Stanley Kubrick - the title sequence designer

I am looking at Stanley Kubrick because he did the title sequence for The Shining and this film is a similar genre to the one I am doing for my film. This film is a physiological/crime film which is what genre my film is going to be.

This is the title sequence for The Shining. Stanley Kubrick wanted to establish an ominous mood whilst the character was driving up the hotel. The vast isolation of mountains and winding roads create a feeling of mystery for the audience. There is an extreme long shot of the settings to show the audience where the film is taking place. Also, Kubrick shows isolation in the nature which could represent isolation and no one being around. Throughout the title sequence, the mountains are always seen in the shots which could suggest to the audience that this will be a key location throughout the film. Kubrick uses a high angle shot to show the car driving alone on an empty and by using this angle the car looks smaller compared to the surroundings. Throughout this title sequence, the settings stay the same which could suggest to the audience that isolation will be a key theme throughout this film. In the title sequence, the music is played throughout in the background which adds tension to the film for the audience. As the main focus is on the location, it gives the audience an idea of where the film is going to be taking place.

About Stanley Kubrick-

Stanley Kubrick was an American film director, screenwriter and producer who was born on July 26 1928 and died on March 7 in 1999. He worked mostly in the UK. He is regarded as one of the greatest and most influential directors of all time. Typically, his films were adaptations of novels or short films, his films were described as having unique cinematography and his attention to detail in realism. Most of his films covered a variety of genres which included war, crime, romance, horror and science fiction.

What the coursework is about?

What the coursework is about? 

The coursework that has been set is to make a title sequence for a genre of film. We then have to blog post everything that we do which includes our research evidence, the planning and filming and the evaluation once we have filmed. In these posts I am going to be looking at different title sequences and ones that are similar to the genre that my group has chosen which is crime/psychological and mystery. I will also be researching into different title sequence designers and especially looking into ones that fit with my genre that I have chosen for my film.

What is STINCS?

What is STINCS?

Setting - where the film is set and takes place

Theme - genre of the film 

Iconography - the visual elements that portrayed in the film 

Narrative - the story line or the plot

Characters - main characters in the film but also minor characters 

Style - the way the story is put together

Applying STINCS to our film:

Setting - The film is going to be set in various locations. Like Canada when they go on holiday. The fair when they are tracking down the son and twin brother. Also a local house in America where the family lives.

Theme - the genre of our film is crime/mystery/physiological

Iconography - the visual elements that will be portrayed in our film will be bones (the six small bones), blood, fire and police tools like torches etc.

Narrative - the story line for our film is that a boy goes missing, but his dad's twin brother has taken him. The twin brother has left six small bones to make it look like the boy died. The police and mum try to find both the boy and twin brother. They find both of them and take the twin brother to be questioned. The audience will see the twin brother being questioned but they won't hear any of his responses and the film ends.

Characters - we have two main characters in our film. They are Leonardo DiCaprio which plays the twin brother and Paul Dano who plays the police officer. We haven't decided on who will play the mum and the missing boy in the film.

Style - we have used Todorov's theory to put our film together.

Todorov Theory

In 1969, Todorov created a theory that he believed could be applied to any film. He believed that all films followed the same narrative pattern. He believed that they all went through the stages called the equilibrium, disruption and the solution which is also known as the new equilibrium.

There are five stages the narrative or story line can go through which are:

• Equilibrium (the start of the story, everything as it should be) 
• A disruption of that order by something that happens
• The narrative recognises something has happened. 
• There is an attempt to repair the damage of the disruption
• A return of a new equilibrium

In my group we applied this to our own narrative: 

Equilibrium 

• The audience will see a funeral taking place, it will be a father that has died, the family go on holiday in Canada. The sons goes to look around the area and he is gone for more than two hours. 

Disruption

• The mum goes out to look for him. They can't continue as they have found a forest fire, there is no sittings of the boy named Morgan. Missing posters are put up, they find six small bones but they have no fire damage on them. The fathers twin brother dug them up from another child's grave to make it look like Morgan died. At this point, the audience don't know where the bones have come from and don;t know of the twin brother. Rose sees a picture of Morgan and a man who she believes is her husband. They go to the fair straight away because that is where the picture was taken. 

Resolution

• The man in the newspaper doesn't have a scar under his eye like her husband does. Calls the police and asks them to see if her husband really did die, during their searches they find a man that looks similar to her husband and who has the same birthday. Eventually track the twin brother down and take him to the police station to be questioned. The film ends with the audience seeing the twin brother being questioned but you won't hear his response. Meaning there is no resolution to the story.

Another theory that I will look at is Vladimir Propp's character theory. Propps was a Russian theorist who studied fairy-tales and folklore. He identified plot elements and developed this into an 8 spheres of action narrative theory. He developed a character theory for studying media texts and productions and this indicated that there were 7 broad character types in the 100 tales he analysed which could be applied to other pieces of media. There 7 character types were: 

1. The villain - they struggle against the hero 
2. The donor - they prepare the hero and give the hero something to help them on their quest/journey
3. The helper - they help the hero in the quest 
4. The princess - person he hero usually marries or they are a love interest for the hero
5. The false hero - they are seen as good at the beginning but then emerge as evil 
6. The dispatcher - the person who sends the hero on their quest
7. The hero - they are either the victim/seeker/winner - they react to the donor and get their love interest which could be seen as a reward for them fulfilling their quest/mission

When planning our title sequence and film, we used Propp's theory: 

1. The villain - Leonardo DiCaprio - he kidnaps the child 
2. The hero - Paul Dano - he is the police officer and helps the family find their missing son
3. The donor - Courtney Cox - she helps the hero find her son because she gives him information which helps his case

As our film doesn't need a lot of characters in it we wouldn't fully apply Propp's theory to our film but if we were to re-think the cast we could fully apply Propp's theory and have all 7 character types. 

Film Pitch in front of class and feedback.

Today in our media lesson Hannah and I pitched our film idea to the class and our teacher. The feedback that we got were both negative and positive. Many people liked our film title but didn't like all the writing that we had on each slide and they wanted us to use more pictures to explain things. This was the opening slide for our presentation and many people liked the concept of the flames because it refers to something that happens in the film.

Below are feedback sheets that all the class were given when we were doing our pitch. Most people thought that our story was very detailed and they understood why we chose to rate our film a 15. Many people thought that a simple breakdown of the narrative was something that needed to be developed in our pitch. They also wanted us to reconsider the characters that we were using in our film. This is because most of the class thought that Leonardo DiCaprio should be playing a main character and also they couldn't understand who our main character was and wanted us to develop on that more. Also the class wanted us to expand on the research that we did for the films that were similar to our genre and that influenced us. They want us to do a slide for each film that influenced us to create this film. For example we looked at two films which were called Prisoners and Taken. Also the feedback we got explained that we need to re-think our budget and gross profit for our film as we have Leonardo DiCaprio in our film. We also need to add more information about the film studio we have chosen to produce our film.

Below are feedback sheets that all the class were given when we were doing our pitch:

The presentation for my group's pitch.

http://www.slideshare.net/zarabhana/pitch-for-media-43879287

This is the presentation for my groups pitch on our film. In this PowerPoint we explain what our film is about, our target audience and who will star in our film. These are screenshots for our pitch for media. Once we showed this to our media class, they gave us feedback and we have to change our presentation according to the feedback we got. We will be pitching our film again on Monday again.

Planning for our film

This is a picture of my groups planning for our title sequence. As you can see we have decided the whole narrative for our film. We have also discussed the target audience for our film and the genre of our film. Tomorrow we will discuss what actors and actresses we want to star in our film. We have also decided our film name which is 'six small bones', we have decided on this title because it links with some of the things that are discovered in our film. Tomorrow my group will be planning a PowerPoint that we will need to do for a pitch that we are going to do for our film. We also discussed today that the font we are going to be using is going to look like bones because it fits in with our title.