This week we tried to film a rough variant of our sequence, which turned out not as successful as I wanted it to be, but this is the life, isn't it? We, finally, made a short video, but unfortunately I can't upload it here, because of some technical problems. Anyway, you will probably like to see the final version, however, the process of marketing of our thriller sequence at this stage meets some troubles.
But, nevertheless, I urge you to be intrigued by our oncoming opening sequence, as it still should be great...
We spent almost two lessons in attempts to film everything we planned, however, this turned out to be not enough. We got several good shots, several bad shots and we didn't get around the third of the shots we planned. So as you may predict we were working harder than God when he was creating the Earth! The reason of such a result, to be honest, is our inter-group inconsistency. As we don't really listen to each other and try to take the consideration only our own vision, not the vision of others, which is not that productive.
This is a nearly description of what we have in our group.
There is one more fantastically tremendous scene, which we might use during the pondering on details of our opening sequence. This is the hanging scene of a nanny in "Omen". I think what distinguishes particularly that hanging scene is that it has the highest level of inhumanity, although it's hard to say that the previous hanging scenes in this blog do not possess this feature.
Hope you enjoy it, but not too much... If we have such a horrifying, desperate and a little bit helpless atmosphere in our sequence, that will be great!!
The shooting is going to be pretty soon, so you have to wait not so long... I'm also excited about it!!
In "Shawshank Redepmtion" has a very touching hanging scene and, moreover, it is very beautifully shot. If we have something like that, I will be very glad. It is slow, again to make us feel the situation. And the thing I like about it is that we can see the whole body in the shot and it's close, it's not just legs... And also the reflection on the background is remarkable.
In "Angel of Mercy" the hanging scene is very impressive. The impression is created with the help of contrast as we see how little little and innocent girl is killed here. In our sequence we also want to kill a girl, although probably not that innocent... But everuthing is very complicated! Anyway, it's a tree again where people are hanged, so it suits our demands))
This is the other part of our sequence which is much to do with suicide, in fact, this is almost a suicide, but the things are much more complicated than they seem to be... Still, in "Sinister" there is a perfect scene where all the family is hanged on the tree (our style). This is almost a perfect example of what we are going to do, at least, the environment has much in common. And also the music that creates the atmosphere perfectly suits here. And also the contrast between the ordinary happy life and then death adds something frightening, don't you agree?))
In "Michael Clayton" again I like the style of filming, and I intend to apply it to our sequence as well. The last scene contains walking with a blurry background, which (it's not hard to notice) makes me utterly happy.
And also when the ending titles are rather sophisticated here, although they are very simple.
We'll try to stand the pace of that one and do at least a little bit better))
Another great film which gives an inspiration is "The Ides of March". I adore the whole movie, but there are some shots in the last scene whcih we can use in our sequence. Especially, I like the shot where the Ryan Gosling's character walks through the corridor and the last where camera approaches from Close-Up to Big Close-Up of Ryan's face. And, all in all, I like the rythm of the scene, slow pace of editing and a game with focus.
The scene from "Aviator" where Howard Hughes (Leo DiCaprio) washes his hands was also an inspiration for my initial idea. The way he rubs the imaginary mud off his hands is much to do with the way our character rubs the imaginary blood off his hands. I also like an editing here, it shows the hustle, tension, sometimes bordering on desperation. It also indicates a rather long time frame.
This is a masterpiece by Martin Scorsese with a brilliant actor in the main role. We'll see what we'll finally get.
In "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" I like the way of shooting as well. The moving of the camera in very slow, deliberate, it immerses us into the atmosphere, makes us watch very closely. And, of course, the game is focus is also noticeable and important. The music is catching, too. Well, it is probably only I the trailer, but we need to use music for sure in order to create mood.
This is one more masterpiece of contemporary cinema. We'll see what we get.
In our sequence we have two major lines. So we decided that Holly and Kate should work on the hanging scene, and I take an official's piece. I reflect the most eloquent example of what I expect to see in our sequence is "House of cards". I love the way creators play with focus, picking up the main aspects. It looks very beautiful!
I think any piece, any shot from it can describe what we will try to achieve in our opening. Especially, I like the underground shooting.
This is an utter masterpiece and that's what I intend to do our sequence.
Here is one more cooperation with Guy Ritchie. The first part of Guy Ritchie's version of Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson. This is an incredible action movie with lots of specal effects and amazing image. Sherlock Holmes is brilliantly played by Robert Downey-Jr., and Jude Law is also fascinating in his interpretation of Watson. We have very nice team and perfect movie as a result.
Kyle Cooper again used the graphics and animation. We see lots of little complicated details, lots of visual information and great amount of action. The image of the credits looks worn out, so it creates an atmosphere of the times of old England. However, this atmosphere is diluted with lots of action, which doesn't seem like XIXth century at all.
Kyle Cooper creates a fascinating image made of little complicated detais. We can see the same pictures in the book. This is the effect that these credits should have. The colours are perfectly used. They are quite calm. But it's more likely that they undicate the old times and the old book.
And again Kyle tries to break into the realty of the audience from the screen. He creates several levels of the image and we have an impression that it is volumetric.
And the words are always distinct, regardless of the fact that Kyle uses only brown, black and beige. He shows everything as eloquently and elegantly as possible.
And, of cousre, as a decent and diligent student of Hurtwood House, I couldn't help doing this!)
And here is the next masterpiece by Kyle Cooper. This time he works with one of the greatest and sylish directors of our time - Guy Ritchie. "RocknRolla" is one of his latest movies that was filmed in 2008. Wait a minute! It's actually quite old!! Nevertheless, it looks absolutely amazing and, especially, do titles.
Kyle Cooper with his own unique style which becomes evident from the very beginning as there are so many visual details, so much action, so much animation and the names of actors are absolutely clear. The colours of the sequence are very striking: golden and black. There are also many guns in it. This indicates an excess coolness. And all in all, the sequence looks as a small cartoon, which tells us what kind of story we are going to see.
We see the beautiful transitions, which distinctly demonstrate us that this is an action movie. The movement is unstable and that gives us a hint of the situation of the main hero.
Kyle breaks the frame in this sequence as we can see several levels of the image. The background plays an impoortant role as it identifies the character in some way and also shows us what he is going to do during the movie.
One more pecularity is that these titles are very short which is inkeeping with the movie as everything happens very fast.
"Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" is a stylish comedy by brilliant Shane Black, who also directed "Iron Man 3" and wrote many screenplays among which there were screenplays for "The Last Boy Scout" and "Lethal Weapon". Still our main focus here is not on this wonderful guy, but on the other guy whom I would call wonderful as well. This other guy is Kyle Cooper who made amazing animated titles for this movie.
There are several features that distinguish Kyle's specific style.
- His titles are always incredibly visual - There is always some kind movement in them - His titles usually contain tonnes of information - He tries to break up the frame, he makes the spectotor a part of the action - Usually his titles contain much animation, or animation only - All the words we see on the screen (i.e. information) is very distinct - Everything he does is vvery creative (that's from his fans) This title opens with a black screen and white inscription (nice choice of colours) "Warner Bros. Pictures" on it. And the moving starts right from the beginning.
We see a dark street and then it cuts to a guy climbing over the fence. And so we get some hints on the plot of the movie and the music helps us to understand the mood. The colours chosen by Kyle also indicate the style of the movie and, of course, the animation speaks for itself.
It tells us that the movie is not going to be very serious, but the amount of red colour indicating blood is overwhealming. The action also switches from colour to colour, their brightness incompatibility shows the unstability of the situation of the main hero and its danger.
There are many incredibly visual transitions. There is lots of things going on the screen that are shown in great details. As usual there is huge amount of visual information that audience need to receive.
But as was already said words are always distinct.
It's also quite noticeable how Kyle plays with the way the words appear and disappear on the screen. All the action is fast and unstable which again shows us what type of movie it is.
Kyle Cooper is a director and designer of films title sequences. He studied graphic design in Yale University. In his early professional career he was a creative director in R/GA - an advertising agency with offices in New York and Los Angeles. In 1995 he created a title sequence for the movie "Seven", which is probably his most famous work, which also received a critical acclaim.
In 1996, Kyle co-founded a creative agency called Imaginary forces. But then he decided that he needs to focus more on the creative part of his work and so he left the company. In 2001 he directed a movie, New Port South, and in 2003, he founded a new creative agency, Prologue.
All in all, he has directed and produced more than 150 film titles and VFX sequences including "Se7en", "RocknRolla", "Sherlock Holmes", "Iron Man", "Spider-Man", "Tron: Legacy" and many others. In 2008, he was a finalist in the National Design Awards. He has earned five Emmy Award nominations and one win for his work on the 81st Annual Academy Awards. He also holds the title of Honorary Royal Designer for Industry from the Royal Society of Arts in London.
We held our second Production Meeting, which turned out to be successful without parallel. We even took a picture of ourselves as you can see. So we did the first draft of a storyboard for our opening title sequence for a thriller. It is predominantly composed of Close-ups (CUs), Extreme Close-ups (ECU) also slip into the sequence sometimes, the main emphasis is done on depth of field. The shot should be focused only on details which need to be delivered, nothing more than that. We reveal some sides of characters' personalities, which are urgent for the whole story. But still thinking about our work, I reflect we need to include some more shots which may be very important from the point of veiw of characters, basic logics and continuity. We still need to work on it much, but the fact that makes me happy is that we made the first step in this process which is, hopefully, the hardest one and found key of our cooperation probably (I hope it sounds normal, so that you don't think I'm a romantic pedant). So me Katie and Holley will continue to work hard and the following photo confirms each of my words.
The opening title sequence of "Don't Look Now" illustrates how important editing is in film production. Camera work and mise-en-scene are also quite important in this piece, editing gives the basic zest. We need to see how the events that are happenning in one place reflect the events that are happenning in the other. The director wanted to show us an odd connection and he also wanted from the very beginning make sure that every shot that we see indicates that girl is going to die and it is more likely that it will happen in the pond.
In the first shot we see a girl in red clothes. What could that mean? Well, let me think...
- Eeemm, not really...
- Eeemm, yes... but... not really...
- Eemmm... NOOO!!
If there is something you don't know - Wikipedia knows!
Red is the color of blood, rubies and strawberries. Red is commonly associated with danger, sacrifice, passion, fire, beauty, blood, anger, national socialism, socialism, communism, and in China and many other cultures, with happiness.
But it seems to me that in this case the meaning is Blood!!!
- Not for the faint of heart!!!
And we also see a white horse which can be regarded as a sign of soul aspiring to heaven. A boy, a brother, rides a bicycle - nothing special, just saying. Then the girl throws a ball into the pond and the theme of water starts. As she tries to reach it, we can hear the sound of raven which shows us inevitability of the girl's death. After that director exposes us to the girl's reflection in the pond telling the audience that the more likely way to die for her is t drown in this very pond.
This last shots cuts to the fire, which symbolizes death in this case, again. We can see a huge variety of hints in this piece already. In the pictures that the main hero watches there is somebody dressed in red, just as the girl. The fact that this somebody sits in the church again (X10) gives us an idea of death and by the clothes of this somebody we can imagine whose death it is. From the picture with a red-dressed woman we cut to the reflection of the girl in the pond with the relevant alarming sound. By the way, this shot is quite interesting as when the girl jumps we see her action the other way round, this creates an impression that she walks down the water. I didn't want to say that this shot is amazingly impressive and/or something that you never seen before, but it's beautiful.
Almost the same thing >>>
Then the director (or editor) gives us a kind of a matching shot: when the girl steps into the pond, her brother who rides the bicycle runs down on the glass splitting it up. Again the hint in the favour of death in the pond. The we cut to the main hero (father), who probably has some strange connection with his children as he somehow reacts on these events hapenning with the children, even though he is not able to see them. At the same time mom doesn't react at all and this gives us an imagery of the relationships within the family.
Then we see a boy checking if the tires on his bicycle are intact. The focus is not actually on him, but on the girl standing beside the pond which means that we, too, need to focus on her. What we see next is a bunch of matching shots: the girl throws the ball - cuts to: her father throwing a pack of cigarettes to the mom. It is probably done to create the connection as a second later we see how the ball flops into the pond and the father spills the water (matching shot again).
Then we see the ball floating on the water and this image cuts to the boy still checking his tire, but there is no girl in this shot anymore.
And all this is followed by the most interesting part of the opening. We see the picture with a red-dressed figure in it and there is a red liquid that slowly flows from the head of this figure. This gives us an understanding of what happened. And we are not the only ones, the father realizes that this can be a sinister sign.
And then we are given a perfect moment with no sound, when the action cuts to the defocused shot of a boy running to the house. It often occurs that silence can have a greater effect on people than the most loud sound. The silence gives us an opportunity to think, to grasp. Or maybe in this case it's more likely to be a suspence, bad expectation. For the audience it's probably both.
It is followed by the slow motion shot showing how the girl drowns. The very beautiful one! The scream of the boy adds more drama to the scene. The father enters the cold pond, we see it by his body language. The frightened face of her brother and indifferent mother. But probably we cannot blame her as she didn't the accident and the pictures in her hands didn't give much information as well as the red figure was almost entirely covered with the red liquid which, be the way spread more and more. But, anyway, the way the mom behaves can be depicted as indiferent. The father pulles his daughter out of water, breaking the 30 degree rule. In fact he doesn't break it, it's actually the director and camera man who break it, so let's blame them. But they can be justified as the scene gets more dramatic and as we all know the rules exist to break them (or something like that).
The music on the background provokes goosebumps. And this heartrending cry of the father provides us with even more drama, or should provide, because I, personally, giggled in this moment.
Almost like that >>>
Then he pulls her out of the water. She's dead! Everything's fine! The director giggles (Exactly like that >>>>>>>>>
somewhere aside...
This opening is based on editing meaning that the editing plays the major part in the opening. It somewhat shows the helplessness of camera without proper cuts and sound and mise-en-scenes. So the conclusion we can draw from the "Don't Look Now" opening -- Editing RULES!
Or, the more formal way, if you are an editor, you influence the final movie more than anyone else (it's probably a bit exaggerated). And the most formal conclusion we can draw: the combination of 4 elements such as EDITING, camera, sound and mise-en-scene, finally gives us a motion picture and each of those elements is entirely vital!
Semantics is the study of meaning. Semiotics is one of the sections of the semantics, this is the study of signs and sign processes, analogy, symbolism, signification, communication.
Words and things don't have single, simple meaning. Traditionally, meaning can be divided in two parts: Denotation (the literal meaning of the word or thing) and Connotation (an association (emotional or otherwise) that the word/thing evokes).
Denotation >>>>>>> Connotation Delta Sign The Difference in Smth, Delta of the river
But there one sound that no one... actually, everyone knows it... ...
whatever...
Thriller and Suspence films are types known to promote intense excitment, suspence, a high level of anticipation, uncertainty, anxiety, nerve-wrecking tension - everything that might cause serious mental disorder.
A genuine thriller is a film that invariably pursues a sinle-minded goal - to provide thrills and keep the audience at the edge of their seeats as the plot builds towards the climax. The character is usually placed in a menacing siruation or mystery, or an escape or dangerous mission. Life itself is threatened, usually because the principal character is suspecting or unknowingly involved in a dagerous or potentially deadly situation. The menace is sometimes abstract or shadowy. Thrillers are often hybrids - there are lots of varieties of suspence thrillers: 1) Action- or Adventure- Thrillers (The Bourne Identity, Mission Impossible)
2) Sci-fi Thrillers (Elysium, Tron:Legacy)
3) Crime-capper thrillers (Ocean's Twelve, Snatch, Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels)
4) Western Thrillers (The Last Samurai, The Good The Bad and The Ugly)
5) Film-noir Thrillers (L.A. Confidential, The Usual Suspects)
Other types of thrillers:
1) Psychological thriller
This is a specific sub-genre with heavy focus on the ustable emotional states of characters. It often incorporates elements from the mystery and the drama genre, along with the typical traits of the thriller genre. Characters are no longer reliant on physical strength to overcome their brutish enemies, but rather are reliant on their mental resources, wheather it be by battling wits with a strong opponent or by battling for equilibrium in character's own mind.
2) Conspiracy Thriller
This is a subgenre of thriller fiction. The protagonists of conspiracy thrillers are often journalists or amateur investigators who find themselves pulling on a asmall thread which unravels a vast conspiracy. A common theme in such works is that characters uncovering the conspiracy encounetr difficulty ascertaining the truth amid the deceptions. It often happens due to coincidence. 3) Political Thriller
This is a thriller that is set against the backdrop of a political power struggle. They can involve national or international scenarios. Political corruption, terrorism, and warfare are common themes. There is also a strong overlap with the conspiracy thriller. The basic plot is usually an ordinary man pulling an innocent thread which leads to a mess of corruption. The corruption should be political or governmental in nature. 4)Techno-Thriller
This is a hybrid genre, drawing subject matter generally from science fiction and thrillers. They include a disproportionate amount of technical details on its subject matter. The inner workings of technology and the machanics of various disciplines are thoroughly explored. This type of thriller can often be regarded as contemporary speculative fiction; world wars are a common topic. Techno-thrillers are often overlap with near-future science fiction. They also have a substantial overlaps with the genres of conspiracy thrillers. 5) Supernatural thriller
This is a thriller in which the film brings in a n otherworldly element mixed with tension, suspence and plot twists. Sometimes the protagonist and/or villain has some physic ability and superpowers. The film deals less with action and more through building tension through plot twists. Now we know in detail what the thriller says. Nowadays, it's probably one of the most attractive and popular genre in the cinema as the spectators want something to thrill them the common live doen't seem so exciting anymore... Well, this is the live.
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