Film Opening Research and Continuity Task

Today in Media Studies, I watched Fight Club and Good Fellas and Se7en for ideas for my film opening. They are both part of the thriller genre along some action, crime and comedy. Both films are targeted at a large demographic of 18+ year old males due to the lack of females within the first 10 minutes. The themes of violence, foul language and adult humour are prevalent in both and are established within the first few minutes. They are very similar to each other and have an interesting non-linear restricted narrative for their openings whilst also providing a voiceover from the main character. Furthermore, the use of flashbacks have a small comedic element as it gives the audience some insight of how the character ended up in that certain predicament. The title sequence of both films are also unique in that they are used to convey what the films are about. For example, the Good Fellas title sequence has the names of the cast zooming across the screen like they were cars, hinting towards the fast-paced nature of the film and the gangster theme.

However Se7en relied solely on multiple montage extreme close up shots that hinted towards religious and dark themes. This may be difficult to show our knowledge of camera techniques because of how limited it is for filming. Also it would have to capture the audience's interest immediately or it will look tedious and repetitive.

We were given a table to fill out whilst watching the first 10 minutes of the films that cover different criteria such as mise-en scene, sound, camera, narration, titles, representation, multi-generic elements/sub-genres, target audience, and form order. We were only able to watch 5 film openings in this lesson but there we were going to watch more film openings of different variety to broaden our knowledge. This task aimed to give us some ideas for our film opening that we will act out in groups of 4 for our coursework. My team consists of Tyler, Ewan and Dan. In the lesson before, we were tasked with making a short 2 minute film of a person opening a door, sitting down on a chair to talk to another person on a table. We needed to use camera techniques of match-on-action, shot-reverse shot and continuity.

We came up with an idea of a parodic, over the top, dramatic interview with a spagehetti-western feel that has the most extreme camera angles and shots to exaggerate how intense the interview is. This would be a mixture of a comedy/thriller type of scene. The interviewee would be nervous and sweating trying to cope with the interview. Stuttering as he tries to answer the interviewer's questions. The interviewer himself is a cold-hearted powerful and stererotypical interviewer who is displeased with the interviewee's application. This is overexaggerated to the point where he tears the application in half, this will be where we will perform our match on action and as a result will cause the interviewee to faint. The extreme close ups will capture the facial expressions of the individuals and they will be edited in a way that contrast each other to show a difference in power and control. The desk in which the interview will take place will be mostly empty to avoid any distractions that the audience might look at.


These were the roles given out for the continuity task:


- Hoiman - Cameraman 1
- Tyler - Camerman 2/Interviewer
- Ewan - Camerman 3
- Dan - Interviewee