Homework for 18/11/10

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/10/04/the-art-of-the-film-title-throughout-cinema-history/: I picked five things from this website that I personally found interesting.

1. 'Words and lettering played an enormous role in films of the silent era.'

I found this interesting because nowadays words and lettering are not very significant. It is also shows how important words and lettering's were to a film and how they only depended on that for their films during the silent era.

2. 'Film titles and letter cards had to provide essential information to the viewer. For reasons such as ease of production and clarity, artists favored mono-stroke letterforms or characters with small serifs. White lettering on a black background is another characteristic of this era, because titles simply looked better this way when projected with live-action B&W film.'

I found this of interest to me because they did not really use much colour in their film which I found rather strange because in films these days we use colour to evoke a lot of ideas within a film. This shows the simplicity of their films.

3. 'Hollywood animation studios, including Warner Brothers and MGM, did give some license to their artists to indulge in title antics. But one can also see that life for the titling crew at Disney was strained by the weight of its foreign-language versions and that film exports rarely encouraged innovation in titling.'

I found this interesting because it seems surprising to me how the films exports would not really let their titling crew introduce something new to titling.

4. 'As much as possible, they liked to convey the tone of a movie through the “dressage” of its main title. Thus, blackletter fonts in the opening credits were used to evoke horror, ribbons and flowery lettering suggested love, and typography that would have been used on “Wanted” posters connoted a western flick.'

From this statement it shows me how the "dressage" of main titles have changed since that time because, nowadays we can usually tell the genre of the film by the music.

5. Breakthrough ideas in titling, such as timing the typography to interact with metaphorical imagery or to create its own world, were largely innovations that came from outsiders to the Hollywood studio system.

This statement explains the breakthrough in titling.

Analysis of The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas

Opening Credits of The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas (Opening Title Sequence ends 3:48)

At the beginning of the opening title sequence we see a quote by John Betjeman that says: "Childhood is measured out by sounds and smells and sights before the dark hour of reason." From this quote it suggests to the viewer that the film is about children and what has happened during their childhood. Then the casting is shown on a red background; the casting is in the colour white which contrasts with red. This is because white signifies light and purity whereas as red signifies war, danger, strength, power and blood. So from this it suggests to the viewer that the film may in some way regard death. However we then realise it was an extra close-up shot of the Nazi flag this shows how significant the Nazi flag is to the film and then it implies to the viewer that the film is set in Germany during the period of the second World War. So, this then notifies the viewer that the film is about war and maybe someone's childhood during that time. We see three boys running through the street making the sound of an aeroplane and using their arms to fly like an aeroplane. We see the people around the boys and it suggests that they are in a place where a lot of the upper class people live because of their dressing. We then see quite a large house which connotes that a rich family may live there and we meet what is thought to be the lady of the house. From the way she is dressed it is portrayed to the viewer that she is quite posh and from an upper class family. Later on, we see a scene where the boys pass a truck and we see that possibly Jews are being forced into that truck.

Therefore, from the opening title sequence of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas gives the viewer an idea as to the genre of the film.

Opening Title Sequence of Hitch

Hitch is a Romantic comedy and it is distributed by Columbia Records. At the beginning of the opening title sequence we are introduced to the voice over, which is Will Smith and it also implies to the viewer that he is one of the main characters in the film. Therefore, from this it suggests to the viewer that the genre of the film is somehow comedy orientated because Will Smith mainly acts in comedy films. The opening title sequence suggests Will Smith to be some sort of match-maker because while he is talking throughout the sequence he seems to be advising men on the way women act and behave. So we then know that is a Romantic comedy. The background music being played is called 'Wonderful World' by the soul singer Sam Cooke, it is a bouncy love song and it emphasises the fact that there is a romantic side to the film. Near the beginning of the sequence we see a little child in a sweet shop and this connotes happiness as most children love to eat sweets. Throughout the title sequence it captures three men (excluding Will Smith) and we see Will Smith meeting the three men on different occasions which suggests he is helping the men to try and woo the 'women of their dreams.' The first man seems to like the women that works in the sweet shop, we learn this by his body language and by the way he stares at her. The second man we are introduced to also likes another women. This is suggested as when the lady walks past there is a connection in their eyes and the camera does a close-up of their faces to capture the happy emotion when they walk past each other. Also, as they walk past each other we see the snow on the ground which represents emotions. Then, we are introduced to the third man in which we assume likes the lady on the same play as him because he is day dreaming towards her direction. In addition to this from the characters costume on set it seems as if they are acting in a fairytale; this lays emphasise on the fact that the film has a romantic side because in many fairy tales people are seen to like people that they know 'they cannot get.'

So, the opening title sequence of Hitch gives us a huge insight as to what the film will be about, which is love.

CONTINUITY SEQUENCE

What did you find difficult about this task?

What I found most difficult about this task was editing our continuity sequences. I found this rather difficult because I did not really have prior knowledge of using iMovie, therefore my first time using it was quite challenging in my opinion. I found the issue of cutting parts of our sequence hard at first, however after sometime I felt confident towards my cropping skills without worrying that i was doing the wrong thing.


What new skills have you acquired or developed?

I have also learnt how to use the Macs because I did not how to use them before. I have also improved on my skills as to how to use iMovie because I was not really confident on using it before I started this task. I have also developed my skills on how to crop clips, which i had not known how to do before.

What worked well?

I believe that we as a group captured the three different types of shots: the 180 degree rule, match on action and the reverse shot well. At the start when we was filming our continuity piece we found it a little difficult to follow the 180 degree rule at times. However, we overcame it and managed to feature it well in our continuity piece.

What could you or your team have done better?

I consider that my team could of perhaps filmed our continuity sequence better. This is due to the reason that when we went on iMovie to edit it we had to cut out so many sections out of the continuity sequence which in a sense confused us. So this lead to us filming our continuity sequence all over again, which I found time consuming.

Continuity Piece