Film Opening Title Sequence Analysis

Opening title sequence form Durham County



Durham County

I choose to analyse the opening title sequence from the film Durham county because I think the 9 shots above have been chosen specially. All of the shots seem to be in black and white except four and even then the only contrasting colour in the shots is red and this is key in the opening title sequence to symbolise danger, blood, war, strength, power, determination etc... this so effective as instantly it draws you in to find out what the danger is? Who's involved? The title itself 'Durham County' sets the scene immediately in the last shot, there are also power lines which suggest civilisation however they stand alone without any trace of community or sophistication, we can assume from this that the film may be about isolation or seclusion. In six we can see that there is model of a man who has been shot which suggests that the film may include a murder or numerous murders and this in itself makes the viewer want to know more about the film and why the opening title sequence has decided to use models instead of main characters, this makes the opening title sequence more effective because when the viewer asks these questions to themselves they are already hooked into the film. The opening title sequence also proposes that the film may include a bit of romance for a period of the film as the seventh shot displays a bunch of red roses that are drowning in deep water and this gives the effect of a romance fading.

Main Production Task

My Team!

From left: Daniel Greenall, Mollie Neal,Cristi MacFarlane and Bethan Gray(me).

This is my group. There are four of us working together on the opening of our film 'Reprisal'. We will all be helping each other out with parts of the filming, editing, sound and Mise en scene however we all clearly have enthusiasm for certain roles. For example, I am very keen on the editing part of the film opening so I shall be very active in this and other parts such as costumes, finding recce shots etc... However Mollie is inspired by hair and make-up and sounds, Dan is enthused by special effects, lighting and costumes as well as me so me and Dan will be working together to creative the suitable costumes for our characters and Cristi is very interested in photography so throughout the filming element she will be in charge of camera angles and certain key skills used. We have all put out creative ideas together to produce the storyline of 'Reprisal' which I will be posting more on soon.



 Mid - January Cristi decided to discontinue her Media AS and therefore left us with Myself, Mollie and Daniel.



Evaluation of the Preliminary Exercise

Myself, Dan Greenall and Billy Turner worked together really well to create a good final cut of the 30 second film. In the exercise we were practising key skills such as Hollywood editing, shot reverse shot, countdown to filming, hyperrealism, rule of thirds and match on match action. These skills were very important practise because it makes our final cut look more pleasant and professional to watch.

Overall the camerawork was good quality, we managed to get some good shots to put together to practise hyperrealism. This is where I walk through the door and into the room , we tried our hardest to make sure the editing was down to a tee so that the shots flowed we did this by editing in the door slamming onto the next shot just to give it a more professional finish. This also exercised our skill for match on action and this is important as we might need these skills for when we come to doing our film opening. I would say our current at an intermediate level of production skill, this is because although some of our shots were good there were a couple of shots where we broke the rule of 180 degree rule, which means you are not allowed to film over the 180 degree line, however even though we didn't apply this rule it wasn't very noticeable when we edited it.

 

When we filmed our shots we went from a noisy corridor to a very quiet classroom which meant the levels of noise differed and this showed in our final cut and was quite noticeable so if we were to film our shots again this is definitely something I would change.

We originally planned our shots to fit into a thirty seconds which was the required time for the exercise however as we took our shots with a countdown so that we didn't miss any part of the filming we ran over the thirty seconds but we sorted this out in the editing by cutting out what we didn't need.

Preliminary Exercise Final Cut

 

 

 

My groups final cut of the 30 second Prelimary Exercise....

 

Report on the Preliminary Exercise

My Group: Me, Daniel Greenall and Billy Turner

 

Me filming for our preliminary exercise with Dan (left) and Billy (right).

We filmed the preliminary exercise in our school mainly in a classroom during a double media lesson on Tuesday the 9th of October 2012. We used a Canon Legria Camcorder  and a tripod to film most of the shots and then used Adobe Premiere editing software to put all the shots together. During the preliminary exercise we were practising certain skills such as 'Match on action', 'Timing' and '180 Degree Rule'. It all worked together really well however I have become aware of my habit of taking over control.