This blog post covers:
- Conventions
- Titles, Idents and Media language for both general and genre conventions
- Social groups
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I took inspiration from James Corden's Carpool Karaoke series on YouTube.
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Transcript
- What conventions did you look at?
- We looked at 7 different conventions in film openings, being titles, idents, companies and production context, sound, opening shots, central protagonist and narrative, mise-en-scene and the transition to the main film
- Which genre of movies did you look at when researching conventions?
- We looked at all different genres from indie production companies, like Warp and production companies like Working Title, the subsidiary of NBC Universal, one of the Big 5, ranging from social realists like Tyrannosaur, directed by Paddy Considine and released in 2011, slashers like the Friday the 13th remake, directed by Marcus Nispel and released in 2009, rom-coms like Bridget Jones's Diary, directed by Sharon Maguire and released in 2001 and of course the zombie sub-genre to horror like Dawn of the Dead, directed by George A. Romero and released in 1978. It's important to have a range of research as a lot of conventions are shown across different genres so we made sure that that was one of our first tasks. Then we of course started to look at some zombie movies more in depth, especially the zom-rom-com hybrid genre.
- Can you talk to me about the use of font or style in titles?
- Sure, so titles have a big effect in anchoring the preferred reading. For example, in a social realist, we would expect to see a serif black or white font as it connotes seriousness. If we flip that and look at, let's say a rom-com, we would expect to see a sans-serif handwriting or bubble font as it stereotypically appeals to a female audience.
- So what did you do for Donnie of the Dead?
- As Donnie of the Dead is a zom-rom-com hybrid genre, we wanted to have a mix of conventional fonts for the zombie and the rom-com genres. To do this, we decided to have a distressed, sans-serif, bubble font. We took a great deal of inspiration from Anna and the Apocalypse. The distressed aspect signifies the zombie aspects and the bubble, sans-serif part signifies a rom-com. Besides the font we used, we also created an order for our titles which was inspired from a large range of genres as they are very similar throughout. However, I will say, quite a few Warp movies we looked at had a different approach. For example, Four Lions, a comedy about a suicide bomber, didn't have any titles besides the main ones. We also followed the auteur theory, where the director's name is mentioned twice, like Paddy Considine's This is England, even though our film doesn't tackle social issues.
- Talk to me about idents and the production context.
- So there are typically around 3-4 idents before the movie which last for around a total of 30s-1m but it does vary. There are some occasions where we would only see 1 ident or maybe even none. The more production companies there are involved in the making of the movie, the more the risks are spread, so if unfortunately there is a loss, it won't be as detrimental. We wanted to have 3 idents which applies to the common convention. Idents can be tweaked to connote the genre, like in the Friday the 13th remake, directed by Marcus Nispel and released in 2009, the idents have a red tint on the signifying blood as it is a Slasher movie which we didn't follow. As production context goes, we've taken inspiration from indie movies, as we saw The UK Film Council, which is now known as BFI or British Film Institution. These help fund the movie, so we put Luxembourg Film Fund in our titles.
- What about sound?
- Sound is largely involved in anchoring the target audience and signifying the genre. Diegetic and non-diegetic music can connote the age, gender and social class. A common example of this would be heavy metal signifying a younger male downmarket target audience and classical or jazz music signifying an older, upmarket target audience. Some movies we looked at had pre-existing music whereas others had music made specifically for the movie, like Le Donk and Scor-Zay-Zee. We took inspiration from This is England which has pre-existing music in the film opening. We also wanted to intertextualise Shaun of the Dead as it was our main inspiration for our film opening by having Ghost Town by the Specials playing as that was also in the Shaun of the Dead opening. This song would also be a way to widen our target audience as it was released in 1981 and so an older audience would know it. Ghost Town is also quite an ironic song to use which adds to the comedic effect. For foley sound, we took inspiration from Hot Fuzz as it has exaggerated SFX which connotes comedy. When researching sound, we also noticed that good ambient sound is what created verisimilitude which we wanted to achieve in our opening.
- Do you think you've been successful when it comes to your first shots?
- Yes I do think we've been successful. A convention in all genres is having the narrative enigma. There are obviously exceptions, such as ..........., but we definitely didn't want to follow that. In About a Boy, directed by Chris and Paul Weitz and released in 2002, there is a large amount of narrative enigma by not showing the central protagonist immediately, however it does provide exposition through the mise-en-scene. A different way of creating narrative enigma is providing a lack of exposition, for example, in Shaun of the Dead directed by Edgar Wright and released in 2004, we see Shaun the central protagonist, immediately, however we slowly gain more exposition by finding out more characters are in the scene. We decided to follow About a Boy's approach to narrative enigma rather than Shaun of the Dead's.
- So you mentioned the central protagonist, talk to me about that.
- Sure, so, we took a lot of inspiration from Shaun and Ed in Shaun of the Dead as they're the stereotypical slob and we wanted our protagonist to be like that. We tried to create this through the mise-en-scene and the costume. To anchor who the central protagonist, there are a few techniques which we have seen in many films, such as being centrally framed according to the rule of thirds, and tracking shots on the central protagonist. We used both of these techniques as well as many others. We also looked at Proppian archetypes, Campbell's hero's journey and Todorov's narrative structure which is apparent in many films. When it comes to Proppian archetypes, in a rom-com, we typically see a Princess/Prize archetype as well as a Hero archetype. We included both of these in our film opening. In the zombie genre we see the Villain archetype, which in our movie are the zombies. We also included Campbell's hero's journey, showing the shift from equilibrium to the call to adventure, and Todorov's narrative structure, the shift from equilibrium to disequilibrium, in our opening.
- What about mise-en-scene, you've been mentioning it a lot.
- Mise-en-scene is what is shown on screen at any time and this is vital in providing exposition about your character and their interests. We took a great deal of inspiration when it came to Shaun of the Dead as you can tell they're slobs from their coffee table in the living room. We practically copied that by putting empty beer cans, pizza boxes and an ash tray on the coffee table in the living room, where our opening starts. A really great example of mise-en-scene providing a large amount of exposition is About a Boy as we get to see what type of person the central protagonist is without even seeing him.
- How did you transition into the main film?
- We found a lot of title sequences which separated the opening from the movie, which we didn't want to follow. We wanted to have the titles over the opening, then have the main titles which then would fade to black before starting the main movie.
- Thank you so much for being here and answering my questions. You can check out Donnie of the Dead. It's out now.
- Thank you so much!
VODCASTS
When we were researching conventions, we made vodcasts for each aspect. We also did a genre specific research. Here are the links to the actual posts:
TITLES, IDENTS AND PRODUCTION CONTEXT - GENERAL
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MEDIA LANGUAGE - GENERAL
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TITLES, IDENTS AND PRODUCTION CONTEXT - GENRE
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MEDIA LANGUAGE - GENRE
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A SUMMARY ON ALL CONVENTIONS WORK AND KEY INFLUENCES WE HAVE TAKEN
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SOCIAL GROUPS
In this powerpoint, we discuss the range of audiences we expect our film opening to attract. We discuss age, gender, economic grouping, nationality/region and sexuality. We also take a look at the difference between the contrasting Warp and Working Title in regards to the size of audiences they get and for which reasons.
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In this powerpoint, we have a moodboard of what we expect our male and female audience members to look like, and what they're into.
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In this powerpoint, we combine the results of our survey we did to test what our target audience was. We did this by showing a video and asking everyone for their age and nationality and if they knew the 3 movies/TV shows we showed.
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