As a group we had to come up with a title sequence for a remake of Groundhog Day, the remake was set in London with British cast Russell Brand, Emma Watson and Hugh Grant.
We decided that we should do a animation style title sequence which would show a continual effect, it's like a domino affect, this happened because of this.
The characters are all a paint-style animation but we wanted to make in obvious and clear who were the
main stars in the film, so we made their iconic styles which gives a clearer indicator on who the stars are.
Saul Bass was a commercial artist who was born in 1920 and died at the age of 75 in 1996. He studied at the Arts Student League in New York but then in 1946 moved to LA so he could get away from the creative constraints which New York had. When in LA he became a freelance artist and designer as well as opening is advertising studio in 1950.
Saul Bass changed title sequences forever with his use of geometric shapes and what they symbolise. A example of the is West Side Story which is a solid block of color that morphs according to the overture. This was his preferred method of title design as opposed to using photographs of the films star, which he saw as boring.
Catch Me If You Can is obviously inspired by Saul Bass' work.
This is my PowerPoint that I will be presenting to the class, I decided to pick Michael Riley for my case study. Seeing his title sequences made me interested to learn more about him, he has been involved in such films like Kung Fu Panda, Rent, Gattaca and many more. One of the main things about Michael Riley which interests me is his style of presenting a title sequence, he is able to give the audience a feel for the story as well as the characters. Another thing I leant about him is that he does title teasers like Spiderman.
Thursday 17 November 2011
Zombieland title sequence
In zombieland’s title sequence we first see a prison-guard being thrown off a watchtower, from this we get a feeling of anarchy and destruction of the law. In the scene we also see the words ‘Columbia Pictures present’ in the font Times New Roman being destroyed and the guard hits the wording, this lettering is a red/orange colour which would tell us their will be blood threwout the film also the sequence is all in slow motion this is an interesting way of showing the title sequence. The next scene we see what we believe to be a zombie throwing up black vomit, this could represent death or evil coming from inside the dead.
After seeing theses two scenes we get three quick scenes all showing civilians being chased by zombies, this would tell us that are main characters will have to run or escape from the un-dead as the actors names are shown thought-out these scenes. We then see the main title of the film being smashed in half keeping in consistency with the glass being smashed. This scene would tell us the destruction and mayhem as well as the fight back against the zombies. On the other hand soon after we see a man running from his burning car, which indicates that there is little hope for any survivors.
One of the main reasons why the audience believe this is a comedy is when we see a naked stripper zombie running after a man holding his money. This takes you to a different perspective on what the film genre is going to be it reminds me of something you would see in Baywatch, the comedy style continues till the sequence which is a clear indication of Scarface. It articulates the scene where Tony Montana gets killed which we assume the zombie in the background will do.
The music throughout this is Metallica, which is an American heavy metal band, this works well with the title sequence, as it’s extremely loud and destructive which sets the mood of the film.
We did this continuity piece as part of coursework, which involved working in groups and coming up with a sequence. The storyline had already been decided which was just one person walking into a room, sitting down and talking to a second person. What was important was the cinematography of the sequence.
It had to have:
Match On Action
Shot Reverse Shot
180° Rule
Also this would show how well we would work in groups and are editing skills. As a group we decided to have a singing montage. We came up with the song 'What Makes You Beautiful' for One Direction. We thought that this would give the scene a bit of humour and would be relevant to popular music today. Making the sequence was successful but, we did take too long to decide how we was going to film the sequence and there were disagreement within the group.
My main roles within the group were director, editor and writer. which I think I did well, I could have improved by giving more advice to the cameraman about making sure that he does every scene several times and by checking there were no differentness (like a moved chair or an object being in one scene but missing in the next scene).
Overall I think we did well but, if we had more time and a different location it would have been much better.
