Rowan Letlow G321 Media Portfolio : December 2015

I have looked at five movie openings for my research, Gone Girl, Amelie, Zombieland, Unfriended & Now You See Me. I used the first two films because I thought they both exhibited interesting ideas. With Gone Girl, I like the empty shots of the streets and the blue tinted lighting. It created a sense of mystery and despair. I thought it was a smooth and simple way to start a movie.
Amelie interested me because of the montage style. I liked how it introduces the character without saying a word and shows the creativity and imagination of a child. I'm not opposed to the idea of using a montage for my opening as I think it would be interesting to see how we could incorporate mystery and a montage together.

Zombieland was a cool opening sequence as it was both comedic and had the generic conventions of a horror film (zombies, blood, death). I like the use of a narrator in this because he lists a set of rules you have to do to survive the zombie apocalypse, which I thought was good at grasping my attention and keeping me interested as it could actually benefit me if it were to happen in real life (of course it's unlikely to happen but the opening makes me feel like it could happen by the fact that it's set in America and that there was mass hysteria and panic, which would happen if a zombie attack happened). I feel like an narration could be good because it does set up films well and is a convention of an opening sequence.

I like the opening of Unfriended as it sparked a lot of mystery (for instance; why was Laura hated ? Who were the people that were involved? Who is the person watching the video? etc). This is the exact thing we want to include in our opening, the idea of creating questions that the audience would sit and watch an entire film just to find out the answer. I also like the lack of dialogue in the opening as creates tension along with mystery. I believe that not using dialogue is more effective than using it, which is why i thought it was interesting here and would like to incorporate it in my opening.

Now You See Me was intriguing because it ranged from exiting and dramatic (the woman and the first man) to simple and amusing (the second and third man). Taking the audience those sort of emotions engages them substantially as they do not know what will happen next. They get excited by big and spectacular moments, but they laugh and feel at ease with the simple ones. It would be cool to include this create those certain emotions in the viewer, however, since we are only as students, are limited by our resources and budget.

All of these opening titles have something in common, they overlay the names of the actors on the footage and have the production and distribution companies before we are shown an of the film. As this is a common occurrence in my research, I think its necessary to include this idea/convention in my opening. I will do this by having my made up companies name come on screen before anything else.

Overall, I think the mystery included in the first, and last two films is what I would like to do with our opening sequence as if it were a real opening sequence, then it would keep the audience interested and make them want to watch on. It's not to say that we still couldn't include a narrator or montage though. Personally, montages would be fun to make and would create question for the audience (such as; why was that take in there? what are they doing in that shot? etc).