ADULT ROM-COM EG4 - Manhattan

WHAT I ENDED UP APPLYING:

• Diegetic titles (though here they really are part of the world)
• Voice-over of the protagonist 
• In the end the character of my protagonist changed from what I planned, and also someone I had in my mind who had a similar look to Woody Allan didn't have time, so the look and character attributes weren't applied, although some went over to the character of Rachel
• I also referenced Woody Allan in one of the sketches as part of my intertextual references to past classic romantic comedies and teen films

POSSIBLE POINTS OF INFLUENCE:

• The look of Woody Allan might be quite fitting as template for my outsider protagonist
• To have someone who is very l'art pour l'art like Isaac and Woody Allan in real life could also be fitting

Manhattan

Woody Allan, 1979

BBFC 12A/15 rating

Opening length: 

LEAD ACTORS: Woody Allan

                                 Diana Keaton

                                 Michael Murray

                                 Meryl Streep

GENRE: Romantic comedy (adult)

PRODUCTION COMPANY: Jack Rollins & 

Charles H.Joffe Productions

DISTRIBUTOR: United Artists (US)

BUDGET: N/A

BOX OFFICE: $40m (US)

TRAILER:



The opening scene here in high quality, missing the first few seconds of sound, , you can find a lower-quality version with that beginning here.

IDENTS:

Two idents, both with their signature sounds.

TITLES:
Only one diegetic title, that of the lighting scene of Manhattan.

NARRATIVE, EXPOSITION:
We get a sense of the character of the protagonist Isaac, however we don't see him, that being narrative enigma, the audience is invited to imagine how he looks like from the sound of his voice and what he says.
He is shown to have a very dramatic, verbal and l'art pour l'art personality.

GENRE:
The romantic atmosphere of a great city, and the voice-over talking about love for this city, is a more subtle and arthouse way of signifying the theme of love rather than showing characters who are going to go on the journey of falling and out of romance.

EDITING:
Black and white filter, this shows that already in 1979 there was nostalgia for this former medium of cinema, which recent films like The Artist still prove today.
We get a mixture of long and short takes, though there is no real change of pace in editing.

SOUND:
One non-diegetic track playing throughout the opening sequence, starting with a jazz riff.

TRANSITION TO MAIN FILM:
Black fade in after the non-diegetic music is over, and then we fade out to the four central characters of the film, and we have diegetic music of streets and of a busy restaurant.

GENRE RESEARCH - The teen film

This Guardian article  by Killian Fox, describes this as the origin of teen films:

The teen movie came of age in 50s America, not long after the concept of the teenager was born. The idea of an intermediate stage between childhood and adulthood, with its own peculiar characteristics, was still new when Marlon Brando donned his biker jacket in The Wild One (1953) and answered "What are you rebelling against?" with "What've you got?"Changing social attitudes and a booming postwar economy fed into the emergence of teenagers. Middle-class parents who had weathered the Depression and the war wanted their children to have full educations, uninterrupted by work or military service. As a result, young people found themselves with larger allowances and more free time. The dramatic possibilities of this stage of life, marked by rebellion, angst and young love, quickly became evident to movie-makers.

The protagonist as the other, so all the other teenagers in films who are represented as the Other are a simulacra of the James Dean archetype. 

James Dean will forever be considered the quintessential symbol of teen angst... Rebel Without A Cause is known for looking at the chaos, confusion and loneliness that comes with being a teenager.People are still trying to emulate Dean's pool persona.

WatchMojo named it the greatest teen film of all time:

It's the theme of teenagers of wanting to bond and finding their place in a society that shuns them that makes it our Number One film.

Killian Fox giving a short history of teen films:

Rock'n'roll, the sound that defined 50s adolescence, figured strongly in the early teen movies. Rock Around the Clock (1956) was one of the first films to be marketed at teenagers to the exclusion of their elders. Its success induced Hollywood to exploit this new demographic.
The Gidget movies and Beach Party (1963) developed a sure-fire formula in tune with the mood of the 60s, uniting music, comedy and romance with surf, Californian sun and skimpy bikinis. Much of the success of the teen movie lies in the fact that it crosses over so fluidly with other genres, and in the 70s, teens were subjected to horror (Carrie, 1976), romance (Love Story, 1970), comedy (National Lampoon's Animal House, 1978) and John Travolta musicals - Saturday Night Fever (1977) and Grease (1978).
High-school comedies featuring the so-called Brat Pack were huge in the 80s - a prime example being The Breakfast Club (1985). None of these films would be complete without the high-school holy trinity: the bitchy cheerleader, the uber-jock footballer and the bespectacled nerd.
Self-referentiality entered the classroom in the Nineties: the students in Scream (1996) knew the rules of teen slasher flicks but got slashed nonetheless. Classic texts were rejuvenated in Clueless (1996), an update of Jane Austen's Emma, Romeo + Juliet (1996), and 10 Things I Hate About You (1999), based on The Taming of the Shrew.
Today, the teen movie remains in good health - witness the success of the High School Musical series and Superbad (2007).

SWEDE1/Opening EG10 - Tyrannosaur

This is the final film opening I am looking at for my general research but also to prepare for my Tyrannosaur swede, the final practice exercise. 

Tyrannosaur

Paddy Considine (2011)

BBFC 18, MPAA unrated

Running time of the opening sequence: 2:57 mins 

Lead actors: Peter Mullan, 

                           Olivia Coleman, 

                           Eddie Marsan
Genre: Social realism

Budget: £750k
UK/US/World Box Office: £243k, $22k, £400k.

Production co's:  Warp X, Inflammable Films
Production financing:   Film4;UK Film Council; Screen Yorkshire; EM Media; Optimum Releasing.
UK, US theatrical distributors: StudioCanal, Strand.
 
LINKS: IMDB; RottenTomatoes (Users 83%, Critics 85%); BoxOfficeMojo; The-Numbers; Wiki; Official site/page; Facebook.

TRAILER 

CRITICAL KUDOS: (wiki)

Tyrannosaur received positive reviews and currently has a "certified Fresh" score of 83% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 75 reviews, with an average rating of 7.3 out of 10. The critical consensus states: "Tyrannosaur is a brutal, frank, and ultimately rewarding story of violent men seeking far-off redemption."^[6] The film also has a score of 65 out of 100 based on 18 critics on Metacritic, indicating "Generally favourable reviews".^[7]Stuart McGurk of GQ magazine called Tyrannosaur "The best British film of the year", whilst Empire said it was "Riveting, uncompromising, brilliant" and gave it 4/5 stars, as did Total Film, The Guardian, Sunday Mirror, and Evening Standard. The Daily Star Sunday and LoveFilm gave the film 5/5 stars and The Sunday Telegraph dubbed it "One of the most powerful films of 2011."
The American film critic and blogger Jeffrey Wells was so taken by Tyrannosaur after seeing it at the Los Angeles Film Festival that he started 'Hollywood Elsewhere's Tyrannosaur fundraising campaign' with the idea of raising $2,000 to cover the rental of a screening room so that the film could be shown in Hollywood with the hope of gaining recognition. Wells claimed this was the first screening financed by a critic.^[8]Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film 3.5 stars out of 4, calling Peter Mullan's performance muscular and unrelenting. He also remarked: "This isn't the kind of movie that even has hope enough to contain a message. There is no message, only the reality of these wounded personalities."^[9]Mark Kermode of BBC Radio 5 Live, hailed the film as one of the 11 Best Films of 2011.^[10] Kermode went on to award Olivia Colman Best Actress in his own Annual Kermode Awards. She tied with Tilda Swinton for We Need to Talk About Kevin.
By 18 December 2011, the film had won 21 awards from 28 nominations worldwide.
When the BAFTA Award nominations were announced on 17 January 2012, the omission of Olivia Colman in the Best Actress category led to global trending of both Olivia Colman and Tyrannosaur on Twitter.^[11]

IDENTS:

N/A, no idents, just like with Le Donk & This Is England.

TITLES:

Are non-serif and white, lower-case apart from capital letters like names are usually spelt.

The roles are smaller and, unconventionally, upper-case in contrast to names in lower-case.

1. Film4 AND The UK Film Council IN ASSOCIATION WITH Screen Yorkshire,                              EM MEDIA AND OPTIMUM RELEASING PRESENT
2. A Warp X/Inflammable Films PRODUCTION
3. A FILM BY Paddy Considine

On action, as the music begins, switching between left and right near the screen edge.

1. Peter Mullan
2. Olivia Colman
3. Ned Dennehy
4. Samuel Bottomley
5. Paul Popplewell
6. Sally Carman
7. Sian Breckin

MISE-EN-SCÈNE:

Urban location, not glamorised, 

NARRATIVE, GENRE, EXPOSITION:

We are introduced to the main character, and we already have the binary opposition within his own character/personality shown.

The other protagonist of the story, is still to be introduced.

THE PROTAGONIST:

My teacher asked me as the vulgar swearing started whether we were going to feel sympathy for the protagonist. I said definitely not in the opening sequence. I as an audience member was proven wrong.

The music and close-ups of the dog's paws are used to create sympathy for the protagonist.

ADULT ROM-COM EG1: Four Weddings And A Funeral

WHAT I ENDED UP APPLYING

• The protagonist being and getting out of bed 
• Added more narrative enigma rather than having them being in the first shot already

POSSIBLE POINTS OF INFLUENCE:

• The protagonist getting out of bed after realising they're late

Four Weddings 

And A Funeral

Mike Newell, 1994

BBFC 15 rating, MPPA R rating

Opening length:

LEAD ACTORS: Hugh Grant
                                 Andie McDowell

GENRE: Romantic comedy (adult)

PRODUCTION C0s: Working Title
                                         Channel 4 Films
                                         PolyGram

DISTRIBUTOR: Universal Pictures

BUDGET: $4.5m = £2.8m

BOX OFFICE: N/A (UK), $52.7m (US), $245.7m (worldwide)

CRITICAL KUDOS:

ROTTEN TOMATOES:  Critics 95%, Audience 74%        IMDb: 8.0/10

From wiki: 

The film was very well received with critics, currently holding a 95% "Certified Fresh" approval on reviews aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, with the site's consensus stating, "While frothy to a fault, Four Weddings and a Funeral features irresistibly breezy humor, and winsome performances from Hugh Grant and Andie MacDowell."^[6] Film critic Roger Ebert gave the film three-and-a-half stars out of four, calling it "delightful and sly", and directed with "light-hearted enchantment" by Newell. He praised Grant's performance, describing it as a kind of "endearing awkwardness".^[7]The film had its detractors. Writing for the Chicago Reader, Jonathan Rosenbaum called the film "generic" and "standard issue", stating that the audience shouldn't "expect to remember it ten minutes later".^[8] Time magazine writer Richard Corliss was less scathing, but agreed that it was forgettable, saying that people would "forget all about [the movie] by the time they leave the multiplex," even joking at the end of his review that he had forgotten the film's name.^[9] The character of Carrie was voted one of the most annoying film characters of all time in a British online poll.^[10]

TRAILER:

IDENTS:

Polygram Filmed Entertainment being the most superior here.

TITLES:

Inter-Titles, one on black and one on a cake

Polygram Filmed  Entertainment and Channel Four are the distributors of the film. Working Title is the production company. White serif font on black background. A flower-like emblem. "invite you to" is breaking the convention of neutral writing, and signifies the comedic and absurd nature of the film. The emblem signifies romance. The  of a serious background can be seen as the serious, romantic element of the narrative.

Followed by titles on live action.

THE OPENING SHOT:

...

NARRATIVE, EXPOSITION:

...

MISE-EN-SCENE:

...

EDITING:

...

GENRE SIGNIFIERS:

...

REPRESENTATION:

GENDER: ...

ETHNICITY: ...

SEXUALITY: ...

AGE: ....

CLASS/STATUS: ...

ABILITY/DISABILITY: ....

REGIONAL IDENTITY: ...

NORMATIVE OR COUNTER-HEGEMONIC?

...

SOUNDTRACK:

....

TRANSITION TO MAIN FILM:

....

MEDIA LANGUAGE - Types of Editing

Types of editing:

DISCONTINUITY EDITING

vs CONTINUITY EDITING

NON-LINEAR EDITING

CUTS

• Cutting/Match on action 
• Cutaway, add an Insert Shot
• Cross-Cut
• Jump Cut
• Match Cut, this video says:  "jumps from one shot to a similiar shot by either matching the action or the composition", change in space mostly but also in time, it is not cutting on action because we are changing to a different moving subject/action, where as with cutting on action we're still following the same subject. Like in The Two Towers, when Gandalf falls after trying to heal the king 
• Verbal Match Cut, the diegetic sound spoken by one character is, is not the same as an audio bridge, because we there we can't see the first part spoken, here one sentence is completed by the other (like in Candalabra)

TRANSITIONS:

• Fade In & Fade Out
• Dissolve (The panning shot from one to another of Billy's room)
• Smash Cut, sudden abrupt change, often waking up from a dream (if I had done the dream where Billy dreams of kissing Rachel)
• Iris, an alternate way of cutting to or zooming in on a close-up 
• Wipes, simple square, or can be different types of shapes (like with the pool table)
• Invisible Cut, where it's made to look like that it's still one single take, but it really is done through camera angles, like in whip pans, or mise-en-scene, like lighting
• L-Cut, audio carries over but is different 
• J-Cut, same as audio bridge? Also difference that sometimes diegetic sound turns into non-diegetic sound. Also "the audio of the next scene starts before you get to it", you hear what's going on before you see what's going on. Also great to introduce a new element of a scene(Tom Hanks stepping on piano and hearing it before we see it)

Both L- and J-Cut are designed to create a seamless flow, continuity editing, to make it look real, to achieve verisimilitude.

CREATIVE COMBINATIONS

The Graduate: Match Cut into a J-Cut

Fight Club: Match J-Cut

Man on the Moon: Verbal Match J-Cut

Fight Club: Cross-Cutting Cutaway 

Mad Max, Fury Road: Cutaway Jump Cut

Adaptation: Jump Cut Cross Cut Smash Cut

MEDIA LANGUAGE - TITLES

TWO TYPES OF TITLES:
Inter-Titles + Titles on live action.

Title giving exposition and anchorage to the date and/or location.

Titles will mainly always be edited in, being called non-diegetic titles, however there are examples of titles that are part of the mise-en-scène, called diegetic titles.

REPRESENTATION/NARRATIVE THEORY: Levi-Strauss´'s Binary Opposition

"Conflict, the root of any narrative, is offered by binary opposition."

Theory that states narrative comes from conflict between two polar opposites, thereby the Proppian hero/protagonist and villain/antagonist will be the anthithesis of each other.

Or in the case of the antihero they could be struggling with opposite facets of their personality, the binary within themselves.

Male vs Female

Young vs Old

Urban vs Natural 
Humans vs Machine

ADULT ROM-COM EG5 - His Girl Friday

WHAT I ENDED UP APPLYING

• The voices calling across the hall as diegetic sound.

POSSIBLE POINTS OF INFLUENCE:

• The slapstick elements

Bringing Up Baby

Howard Hawks, 1938

BBFC U rating, MPAA Not Rated

Running length of opening: 

LEAD ACTORS: Katharine Hepburn

                                 Cary Grant

GENRE: Screwball comedy 

PROD + DISTR: RKO Radio Pictures

BUDGET: $1.07m

BOX OFFICE: $1.11m

From wiki:

Despite Bringing Up Baby's reputation as a flop, it was successful in some parts of the U.S. The film premiered on February 16, 1938 at the Golden Gate Theatre in San Francisco (where it was a hit), and was also successful in Los Angeles, Portland, Denver, Cincinnati and Washington, D.C.. However, it was a financial disappointment in the Midwest, as well as most other cities in the country, including NYC; to RKO's chagrin, the film's premiere in New York on March 3, 1938 at Radio City Music Hall made only $70,000 and it was pulled after one week^[46] in favor of Jezebel with Bette Davis.^[47]During its first run, Bringing Up Baby made $715,000 in the U.S. and $394,000 in foreign markets for a total of $1,109,000;^[34] its reissue in 1940 and 1941 made an additional $95,000 in the US and $55,000 in foreign markets.^[46] Following its second run, the film made a profit of $163,000.^[34] Due to its perceived failure, Hawks was released early from his two-film contract with RKO^[34]and Gunga Din was eventually directed by George Stevens.^[48] Hawks later said the film "had a great fault and I learned an awful lot from that. There were no normal people in it. Everyone you met was a screwball and since that time I learned my lesson and don't intend ever again to make everybody crazy".^[49] The director went on to work with RKO on three films over the next decade.^[50]Long before Bringing Up Baby's release, Hepburn had been branded "box-office poison" by Harry Brandt (president of the Independent Theatre Owners of America) and thus was allowed to buy out her RKO contract for $22,000.^[51][52] However, many critics marveled at her new skill at low comedy; Life magazine called her "the surprise of the picture".^[53] Hepburn's former boyfriend Howard Hughes bought RKO in 1941, and sold it in 1959; when he sold the company, Hughes retained the copyright to six films (including Bringing Up Baby).^[50]

CRITICAL KUDOS:

ROTTEN TOMATOES:  Critics 95%, Audience 90%        IMDb: 8.0/10

From wiki: 

The film received good advance reviews; Otis Ferguson of The New Republic thought the film very funny, praising Hawks' direction.^[38] Variety praised the film, singling out Hawks' pacing and direction, calling Hepburn's performance "one of her most invigorating screen characterizations" and saying Grant "performs his role to the hilt";^[39] their only criticism was the length of the jail scene.^[40] Film Daily called it "literally a riot from beginning to end, with the laugh total heavy and the action fast."^[41] Harrison's Reports called the film "An excellent farce" with "many situations that provoke hearty laughter,"^[42] and John Mosher of The New Yorker wrote that both stars "manage to be funny" and that Hepburn had never "seemed so good-natured."^[43] However, Frank S. Nugentof the New York Times disliked the film, considering it derivative and cliché-ridden, a rehash of dozens of other screwball comedies of the period. He labeled Hepburn's performance "breathless, senseless, and terribly, terribly fatiguing",^[44] and added, "If you've never been to the movies, Bringing Up Baby will be new to you – a zany-ridden product of the goofy-farce school. But who hasn't been to the movies?"^[45]

TRAILER:



The whole film can be found on Dailymotion here.

SYNPNOSIS:
Classic screwball comedy following palaeontologist David Huxely who is engaged to the dour  and workaholic Alice. He faces a marriage trapped in hard work with little romance, who is determined that their marriage contain "no domestic entanglements of any kind."
He is about to meet a new woman in his life, Alice Swallow, a free-spirited and, possibly pre-cursor of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, who will turn his life upside down in the pursuit of a leopard that he has been sent from Brazil.
The opening sequence introduces us to the engaged couple in their place of work.

IDENTS:

One ident for one company responsible for both production and distribution, as was more common in those days, lasting for 15 seconds and then fading in and out to the titles.
It has a signature sound, that of s radio signal, appropriate for its name.

TITLES:

Separate inter-title sequence before the live action starts, which was the norm and convention back then, but can still be seen such as in films like This Is England and The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, and is still seen after a live action opening sequence in the Bond franchise.

THE OPENING SHOT:

An extreme longshot, an establishing shot which we are going to close in on

NARRATIVE, EXPOSITION:

Instead of a title telling us date and setting, like we sometimes see, mise-en-scène is used to anchor the location.



We get introduced to one of the main two protagonists of the narrative.

TODOROV:
This is an equilibrium, the disruption will happen later with the introduction of 
We are at the same location that the film will end on, when the dinosaur smashes to pieces, so the dinosaur at the moment represents the old equilibrium that must be destroyed for a new one to exist.

MISE-EN-SCÈNE:
For verisimilitude their are multiple scientific objects around the room to connote that this is a place of scientific study.
Huxley is dressed in a typical white garb which a majority of people know, making it one of Barthes's cultural codes.

EDITING:

At the beginning we cross-fade into shots.

GENRE SIGNIFIERS:

Two parts of the love triangle are present here, and conflicts about different opinions on family life.

REPRESENTATION:

GENDER: The female dominant in the relationship here. However the woman is shown as the typical torment for the man.

ETHNICITY: Just Caucasians present, this is pre-Civil Rights Movement.

SEXUALITY: Represents the norm of the time, heteronormativity, homosexuality was a punishable criminal offence.

AGE: This is a film mainly focussing on young middle-aged characters, teens and children are not present in the opening sequence. The old Professor stereotypically stands for intellectuality.

CLASS/STATUS: Middle-class, Alice Swallow has delusions of grander when she reacts to Huxley using the phrase: "I'll knock him over", she responds by saying:

David, no slang, remember who and what you are.

ABILITY/DISABILITY: Able-bodied, no physical or mental disabilities, unless you count the glasses of, which are more there to connote his status as a scientist.

NORMATIVE OR COUNTER-HEGEMONIC?

All in all this is a very typical representation in US cinema of the time, however we do get a more unconventional emasculated male who throughout the film will never be the true strong, masculine action hero.

SOUNDTRACK:

Start off with the first track for the titles from the soundtrack, we then get.
For the discussion between the characters we only get their voices as diegetic sound, with them projecting across the wide space, this adds a sense of realism.

TRANSITION TO MAIN FILM:

There is no sound added, just a cross-fade into the next scene, the change of location is the main transition, the protagonist is now on his journey as Joseph Campbell would say.