ColdShoulder

Analysis of our opening sequence

By: Waleed, Emre and Rehaan
Our production studios logo/intro to the movie
 At the beginning of our opening sequence, we have a
number of establishing shots, they show, the millennium
eye, the houses of parliament, millennium bridge and a
few other sites near London's famous south bank, the use
of establishing shots are really important, they help set the
scene, also the audience can understand where the film is
set in our case, quiet clearly its London. The music used is
quiet relaxing, it's a piano playing rather slowly, but with
quiet a hard hitting sound, this empathizes the seriousness
of what's about to happen in the film, it coincides with the
genre of our opening sequence which is quiet evidently a
thriller, all the sound at this point is quiet clearly non
diegetic. The text that comes up, showing various names of
the people who worked on this film, are quiet clearly blue,
as most thrillers have blue text, again this shows the
audience that this film is a thriller, nearly all thrillers have
blue font, however there are a few exceptions. While
editing, we as a group decided to darken the edges of the
establishing shots, this gives them a depth, it does not
show the bright, colorful and vibrant city we all know,
instead it shows a more colorless, darker London, the side
that most people don't know exists, as our film goes on to
show, a deal of some sorts, this is not done, nor heard
about by an everyday Londoner. We panned across the
river to capture millennium bridge and the London eye, we
were recording from Westminster bridge, however when
we wanted to record the houses of parliament, we had to
record from the Southbank.
 After our establishing shots there is a fade to black, this
fade empathizes some time laps, and helps the music fade
out and change in to the next, more up tempo type music.
In this section, you get the first glimpse of the characters,
there are two in total in this opening sequence, there's
'Phill' who is played by Chris Smith and there's 'Ali' who's
played by Richard Evans, there both look like your
average people walking down the road, ones wearing a
hoody, ones wearing a woolly hat, this is casual attire for a
teenager around London, since our target audience are
teenagers, this helps draw them in. In this part, we use a
lot of quick cut shots, these quick cut shots, help in
keeping the audiences interest since we keep jumping
from shot to shot, it also keeps the audience guessing as
to our next shot. Also when the camera is showing 'Chris
Smith' its from a low down angle, this lower angle, shows
that Chris Smith is the one with the control in this deal,
also as he is the one who initiates the phone call, he can
demand what he wants, as he is the one with the bag,
making him in charge of this deal that's about to happen.
Compare this to the camera angle on 'Richard Evans',
which is at eye level, showing that although he's not that
powerful, he still has some type of control, he is the one
that at the end of the day will purchase this bag off 'Phill'.
All the sound again is non diegetic, the characters can
clearly not here the music.
 In this scene, you hear the first diegetic sound in our opening
sequence, its of the phone ringing, if you listen to the
ringtone, the song is 'Black And Yellow (Produced By Stargate)
- Wiz Khalifah'this song may seem insignificant, but our target
audience has probably heard this song, many times, it's
played all over the radio and is very popular with teenagers.
There is a phone call scene in which 'Phill' and 'Ali' have a
conversation, about what's going to happen, 'Phill' says 'I'm
on my way now G' and 'Aight Cool' - these statements, very
much relate to our target audience, with our audience being
teenagers, they usually use these phrases, or have heard
people use them, us as a group use these words in normal
conversation, as this film is targeted at our age, we can all so
agree to the fact that we've heard the ringtone song, many
times. When the phone rings, the phones screen is shown on
the sequence, from this you can see that Chris Smith plays
'Phill', this scene to us quite a while to film, because we had
to get the reflection just right, so you could actually see the
screen, also, when 'Ali' picks up the phone, the way he
answers it is quirky, this is because when we were filming it,
we wanted the camera to pick up his mouth moving while he
was talking, however to the audience this could show that he
is a bit different and does not follow the crowd. As you can
see in the last screen shot, the camera is looking up to 'Phill',
relating to what I said in the previous slide. This scene took us
quite a while to edit, as we had to get the continuity right,
which we had perfected in our preliminary task.
 This is the final scene, there's a lot going on in this scene,
firstly you'll notice that as soon as 'Clyde' walks across, the
camera automatically follows him at a lower level than him,
showing that he has something about him, that makes him
powerful, maybe he has a weapon disguised, this makes
the audience think a lot about what's going to happen
next, furthermore, again there is a lot of quick cutting, this
keeps the audience guessing again, also, it makes it more
interesting, than just showing one person walk from one
side, but the fact that your first shown 'Clyde' walk means
that he's really important in this opening sequence. Notice
that the music now has completely changed, it more an up-
tempo sound, this was made by me in Garageband, it took
rather long to make, but as a group we decided that it
fitted well, we were looking for royalty free music, but we
didn't find any that would fit the scene, so decided to make
our own. Now one of the most important scenes of our
opening sequence, the bag swap, we shot this twice, from
two angles, hence how we cut the shot half way through,
the continuity was perfect, thanks to great editing and the
director was great to, we were planning to slow down
when the bag swap happened, but it just looked really
cheap, because the frame rate would drop really low and
would look really choppy, the bag swap scene surpassingly
only took two takes to get it right, we were pleased and
decided to finish shooting, since that was the last scene of
the day.
That was our analysis on our
opening sequence.
Thank you