As the title indicates, practically the entirety of the previous film opening idea was scrapped due to simply being an unrealistic standard based on what we have available, location, and mise-en-scene, simply seeming outside of what we could afford and offer through production means. This is partially due to viewing previous projects and seeing the differences in how other students were able to create well-produced and enjoyable pieces without extravagant means.
As we had discussed in class, a very lengthy and frankly tedious process for how to move forward, taking inspiration from Stranger than Fiction's film opening for its comedic aspects taken through a serious, monotonous lens, using movement, shot/angle placement, and editing to create comedic effects, and a previous idea I had for another class for a 10-minute play involving a lawyer meeting with Death.
The story would roughly ensue as a series of clips portraying a monotonous life, abruptly ended by the main character's death, preferably off screen and slowly played out like when a character's death is portrayed off screen with blood slowly seeping into vision.
This monotonous, uniform effect is something we wanted to facilitate the comedic aspects of this story outline through dramatic techniques and production that exaggerates the opening's tones. Evidently, it would culminate towards the end of the opening by the character meeting Death, within the differences of setting, darker lighting, and appointment-like tone. The ending would be portrayed as the character sitting across a desk from Death, where he is handed papers in a script-like font and format declaring his death, means of death, and processes from that point forward as the rest of the story would revolve around this changing aspect of his life...or rather, death.
Of course, the previous research conducted based on suspense rising to the introduction towards the title card like in Joker, or Arrival's subtleness in introducing the movie and its themes is not for naught, as it is still valuable and versatile for our use in our own film opening.
A new, surprising and extremely helpful addition to this project: I will be working with Nyx! We got together to discuss project management orientation and how to tackle different aspects such as direction, photography, retrieving actors, extra help on the side to help with lighting, mise-en-scene elements, and more. As a result, we were able to fully develop how the film would play out, and the significance of the film opening towards acting as a prologue sequel type which I’ll explain in a moment. Before that, there is one major concern that can overthrow our current processes and diagram of how this film opening and the project will go: pray that Ms. Stoklosa will green light this film opening since it does include violence, most likely some blood, and death.
FILM OUTLINE:
Opening includes: A fight between two men, as the initial attacker kills the first - first in terms of order of character appearance - where the attacker is seen combatting his thoughts/emotions/actions and fades to white, and this is left to interpretation by the viewer through technique aspects (to be explained). Opening ends with the same very first shot (a wide, long shot) instead with a different color palette changed to one more soothing, comforting, and light-hearted, as the attacker now instead approached the first in an embrace as the two walk out of frame (embrace and walk-our not necessarily set in stone) meant to represent the film’s story as the story of these two characters, their relationship, and how it reaches the point initially viewed in the murder. Upon reaching the initially viewed murder, it will skip/replay (undetermined) the scene, but adding more scenes afterwards to further explore the themes developed. Or it just may end with an extreme wide long shot of the two characters.
Evidently, the film will embody the genre of drama, despite, and possibly enhanced by depending on how production is executed, the opening’s introduction of violence since the remainder of the film revolves around themes of examining the human spirit, bonds, friendship and love - their relationship is undetermined and frankly I feel it is not necessary to the story, mainly the opening, but to the story as a whole since I’d rather like to portray emphasis upon thematic material over specificities and it’s undetermined-ness would contribute to that. And so, this opening would heavily include the techniques discussed in the previous post with influence and inspiration from Society of the Snow’s portrayal of themes and action sequences.
Nyx and I formulated this outline and genre-centered film based upon today’s influences and ideologies. For example, the reason as to why the characters are men, with the opening, opening with violence and murder contrasted with ending in warm-hearted tones and friendship/love is because of gender norms and societal expectations. The film would revolve around questioning these sociocultural concepts, portrayed within the characters by again questioning their own identity (could range from emotional vulnerability to sexuality to societal pressure for masculinity), and breaking these stereotypes.
We accumulated research from numerous film openings, drawing upon Arrival’s opening through a tilt down and introducing the birth of a baby and communicating with the baby, symbolic and contrasted of communicating with alien life. This is an important contrast that we will attempt to portray through different material in our own opening through aforementioned techniques. Specifically, the tilt down would slowly introduce and set the scenery of the opening, to further be able to instill intended tones. For example, during this we plan to utilize a black screen/shot of the sky for credits, tilting down to introduce the opening. However, we will also use an increasingly louder ringing noise throughout the credits, silenced by the fade to white, to instill these tones.
Another example of an inspiration we plan to use for our opening is how to introduce the title - currently to be determined. Initially, we discussed to place the title before tilting down into the scene, that used a style of diction that can further instill suspenseful and eery tones like in Scream’s title card that used the connotation of the word, the sting of a scream, and a bleeding font to carry out its intended effects. However, with this being a drama opening from an intense to more mellow, warm-hearted effects, we transitioned towards something more similar to Parasite’s title opening’s serenity and Joker’s intensity.
Joker’s intensity is fully demonstrated by the context of a beating upon the main character, followed by a screaming title encompassing the entire screen, bleeding outside of frame at the edges, portraying an exaggerated use of title for the purposes of thematic development in a film. Our film opening can manipulate the similar techniques through the use of sound for exaggeration, and possibly use a bleeding title outside of the frame to define the extent of how deeply significant the emotional impacte and themes developed in the reminder of the film are in relation to the characters and the world. Additionally, this title card is used after the grotesque beating, additionally exaggerating the drama. Therefore, we plan to place the title during the fade to white after the fight previous violence to create more of an impact.
Parasite opens the title slowly in a section of the screen where there is little to no movement, as the letters form slowly, similar to a parasite infecting its host. It contrasts this movement with the rest of the screen displaying day-to-day activities of the city’s streets through a window, again contrasting by needing to peer through a window to access this life, instilling a sense of a caged life, barred from normalities and well-versed in poverty. This slow opening title formation integrated into contrasts is something very applicable into our film opening. During our title’s opening, we can manipulate the formation of the word, placement, and contrasts to develop our intended emotional impact and to signify the how a deeply rooted and powerful relationship can spiral into violence, thus developing the story’s thematic material and initially setting the tones necessary during this transition from the violence to the relationship they had prior to this event.
For the film opening, as I talked about in the previous post, I already have an idea for the story of the film opening, despite having many flaws. In a basic sense, the film would open with a eerily still long shot to establish setting and stylistic choices such as colorization and cinematography. A man would be exactly in the middle frame without movement. Eerily tones and suspense would arise through no direct movement until another man charges at him from out of frame - into frame and a fight ensues. The reason for this simplistic idea formulating was because of recent inspirations and stylistic measures I wanted to incorporate into future projects: use of distinct color palettes in post-production, extreme close ups contrasted against extreme long shots, experimenting with the 0.5 feature on the camera of an iPhone, a fishbowl lens or POV shots, etc. There are many opportunities for stylistic implementation with a fight scene, especially in this scenario's introduction and how to shoot the initial fight. Evidently, not all these techniques will be used since their usage should be implemented towards developing certain tones or to provide a meaningful contribution towards my intended tone/vibe, and how it plays into the remainder of the opening and film.
Some major inspirations for this was Society of the Snow's beautiful usage of color, extreme close ups, and camera lens to film intense sequences and definitively instill tones of the film to reach its intended sequences. This can especially be seen during the scene of all the survivors taking shelter within the plane when they are avalanched and suffocated by large amounts of snow. What I particularly love about this scene is the techniques it uses, aforementioned, to create a sense of chaos, impending death, and suspense among the characters and within the audience.
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I intend to use such technique within my own film opening to create suspense, chaotic movements, and frantic desperation as the characters fight back against each other. These techniques can be used to enforce the dramatic sequence and instill a definitive sense of life or death, finality, and the importance of the characters' desperation throughout the fight.
Although the story outline can use a lot of work, and the opening will most likely change dramatically due to the rest of the film's story, I still plan to manipulate colorization, movement, and contrasts heavily within my final product.
Upon completion of the music video/marketing campaign project, I am left with many inspirations and determination to create a piece reflecting my personal visions and my improvements in cinematography, directing, editing, and especially production. I feel previous projects lacked some versatility in cinematography and production where I could have improved with using various settings, design and props, and in shots, angles, and camera movement. Therefore, I hope to see much improvement in this upcoming project.
Already, I have some ideas as how to approach improvements for the film opening - I am mainly interested in researching types of character v. character, nature, supernatural, or society, especially revolving around conflict generally applicable to any genre that I focus the story around, or within establishing background and setting within dystopian or utopian genres, some of my favorites. Additionally, establishing tone primarily has become a favorite interest because of the versatility it has in opening possibilities, or within the visions I have in mind.
Some inspirations towards establishing tone, conflict, and setting is the film openings of Raging Bull for its still shot, internal movement, and colorization in black and white versus the alarming red title. Also, there is Scream's opening through alluding to conflict but mainly establishing tone through alarmingly increasing sounds of popcorn steaming, long shots contrasting quick cuts.
I hope to be able to follow set schedules to easily time manage and complete the aspects of the project with time to spare and revise. I am already pretty excited for this project and how I can express my creativity and full control of the piece, with ideas for openings already in place which I will discuss numerous opening ideas within the next post and decide the route/opening I want to take.
For our music marketing project, our genre and select song choice was rock and Many Shades of Black by The Ranconteurs. Throughout our initial listening sessions to the song, the group members and I each created a brand identity and the vibes the song and our newly created band would impose onto the world, generally with each revolving around the grunge, darker toned aesthetics of rock. These ties had inspirations in Nirvana's lyricism and styles, and Artic Monkey's influence on target audiences in the modern world.
Evidently, we also came up with ideas for how to market our band through our prior research to the start of the project based on Apple's music partnership opportunities and how they are applied to social media platforms. For example, album or single covers can be displayed with embedded links on Twitter or Instagram profiles, or use embedded banners that display the songs of the album that additionally include 30 second previews of each song.
Finally, we begun to brainstorms some ideas for storyboarding the music video and the things we want to include within our presentation. Some of the most important aspects of the presentation was to fully develop the brand identity, detail how marketing strategies would grow the band and target the desired audiences, and the distribution practices used to make our songs widely available.
Representation in Fight Club is extremely misconstrued and skewed in favor of a stylistic story and presentation. These groups are presented in forms of stereotypical perspectives taken to extremes for the previous purpose, as seen in Fight Club's men, women, and mental illnesses. The main character, suffers from a split personality disorder and schizophrenia, portraying himself in vulgar and radical terms as he forms Fight Club under his alter ego, Tyler Durden. The club evolves into brutal fist fights, representing mainly vulgar masculinity and whims of the ego. This is further evident as the club becomes a terrorist group targeting economical ruin.
Dystopia has been a cornerstone of modern storytelling, heavily incorporating political and personal, emotional themes. Recent years has brought the sub genre, diverse in ability to range from thrillers to dramas to cyberpunk, to the masses in bulk as proxy wars of imagination between political perspectives mainly such as The Maze Runner, by Wes Ball. However, dystopias are not limited to being used as a clash of political perspectives, but could also be used simply as a setting for the story like Wall-E, by Andrew Stanton. Dystopia is extremely diverse and versatile in use.
The rise of dystopian films is largely due to the comfort found in the idea of escaping reality of probable stressful environments to one vastly different. This comfort is not limited to older ages but is also available as a setting for younger ages as well, displaying dystopia's versatility. For example, the aforementioned Wall-E is a dystopian romantic comedy, reflecting the love of the two characters while also portraying the underlying themes of utopian ideals and insatiability - the human condition.
Although it is available to all ages, the general themes portrayed in dystopian films include mass poverty, class divisions, environmental destruction, anarchy, and individuality. They focus on social injustices, revolving mainly around characters on the receiving end of mass destruction and injustice, or that question philosophical standpoints like in Blade Runner, which follows Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) as he hunts down genetically replicated humans known as "replicants" to "retire" them. The final replicant, played by Rutger Hauer, delivers a famous speech questioning existentialism and the meaning of life.
Dystopian productions include techniques that highlight each film's respective thematic material and message toward the audience. These techniques can range from landscape establishing shots to display mass destruction or poverty to close ups and high angles to portray condescending power of superiority in utopian illusions. Dictatorial and social hierarchies are popular within dystopian films and highlighted by these techniques, for example in The Hunger Games. Multiple instances throughout the trilogy, grandstanding portrayal of rich upper classes and high angles to display superiority are used for these thematic purposes. Additionally, lighting easily conveys manipulated tones to create feelings of a depressed society, namely in The Giver which transitions from a monochromatic era to a technicolor bloom in the later half of the movie representing the birth of a "different" life and philosophy.
Snowpiercer, directed by Bong Joon-ho, delves into rebellion between the inequality of the rich upper class and poor, poverty-stricken lower class as a result of environmental degradation, finally culminating in the complexities of human nature. Snowpiercer focuses on the poorest residents of a train holding the last of humanity because of the Earth's second ice age, as they plan to improve their conditions by overtaking the front cars and the engine room, hailed as a religious and power symbol. Class inequality is evident throughout the film as displayed by the poverty-like conditions of the poorest residents as they live off of nutritional bars made of cockroaches while the upper cars and classes eat meat and enjoy the luxuries of aquariums, alcohol, and showers. Rebellion for social change and justice against the oppressive, unsharing powers of the upper cars is the grounding for the movie, reflecting on real world issues through the degradation of environments, social injustices endured by marginalized communities, and the ruling elite's exploitations.
Gattaca, directed by Andrew Niccol, immerses themes of discrimination, identity, and human spirit and flaws. The movie revolves around Vincent Freeman (Ethan Hawke) and his dreams of traveling to outer space but is restricted against doing so because of his genetic inferiority, as described by the societal standards of the realm. He perseveres against enforcement, the manifestation of dictatorial characteristics, to achieve his dreams, involving themes of identity, courage, and perseverance to achieve goals. This is further enforced by the interactions with other characters that incorporate love and identity into the story as well.
