Enemy of the States 1998 (Directed by Tony Scott)

At the beginning of this film, there are quick cuts from two people who seem to just be hanging around what seems to be a park. A car pulls up and an old man starts playing with his dog. This is a very happy mood as the sun is shining and the character looks like he is having a good time. A medium close-up is then shown of another old man in a very fancy black car. This shows that he is quite wealthy and as he isn't the one driving the car, it also shows that he must be someone of importance as he has a driver. When the old man playing with his dog she's the wealthier man his first response is 'oh god damn it'. This shows he knows this man and also he doesn't like this man. They both have a convosation where the man who was playing with his dog disagrees with the other man, this then leads to a sudden attack from behind fromt the two men at the scene at the beginning and they inject something into the man playing with his dog. This was mainly due to the fact that this man didn't agree with the man with money and so he killed him.

This is quite an interesting beginning with a quick shift of moods. There is then a montage of road crimes which kind of give the audience a hint of what the film may be about.

Ideas

Today, I saw an extordinary sight around my area. The circus was in town. This gave me the idea that we could use the busy circus scene to our advantage. We could do the train scene at the circus as Dhylan would be off gaurd to see Tyler at a circus whislt he is enjoying himself. 
This couldn't work though as there would be too many people. Also Dhylan wouldn't go to the circus by himself and so we would have to have more characters. But we wanted to have him on his own so he would she lonely as he has just lost his best friend.

Immortals 2011 (Directed by Tarsem Singh)

This film is about Greek History on how humans have saved man-kind and become a god. The opening scene is a dream of a orical who sees the future to be bad. From this OK opening scene we could see that the ending is going to be about a hero who changes the oricals dream. The rest of the movie goes down-hill as the film only contains violence from that moment on.
This would make a good film for people looking for a blood thursty battle but other tahn this, the film wasn't good.
So we will not be using any ideas from this particular film for our film as there wasn't a good story line to the film.

 

Ideas

As we are making a montage at the beginning of our opening sequence, we have to make it dramatic. Seeing a montage from the film The Incredible Hulk, they made a sort of Montage of how Bruce Banner became the Hulk. The music was especially influential as it really help set the mode.
From this sort of montage I learnt that the music could be the most vital part of our opening sequence.

Ideas

During the holidays, I went with my family to Disney World Florida. There I saw how stunts and Disney films are made and saw some very interesting shows on film.

The stunts showed me why we can't do stunts in our opening sequence as firstly we need a professional and secondly you need time to reherse it and make sure the stunt is perfect.

Another thing that I learnt is that with all Disney films, there is always a sequeal, so there is a finale but it could lead on to another film. This gave me the idea of having a cliff hanger in our opening sequence. We could make something spontanious happen and then have our titles. This could be a way we can build suspense also as the cliff hanger can make the audience wonder a lot about what is going to happen next.

Ideas

During today's lesson we watched a previous AS Media coursework done by older students from our school. The one we watched today was called Relapse. In the opening sequence, someone had been tied up to a chair and left in a dark, dull place. This was a very good location for the groups purpose as the boiler room under our school gave a sort of 'something bad is going to happen here' mood. At the end of the sequence, their is a point of view shot of a character looking up at another character who is standing up and punches the guy from point of view shot. This looked really good in camera because the light was in the background and so made the punch stand out.

These two aspects of there opening sequence was good and on a whole they did OK. If we had any sort of violence in our opening sequence then the punch from point of view shot could have been a good addition to our film.

Taken 2008 (Directed by Pierre Morel)

The opening sequence of Taken has a home video of a little girls birthday. She opens a present and then blows out the candle. She is very happy at this point. Once the girl had blown out the candles, the camera cuts to Liam Neeson's character Bryan Mills. This indicates to the audience that he was having the dream and so the girl in the home video whose birthday it was is his daughter. A clever technique I think that Pierre Morel uses is as the video comes to an end, we see flashes of white in the frame. This could indicate that Bryan Mills was waking up. Having this as an opening sequence tells you a lot about the character Bryan Mills. The audience can identify he is going to be a main character, we also can tell that he cares a grate deal about his daughter and finally the audience can identify that the girl is his daughter.

This opening sequence is very unusual and unique, however, this is not the best part of this film. In the film, characters continuously ask what Bryan Mills job is. This then leads to the story about Bryan Mills daughter (Kim played by Maggie Grace) getting kidnapped in France. She is on the phone with her father and she sees her best friend getting kidnapped and so asks her father for. Bryan tells her what to do and his final instruction was to hide under the bed. Kim replied and said now what. Bryan replied with

'The next part is important, they will take you.' This quote arises many questions to the audience as how does Bryan know this is going to happen. This also creates a lot suspense for the audience as they are expecting her to get taken straight away but there is a little dialogue before she actually gets taken.

This is one of the most tense and exhilarating moments of the film and this is the perfect set up to what follows in the film.

These two ideas presented by Pierre Morel I find to very good and very interesting. I hope my group are able to put these ideas in our own opening sequence as this will really get the interest of other viewers.