Title Design Website

 While researching for title scenes I came across a website called “Art of the title.” This website has been very beneficial in our research of titles. This website allows us to find the opening title sequence to many popular movies and tv series. This is very helpful to us in our research for title sequences specifically. The page is pretty easy to navigate and is very able to find what you are looking for. However, there are a lot of people’s personal films on there and that can sometimes be tricky when looking for specific resources. There are many different ways to view the titles. It also tells you whether it is an opening sequence, closing sequence etc. It also tells you the studio that produced it. This has been very beneficial to us for many reasons. Some of those have allowed us to gain inspiration as well as ideas for our own project. It also allowed us to see a reoccurring theme or idea between recent title sequences, showing what's popular and what's not.  

 

While researching we also came across a website called “Watch the Titles.” It is similar to the other website we found “Art of the Titles.” However, it is slightly different. This website was slightly easier to use. However, it had more students and other films rather than blockbuster hits. This site allowed us to watch the opening sequence to many movies as if we were watching it on YouTube. A lot of the films on this site were also older and so we were less likely to use the ideas in our own opening title sequence. We did find good resources on this site though. We will definitely use it in the future to get inspirations and ideas when it comes to opening title sequences. Although, we liked the other website better. This was still very beneficial to our research.

Genre Research: Spider-man No Way Home

 

• Some conventions in this film that drew my attention were the use of sound. Sound was used in almost every scene. This allowed for the emotion to really get through to the audience. They also used lighting to do this. For example, when in a sadder scene they used darker lighting to make it more devastating to the audience. They also used a variety of camera angles that really allowed the audience to better understand what the director wanted them too. Their innovative and stunning costumes and acting also appealed to our group because it really helped the story line make sense. It allowed insight into who the character was and where they came from. For example, you might be able to tell someone's social or money status by their outfit.  

• 
  

• This movie portrayed a lot of conventions we would like to use in our film. For example, many high angles were used to show a power struggle between one or more characters/actors. Another type of angle that was shown in this film was medium long shots. These were used to emphasize the actor and their surroundings, giving the audience a better understanding of the scene. Many costumes and lighting were used that we would also like to incorporate into our film. The use of the normal street wear for a teenager as well as the use of low light in this film. 

• 
  

• Although this movie had many conventions we would like to use in our film, there were also some that we would not like to use in our film. Some of these include the use of high-tech and innovative costumes and settings. This movie was created with an insanely high budget that we do not have access to. Therefore, some of the resources are not currently available to us. However, because of this lots of other inspiration has circled into our mind. Another thing that we would not necessarily use that was in this movie was the use of many tracking shots. A tracking shot would not be needed in our film. The editing and added CGI in this movie is also something that we will not be able to contribute to our film.  

• 
  
  
  

Genre Research: Godzilla vs Kong

 

• Some conventions we saw in Godzilla vs Kong were the use of high angles, and low angles with camera shots that help add to how the character is viewed. It also gave us lots of wide shots, and pan shots to see what is going on in the scene. Lots of diegetic sounds, as well as incidental music give the audience more of a view into the scene. The movie uses a lot of eye-line matches when there is dialogue between characters, as well as reverse shots and action shots. The sets and props are also well designed in the movie to look realistic. 

• 
  

• In the movie, we liked how most of the camera angles were used. The low and high angles helped add a dramatic factor to the movie. The use of diegetic sounds gave the audience a better idea of where the movie currently is, for example, the wave sounds used in the scene where the characters were in the ocean. Another aspect of the movie that we liked was the props and sets and how well they were designed. This movie helped give us a lot of ideas of what to do in our opening sequences.  

• 
  

• Some aspects that did not appeal to us were how the dialogue took over most of the movie, and how it messed with action shots. Also, how it overused a lot of pan shots in the movie, causing it to become regular. There were also a lot of close-ups in the movie, in places where it did not need to be. The movie was great overall but there could have been more emotional scenes with some of the characters that could add to the plot. While we will not be able to add any CGI to our film, we will use a lot of other concepts in this film that have inspired us. 

• 
  
  
  

Genre Research: Stowaway

 

• There was a lot of suspense in this film which I believe we should try to do the same in our movie. Using music, we could put watchers on the edge of their seats just like they did in Stowaway. 

• 
  

• Stowaway was highly Music oriented, and I would like to do this in our movie too. There were also great props because it was like they made the whole ship one big prop throughout the movie. There was also the fact that Stowaway only had 4 actors on screen the entire movie. I believe this contributed to the lonely feeling of the movie. They truly didn’t have help and were on their own up there. 

• 
  

• In the beginning of the movie during the ship launch, there was very shaky camera movement, and I don’t think that this could be useful to us. There won’t be any intense scenes with lots of movement in our film. One thing that I didn’t like was that there were very basic camera angles. I had a hard time seeing what they were trying to portray through them, and I want to make it easy for our audience, so they understand our movie. 

Genre Decision Blog: Sci-fi

 Our group researched the different genres to do for our opening sequence and chose thriller, horror, and Sci-Fi. When researching these genres, we relished how while they are similar, they all have distinct aspects that make them its own genre. This helped us see how each genre would work in our opening sequence. Thriller is more of a suspense, horror is a fear factor to scare you, and Sci-Fi is science fiction which is imagined science. Some movies helped us get a better view of how each genre looks, rather than just reading about it. For Sci-Fi we looked at movies such as “Godzilla vs. Kong” “stowaway” and “Free Guy”. When looking at movie genres like horror “Halloween kills” and “scream.” which as we saw has a lot of gore. Finally for thriller we looked at “a quiet place part II", "countdown” and “hereditary” which finally put what we were missing into what genre we wanted to use. We chose Sci-Fi as our movie genre because it fits best for what we are going for and the kind of story we are trying to tell. Looking at the other two choices, it was easy to see which on we should pick for our opening sequence. Horror and thriller, while highly considered, did not fit how we wanted our movie to turn out. We thought that horror and thriller were the same until further research showed us that they are completely different and would not work for our movie. Since our movie deals with an alien, it falls more into science fiction than any of the other genres. If we chose horror, we would have to make it seem more extreme and scarier rather than making it more dramatic than it is. Choosing thriller we would run into a similar problem, the only difference is thriller has more of a buildup, so the kidnapping would seem more like something you know was coming rather than it shocks you out of nowhere. Sci-Fi gave us the right buildup, along with camera angles, editing, and sound we would use in the opening sequence. Choosing Sci-Fi has now given us a better idea of how our opening sequence will look. When doing our opening sequence, we will look back at Sci-Fi movies which could give us ideas on how to improve our movie. Our group is extremely excited to do Sci-Fi as it seems like it gives a more opening to being imaginative. We cannot wait to get started on the next part of our project.