codes and conventions

In Films, we see many codes and conventions in the opening scene to the main body.
i have looked at 5 films from different genres and this is what i found.
i looked at:
Legally Blonde
Cabin in The Woods
Pride & Prejudice
Toy Story
Footloose


Legally Blonde 
We can see the genre, through things like Action, Printstyles and Sound. 
The font, we see it's Diary Writing, it's pink - we can see it's aimed at a girls audience,the writitng is nice and bubbly. 

Music - The song Perfect day, insinuating her perfect life, the song is really girly and upbeat, like her life. In the background we see her Blonde hair and perfect manicured nails, a pretty and girly film. We then see the title of the film come up, it then cuts to the actress name, the only name we see, which shows us who our main chsrscter is. Again all of our credits are Pink. 
we see things on her table such as: A heart necklace, Nail polish, magasines, cream, hair stuff, make up, perfume
we also see her shaved legs, sparkly shoes homecoming banner - this is all part of our narrative - we have been introduced to our main character and her personality. Whilst we see all of this, The actors, producers, Directors, Editors and music people - we are introduced to more of the cast.

Cabin in the Woods 
Lionsgate - the colours changed to Red, introducing to us that it is a horror Genre.
We see Blood - which reveals the Background information = We see religious symbols and our Credits are all in Red. 
Cuts then to a normal scene of people drinking coffee, CABIN IN THE WOODS  in capitals and in red. 
We're introduced to our main characters straight away, but however we get the tone of the film from the blood , but however we see a cut to the coffee room, suggesting a different type of horror. 
cuts to home town 
Actors names - in red - we meet our group of characters - set up for film 
Editors, Designers, Producers and Directors etc - All in red with blood spat - reveals the genre

Pride and Prejudice 
Serif font ( flicks, coligraphy), the credits are white/ cream and the music - Piano/ Instrumental - 
sophisticated 
the title of the film is in capital letters - When it cuts to our Main character walking through a field, reading a book, we see our main characters personality - she likes reading, she's sophisticated, strong willed, not like other main girl characters. 
Actors Names, producers, screen play, exec prodcucers and directors. 

Toy story: 
Production logo - Disney Pixar 
we see Animation - tone of film - aimed at children and families
music - you've got a friend in me - also sets the tone of the film, it's happy and adventurous 
we see the title of the fim in big letters, which roles to our credits 
Producers, executive producers, technicals, music, original writters - howver we see no actors names in the opening sequence, just a background scene of all the toys - we can make inference from the scene and the title, what the movies about. 


Footloose: Music - upbeat, funky, dramatic - the Genre - Drama revealed through music
, we see the credits, in lower case bubble type font in a dark yellow colour, we are introduced to our main characters, when actors names come up, the rest of the credits role up as we follow our main characters, we see, producers, the Title, the casting directors, chereography and Director. 

Overall from these openings we are introduced to our main character/characters 
the tone of the film, through - font, narrative and music 
Actors names 
credits - producers, directors 
The film Title 
and the set up for what type of film it is 
iconography's through the film - our reccuring object 

Saul Bass

Saul Bass

Saul bass was born on May 8th 1920, in the Bronx, New York City, USA. Died april 25th 1996, Los Angeles US

His Artwork : Anatomy of A Murder, Advise and Consent, Exodus, The Man With The Golden Arm and In Harms Way. 

Awards - Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject. 

In the films like around the work in 80 days and carmen jones, he designed very abstract title credits and end credits. Saul bass was a graphic designer and a title designer, who used a number of styles like animation, live action and type treatments. Saul Bass is known as the man that changed graphic design, his use of lines and his crafting were surreal and abstract which everyone interpreted as his way of telling the nature of films. His time began in hollywood in 1940's designing print advertisements, for films including champion in 1949 and death of a salesman in 1951.

 

Before he did title sequences he also did logos such as:

 all his logos use a very abstract, cubist style, which we also see later in his title/end credits

during his 40 year career, bass worked for some of hollywoods most prominent filmmakers, including Alfred Hitchcock, otto preminger, Billy Wilder. Bass designed some of the most iconic corporate logos in north America  including the bell system logo in 1969. He designed logos which became some of the most recognised in the industry. Bass became widely known in the film industry after creating the title sequence for Otto Preminger's - The Man with the Golden Arm in 1955.  He chose the arm as the central image, as it relates to heroin addiction - the way it looks like it was cut out shapes from black paper, as he hoped, it caused quite a sensation.

Martin Scorsese opinions on saul bass. Martin states that before he had ever met saul bass or worked with him, "he was a legend in my eyes" taking into account his work, Scorsese says the that his work were images you could dream on and still are. bass said "the ideal trademark is one that is pushed to it's utmost limits in terms of Abstraction and ambiguity, yet is still readable. Trademarks are usually metaphors of one kind or another, and are, in a certain sense, thinking made visible.

Martin scorsese thought very highly of bass, my opinion of him myself, is he was a genius who had an amazing, abstract,cubist way of thinking, if you were to look at anything created by saul bass, you could clearly see his thinking behind it, especially with lines and shapes. for example in the man with a golden arm, it looked as if the shapes had been cut, a particular signature i like is the colours, shapes and lines and how he could use these over again but create something completely different, and would still look just as amzing . which makes him as an artist very unique as regular designers always look for somehting new instead of changing what you already had and thinking of a physcological impact that it could have on the audience, which links in very nicely to the lines we see in the prelude in physco, with the fenetic stabbing we see in the shower scene.

movements video

Preliminary Task Evaluation

In the Preliminary task the story board and the shot list were the basis of what we planned to do in our video, When it came to filming the video and editing it together, the shots we had worked well for matching what we were trying to do: match on action, shot reverse shot and 180 degree rule. The shots worked well as each character delivered their lines to the camera. However when it came down to importance of what needed to be in the video, some stuff was cut out - like crabbing of the feet as it would have breached the continuity of the video. but generally the shots we were trying to achieve to demonstrate worked well.

   The match on action shot worked well because we managed to match up where jack opened the door on one side, to wear it was opened on the other side, again the shot reverse shot also worked well as we got both people to delver there lines on the exact moment as the camera cut to the other person.

What i feel could have worked better was when we tried to get a crabbing shot of jack walking along to the heads office, as we couldnt use the tripod to take the shot, we handheld the camera, the shots we got were unfortunately no good as they were really rocky and unsteady, whereas if we could have steadied the camera the footage would have turned out better. Also i feel we could have worked more collectively as a group, as we couldnt really decide on the order of shots and the angles we wanted as the main focus, so we all should decided so we could have got on to shoot the footage earlier on, so the quality of film could have been perfect.

Prelim Task and finished video