people who are opposite each other. There is commonly a camera over the shoulder of the first person facing the second person face on. There is the same camera set up for the second person, over their shoulder facing the first person. Another camera is often set up facing the two characters face on. The shot gives the audience a sense of action as there is a constant change of shot with every characters turn of dialogue.
This shot has become a staple of modern and classic film editing, almost every film uses the shot at some point. Early films that didn't use the shot for conversations were boring and often unwatchable. Below is an image of a scene from 'The Dark Knight Rises' in which Batman is conversing with The Joker; The camera is over The Jokers shoulder and so the image contains both characters face to face.
Below is my own short film demonstrating shot reverse shot. As it's only a demonstration it is very scruffy and floored. The film is only to demonstrate that i can shoot scenes using shot reverse shot. I found that whilst shooting the scene we had to pause the conversation after each characters line so that we could go around to the other characters side and shoot the clip of their speech. This was frustrating however there is no way around it. I have also learned how to join individual clips together to create a film.
I will be using match on action in my preliminary and main tasks so it is important that i comprehend the idea. My own version of match on action is poor quality and seems rushed however i have learned the basic technique and am comfortable using it in later films.
