Influences

Influences

 

Up

We really liked the idea of using the opening scene to tell the story of what has happened previous to the film and give the audience some context without having to explain it in a dialogue or monologue. Although 'Up' is an animation they've still used pictures and videos to start the story without the use of words. We thought this was a really interesting and unique way of starting a film as you don't see it very often.

Napoleon Dynamite

Napoleon Dynamite has a really quirky opening scene with the credits and title displayed on objects such as student cards, library books and food. We are looking to do something like this with our own opening sequence with the concept of displaying credits on inanimate objects. When we watched this we thought it really interesting not only because it was food but the way it had been used to write on and arranged and also the fact that not many films that we had seen had done this original idea. 

Mean Streets

Mean Streets was one of our influences because we liked the old films and old photography used. The credits were around the picture like an old video camera set up where it would say the date and time but replaced with names and we thought this was an interesting way to display the credits. In many opening sequences they use very quick cuts between shots to show different things, however it wasn't too fast in Mean Streets meaning you could actually see what the picture of film was.

The Grass is Greener

The opening sequence to The Grass is Greener is very funny as it is four babies in a field and you don't actually know if they have anything to do with the film. We thought it was a very clever opening sequence because the babies actions reflected what the credits said, e.g. when the credits of screenwriter came up, the babies were playing with a typewriter and when the costume designer credit was run, one baby was dressed up. The idea of the action matching/relating to the credit was very interesting.

Se7en

From the opening sequence you can tell that the movie is scary because of the music and the lighting. The shots all look very dark and grey and we weren't sure what the person was doing even though the cuts weren't too quick. We liked that it was also an opening sequence with quite a lot of action as it cuts between the different stages of what the man is doing and we see it in such detail as each of these shots are close-ups, however, they don't give away the bigger picture of what is happening entailing that element of suspence. Another aspect we liked was that the writing flashed and moved around quickly because it also showed the film was going to be scary.