analysis of title sequences

PSYCHO

I analysed the opening sequence to the film Psycho created Saul Bass. It began with the music which was screeching violins; this set the mood of the film straight away and gave the sense of suspense and fear. He uses a series of simple white bars to usher in the sans-serif titles and escort them back out again. Although these lines come from different areas of the screen, they never once break formation or intersect. The way the lines move around from left to right etc. represents the mind of psycho (Norman Bates character)  with confusion. Saul Bass introduces, the director Hitchcock first then the name of the movie after this all the actors and actresses following that came the all the producers and people involved in making the film.

THE WAR OF THE ROSES

Secondly I analysed the opening sequence ‘the war of the roses’ also created by Bass. This film opening linked to the way Psycho was arranged with who was introduced in what order. It was static, nouveau sans-serif typeface is superimposed over a neutral grey background which soon was discovered to be a bit of white fabric. The fabric becomes more detailed and the folds become more clear and pronounced and by the end you discover that it’s a crumpled tissue which links into the film as the first thing you see is the man blowing his nose with this tissue which was a clear graphic match.  The music on this has a much different feel to it compared to psycho as Saul chose music which linked well to the story line and feel of this film. It goes from very light hearted music which is calm and quiet to sudden bangs and loud noises then it changes again.

ANATOMY OF A MURDER

Anatomy of a Murder was the third opening title sequence I analysed and again was created by Saul Bass. He created this for a crime drama movie but he went a different way about this by using graphic design. The music placed with this opening scene was music which created suspense. The animation worked well and told a little story within itself. A body is shown as one then dissembled and put up like a jigsaw this then had the names of actors/actresses placed inside it. It was said that no special equipment was needed for this and only resources around them, this would of meant it was a lot cheaper than the other film openings he had created before.


 

'Foley workshop'

This task began with learning the basics about non diegetic and diegetic sounds and the differences of impact they can have on a scene in a movie or on TV. Diegetic being sound which everyone can hear, so the viewers and the characters can too, for example a phone ringing. Also there is non-diegetic sound which is where you can only hear the sound as the viewer, It’s sounds which is added in after the scene has been created such as music placed on top of the scene to influence a certain emotion. The Foley task involved creating sounds which would fit our scenes well and the sound to therefore be placed on top of the original noise made. In our film one of the Foley sounds we did was the girl's footsteps we recreated the noise to make it clearer then placed that noise on top of the scene.

shot reverse shot

I did a shot reverse shot scene on the theme of a teenage pregnancy.  I began by doing a master shot of the whole scene which would then show the viewer where the characters were and set the mood of the scene. Also taking shots of the individual characters using close up shots I got across the emotion of each individual person in the scene. Using the 180° rule it made sure eye contact stayed in the same place and did not confuse the scene whilst doing the close ups on the individual characters. It made sure that the conversation flowed and they both stayed in the same places throughout the whole scene.

'The Homecoming'

This was the first particle work we did. It included developing skills on the different types of shots you could do along with pacing. We played with many different shots such as close ups, long shots and movement shots such as a tilt shot. We used a tilt shot to build tension and show status with the reviling of who sent the text and who’s being met. Also we used angles to help set scenes the three main angles being straight on angle, high angle and the low angle. Pacing is about controlling a shot length and how you can expand time etc. As an end result the people in the same group had very different final peace’s, one being dramatically different was Jacobs the way he cut up the scenes created a very different feel and meaning to his film opening using the same original shots as me.

welcome to my blog

This is my AS media work. I now know how to vary my different kind of camera shots , also i have learnt a new wide range of vocabulary.