Tuesday, 5 October 2010

Product research

I watched the opening clip of the film 'Saw' to see how they went about showing the opening scene. I thought it would interesting to see how a 'thriller' type film would begin.
I found it quite useful in that it taught me that you only get a vague idea of what it is about from the opening sequence, most of it is up to the viewers imagination from what they can see.
I also noticed that it also flashed between the opening credits and parts of the clip, which i thought was quite effective.
I would discard the soundtrack as it was quite depressing and include something more 'adventerous' to make it more appealing. Although a depressing soundtrack fits into forms and conventions of the 'thriller' genre, for the opening sequence i think it would be more appropriate to catch the viewers attention.
Unfortunately if we was to make our film opening fit into the 'thriller' genre we wouldn't be able to do hardly any of the SFX needed to give it any kind of the same effect as 'Saw'.

Link to opening of Saw: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Opz1kxZSk10

I also watched a fight scene from a jackie chan film 'Rush Hour 2' to see how we would go about doing a fight scene if we was going to do one and if it would be appropiate. It starts off with a long build up to the actual fighting, this builds up the suspense, but they also make it quite obvious that a fight scene is about to start, because of the way they build it up. I think it is quite good and if were to do a fight scene, i would take that approach into consideration.
They begin the scene with a close up followed by a tracking shot, this helps to set what is happening, build it up and begin the fight scene.
There is no soundtrack to this particular fight scene, but after watching a few from other films, most of them tend to use music and i think it has a far greater effect with music. They use a lot of fake punches and the noise made when they punch is non-diegetic sound, and if we were to film a fight scene we would have to do something similar.
During the fight scene, there is a lot of editing. They use a lot of quick cuts to seem more fast paced. They also use a mixture of close ups and long shots so the audience can see what is going on as well as character expressions. They ignore the 180 degree rule to make it seem more 'hectic', which is quite effective in fight scenes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9PWjpngkTA

I wanted to look at a sort of a crime/mystery film so i watched some clips from 'Inside Man'. I liked the idea of to keep the audience guessing as to what could happen and them wanting to know what happened and how they did it.
It was good in the way they did, because yoy don't really know what happens until the end of the film, in which the people who broke into the bank (who we know nothing about) make off with all the 'goods' without actually leaving the building. I like the idea of a clever 'catch' to a film, and i think it works especially well in this genre.
These type of films are generally quite slow paced and long winded and as we only have to do an opening scene, it would be hard to make this as affective, and a lot would have to happen in a short space of time, meaning ours would have to be of a faster pace. To do this we could bring in some action or comedy to make it more exciting.
It is also very clever in that in parts throughout the film, they switch to after it happened and show the interviews with all the people in the bank, and again it gets the audience thinking and gives them clues.
The soundtrack to this film is also very clever. It adds more of a mysterious edge to it, as it doesn't really make any relevance to the type of film it is, as the music is quite 'bouncy' and sort of mysterious.
The editing, as you would expect is very basic in the sort of film. They use a lot of tracking shots at the beginning, in which you see the main protagonist walk into the building. which i think is quite affective in opening a film and helping the audience to identify who the main protagonists are.

This link is a trailer for 'Inside Man', which i think sort of shows a bit everything i have just explained: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLxVTyFfQos