My film opening; characters

Some directors thing of characters before they think of the plot of there film as the characters move the plot forward. Plus the more complex the character the more impressed the audience will be, if the characters are  more interesting  and have a good back story the audience will have more of a connection between the characters.
The directors who do this pick characters that will fit with the story. For example Tim Burton in big fish thought of the character of Edward Bloom before the story. As Edward Bloom was such a well thought out character it was better to make the plan out the story based on his character rather than make a character to fit the story. I think that Burton did this so it would make the film process easier as events of the film would only work with that certain character. As the events are strange and would only fit with a character which who like Edward Bloom is strange enough and kind enough to live in the situation like them.
Characters are important to a story as they flesh out the plot and increase likability to the film. In my view the characters are more important than the story as a bad plot can be fixed by some great character as they are the more remembered and most relateble part of the film.
In the past many ( Although not always) where stereotypes of certain types of people. The Hero, The Villain ect. As time has gone on creators have become more creative with there characters and making them more complex. This trend has happened in all genres of the film memdiem. Strangely the time we are in now has changed the main idea of the Hero. The heroes dynamics in most media have ( mostly in young adult, adult films) have become more dark and depressing. The changes between Adam West Batman comedic of the 60s to the Christopher Nolan dark, edge films of this era.  The characters of today can be excellent and well thought out or terrible examples of writing and human concepts.

As my Coursework is only an opening few minutes I can not create a well establish characters as there is too little time but I can use my characters to show the genre of my film or the roles they will that be in my opening. As my film is the genre of Horror I want to show that my characters are mysterious and modern in dress and aesthetic.

Typical horror movie teenagers:

Openings of other genres

Romance
The conversions of a romance film are quite simple. A romance film should show two people fall in love with each other.

Here are three openings of Romantic films.

The Notebook displays ideas of the love though it's soft music and sweet romantic colours of red with the sunset. It gives an impression that it will be quite a famous love film because of it's simple but sweet opening.
And the river shows that maybe it's a quite famous part of the film.
The names coming up slowly also makes the film seem more simple and sweet.
As well as show the gracefulness of the characters.

The Fault In Our Stars
The fault in ours shows the character is high sprites, laughing, smiling ect. This shows that the film will have romantic ideas in it and the relationship will be full of promise.
However it mixes it with a rather depressing speech about how life is which shows the ideas that it could included sadness. The mix of the two shows that the film will included romance with tragedy, which this genre sometimes uses this convention.

10 Things I Hate About You
In contrast 10 Things I Hate About You is a more of comedic film with romantic intent. So this film shows a contrast between two types of people. It shows two girls driving to school, one girl has popular ( for the time) while the other girl (later we find out is the main character) is playing hard rock music, while having a sour face. This shows the that film will surround this girl. Her moodiness shows that this film will show to contrasting characters will be the ones in love, as the conversations of America high school dramas is that the girl and guy will change each other to fall in love. This opening is simple and doesn't really show the genre plentifully but does make the audience interested in the film itself.

The start of reasech

My project has started to make own film has officially started. For this I will look it to the film genres such as horror and thriller. Looking at examples of films and watching them, such as many Alfred Hitchcock films and other thriller works.
 Here are some films I might watch that go with my genre.

I will also research, different ways different directors make and start they're horror films, and more research into the Mis-En-Scene of horror films.

Company idents

In films, before the action it must pay respect to the company that produces/directed or funded it. Over the years companies have shown this in multiple different ways, which showcases a number of different techniques  to highlight the company.
Such 20th Century Fox logo is remembered as it combines the large gold font, stylist lettering and booming sound to have it stuck in the audiences head, it also gives the audience an idea of what scale that the production will be on because of the large and bold statement the logo makes.

Similarly the Disney logo, while it has change in the resent years when Disney main Blockbuster movies were 3D animation, the Disney castle is sweet and lovely animated. For Adults it brings back a sense on Nostalgia because of the impact of Disney films for a young age and the logo excites children because of it sweet romantic music and exciting castle.

In our own Media studies class, our task was to create a company ident , we did this on Adobe After Effects. As I wasn't experienced on this program  so my final ideas were very basic. With the program I wanted to make something quite scary to show that my film was going to be a horror movie. With this in mind I chose a picture of showing creepy and bloody.

I used different effects such as Glow and Fade to create the creepy shadowy effect. I chose these effects as they were simple to program and looked creepy with the scary picture I chose.
I will hopefully develop these skills to create a more interesting and simply logo with people will remember more. This ident will also help create image which will go with the theme of my film, the hand will show the scariness and violence that will be shown in my film. The faded text will show simple way I can show something creepy.

Stop motion

Stop Motion is the animation style in which the directors physically manipulate the character to make them move on their own.
For this the directors take a photo frame by frame, where they move the characters slightly.
Then when the film is run the characters look like they're moving on their own.
Examples of Stop Motion:
Wallace and Gromit directed by Nick Park is a very good example of stop motion The whole film is made of  clay and took a long while to make. About 15 months  to make there film length film "Wallace and Gromit and the curse of the ware rabbit"
To makes there characters look as smooth as the do, the maker really plan every single movement in the film. They use a detailed story board and chose very  precise movements.  The characters and backgrounds have different designs to make the final finish, however with some parts of Wallace and Gromit such as smoke, explosion in the film had to be rendered  on a computer after the film is made.
This is a trailer for the film

Wallace and Gromit and the curse of the ware rabbit.
This film is combined effect of Dreamworks and Aardman studios. Made in 2005, it's the second of Aardmans stop motion film after Chicken Run.

Aardman studios
Aardman is a british film company in Bristol, which specializes in Stop Motion animation using Clay. The company has produced two major just Stop motion produces. The first was Chicken Run (2000) was the first of this studios films. Chicken Run reserved many awards for it's fast comedic style and it's detailed stop motion. The second film was Wallace and Gromit the curse of the ware rabbit, which had a high grossing rating and a high number of awards.
In 2006 Aardman released it's first computer Animated film "Flushed Away" and used this technique
 in there other films.


Other films have also used an element of Stop motion.
The film Coraline (Henry Slick) and many others by Tim Burton uses the element of Stop Motion in there work. Coraline most famously is the combining effort of Stop Motion and  CG1 techniques. The Stop Motion element makes the character move slowly and the clay effect makes the film combined with the dark elements of most of these films, give the idea of something strange or grotesque giving the idea of horror.

                                          The main character in Corline who was made as a puppet
                                           by many different designers.
                                         

Stop Motion in Media Studies lesson
In our lesson we looked the idea of Stop Motion. To do this, in a group we used Play Dough Models and a Canon Camera COMS.
With these objects we moved the models into different shapes with our hands. Then deciding a perfect position for the character we took photos, to show to give the idea that the character was moving.
Our characters
For our Stop Motion me and my group decided to make our stop motion about Death Harvesting a soul.
To do this we created our two simple characters
Our characters, made out of different coloured clay.

To do this Stop Motion style, me and my group took a lot of photographs to make frames. The finished film was only 40 seconds long, but it gave a good example of what Stop Motion Technique looked like.

The finished product looked very good and the character did look full of there own movement. It was a smoothly ran finish.
The process itself was very interesting, Stop Motion gain an impression of an "Uncanny Valley" which made it look creepy. The stories we could make were very accessible. As the play dough could let us make anything. However I would avoid using Stop Motion for my opening as the process took a long time to finish, even for a 40 second film, I think the process would be too restricted and take up to much time.  

Pro/Cons of stop motion:
Pros:
Stop Motion is very interesting
Stop motion can make a film look very creepy
Can look very creative
Humor can be used within stop motion

Cons:
Takes a long time to
A lot of people to make that work
Can look faulty and weird is not done write

Script for are re-creation

My beast friend.

The script for the re creation. 

*ED walks in the hallway, carrying a load of boxes. The cat, Fluff is sitting in one of the boxes mumbling and looking at his note.*

FLUFF: Pl- Plea- Please... ED!, tell me whats going on right now or I’m going to sick up all of yesterdays tuna. *Coughing up noise* Oh no, it’s that girl isn't it, AMELIA, you’re mad. She’s weird!

ED: This has nothing to do with Amelia, *Strokes hair* I just wanted to sort my life out, ya know, get rid of some of the dead wood. So, I’m going to take you to this great fun place just for cats. Yeah, just after I finish tidying up. It’s called. Pleasure land!

FLUFF: *amazed* Pleasure land?, sweet. But not before time!

*Door bell rings, AMELIA enters,*

AMELIA: *in a rush* I’m so sorry Ed, I know I’m super early! *sees  Fluff* Oh my god who's this?

ED: *hesitantly* That’s Fluff.

AMELIA: *Reading* Free to good home. Some monster, abandoned this sweet little creature?

*AMELIA Strokes the cat, and picks it up. AMELIA sees a actual cat while, ED sees a guy in a cat costume.*

Well, Fluff, I guess that makes me your new mummy now.

FLUFF: *To Ed* Ya lying cu-  (cunt) *Cut out*

*Credits roll. *